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I have tried, I really have. I love to read and admire great literature, but I just cannot cope with poetry. I have tried to read some and not done well, but suspect it maybe to do with the voice people do when they are reading it out loud. I have listened to it on the radio and as soon as the "voice" starts, I switch off. Is it just me? Can someone help me to get over my fear of it?!

I feel I may be missing something...

i ???

must admit, I tend to read it, not listen, the only one I listen to is my son and he's fab but he's an amateur  ;D
is it a sing-song voice or one like kids use in school, there must be one out there for you, an actor you like?

I prefer to read it rather than listen to someone who is over dramatising .It is very irritating. :)

Radio 4 have had poets on reading their own work, their voices were excruciating, but then so was most of the poetry.....
I am a poetry fanatic, but reading not listening.  I've memorised hundreds, from early Elizabethan stuff to 20th century so I've always got something in my head to block out bad thoughts.  Try some stuff from about 100 years ago - what they call the Georgian poets, or Thomas Hardy, Gerard Manly Hopkins is wonderful , on to John Masefield, W B Yeats......I think I'd better stop.  Oh, and Andrew Young wrote some lovely short 'nature' poems.......

I agree completely. Love poetry but can't stand hearing it read. Even by the author, even if it's difficult to understand (Abaddon in the hangnail cracked from Adam, springs to mind  ???).  You have to give it you'r own personal meaning I suppose

ALSO ever noticed when there's a play on the radio with AMERICANS in it, they don't sound like any American you've ever heard, even if they really are proper American actors??

Listening to modern poetry is nearly as bad as listening to a wine buff.

Makes me cringe to hear them.



SHH. Don't tell any one, but I make an exception for John Betjemen.

Katie! You are me, and I claim my £5 ;D

That bleedin 'solemn-cos-this-is pottery and profound' voice? YUKKKKK! The very worst is that, whatsisname, the poet lauriate (without the caps cos he doesn't deserve them & I'm sure I've got the spelling wrong, too) blokey....straight to the 'Off' button on the radio and sometimes I'm in such a hurry I knock over me wine glass..unforgiveable!! (PS just remembered..Andrew Motion, something like that?)

But poetry read by a RADA-trained proppa actor, tho?....sheer bloody magic - or do I mean Poetry? Different ball-game altogether.

 ;D

OK Hyacinth, I owe you!

Don't wish to offend anyone, but the voice I mean is very similar to the one used by religious persons...maybe it's just old vicars and I am out of touch. It's that solemn kinda thing with pauses in peculiar places.

Thanks for the suggestions of things to try small, it's not poetry I object to, just The Voice!!

Pam Ayres dont use the 'solemn-cos-this-is pottery and profound' voice, but she can still put pauses in peculiar places.  8)

Katy! ( or Katie? must be the pottery in me soul wot made me get yr name rong)...ANYWAY.....get yr bod down to Brum & I'll get you a Poetry Reading Session by a RADA-modulated 80+yr old actress whose voice, to this day, is, well, Poetry?

(price to pay will be liquid lunch for her'n'me at her local pub.....not too far a push from where she lives but oh! pushin' that wheelchair don't 'arf bring on a thirst... ;))

XXX

Always happy to listen to Roger McGough but agree about the ex-poet laureate and most of the others.

Quote from: plot51A on January 21, 2010, 16:25:11
Always happy to listen to Roger McGough but agree about the ex-poet laureate and most of the others.

Oh! Roger McGrouch....now that's another I really really can't stand & also one responsible for the overturning of many a glass of vino bianco by me en route to the off switch :o....just shows, tho....horses for courses, eh?

An aside here....I've been mailing with the OP and half-got her to visit and to introduce her to my elderly RADA-trained actress friend for a poetry-reading session......confidently expect she will resurrect this thread with Rave notices bout mid-April time 8)

There are a few different types of poetry.

The sort which tells a tale like Hiawatha and the Ancient Mariner.

The amusing sort, Pam Ayres and Mike Harding spring to mind.

Then there is the gushy sort which I think is too much for me. I wont mock the poets but we were all forced to read them at school.

Some are political, religious, or even a tinge blue.

It is very skillful to be able to write a good rhyme but it takes even more skill to recite them properly and in my view the biggest failure is with Shakespeare. The works were written to be performed with a strong regional accent and the RSC, to my mind, ruins them by being too posh.

Quote from: PurpleHeather on January 21, 2010, 17:38:14
It is very skillful to be able to write a good rhyme but it takes even more skill to recite them properly and in my view the biggest failure is with Shakespeare. The works were written to be performed with a strong regional accent and the RSC, to my mind, ruins them by being too posh.

North Carolina, it appears  ;D
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4694993.stm (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4694993.stm)

Benjamin Zephania - class!!!!
Plus Attila the Stockbroker and John Hegley plus quite a few others.  But then they all perform performance poetry,

Carol Ann Duffy (current poet Lauriate) - Last Post. Written in honour of Henry Allingham and Harry Patch.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/jul/31/carol-ann-duffy-last-post

Under Milk Wood (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuPO2Kvqlms).  It doesn't get much better than that.

And here's Seamus Heaney (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIzJgbNANzk) reading Digging - and I think he could have read it better.

For me so much poetry is self-indulgent rubbish about stuff I have no interest in so even if it's artfully written it's not going to interest me much, and I've not found much that I'd concede it terribly artful either.

Maya Angelou, fabulous reader of her own and others poetry. Benjamin Zephaniah is magic. I took my girls to one of his readings and it was electric.
I went to an event called Tea with Wendy Cope a while back and while I really love her work, I found her voice a bit dreary.
It sort of spoiled it a bit as i always her read in my head in a much more amused and less tired voice.
Seamus Heaney I like after having to study him for a course I did. The poems about his mother's death are beautiful. For children you just cannot beat Michael Rosen-he is fab, fab, fab.
There is too much pretentiousness around poetry and literature. It puts people off.  ::)

Has nobody mentioned Adrian Mole?


A Mole

and then there was this.....................
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6gD_CwF5YM

  8) 8) 8)

Tony................ ??? ??? ??? :D

This is perfection for me

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuPO2Kvqlms

Quote from: redclanger on January 21, 2010, 19:12:30
Benjamin Zephania - class!!!!
Plus Attila the Stockbroker and John Hegley plus quite a few others.  But then they all perform performance poetry,

Yes, and don't forget John Cooper Clarke.  8)

G x