I'm writing as best I can, but mixing in the company I do makes it difficult to assert my own personality.

I want to give my work more of a showcase, but find it difficult to get to things on my own.

How should I progress?

Hi Chris,
I've seen you perform once before and you seemed all right to me.
Best advice I can give is the same advice I've been given many times before, just keep on writing and performing and given time everything will click and you'll find your own voice.

When I started I suffered from really bad stage fright and due to that and alcohol I forgot half of my poem and had a really horrible night, it was actually Gray-Hamm who encouraged me to keep going and barring an incident in Derby with an empty lager bottle I've found myself improving time and time again.

But as I said earlier just keep at it and your personality will start to shine through what you do.

Hi Chris,
I think what Cayn and Paul say is good advice, I would add that whilst some people will get a lot out of seeing a dynamic performance, others will get just as much from hearing a beautiful poem recited and others will be given confidence to attempt it themselves by seeing other nervous poets attempting it.
On the bit about going to events on your own I have possibly the same problem, I don't mind going to events on my own as I'm quite happy to sit alone and listen to the poetry or to make new friends but I don't like to travel to strange towns alone which means I miss out on a lot of gigs. I wonder if there are others out there who feel the same way? Maybe we could meet up somewhere central and travel to the gigs together?
Would love to hear what others think on this subject?
Much love to everyone.

Magi
xxx

Going to new towns to perform can be very daunting, I'm slowly getting used to it, but I think other poets meeting up before going to a new and (if outside Yorkshire) strange town is a good idea.

Ventriloquism's best. You can have lots of voices. You can try each one out AND drink a glass of beer without stalling the flow of the poem. You need to practice, though, or it will sound like gargling.

You know I used to really care what the audience thought, I still do of course just not as much.
These days though I want myself to be happy with my performance more than anything. If I'm not happy about a poem or a delivery then I beat myself up about it for a few days and then work on what I did wrong and fix it or change it slightly.

So fuck what the audience think or your contemporaries, you're performing for you. Take chances & risks or stick to what you know works and do it gradually. The more time you spend in front of a mic the more comfortable you will be.

This point though has taken me three years to get to and an awful lot of crappy performances.

Keep trying

dam

One piece of advice to add:

Read.

Read poetry. Go to the library and borrow all the poetry books you can get your hands on. Not just by those who are like you; don't expect to like everything you read.

You only learn by reading. And continuing to write the things that are important to you. Audiences are only important after the writing's been done; you're not put on this earth to ingratiate yourself with a bunch of drunks.

And don't go looking for your voice. Borrow other peoples', and the more peoples' voices you borrow, the more you start to sound like yourself. ("Great poets steal; bad poets plagerise" as TS Eliot once said.)

As well as reading, keep on performing and practising, you'll come along in leaps and bounds!