ABSTRACT
This chapter turns to the literary and performative practices discussed across the data, such as adults reading, performing, memorising or reciting poems, play-reading groups, actors learning lines and singers belting out lyrics. It draws on the theorising of literature and drama to explore the importance of sound, ‘role-taking’ and ‘meeting places’ between writer and reader(s) and examines literary life in three ways: as production, performance and experience. This includes a development of the notions of recitation and the compression of time and space introduced in chapter eight and uses the idea of the Anglo-Saxon ‘Wordhord’ to think about the ‘banks’ of memorised poems, words and phrases inside so many people and what being able to call on these might mean.
