Modest proposals for demoralizing your local literary community
Think 'Oblique Strategies' for the scene terrorist set
Aim a BB gun at the poet on stage. Explain that the BB gun is metaphorical. Fire it anyway.
Schedule your own show for the same time and place as an existing event. Set up at the back of the venue and run both programmes simultaneously.
Book a number of extremely abstruse, academic readers. Right before the first goes on, announce that the reading is a slam and that their performance will be scored by the audience.
Erect a wall of two-way mirrors between the audience and the performer. Either direction is fine.
During the night’s opening land acknowledgement, have a local Indigenous person interrupt and announce that you do not have his consent to perform. Have a second local Indigenous person stand up and announce that you actually do. Have the two argue as to which of them represents the legitimate authority over their traditional territory, only to be interrupted by a third man dressed as Jacques Cartier.
After each reader at a feminist-themed event, invite a male audience member onstage. Bring out two armchairs and interview him at length on what he just heard.
Put out a Craiglist/Marketplace ad offering reading slots at your upcoming event for a modest fee. At the show, thank a long list of arts organizations that have provided financial assistance to your series, then have each performer pay you onstage in front of the audience before reading. Optional: Haggle aggressively.
The Forbidden Words Night: Explain to the audience that certain words have been banned from your stage. Do not say what words they are. Each time a reader utters one of the forbidden words during their reading, flog them with a whip. (If they cum, they must leave immediately.)
Have the opening reader give a rambling, discursive introduction to their work, and then announce that they’re out of time just as they’re about to launch into their first piece. Repeat five to seven times.
Book the sort of poet who constantly writes “transgressively” about all the sex they’re having and then invite their mother.
During a break in your event, solemnly announce that you have just received news that a beloved literary icon has passed away. Invite a conspirator up to read a poem by that departed writer. Have them recite “Camptown Races” by Stephen Foster from memory.
Announce a new hyper-exclusive apartment reading series. Pick a random address and put it on the poster.
Concept: a literary trivia night in which every question concerns things a specific community member has done after readings while blacked out. Start with three things you know they know they actually did, fill the rest out with progressively more shameful and unforgiveable acts of your own invention.
Each poet must read their work through a guest translator who speaks a language the poet doesn’t understand. The translator is allowed to interpret the poem however they wish.
Rig up a shock jock style soundboard. Cue various sound effects during the readings (crickets, a slide whistle, the Wilhelm Scream, the TOASTY! clip from Mortal Kombat etc.).
Aggressively publicize that an internationally famous and trendy writer (Warsan Shire perhaps, or Ocean Vuong) will be doing a special performance at your show. Announce at the show that they will only be able to join via Zoom. After some tech set up, announce that the projector doesn’t work. Zoom in a performer who sort of looks like them and have them read terrible poetry for 30 minutes while you hold your phone up to the mic.
If an audience member goes to the bathroom during a show, performers must follow them while continuing to read into the mic.
Poetry Bingo: Distribute bingo cards like the one above to the audience with words like TRAUMA; SEASONAL FRUIT; LITERALLY AN UNEDITED DIARY ENTRY; ASTROLOGY REFERENCE; DESCRIPTION OF DEPRESSING HETEROSEXUAL ENCOUNTER etc. When someone gets a bingo they must stand up and shout BINGO in the middle of the reading, at which point the host checks their card, has the winner cite examples from the poems to verify their score, and awards them a prize.1
Readers enter a soundproof booth with the host and perform their poem. The audience hears nothing. Afterward, the host emerges and offers a loose, emotional summary of what they felt the poem was about in an abstract sense. Audience is asked to “forgive” or “condemn.”
All readers must whisper their poems into a hyper-sensitive mic. The audience is given headphones. “Intimacy is heightened” by introducing the sounds of dry lips smacking and nails drumming on a desk.
Book a prose reading night. Let the first reader go way over their time. Apologize to the second reader that they have only 3/4 of the time allotted to the first. Have them read a piece of the same length, but at a faster pace. Repeat with next reader at 1/2 the time and twice the pace. The final reader has 1/4 of the time, and must read at an unintelligible speed.
Accuse a performer at a reading of being an imposter. Produce someone of vaguely similar appearance and demand they take the stage instead. If successful, have them read terrible work. Repeat this stunt at every reading this writer reads at, then, eventually, their family functions. Replace them in every facet of their own lives, reading terribly all the while.
Spread the rumour that a senior editor from a distinguished press (Farrar Straus and Giroux maybe) is on a scouting trip to your city and will be attending your reading. Book three highly ambitious local writers. Pay a well-dressed older gentleman to attend the reading, but do not acknowledge him at all from stage. The “editor” should look bored, excuse himself to take a phone call etc. during the first three readings. Your final reader is an extremely conventionally attractive plant who reads abominably. Have the editor stand up and clap like a seal at the end of their set. After the reading, have the editor introduce himself to the plant, drop a large bill at the bar, and then have them depart together.
Alternatively: Use the same setup minus the plant. Have the “editor” introduce himself to one of the ambitious local writers, flatter their talents, and wine and dine them all night. The editor will then offer the writer a contract with their press, complete with a huge, Publishers Clearing House-style cheque. Then have the editor point to the camera and tell the writer they are on Les Gags (or the cruel YouTube series of your choice if outside Quebec).
Announce a New Israeli Writing gala. At the scheduled showtime, bar all of the entrances from the outside. Barter your new hostages for Palestinian prisoners of war. Repeat as often as needed.
Outdoor reading, multiple readers, one “out of towner” who reads in the middle. Turn over introductions for the out of towner to his personal announcer, who gives a pro wrestling style introduction to the reader as “Born to Be Wild” blasts over the loudspeakers. The reader drives up on a Harley Davidson but loses control of the bike and crashes into a nearby building. Announce that the reading is over and flee on foot.
Catfish Night: Assemble a group and have each person use apps to set up as many dates as possible for the next literary event. After the first scheduled reader, one of the catfishers rushes the stage and begs to read a poem for their date. Regardless of the result, keep doing this one by one all night until the reading totally collapses.
Book several poets who are clearly very shy/vulnerable performers. Make special note that the readers have asked for perfect silence during their performances. Have someone bring a small dog who really likes to hump. Let it wander freely around the audience during the sets.
Devise a reading in which each reader performs in a sensory-adjusted environment: flashing lights, industrial fans, the smell of sickly pungent citrus or burnt rubber, all perhaps chosen by way of the logic of the Saw films or Dante Alighieri’s vision of hell. The final reader gets pure silence and a single candle. The candle is extinguished if they use the word “body.”
Have the final reader of the night at a sweaty bar do James Brown’s cape routine over and over until the last patron has finally left the building.
Go to the nearest poetry reading to you. Self-immolate.
IN OTHER NEWS
How to Run a Poetry Reading (the Way I Say it Should Be Done)
It’s not too late. You don’t have to do this. Running a poetry reading won’t make people care about your writing or make you popular. In fact, it is a perfect vehicle to earn the resentments of the other inmates in your local literary correctional centre (“community”).
Off on a tangent, perhaps the appalling subject of the linked reply will serve as a generator of enduring discord:
https://theplanetsspeak.substack.com/p/trump-vs-immigration-protestors/comment/126354215?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=1epo4c