It was the end of the evening. I was the last one of twelve participants. I was 22 years old, extremely nervous, and maybe a little bit drunk. I’ve had three or four glasses of red wine, perhaps too much, but I had to calm myself down – this was my first stage appearance ever. I was standing in the spotlight which was too bright for me. I had a couple of pages with poems in my hands and a microphone in front of my face (I had never read with a mic before). The presenter introduced me and joked with the audience. I was too tense to listen. Then he addressed me directly, and from then on things were up to me. I bumped into the microphone and people in the audience started laughing, but I began reading – or rather: I tried to read. It was anything but a good performance. My voice was trembling, I was sweating, I read too fast, and (to be honest) my poems were actually really bad. But surprisingly, the event didn’t end in a disaster. I read my poems, I received my applause, and – most importantly – I survived.
This was my first experience of reading at a poetry slam. It was held at the culture centre Lagerhaus in Bremen – which was the only place in town that organized slams at that time. Nowadays there is a vivid slam culture in Bremen and these so-called ‘open mics’ are a good opportunity for authors to get out and present their texts to an audience. But, these kind of events are only suitable for specific types of texts. Where to go, if you are not a slammer? Where to go to present more complex poetry or prose writing to an audience? Why do people seem to be so much more interested in open mic sessions than in other forms of public readings? The Slammer Filet which is organized by the Tower club for instance is always crowded with students, whereas you usually don’t find more than a handful of people under the age of 60 at more conventional readings.
So, the question for me was and still is: how to create a space for local authors of all kinds of genres to present their work? And: is there a way to bring the above mentioned audiences and generations together? In collaboration with the Bremer Literaturkontor I started a reading series called Doppelpack at the culture centre Dete last spring. Each time we brought together two writers of different generations for a public reading of their works. Afterwards, we opened the stage for other writers of all age groups to participate. Almost one hundred people between the ages of 16 to 80 showed up for these readings. They listened with dedication and gave some terrific feedback after the event. I loved it, and I hope that we will continue to make this happen.
I had my second experience with reading to an audience in the context of a creative writing seminar at the university of Bremen which was organized in collaboration with the Kontor. Our teacher organized a reading at the end of term at the Café Ambiente. This time I experimented with using some performative elements while reading my texts. I played short pieces of music with an old tape recorder and used some beer cans as well. Afterwards people maybe did not remember the content of my texts, but everyone remembered my performance. I‘m not sure, if that is a good thing, but I guess, I have always been interested in breaking the routines of the ordinary public reading format. And I‘m not the only one – in Bremen there are many authors who work with musicians for example. I did that too a couple of times. I like to use music or talk to people in the intervals, the direct contact to the audience.
After my experimental performance years passed by before I read in front of the public again, this time for the Bremer literature week. We were five local authors that evening, and most of us did not have much experience with public readings, so we were all pretty nervous. We were sitting on our chairs like chicken on a roost, but all in all it was an interesting and very intense evening. For me this was in a way the start of becoming a writer. Until then I didn’t really have any idea what to do with the stories I had written. That evening I realized that I enjoyed reading in front of people. After the event I received some further invitations to read at festivals, parties, and other events from institutions like the Kontor or the virtual Literaturhaus Bremen.
That’s what I still love most – to read my texts to an audience. But after years of writing you do at some point also hope to be published someday. You can of course easily publish all your texts on the internet, but if you are a bit old-fashioned like me, you want to see them in print as well. In Germany that’s what counts if you want to be accepted as a ‘real writer’. There are specific ways to get your writing published in Germany. The most widely used options are literary magazines and literary prize competitions which will often publish an anthology with a selection of the best stories afterwards.
I have entered my texts in a couple of these competitions. Sometimes successful, but most often I’ve received answers like this one: “Thank you very much for you contribution. We received more than 500 submissions and were very surprised about the great quality of all these stories, so it was really hard for us to chose the best ones. We are very sorry to inform you that your text will not be part of the compilation, but we wish you good luck for your future writing. You can buy the anthology with the selected stories for just 17,99 €.”
Sometimes this can be hard and you need a thick skin to stay calm. The magazines and competitions are a good starting point, though. You just have to take some time to check out which competitions and magazines are out there and which ones are the right ones for your writing. In Germany the websites poetenladen.de or www.autorenwelt are very helpful in this regard.
There is a lot more to say about publishing! Please ask if you have further questions and let’s discuss our experience with publishing and public performance.
Jens,
I believe that poetry is much easier to perform. You can use music, lighting and even audience participation to make your poem memorable. But what about people like me who write prose? How do I read my 3,000 words story to people? You know how those gatherings are: so much wine; short attention spans. Maybe if you circulate the story (a shorter version) prior to the event so that you then do a short reading and then talk about the story? I think it might be more memorable if people discuss it and try to understand why as the author you made certain decisions. Or maybe if you give it to someone who is naturally a performer to read it so that they add some character to the reading.
