Poetry’s Fourth Wall & How to Break Through
“The Fourth Wall” is a term I lovingly borrow from the theatre world and apply to poetry. If you are “a stage poet,” maybe you are already familiar with the idea, and if you are “a page poet,” maybe you are a little suspicious.
Let me set the scene: if you are watching a play, the invisible “wall” between the audience and the actors is called the fourth wall (the other three walls being stage left, back stage, and stage right). When an actor on stage talks directly to the audience through an aside, this is called “breaking the fourth wall.”
But what does this have to do with poetry? Once a poem has been written and is ready to find an audience, an author must consider poetry’s fourth wall—meaning a poet makes choices about how an audience will encounter the poem.
These days there are more choices than ever! One can indeed recite a poem on the mic to a live audience, or record for social media. One may submit to a print anthology, where an audience will be holding a book and read privately, or to an online journal where anybody in the world can search and find it.
What are the advantages and disadvantages of each of these options? And how do our choices as authors impact our poetry?
Here I have gathered six ways an author can break through the fourth wall.
1 Out Loud and On the Stage
That stage can either be an exhilarating place for a poet or a terrifying one. Some poems thrive in front of an audience because of the strong aural impact (a poet might hear sighs, hemming and hawing, even laughter).
If the stage is a new or kind of scary place for you, I suggest sharing a poem that is a “crowd pleaser.” Poems that have a strong narrative, implement repetitions, or have a very saucy punchline help to pull a live audience in.
Practicing your poem aloud a few times before performing is helpful of course, and even marking up your copy of the page so you know where you plan to slow down or speed up your reading, or where you plan to add hand gestures for dramatic effect. On your reading copy of a poem, you can add affirmations to boost your confidence before you read and reminders, like to look up and make eye contact every so often. If the audience reacts, pause and let that response sink in. If a dog begins to bark loudly, let it happen, acknowledge it, and then resume reading—it is okay to take your time.
In many ways this is an act of trust: you as an author are trusting the audience to respect your work and your effort.
That being said, if a poem falls flat or doesn’t come off the way you had hoped, remember it is okay to keep trying. We are here to learn. Each audience will be a little different and you may find you prefer a coffeehouse open mic over the one at a pub.
Reading in community will give you the opportunity to meet like-minded contemporaries out in the world and this can nourish your work with new insights and understandings. Stage poetry allows you to embody the poem and, in doing so, reaffirm your place in the world as a poet.
2 Recording & Posting for Socials
Recording a poem for social media can be a great way to reach an interested audience (your friends and peers) on your own time and schedule. As poets, many of us have to do our own self-promotion. Even when work is published, the outreach and publicity of these works is often limited. However, for some journals, sharing a poem on social media can be considered “publishing,” rendering a work ineligible for submission.
So if you are thinking of sharing your work on social media, I think the sweet spot is in sharing published poems. These can be recent works, and this is a great way to celebrate your success as an author. Sharing older published works, especially as they may relate to timely events, can also be a powerful option for an author.
With a smartphone this has become relatively easy to do and it’s free!
Again, considering your audience will be important, because you may not want every published poem out there for your aunt or coworker to see.
Due to the parameters of posting on socials, shorter poems are the easiest to format.
As authors we want an audience to encounter our work, so bringing your poetry into the realm of social media, where there is an active audience can have many benefits, though of course not every poetry “interface” will serve you and your poetry. The choice is yours.
3 Poetry Videos Are a Thing
Taking one step further into the digital realm of poetry, we can see how the page and the screen harbor many differences.
The boundaries of printed press do not apply in the digital world. For example, a poet can add music, recorded voice or even voices to a poem to be posted online. They can create a film that is then the interface of the poem, no longer bound to the page. This fourth wall deeply immerses the audience in a multi-sensory experience.
Poetry film also offers an opportunity for collaboration, as compiling a film takes skills beyond typing. Making a poetry film is a wonderful way to cross-collaborate with artists from different disciplines. This can be an advantage when screening the film, as all collaborators will invite people outside of the poetry world.
