3 Things Poetry And Comedy Have In Common

I started doing stand-up comedy to push my poetry in a new way. Quite simply, I wanted to learn more about what it means to entertain people. Most of my poetry colleagues definitely gave me the “I could never do that” reaction when I told them I was going to do this.

There’s a common misconception that poetry and comedy are diametrically opposed. We even used to capitalize on it with our Poets vs Comics event.  But the truth is, they’re not. 

Slam poetry, imperfect as the form may be, at the very least requires a poet to consider the audience in the form of the judges scoring them. A lot of poetry shows (commonly called readings) are pretty quiet, but slam in its heyday was boisterous, rowdy, and reactive—more like a comedy show.

There are a lot of things that performance poets could learn from stand-up comics about stage presence and connecting with the audience.

How poetry and comedy are similar:

They’re both forms of storytelling.

A mic and stage, maybe an occasional prop. That’s all that you need to put on a poetry or comedy show because these events are based completely on storytelling. Comedy and poetry may use different tools, but at their heart, they are just telling stories. 

Storytelling is an important part of the human experience. It’s how we connect. Studies even show that when you’re telling a story to someone the same parts in each of your brains are lighting up at the same time.

I think that’s why people are drawn to both poetry and comedy. But why is Netflix full of comedy specials and not poetry specials? I think poetry has lost something of its history. Classic poetry, think the Odyssey and the Epic of Gilgamesh, were all stories made for entertainment and performance.

They’re both trying to get reactions.

Simply: comedy is trying to get laughs and poetry is trying to get snaps. Right?

I actually think poets these days don’t always know what kind of reaction they’re trying to elicit from their audience. Added to that, a lot of the comedy specials I’ve watched recently haven’t just been about silly jokes—there’s usually some sort of message attached to them. Iliza Scheslinger discusses women’s empowerment towards the end of all her recent specials. Nick Kroll’s most recent special is punctuated with hard moments and poop jokes. Neal Brennan has his own brand of “traumedy,” which he talks about in Blocks.

Their material is usually about the speaker.

Putting “confessional” and “comedy” in the same sentence probably doesn’t seem right, unless you’re familiar with Hannah Gadsby’s Nannette. 

Confessional poetry is probably the most popular form of poetry these days and most people assume that poetry is True (capital intended) and about the author.  

Comedy is also usually assumed to be true and about the speaker, even when that’s clearly not the case. Take Bo Burnham’s Inside for example. Bo Burnham uses confessional elements in his work, but that doesn’t make the entirety of Inside factual. It’s not an accurate representation of his life, but an artistic one.

Blending poetry and comedy

Writing shows that blend both poetry and comedy are where I feel most at home. It allows me space to connect with the audience that I wasn’t cultivating before I started having to look up from my page and look them in the eye. While I never felt quite at home in slam spaces, I am thankful that my performance career started there because it got me off the page and into the world.

As a last thought, poetry sometimes has a reputation for only being about the hard and difficult things, but I think there is room for joy in the craft, too. Likewise, comedy doesn’t have to be limited to just silly jokes; it can also explore what it means to be human, which really is an absurd experience when we get down to it.

Follow along with my journey blending poetry and comedy.

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About the author

Abby Bland (she/they) is a nonbinary writer who also straddles the line between comic and poet in Kansas City. Her poems have appeared in numerous publications and she regularly produces shows in the KC area. In 2022 she was awarded an ArtsKC Inspiration Grant for her one-person spoken word comedy show You Are Here.