Stage fright: what to do in the ninety seconds before you speak
Nerves, and what to do with them
Stage fright is the body's threat response arriving at a moment when there is no threat, and in spoken word poetry it turns up in the ninety seconds before a poem, not during it.
Adrenaline is released, the heart speeds up, blood moves to the large muscles, and breathing rises into the top of the chest, which is why the hands shake and the voice comes out higher and faster than the poem was written for.
What stage fright is, and what it does to breath and hands
Stage fright does five recognisable things to a body, and knowing what they are removes most of their power, because a shaking hand read as a signal of failure is frightening and a shaking hand read as adrenaline in the fingers is simply information. The five, in the order most people notice them:
- Breathing moves up into the chest and gets shallow, so lines run out of air halfway.
- Hands go cold and shake, because circulation has been sent to the big muscles.
- The mouth dries, which makes consonants sticky and makes people swallow mid line.
- Hearing narrows, so the room sounds far away and the audience seems silent when it is not.
- Speech accelerates, which is the one that actually damages the poetry and the one nobody feels happening.
None of that is a verdict on the writing or on the person. It is a physical event with a beginning and an end, and it peaks earlier than people expect: for most performers the worst point is standing in the queue to go on, not standing at the mic. The first 30 seconds of the poem usually burn most of it off.
Can stage fright be overcome?
No, stage fright is not overcome, and it does not go away, including for people who have performed for twenty years. What it can be is reduced, redirected and made survivable. Experienced performers report the same physical events and have simply stopped treating them as a reason to stop. What changes with practice is the gap between what the body does and what the voice does, so the nerves are still there and poetry timed at 3 minutes in rehearsal no longer arrives in 2.
The reduction comes from repetition in rooms that get gradually bigger, not from a single act of courage. A workable ladder runs: say the poem alone out loud, then to one person, then to the writing circle described in How a writing circle gives feedback, then to a class, then to a room of strangers. Each rung is easier than the one after it, and skipping straight from a bedroom to a public open mic is why some young writers perform once and never again.
The ninety seconds before you speak
In the 90 seconds before you speak, five actions genuinely help, and all of them are physical rather than mental, because talking yourself out of adrenaline does not work while telling your body it is safe sometimes does:
- Breathe out for longer than you breathe in, 4 counts in and 6 out, six or seven times over. The long out breath is the part that settles the system.
- Unlock your knees and let your arms hang, then shake the hands out once, hard, and stop.
- Put the paper down for those ninety seconds, because gripping it tightens the shoulders and takes the breath higher.
- Say the first line silently to yourself, once, and no more of the poem than that.
- Name what is happening in plain words: cold hands, fast heart, adrenaline, ninety seconds.
Drink water beforehand rather than during, avoid energy drinks in the hour before, and eat something, because an empty stomach makes every one of the five effects sharper. Sitting through the poem before yours with your eyes on the performer, rather than mouthing your own first line, is worth more than any of it: attention pointed at somebody else's poetry is the fastest way out of a spiral.
What to do while you are speaking
While you are speaking, the job is pace, and everything else can be left alone. Nerves make a poem faster, so deliberately take the first line at what feels like an unnaturally slow speed and the rest of the poem will arrive somewhere near normal. Find one friendly face, or one fixed object at the back of the room at head height, and use it for the first stanza before letting the eyes travel.
Three small mechanics carry a shaky performer through: hold the microphone with the hand that is steadier and rest the other at your side rather than in a pocket; let a pause be a pause, since the audience hears silence as control and cannot hear a heartbeat; and if the voice cracks, stop, breathe out, and start the line again, which the room will read as care. The mechanics of pace, breath and the pause belong to performing poetry in their own right, and stage fright only makes them matter more.
What the adult in the room can do about it
An adult running the room can lower the stage fright in it structurally, before a single poem is read, and the biggest lever is making performance genuinely optional. Offer four routes that carry equal status: perform it, read it from paper, read it in a pair, or have somebody else read it while the writer sits in the audience. A young person who is not going to perform is not a failed participant, and the poetry route in How to write a poem still delivers everything it promised. The stage and its circuit is where the ones who want an audience go next, at their own pace.
Other measures that reliably calm a room: rehearse standing on the actual stage with the actual light on, so nothing on the night is a surprise; never call on someone cold; put the running order up in advance so nobody spends the evening waiting to be ambushed; and let the first three performers be volunteers rather than the strongest writers. A session built on Starting from a prompt helps here too, because a shared subject is easier to read out than the worst week of your own life. Adults should also watch for the young person whose distress is about the content of the poem rather than the audience, which is a different matter entirely and goes to the setting's named safeguarding lead, under Keeping Children Safe in Education in England, Keeping learners safe in Wales, the National Guidance for Child Protection in Scotland, and the Department of Education's safeguarding guidance for schools in Northern Ireland.
Where this page stops, and a doctor starts
This page stops at ordinary performance nerves, and a doctor starts where anxiety persists. Nothing here is medical advice, no medicine is named on this page, and no breathing pattern described above is a treatment for anything. Nerves that arrive before a performance and fade during it are normal. Anxiety that turns up on ordinary days, that interferes with sleeping, eating, school or friendships, that produces panic attacks, or that has been going on for weeks is a different thing and is not a poetry problem.
The route in the United Kingdom starts with a GP, in all four nations. A school or college can also refer a young person to NHS child and adolescent mental health services, which run under the NHS in England, Scotland and Wales, and under Health and Social Care in Northern Ireland. An adult in England can additionally refer themselves to NHS Talking Therapies without going through a GP, while in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland the GP or a local primary care mental health service is the way in. Childline, run by the NSPCC, is free and confidential for anyone in the UK under 19 who wants to talk to somebody first. A poetry workshop is a good place to be nervous in and a bad place to be diagnosed in, and the adult who says so plainly is doing the job properly.