Editing Performance poetry (section)

==20th century==
The early years of the 20th century saw a general questioning of artistic forms and conventions. Poets like [[Basil Bunting]] and [[Louis Zukofsky]] called for a renewed emphasis on poetry as sound. Bunting in particular argued that the poem on the page was like a musical score; not fully intelligible until manifested through sound. This attitude to poetry helped to encourage an environment in which poetry readings were fostered. This was reinforced by [[Charles Olson]]'s call for a poetic line based primarily on spoken human breath.<ref>'The Poetry of Charles Olson: A Primer', Thomas F. Merrill, 
University of Delaware Press (1982) p.53. ISBN 9780874131963.</ref> [[Clive Sansom]] devoted much of his life to gathering and contributing poetry and drama particularly suited to performance by children.

During the 1950s, the American poet [[Cid Corman]] began to experiment with what he called oral poetry. This involved spontaneously composing poems into a tape recorder. [[Allen Ginsberg]] was to take up this practice in the 1960s. [[David Antin]], who heard some of Corman's tapes, took the process one step further. He composed his ''talk-poems'' by improvising in front of an audience. These performances were recorded and the tapes were later transcribed to be published in book form. Around the same time, [[Jerome Rothenberg]] was drawing on his ethnopoetic researches to create poems for ritual performances as [[happening]]s.

The writers of the [[Beat generation]] held performance events that married poetry and [[jazz]]. In the late 1960s, other poets outside San Francisco and New York City were experimenting with performance pieces. Notable among these was David Franks, at the time a faculty member at the [[Maryland Institute College of Art]]. Franks' work was not poetry recited to a musical counterpoint but literary pieces in which the performance was a necessary and integral part of the work itself.

In [[British literature|Britain]], sound poets like [[Bob Cobbing]] and [[Edwin Morgan (poet)|Edwin Morgan]] were exploring the possibilities of live performance. Cobbing's groups Bird Yak and Konkrete Canticle involved collaborative performance with other poets and musicians and were partly responsible for drawing a number of the poets of the [[British Poetry Revival]] into the performance arena.

Meanwhile, many more mainstream poets in both Britain and the [[Poetry of the United States|United States]] were giving poetry readings, largely to small academic gatherings on university campuses. Poetry readings were given national prominence when [[Robert Frost]] recited "The Gift Outright" from memory at the inauguration of [[John F. Kennedy]][http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/robert-frost-reads-at-jfks-inauguration ].After that event, spoken word recordings of Frost and other major figures enjoyed increased popularity.