I used to like the idea of Facebook notes but there are very few people who can outrightly tell you that you are writing crap. Most people will like your post without even reading it and you run the risk of thinking you are doing great when you really aren’t. Getting a group of people who can critique your work honestly is also a good way to start. It builds your confidence in as far as reading to a crowd is concerned and it really gives you an opportunity to actually work on your writing.
My worry about the poetry slams, as you have mentioned, is whereas it is good for getting your name out, it isn’t so great for posterity. I may say I love Jens’ performances without even remembering one single poem. Which is why publishing is very important. We can read these poems, we can get personal interpretations of the poems and for posterity. The publishing industry is still struggling here but there are number of options for one to get published online. Some newspapers also have sections for short stories but publishing in general is something we still need to grow as an industry.
Thanks for this.
Dear Nyana,
Yes, publishing is important, the more successful slam poets do that as well. But as I said somewhere else on this blog to Ronald, unfortunately, most of the slam poems lose a lot of their magic, if they are written down. So many of the spoken word performers publish them together with an audio, or someone like Dalibor Markovic published his poems on a pen drive.
You´re right, it´s harder to read prose in front of an audience if you compare it to poetry slams (I think, for ordinary public poetry readings it´s hard, too). But there are quite a lot of public readings of prose writers in Bremen – and if they are famous, it could be that there are a lot of people in the audience. Last Sunday, I was at a public reading of the “LiteraTour Nord”, which is a reading series in Northern Germany, combined with a competition (from October to February six authors read in six cities and the winner gets 15.000 euros in the end). On Sunday, the Austrian novelist Robert Seethaler was reading. There were about 170 people in the audience. And there is a simple explanation, why there were so many people: his book has been in the top ten of the most important literature ranking in Germany for weeks (the ranking of the weekly news magazine “Der Spiegel”).
For not so famous authors like me, who write prose, too, it´s not so easy to find an audience (I had readings with 100 people, but also with only 7). You have to build up your own group of followers and you have to promote yourself, and even tiny things like a good title of your event are important, too. The location is also very important. You should have a location, that has its own community, so that some people just come, because they like to go to events in this location – even if they don’t know you.
Something else that helps me a bit during public readings is, that most of my stories are a bit satirical or humorous, so that the people laugh, sometimes. This is good for the atmosphere of public readings, but not so good for getting accepted as a serious writer in Germany. There are still a lot of people who think that literature can’t be serious, if it makes you laugh. How is that in Uganda? Is humorous prose common and accepted as serious literature?
Hey Nyana,
I hear you about “performing” prose. Given that my writing is always intended for performance, I have always wondered how a writer of short stories may benefit by hearing their work read out loud, especially if it is still work in progress. I think you are right about getting a performer who can read an excerpt of your prose before an audience, for example. If it were still work in progress, I would have different performers and have each read at least a page. That way, I would be able to hear the way it sounds, “see” it with someone else’s eyes, and that would give me an opportunity to decided whether what I intended to say is being said or not, and therefore to revise the story accordingly.
If it is not a work in progress anymore and I want to be able to give my audience an understanding of the whole story, I would get three performers and pick excerpts that bring the whole story together, and have them perform it. (Speaking as a theatre person here), I would get a director to work with the performers for some few hours. This is all to say that I think it is helpful for prose writers to hear their work read out loud not by them, but by someone else.
“You have to build up your own group of followers and you have to promote yourself, and even tiny things like a good title of your event are important, too. The location is also very important. You should have a location, that has its own community, so that some people just come, because they like to go to events in this location – even if they don’t know you.” Great, great advice!
There are a couple of humour and satire writers in Kampala that are respected. Most of them built their following as newspaper columnists. Some have gone on to publish books/chap books so I believe there are certain people that respect that as serious literature. One of such writers is Ernest Bazanye: http://bazanye.com/
and http://www.scribd.com/doc/83306732/The-Ballad-of-Black-Bosco
Not on how to find an audience but on how to find a schoolarship: Gloria Kiconco asked for an overview of international writer’s residence programs. Joel Benjamin Nevender once posted this link on Facebook: http://www.aerogrammestudio.com/2015/01/08/residencies-for-writers-2015/
Are there any further tips? Deborah Asiimwe?
Hello Nikolas,
Sorry for having taken long to respond to this. I am currently doing a writing residence at Akademie Schloss Solitude (www.akademie-solitude.de), maybe, we can start from there. The other day, someone sent me this website: http://www.kulturvermittlung.org. There is also a writing residence that is open to international writers. The Commonwealth Writers has workshops and residencies as well. There is one at Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown (FAWC). See the website here (http://web.fawc.org) I am not sure what Gloria Kiconco writes, but given that my background is playwriting and theatre, I am more aware of playwriting and theatre making residencies. The ones I have shared above though are open to different writing genres. Also, my advice to Gloria is to get herself on as many mailing lists of as many writing support organizations like Femrite, Kwani? etc as possible. That way, she will be able to get to know opportunities that are out there. The other advice I can give Gloria is to make the internet her friend. I sometimes land on writing residencies by simply surfing the net. But, also Gloria, keep asking your colleagues, contemporaries and gather as much information as possible to determine what residences may work for you and what may not. I hope this is helpful.