I learned to move from microphone poetry to public performance thanks to working alongside many of these great poets, though my wake-up moment came one day in a primary school in Kensal Rise, in London, in 1975. I started to read from my book without looking out at the hall of 400 children. Sean McErlaine, the teacher who had invited me, interrupted, calling out to the children: “No, no, no … it doesn’t go like that, does it?” “Nooooooo!” they called back. And the whole school, led by Sean, chanted, wriggled and danced one of my poems back to me.

Ah, I thought: so you have to live the poem with your whole mind and body. This is why performance poetry has had not one great heyday, but many. You pass a poem to the audience through the words as embodied – literally – by the rest of your human form. And the people listening and watching come back at you in an equally embodied way.

Performance poetry: the word of the moment, Michael Rosen, The Guardian.