Full-Body Poetics

On the 26th of August 2011, as part of Experiment #49: Full-Body Poetics in the Read Rover Reading Series in Chicago, Illinois, Geof Huth gives a poetry performance that includes whistling, pwoermds, found poems, visual poems, lineated poems (primarily in Spanish), poems created during the performance, singing, and acrobat singing, along with a few other performative acts. Introducing Geof is Jennifer Karmin, one of the curators of the Red Rover Reading Series. Videography by Veronica Lucuy Alandia. 


Over time, I've moved away from the idea of the poetry reading. It is not that I don't read poems of mine aloud for people so that they can hear them; it is merely that that is only part of what I do, and a shrinking part. I want the poem to be of the body, of the moment, so the poetry I perform I often create in situ, by speaking it out of my body, by suddenly singing it, by inviting ways to read unreadable visual poems.

So my performances, though rigidly orchestrated, are filled with extemporaneous actions, motions and words that I invent on the spot. Because every poem is extemporaneous at the point of birth, and I want to experience the birth more than I want to experience the growth into adulthood.

Above you can find a longish poetry performance of mine, complete with every kind of action and poetry I've ever put in such a performance. I won't have many places where I can the space and opportunities offered me by Jen Karmin and Laura Goldstein in the space where they hold their Red Rover Reading Series, so I appreciated this chance. And I appreciated my friend Veronica Lucuy Alandia's making the effort to videorecord this performance for me, and I appreciated the audience (which wasn't large, but size doesn't matter to me; the act matters). And I especially appreciated the smiles of the audience.

It was a good night, and I've been slow to write anything about it, and soon I'll have to write something about Steve Roggenbuck's performance, which preceded mine, but seemed to me another example of full-body poetics.

ecr. l'inf.