In May 2024 I visited London and William Blake's Grave. This is a recording of the Precision Poetry Drill Team performing "The Tyger," by Blake. Images of the grave by Carie Lovstad. Tiger images are found footage.
Precision Poetry Drill Team
Precision Poetry Drill Team- Picture 20,000 people cheering, waving, with shouts and applause washing over us. The young poets are chanting:
Tyger, tyger burning bright!
The huge crowd is chanting along. This is the Precision Poetry Drill Team (PPDT). The teenage poets are leaping up and down as if on pogo sticks. As their poetry coach, I spin and pump my fist and leaping about. As far as we can see the throng of people, three football field lengths of people are cheering. This is a poetry dream come true.
The concept of chanting a poem shifts the expectation of how poetry may be presented. It may tap poetry into its roots as an oral art form. By considering the poetry may be chanted it opens up the performance of poetry to include cheerleading calls and military marching cadences.
You may hear the PPDT perform “The Tyger,” Blake, “Kubla Khan,” Coleridge and “We Real Cool,” Brooklyn at the link to the NPR story on the Precision Poetry Drill Team in the comments.
Also, the student could letter in Poetry!
Zozobra
Performing at the Zozobra festival was a thrill. Zozobra had its start in 1924 when a group of Santa Fe artists led by Will Shuster decided to create an effigy called “Old Man Gloom,” and set him on fire in a ritual burning.
Zozobra means anxiety in Spanish and people are encouraged to write their “glooms,” on a piece of paper and stuff them into the effigy so that their worries go up in smoke when the man is burned. I hope that little bit of New Mexican history gives you a sense of what an honor it was to get to perform poetry at the festival.
The organizers had invited the Precision Poetry Drill Team to perform early in the event and if they liked what we did they would invite us back to perform just before the burning of the man for the full audience.
The stage was on top of a hill at the end of a string of playing fields. We got to the concert early and performed for a few thousand people milling around and setting up blankets to settle in for the night. The organizers loved what we did and told us to come back at 9pm to perform for the complete 20,000 crowd.
I include this Poetry Month story to show that using chanting when performing poetry has the potential to reach much larger audiences than a typical poetry reading.
Sky Noel Sadler was a member of the PPDT and we are in touch through Facebook, as a teenager she was a talented performer, and writer. It is a pleasure to see her continue to grow as a visual artist. Go Sky!
Other members included: Zak Hoerning-Silva, Jake Hayman, Danny Ross, Joe Clark, Lucas Buck, Phoebe Toole, Zoe Morris and Tashi Yazid.
Performing at the Zozobra festival in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in 2006, for this huge crowd of people was one of the highlights of my life as a poet.
Photo from our costumed march in the annual Pet Parade! Which is attended by over 10,000 people. Go Poetry! Go Precision Poetry Drill Team!
The Tyger by William Blake
Tyger Tyger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
In what distant deeps or skies.
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand, dare seize the fire?
And what shoulder, & what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat.
What dread hand? & what dread feet?
What the hammer? what the chain,
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp.
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?
When the stars threw down their spears
And water'd heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?
Tyger Tyger burning bright,
In the forests of the night:
What immortal hand or eye,
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?