The Unique Power of the Spoken Word, by Helen McDonald

I don’t know where the last few weeks have gone since the phenomenal success of the 100^th Chamber Poets was celebrated at Woodend’s RSL club. I think I’m still soaking up and processing the wonderful atmosphere of the spoken-word event. The 100^th celebration drew a crowd of no less than 100 enthusiastic poets and poetry lovers to listen to some of Australia’s most lauded poets – including Andy Jackson, Kevin Brophy, Es Fung, Joe Dolce, Gaylene Garbis, Ross Donlon, and the legendary Pi O – spin and weave their beautiful, funny, heart-wrenching, poignant, politically charged and piercingly honest poems.

We are currently bunkered down in the Macedon Ranges, experiencing our coldest winter for many years, and we have yet another much-loved Chamber Poets afternoon of poetry reading to keep our hearts warm this coming Saturday, July 13^th.

There is really nothing like the spoken word – it has the power to draw an audience into a kind of magic circle that unites and holds it spellbound, addressing as it does both the personal and universal experiences common to humanity.

For the poet, the experience of reading aloud to a gathering is very different from sending out work on the written page for the reader to interpret as they choose. I was recently delighted to have my poem ’Crossing the Fitzroy’ published in online journal Catchment – Poetry of Place (click here to read) after a marvellous exchange with its editor Rodney Williams. I had originally written what I thought was a haibun, a Japanese poetry form comprising a piece of prose followed by a haiku, which has its own unique structure on the page. This in itself informs how the poem is read aloud. Though satisfied that my words expressed the sentiments I needed to put down on paper, when I read the piece aloud I somehow couldn’t quite get the phrasing to sound as I wanted. 

Working with Rodney and his incredibly helpful suggestions, and using exactly the same words, I came to realise that my haibun form was masking a poem of free Western verse. Not only did the visual effect of the revised poem work more effectively but, importantly, the way I now read my piece aloud – the phrasing, pausing and emphasis – came far more naturally. This of course will influence the way my words resonate with the listener as I come to share my profound experience of travelling in the Kimberley region on Aboriginal Bunuba country.

There is a world of difference between the look of a poem and its telling, but in both instances, once seen or heard, the individual can take from the poem whatever meaning they will. It no longer belongs just to the poet.

Such is the power of the spoken word.

Helen McDonald