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Apples and Snakes Performance Poetry

Performance poetry means reading or declaiming poetry in a way that acknowledges the presence of an audience. This can be anything from eye-contact to fully blown histrionics. Open mics are the bedrock of the poetry scene. They are the testing ground for new material.

Voice is an active, physical thing in oral poetry. It needs a speaker and a listener, a performer and an audience. As poetry is a vocal art, the speaker brings their own experience to it, changing it according to their own sensibilities and intonations. Controlled through pitch and stress, poems are full of invisible italicised contrasts. Reading poetry aloud also makes clear the pause as an element of poetry.

Apples and Snakes is England's leading organisation for performance poetry and spoken words, with a national reputation for producing exciting, engaging and transformative work in performance and participation. Their vision is to lead the poetry revolution, creating artistic and social changes through the power of the spoken word.

They create groundbreaking, diverse work including live performance, artist development, participation and digital content that help to broaden people's understanding of what spoken word is and can be. They facilitate cross-artform collaborations that push performance poetry into new directions and develop work online as well as internationally.

http://applesandsnakes.org