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DEFINITIONS**
The following definitions have been established as guidelines for performers and teachers:

Prose: A prose passage is a selection from a story, novel, essay or similar writing that forms a concise unit. Prose is non-metrical writing: thus stories written in verse are not appropriate. In prose, the speaker is the narrator. The focus should be on the voice. Vocal characterization is encouraged but the quality of prose must be maintained. The selection should include narration, description and dialogue. It should be spoken in the story-telling style, but should not be performed as a dramatic scene, i.e. there is to be no acting, with only very limited movement around the stage. Competitors may stand or be seated.

Drama: In drama the speaker is the character. The selection should be the words of one character only with words of other characters omitted. Shakespeare selections must be taken from his plays rather than his non-dramatic poetry.

Poetry: In poetry, the language is moulded into some kind of design; in prose it is not. Speakers may choose to perform any type of poetry including but not limited to: lyric, narrative, dramatic, slam or free verse – matching performance choices to author intention and style.
• Lyric – a short unified poem expressing the poet’s own experience and emotion usually presented in a relaxed stance with no movement. The speaker interprets rather than identifies with it. (e.g. Solitude by Bliss Carman: To Autumn by Keats; Sonnets of Shakespeare and Wordsworth).
• Narrative – a poem which tells a story and usually has dialogue: the telling of a story is the primary concern of the speaker (e.g. The King’s Breakfast by A. A. Milne; The Raven by E. A. Poe; The Cattle Thief by Pauline Johnson).
• Dramatic – in a dramatic poem, a character distinct from the performer and poet speaks, revealing personality and attitudes. The primary concert of the poem is to reveal character, rather than tell a story (e.g. My Last Duchess by Robert Browning; Patterns by Amy Lowell).
• Slam Poetry – Idea or thematic connection poems with voice, humour, rhythm, exaggeration, wordplay, written for performance to an audience. Excerpts may be presented as these poems are often very long. Suggested resource books or poems include: “We Are More” (Koyczan), Word Warriors (Olsen), Take the Mic (Smith): Poetry Slam (Glazner).
• Free Verse – poetry or ‘a poem’ without regular rhythm or rhyme, yet still providing artistic expression (eg. Poems by Walt Whitman, Carl Sandburg or T.S. Eliot).
• Sonnet – a sonnet is a fixed form lyric poem, traditionally consisting of 14 lines of iambic pentameter with a set rhyme scheme.

(**Reproduced with the kind permission from British Columbia Arts Festival. May 2021)