Reading notes for debut and other poets at launches and book promotions

Often an uncomfortable truth, but reading one's poems out loud in public is very much part of the job of a poet, especially if you are releasing your new book into the wild and want people to buy it. Many folk like to hear the work before they part with their hard earned, so consider this activity as part demo, part entertainment and try to make some fun for yourself and your audience when doing it. 

I've been to many, many launches and book promotions over they years, and it has struck me that there are some key things to avoid for a successful reading. If you are a debut poet, these notes might be useful. They might also be a reminder for the rest of us.

1. You are on stage, so dress appropriately and put your best self forward. Don't scruff on in dirty clothes, unwashed and unkempt. Your audience will most often have paid to attend, so present yourself well. Would you want to buy a book from someone who didn't care about their own appearance? OK, call me a snob if you will, but I'm old fashioned and think this kind of thing is rather important.

2. Unless you have a disability, don't sit down. Stand proudly so you can fill you lungs with air and give good voice to your words. Lift your head up and don't mutter to the ground. Don't try to disappear at the back of the stage. Step forward and approach the audience. 

3. Hold up your book. Let the audience have a chance to see the cover. You are trying to garner sales, so advertise its physical presence and don't hide it in your notebook when reading. Don't be ashamed of it. Show it off!

4. If you are not using a mic, you will need to use your big voice, even in a small space. Learn to project and make sure everyone can hear you. The last thing you want is your reading interrupted by someone asking you to speak up.

5. If you are using a mic, do a sound check before hand so you know how far away to be from it. Not all mics are the same and you need to practice using them.

6. Be very familiar with your set list and reading order. Know where the poems are in your book. Use numbered sticky tags. There's nothing worse than watching the poet fiddle about flicking through pages trying to find the next poem. It disrupts the flow of the reading and breaks people's concentration.

7. Don't waffle too much about sources, influences and the background to the poems. Less is more and don't let this chat get in the way of the audience hearing your poems. If in doubt, just read.

8. Overcome your shyness and practice until your are confident. This includes practicing your remarks between poems. Yes, even ad libs need rehearsing.

9. Try to catch the eyes of different parts of the audience during your reading. Don't just look in one direction or fix your gaze on a spot at the back of the room. This can be tricky, but do try to make it look like you are reading to people not floors or ceilings or walls.

10. Don't expect applause after every poem or try to elicit it by saying thank you. Do this at the end of your reading to signal you have finished, or if unexpected applause burst out during your reading.

11. Never ask what time it is as this looks unrehearsed and uncontrolled. Time your reading and remarks so you know how long it lasts and how many poems you can read in the allotted time.

12. Never over-read. This is a cardinal sin for which there are no excuses.

13. Don't read another poet's work, especially a well known one. The audience is there to hear you and your book. This will only attract the inevitable comparison to your work.

14. Don't read new work that's not in the book. You are promoting this book. This is especially true if you go on to say the new work is unfinished. If you're not happy with it, don't read it. 

These are suggestions for launches and book promotion readings specifically and I hope they are helpful. I look forward to hearing you read from your new book soon!

Ian McEwan - Maison de la Poesie

Shameful though it is, I have never darkened the door of La Maison de al Poesie until now, which is of course ridiculous as it's just ten minutes from my house, but that's largely because they have few anglophone guest writers - surprisingly enough this is France - and I can only just about cope with bi-lingual things.

Ian McEwan was in town last night to promote his newly translated latest novel Operation Sweet Tooth or in French, Operation Sweet Tooth (acute accent on the e in operation), which, as you can guess by the title, is a spy novel. a genre he has written before and might again. In response to a question (from me) he explained that emersion into the genre involved reading Somerset Maugham and Le Carre (acute accent on the e) in order to learn and follow the conventions. On Le Carre he hopes that he will be considered a major literary novelist eventually and gave a lovely vignette of him when working at MI5 and never being sure of whether his colleagues were brilliant or totally stupid.

The novel is set during the Cold War, a period in time, he thinks has become sufficiently contained by its effluxion in order to be written about in the way he does. Little of the plot was given away, and certainly not the ending, instead McEwan talked about the activities of the CIA. The agency was paradoxically funding culture, like concerts of A-tonal music in Paris, the Boston symphony orchestra and exhibitions of abstract expressionism, in order to have free and open culture, whilst at the same time the Soviets were busy elevating the importance of writers by incarcerating them.

For McEwan Orwell is the most effective anti-totalitarian writer and Animal Farm and 1984 are the most eloquent writing in this cause.  He went on to question our love affair with irresistible and addictive machines, which have the capacity to change human consciousness and give us two enemies, the state and ourselves, as we are becoming more vulnerable to being watched and listened to, and which have banished our capacity for solitude. These are the kind of machines of which Orwell never dreamed.

Sound bites to take away and chew over:

I don't create literature, I am the inheritor of literary tradition. 

In a free society, writers should be free to do what they want.

Writers are spies - we all try to read each other all the time and control our own narratives.

History is the construction of narrative.

To the question as to whether McEwan reads poetry, he replied that the poets he reads most are Auden and Larkin. Nothing contemporary then, which rather disproves his claim to be an avid reader of the form. Pity, but an interesting evening with a writer whose work I much admire.

Oxfam Readathon

I will be reading at the Oxfam Readathon at 12pm at 91, Marylebone High Street, London on Monday 5th July. Do come along.

The Laugharne Weekend

Runs from this Friday 9th April to Sunday 11th April - a bargain as £50 gets you into pretty much everything www.laugharne.co.uk including me reading from both of my collections and some new poems at Portreeve at 2pm on Friday. See you there. The sun always shines in Laugharne - you know this is true.