manfredvijars wrote:I'd suggest (Your Honour) that there is no difference between "Written" and "Performance" verse
That's why you're printed in red Manfred, you are correct.
I wonder what would happen if a concert pianist got up and played a Beethoven sonata and made all sorts of wrong notes and phrases that Beethoven never wrote, could she get away with the explanation " performance is more flexible than the written stuff"
What would it sound like if someone recited Dorothea McKellar's poem My Country and put in words and sentences that Dorothea never wrote or left out words that she had put in.
The result would be atrocious.
But that one is well known you might say...so...., since when does not well known become a license for shoddy work ?
Of course there's performance flexibility in loudness, speed of delivery, pauses and tone of voice, there is no flexibility in structure, either the poem is structured right or it is unstructured. Free verse is unstructured, accentual/stress verse cannot be unstructured, and you mob claim to distain free verse in favour of " metred and rhymed " verse. Make up your minds.
The other thing to consider is, what are we drawing attention to in our performance ? Is it the poem or the performer. Do we want to present poems .....or be admired as celebrities of stage and screen and radio. Just a thought.