I love puppetry. I have a deep respect for the skills and craftmanship that goes into both creating and performing with (through?) puppets. I get a real buzz out of knowing how Big Bird words (and being able to recognise that Bear from Bear in the Big Blue House works the same way). I love knowing what goes into a marionette, how that differs to what goes into a rod puppet, and what needs to be considered for a full body puppet or a giant festival puppet.
There was a time when I thought the natural progression of my love of puppets and my interest in how they work would be to make puppets myself - to construct them and use them. On at least two occasions, I actually started constructing a giant puppet for some project or other. I spent lots of time planning the puppets, and far too much money buying the parts for them, started to assemble them... and then never finished. Ended up throwing out the half-formed carcasses when I need to move, or needed to declutter.
At some point, though, I made a rather important realisation. As a puppet lover, the most important thing I can do is be in the audience. There are dozens of talented puppeteers out there who need someone to watch them far more than they need someone to join them.
By being in the audience - by paying money to see them and by engaging in what they are doing - I am fulfilling an important role. Without an audience, who will they perform for?
I've been thinking about that lately as I've been looking at a number of public library websites around the world for an assignment. A number of them had a "poetry" section where kids could write in and share their poems. Only one had a section for people who like to read poetry (Christchurch City Library - it's a focus on New Zealand poetry that treats poetry like a genre, rather than a project).
It seems as though, these days, poetry is something kids do to "express themselves". We seem to have forgetten that it is also something people read. Without readers, what's the point?
I don't know what it's like in other countries, but in Australia poetry in schools has become the literary equivalent of paddle-pop stick art. Every kid produces it and displays it, no one really looks at it. No one really expects you to. I mean, you wouldn't go to a Year 3 paddle-pop stick art display and spend quality time looking at some kid's work unless it happened to be your kid, right? Well, it's kind of like that with poetry.
Think back to when you were a kid in school. Did you write any poems for a school assignment or project? Can you remember what any of them were? Can you remember any of the poems your friends wrote? Did you even read the poems the other kids in your class wrote? Would you have even thought of reading the poems from the kids who weren't in your class?
And yet, that seems to be the main point of poetry in schools. Kids aren't really learning to read it, just produce it and post it somewhere. I'm not sure I'd really call it poetry, to be honest. I certainly wouldn't call most of the kids who produce it poets. Some, maybe, but most of them are just going through the motions (poorly).
Yet there was a time when poets were the rock-stars of their generation. Some of the best songwriters today are really poets and composers. And there are still real people writing real poems - poems that were meant to be read, rather than just posted to the web like finger-paint pictures on the fridge.
I read poetry. Heck, the last three holidays I went on, I came back with poetry books. I even borrow poetry books from the library. I do it because I enjoy reading poetry. I think a lot of people could enjoy reading poetry, they just aren't used to it. I don't specifically read poetry because I think it's important, but I do think I'm helping to stave off death, in my own little way. By reading poetry for the enjoyment of reading poetry, I'm actually contributing something useful to the world of poetry - the audience.
Sure, there will always be people to study Keats and Byron and Goethe and Liiv at universities and colleges, but poetry isn't just for studying any more than it's just for producing in school projects. Those of us who pick up Colleridge and read The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner for the thrill of it are the ones who are going to keep poetry alive.
And there is something particularly magical about "discovering" a poet for the first time - reading something by someone you've never heard of before, and thinking: "This is fantastic! What else has she written?" My latest discovery? Ursula Bethell - a New Zealand poet in a collection of Kiwi poetry I bought on my trip to Uus-Meremaa last year. I've only read a handful of her poems, but enjoyed all of them. She's worth checking out.
In fact, I think I'll go check out one of her books right now...
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