ABSTRACT
Chatzichristolou and Zeherin (2012) suggest that the rise in intimate performance has a social, political and cultural significance. This chapter seeks to interrogate transactional and consensual relationships between audience members, performers and organisers in 1-2-1 and intimate poetry. It examines my own practice, looking at different models of money exchange and value. The chapter will try and tease out differences and similarities in audience response, asking questions of both poets and participants about what constitutes intimacy, whether intimacy can be bought and why audiences might want to seek out intimate poetry experiences. This chapter will seek to understand the ways in which audience responses to intimate readings configure a relational or participative aesthetic which binds audience and performer in a profound social moment that suggests a politics of conviviality which supercedes or makes redundant, the transactional nature of the exchange.
The research will be based on both my own and fellow poets experiences performing intimate poetry in The Poetry Brothels of London, Urtrech, Berlin and New York; performing with The Crimson Word at immersive events and with site-specific performance art piece TIME = MONEY.
