This essay is very slightly modified from a journal entry dated May 17, 2020
In the traditional poetry reading or event as framed or instrumentalized as a social occasion, the poet is a focus for or excuse for the attendees to interact with one another, & also a figure whose expected function or behavior is complex. This is rarely acknowledged or analyzed, much less made open to negotiation or clear consent.
Not only is the poet expected to deliver a reading to the audience (labor 1), but they are also expected to offer the audience direct access to their bodies, through social interaction, in what is often uncompensated but very difficult labor (labor 2). Sometimes, if the poet is the one who puts together &/or hosts the event, there are third & fourth layers of labor, again for which the poet is rarely compensated.
To get at the crux of this, to unpack the assumptions surrounding the poetic labor of the reading, seems to be unusual or unpalatable. But I have had to do it in analyzing the reasons why it has become untenable & impossible for me to perform this labor, whether it's compensated or not.
Compensation (i.e. payment) is less of an issue for me because paying me won't magically make it possible for me to do something I can no longer do. The major problem for me in this is the incomprehension of others that there are multiple layers of labor demanded of a poet at their own reading, & the poet is rarely offered a chance to negotiate this labor, to actively consent to any or all of it. To agree to, or arrange to, "do a reading" implies global consent to these unnamed, unacknowledged forms of labor. To refuse for any reason to do any of it is offensive to many people, but the same people refuse to examine their assumptions that agreeing to read a set of poems in the company of others explicitly includes placing a poet's body within the access of those others. To play along, to play the Poetry Reading Game, is assumed to mean one slots one's presence, performance & even one's poems into the received framework with no objection, no complication.
I have never seen an event contract that explicitly names the expected duties of socializing, networking, dispensing of free advice--of physical availability to the audience members on an individual, sequential or mass basis. Occasionally a specific Q&A session is named, a book signing, or attendance at a reception. But that's not true of every contract, & plenty of event organizers do not provide formal contracts.
From the viewpoint of disability justice, this approach to poetic labor is violent & unacceptable. There is no space for negotiation of poetic labor provided at events without risking the loss of the opportunity to participate at all, or the loss of compensation, or both. But it is also deeply problematic from a more general, personal-agency point of view. If a poet has no option to refuse, or even to negotiate consent for, certain unspoken types of labor assumed to be "givens" in a poetry event, how can that poet safely set & hold boundaries, especially in a high-contact situation where intoxicants are frequently also held to be unquestionable presences in the scene? If poets can't even safely refuse consent to the parts of an event that are too strenuous, or outright dangerous, or impossible for them, how can they safely participate at all? The poetry community is known to foster predatory & abusive behavior. This way of approaching events is part of the problem. It needs to be re-examined & recast in a myriad of different, consent-empowered modes.