The mention of poetry readings has often been sufficiency to pull in a room before the reader has even had chance to clear his or her throat. Now, the Myspace generation is taking its poetry to stages at rock festivals that would normally be the preserve of seasoned performers such as John Cooper Clarke or John Hegley.
One of the rising stars is 22-year-old Laura Dockrill, a former Brit School prot�g�e. She has Glastonbury, Latitude and Summer Sundae festivals under her belt already and has supported Adele, Kate Nash and Martha Wainwright on hitch. Her poems posted on the Myspace website birth been listened to over 300,000 times. This weekend Ms Dockrill volition be playing in figurehead of hundreds of citizenry at the Reading Festival.
"I'm playing the Alternative Stage at Reading, which can be a minute worrying as it is known as having quite a a ill-famed rock crowd," said Dockrill. "I make had strong times before � regular with Kate Nash's hearing. I've had people shout out out: 'I didn't issue forth here to hear tap!' I wrote my first verse form at the age of six, simply I never really thought I would turn out doing it as a full-time career."
The poet, who has signed a major publication deal with HarperCollins for her first base book Mistakes in the Background, believes that performance poetry or spoken word of honor, as it is also called, is about to break into the mainstream.
"I definitely think it's release to get hold of off in the side by side few days. There's so many good artists out there like Scroobius Pip and Aisle16. They are really exciting."
Last week the final of the third annual Summer Poetry Slam competition took place at the Roundhouse in London. Poets cured between 13 and 21 performed in front of hundreds of other teenagers and a panel of judges, competing to be crowned Summer Slam poetry champion 2008.
BBC Radio, which features Bespoken Word on Radio 4, has added another slot in its roster for poetry on Colin Murray's Radio 1 show.
Graham Frost, the jehovah of Bespoken Word, aforesaid that a new generation had developed: "There is a new type of entertainment which is packing people in to the performances. It's performance verse with selfsame strong ethics. There's an empowering nature where offspring people from all different backgrounds are addressing issues such as knife law-breaking, media pressure, the credit crunch, suicides. We're now seeing brigham Young people using their brains in a very creative way."
More info