I personally do a lot of my writing in Canva as it allows for layering of visuals, words, recordings, music, and is easy to use without having a design background. If this is the kind of thing you have been wanting to get into, I suggest signing up for a free account and start creating.
4 On the Internet, Baby
When I was getting my BA in poetry, online journals were just starting to be a thing. As students, we were advised to not submit to these spaces or at least to limit our participation in them. To be fair, there were a few money grabs out there, but mostly I think there was a misunderstanding in what the internet would become in our current time.
Now online journals are undoubtedly a space where poetry flourishes, allowing fast and easy connections for those curious about and practicing poetry all over the globe.
Though there is no required license to become a publisher, vetting these publications is important so that you feel comfortable with their ethic, aesthetic, and process. Considering which online journals you want to submit to is just as important as deciding which of your poems you would want to see in these spaces.
Online poetry is searchable and often free to read, which creates greater access than many forums. With this greater access though, an author may decide some poems require more privacy than an online publication would allow. Anyone can screenshot a printed poem to later share online, so be aware poems are traveling at warped speed these days.
As poets, it is important to protect our emotional wellbeing, so deciding a poem isn’t ready to traverse the fourth wall is okay. Writing for yourself holds tremendous value and outweighs any potential accolades that come from any form of publication.
5 By Gosh, A Book!
And, of course, the book! Whether a poem is being anthologized in a print collection, or as a book of your own poems, this thing called a book, that you can hold, and carry, and read at your discretion, is what often leaps to mind when talking about publishing poetry.
This simple invention has lasted since its inception and, in my estimation, books will be made into perpetuity. The impact books make on their audience makes them well worth the effort, and the effort is great, especially for poets. I say this because as an artform poetry lacks much of the support offered in the art world, so be ready to really showcase your work once it comes to print.
The parameters may be a little different with more established presses, but in my experience with indie presses, I would say most won’t have the budget to help you tour, promote, or submit your book to prizes. This is when an author must really traverse the fourth wall, to ask where their ideal audience is, how to find them, and connect them to your book. A poet must strategize and decide how to spend their vital energy, to show up in their community as a proud poet actively being a literary citizen.
I think I wrongly thought of getting a book published as the last step in the creative process and what I have learned since is that it is just the launching pad into a whole new level of creative engagement. So be prepared, bring your towel ;-)
6 Self Publishing & Guerrilla Distro
Outside of getting published, there are countless options when it comes to self-publishing.
Don’t have a full collection but want to print a single poem? Try a broadside (small poster) or a mini-book, made by folding and cutting a single sheet of paper.
Have a short series of poems? Try a pamphlet or even binding a few pages together to create an almost chapbook.
These kinds of prints are wonderful for the community. It is so fun to collect and trade limited edition print materials.
Or maybe you don’t print but share a QR code that links an audience to a larger body of work.
There is also a wide variety of options when it comes to distributing these materials. A poet can sell them at a reading to help cover the cost of transportation, or trade them with other authors at events.
Maybe you leave them at bus stops for the person who doesn’t know they want poetry in their life, or doesn’t know where to find it.
The fourth wall is a tremendously vast place that really pulls an author out of their mind’s eye and fully back into their skin. It is a relief to know we don’t all have to be the same kind of poet from the canon, but that there is plenty of room to grow our voices and play in the wild, wild world as we do.
&&&& Some Final Thoughts
Why stop there, right? Phone Booth poetry, vending machine poetry, live poetry on typewriters: I feel like it is all happening right now and all one has to do is look around to soak up the ideas and then try what suits you and your vision of your work.
Perhaps you’ll turn your poems into a play or into a workshop (like we do here at The Poetry Lab).
If the fourth wall made you nervous, if you were looking for new ways to share your work, I hope this article serves you. If you already knew all this, damn, poet! Go out there and get it.
Let’s all get out there and get it! See you on the other side of that fourth wall.
You are a Very Important Poet
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This article was published on May 30, 2024. Written by:
