“Poetry Off the Page” is a five-year project directed by Dr. Julia Lajta-Novak from the University of Vienna and supported by an ERC Consolidator Grant and the START-Prize of the Austrian Science Fund (FWF).

Spoken word poetry has been going through a noticeable boom for more than half a century. Movements such as Beat poetry, jazz poetry, and poetry slam have given rise to extensive performance scenes in the English-speaking poetry world and beyond. 

Drawing from the Spoken Word Archive and other sources, the Poetry Off the Page project investigates the impact of poetry performance on contemporary British and Irish literary history. Taking account of the aesthetic and semantic potential of spoken word, the project will examine the alternative institutional structures, publication channels, career pathways, presentational formats, styles, and poetic genres that have emerged from the performance scene. 

A core aim of the project is to articulate multifaceted theoretical and methodological approaches to poetry performance analysis. By revealing the vital role of oral performance in the history of Anglophone British poetry, providing new sources, and cultivating spaces for its study, this project seeks to establish poetry performance research as a recognised branch of historico-literary enquiry.

Follow the project: www.poetryoffthepage.net
Check out the Spoken Word Archive.

This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European
Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No 101002816) and from the Austrian Science Fund (START grant No Y 1263).

With thanks to :

Participating Universities: