While I was on the other side of the pond, The Guardian ran a story on its website here entitled “Are Theatre and Poetry Really So Different?”  Ah, a topic close to my heart.  This piece begins what could be a rather complicated, though inevitably fascinating discussion about the use of language and the meaning of poetry.  The author, Natasha Tripney, discusses how poets often write for the stage and wonders aloud about whether there really is a difference between the two at all.  To me, I actually believe all good writing, regardless of genre, aims to be poetry, ie language that attends not only to meaning, but also to sound, rhythm, nuance, the juxtoposition of seemingly disparate ideas in order to create new meanings.  She quotes some so-called “performance poets,” which is a start, but she seems to infer that these poets are the predominant  poetic play-makers.  Their poems are written not to be read silently alone, but to hear performed by the poet in communal spaces.

This is a discussion I’d like to continue, if anyone is interested.  And I’ll start the continuation (?) by saying that there is also a difference between performance poetry and a poetic play.   Performance poetry is indeed meant to be spoken to an audience, but generally it is spoken by the writer herself.  But I believe that for a play to go “beyond” poetry, it needs to have both action and character.  A character must be created whom the audience watches change through experience and time.  Poetry, therefore, only really becomes a work of theatre when the actor does not need to be the poet  —  perhaps I’ll go so far as to say that the magic really happens when an actor definitely is NOT the writer.  Then a new character has been created, and it stands alone away from the writer and open to the interpretation of others, such as a director or an actor.  Having written both poetry and plays, not to mention pieces that combine the two, I have found that the theatre is the place where the writer can disappear the most, indeed must disappear. Play writing is the most collaborative of art forms.  When an actor speaks words that a poet has written and uses those words to create a new character, that’s when a poem moves from a spoken or theatrical event to a “play.” If you read Dreams of May, you might get a better idea of what I mean (of course I have to plug my own stuff, right?).  The title page of the published text calls it “A Play with Poetry”.  There is a distinction to be made.

Any thoughts?