In the last couple of years I have stood behind a mic a fair few times and read my poetry to willing members of the public. It’s a humbling experience and one that has had some surprising effects.

The biggest lesson I’ve learnt is that it forces all of us introvert writers, all of those “I write for me before anyone else” writers, to realise that this attitude is delusional BS. True communication, an understanding (even with yourself), takes on a life beyond your own bubble.

I realised this about two seconds before I nervously started to babble into the microphone for the first time. Everything I was about to read was passed over in my head at warp-speed by a new internal editor. “Crumbs, how will other people relate to this?” “How will they interpret it?” And then “Damn it, that’s what I should have been considering all along!” Why? Because we don’t live in a bubble and, when we pretend that we do, all the bubble ever does is make excuses and it blinkers us from all the egoistic shortcomings of our work. Your creation will dramatically fall short at any point where it stems solely from that strange and alien part of ‘You’ and not the magical ‘We’ (i.e. truth) that brings us all together. The ‘We’ is the purpose of art; the reality that can’t be conveyed in objective terms. The alien ‘You’ can often speak in a language only it itself understands and its rhetoric can convince you that the result is something profound, insightful, truthful or beautiful, when really it’s nonsense. Sharing your work face-to-face forces this consideration into consciousness. You see your work in a whole new light.

Another great reason to read publicly is for confidence. Yes, you need a certain degree of confidence to stand there in the first place and yes, it can be a terrifying experience, but to give your work a public life and history greatly improves how you see it yourself and you learn to trust it enough to fly and run its own course. I suppose it is a bit like letting your children grow up and make their way in the world. You give it its independence, it repays your faith and then your feelings towards it grow even stronger.

The most obvious upside to performing is experiencing other performers. Not only do you expose yourself to different styles and perspectives but you also get to witness seasoned artists and how great delivery can add another dimension to content.

I’m still undecided, though, whether first-hand experience of art is necessarily a good thing. I think that in most cases it is, but I can also think of times when it detracts from other alternatives. For instance, compare trying to see the Mona Lisa in a heaving and pushy crowd at the Louvre to seeing a quality print or an electronic copy of it. Or seeing live the band whose recorded music you have come to know and love in a venue with poor acoustics or are let down by a poor performance or a disinterested and unappreciative noisy crowd. Classical music provides the best example, I think. Nothing can compare to a superb live orchestral performance, but a superb recorded orchestral performance certainly beats a mediocre live one.

I’m always aware of this when I take in art. With music in particular, I won’t even consider going to see something live if I think the performance won’t live up to the recording. I adopt this attitude mostly with artists who are touring material from decades ago. Only when the feeling is fresh can the performance be moving and enhancing and it takes the greatest of performers to keep that feeling alive many moons later.

Poetry is a strange one though. I think that it always goes one way or the other: to see someone read a poem that you know from the page will either disappoint you or mesmerise you. I don’t think I’ve ever felt ambivalent. You read poetry to yourself in such a personal way, in your own voice, that when you hear someone else read it, even the author, it’s never the same (for better or worse). The same logic applies with film adaptations of books.

Additionally, it is difficult to perform your poetry well and to bring to life that inner voice. Impersonating what happens in your head is just as difficult as impersonating another person. If I watch someone perform and it misses the mark but I like the idea of the poem I will try and get hold of a copy to read to myself and often find I really like it. I’ve had people in the past ask me for a copy after I’ve read – at first I took it as an out-and-out compliment but I have now come to understand it’s probably because my performance was bad but the poem still managed to pique their interest! Like if Microsoft Sam was to read out Shakespeare!*

It’s an easy assumption to make that plays are the only art form that always benefit from experiencing live and that something is always going to be lacking when your imagination constructs a world from just stage direction and dialogue. But is a badly performed play more worthwhile than reading a script? I would argue not. Plays are like novels where the narration is a physical manifestation. The anticipation of all the emotion and subtext of a piece being loaded into actions unfolded before you is irreplaceable but not guaranteed. The stage has magic but requires magicians.

So if you are a closet artist I urge you to take the plunge and to remember: you don’t do it for adulation, you do it for everyone.

*I’m by no means comparing myself to Shakespeare, but Microsoft Sam isn’t far off.

This month's favourites:
   Nelly, Country Grammar
   Eric Ambler, Epitaph for a Spy
   Two Lovers (2008)