The Joys of Performing Your Writing

Performing your writing is a wonderful way to send your writing into the worlds.

I’m full of joy this week, as I look forward to the return of the SpeakEasy Poetry and Open Mic event tomorrow night, Friday 20 September, which is Culture Night. It’s been ages since I stood in front of a crowd at a literary event (well, I’ll actually be sitting, due to a little medical blip which I’ve described here.

I figure that MCing at SpeakEasy will aid my recovery from this medical blip, seeing as I’m a noticebox who thrives on a crowd. There’s a bit of glory being involved in SpeakEasy – you get to hobnob with well known poets and musicians. One of my fellow SpeakEasyers refers to this as SpeakEasy gravy.

Performing your writing is a great source of joy on so many levels. Firstly, you get to collaborate with other people. There’s a group of five us involved in SpeakEasy. We don’t call ourselves a committee, but a meitheal, that lovely Irish word that conveys a sense of collaboration, of community spirit.

Katie Donovan is our featured poet and Fergal O’Connor is our featured musician. The details of their reading are contained in this helpful poster, and if you’re nearby and not involved in Culture Night yourself, we’d love you to come and join us.

Photo Description: This is the poster for our SpeakEasy event. It basically says that Katie Donovan and Fergal O’Connor are our guests for SpeakEasy on Friday 20 September, and you can hear them in The Book Bar, Waterford, at 7.30pm. And our event is free!

But with the greatest respect to Fergal and Katie, the true highlight of the night will be the open mic, when we hear from poets and writers of every kind, at every skill level, from Waterford and beyond.

These people will stand up at the open mic and share small, precious pieces of themselves through their words. They’ll be incredibly nervous, but our audiences are generous and attentive. A hush will fall as they read, the hush of people who are listening with intent. And afterwards, they’ll feel marvellous – or at the very least, relieved.

Performing your writing is a powerful way of getting your writing out into the world. It’s a great way of building your audience and writing skills en route to publication. But based on my experience with my one-woman show, I would also see it as a viable alternative to publication.

Publication is a mighty goal to work towards, and even in this competitive publishing environment, it is still worth doing. But it is not the only way to send your writing out into the world. That may be a comfort to you if you’re struggling to figure out your publishing options.

Sometimes after you publish, it can feel like your words have disappeared into a void, and nothing comes back to you. But when you perform your writing, you are standing right before your audience and receiving an immediate response. To use a marketing buzzword, you can feel your words land.

If you want to build a performance around your writing, there are fewer barriers. You contact a venue, make an arrangement to stage your show that fits, and then deliver your show or reading. You have control over the staging of the show, your audience and your finance – it’s easier to make a reasonable profit.

If you want to get a taste of what it’s like to perform your writing, look out for open mic events in your area; they’re very popular at the moment. I’m not performing my own writing at SpeakEasy this time, because I’m doing continuity for the whole event, not just the open mic, which is my usual specialty. But I’ll still be able to get my performance fix.

Thanks to Geraldine Creed for recommending my newsletter. She has a Substack of her own, Geraldine’s Substack.