Wednesday, April 20, 2016

Break Out Your Dancing Shoes, Poetic Pairings Are Coming

Lisa Vihos, Stoneboat's poetry and arts editor, reporting here:

I have been long fascinated by the way in which poetry, when spoken aloud (as opposed to read in silence from the printed page) is in fact a form of theater. This hit me upside the head a few years back when I staged a reading from my then-new chapbook, The Accidental Present, and instead of me droning on reading poem after poem, I had my friends and neighbors read the majority of poems in my stead. I cast my poems in the voices of people of all ages and walks of life, and the result was pretty nearly breathtaking. Seriously, it was very cool. Even people who had not come to Paradigm coffeehouse that night for poetry looked up from their laptops to listen.