ABSTRACT
This chapter explores writing for performance, and encourages the reader to increase the oral dimension of the author's writing. It is about the various ways in which the reader can make the text ‘talk’, explores different voices and untie people tongue. At the same time it takes the reader from performance poetry into intermedia work, improvisation and theatrical presentation. However, it does not encourage the reader to construct conventional plays, and is not about writing drama. An awareness of the possibilities of performance can give a whole new and exciting perspective on writing. Performance radically changes the author–reader dynamic: it creates a live situation in which the writer and audience interact in the same space. Performance poetry is a very general term which has been used to describe many different types of orally based work. It includes sound poetry, ethnopoetics, dub poetry, and what is sometimes known as slam poetry.
