Yet Lebo Mashile, best known as a performance poet, first sought her audience through the printed word: "Eight years ago, I couldn’t get publishers interested in my work. So I turned to performance. I became more widely known, and then I was published. Now I find the two forms work together. When I stand on stage, you, the audience, are the page. I write on you." Jeremy Cronin pointed out that one cannot generalise about what it means to ‘perform’ poetry, as different contexts dictate different kinds of performance. Cronin, who has achieved the (almost) impossible by remaining both a creditable political player and a widely respected poet, has on some occasions read his poetry to only a handful of people, but has also addressed crowds at political rallies in soccer stadiums. The latter is not a likely scenario for a poet such as Gabeeba Baderoon, who prefers to make eye contact with her audience members because her poetry "works through intimacy".

Finuala Dowling joked that she is aware of being bracketed on "the non-performing end of the continuum". Yet many of the poems in her latest collection, Doo-Wop Girls of the Universe, are performance-oriented insofar as they are funnier and create a more obvious audience response. Dowling admitted that she finds herself choosing more light-hearted poems for poetry readings because she feels uncomfortable with the quieter (if no less appreciative) responses of an audience listening to more ‘serious’ poems, such as her tribute "To the doctor who treated the raped baby and who felt such despair". As a result, she said, "I have become schizophrenic – I have two audiences, one expecting comedy and one expecting tragedy."

The audience that waited for the appearance of Kearopetse ‘William’ Kgositsile at the Book Fair was unsure what to expect. Kgositsile, recently named as South Africa’s poet laureate, has lived in America for much of his life and his work is not known to most of his countrymen. But the converse does not apply; Kgositsile has kept his finger on the pulse of South African literature ("it wasn’t as if exile made us ignorant of what was happening in SA") and has some strong opinions on the subject. When asked what responsibilities he anticipated fulfilling in his official capacity, he replied: "If I could, I would have all young writers honing their skills five days a week. I would also have those who mislead them taken to a holiday resort elsewhere, without their writing instruments. But I can’t! So I will write, travel and try to establish some new magazines and journals."

It was evident that there are things he doesn’t like about some of his fellow literary practitioners. Although he insisted that "my taste is totally irrelevant", he also affirmed that "there is a whole lot of garbage out there masquerading as poetry!" He was reluctant to be too specific, but he did dwell briefly on the need to distinguish literature from "slogans": "If you shout a slogan at a protest rally, it has value; but once the rally is over, you have to say something different." On the age-old issue of ‘form vs content’, he was clear. "If he or she only focuses on content, the writer can’t contribute anything new. The major themes – love, war, death, politics – have always been there. That’s why how you say something is more important."

Kgositsile was himself involved in the development of performance poetry, or ‘jazz poetry’, in the USA in the 1960s and after. "Rap, hip-hop is nothing new," he reminded us, referring to the Black Arts Theatre and African-American poets like Langston Hughes who "consciously reclaimed an African tradition ... and now you get some young South African punks mimicking the USA. It’s terrible!"

Still, I find myself asking, what is a poet laureate supposed to do? In a South African context, the historical importance of the imbongi, or praise-poet, comes to mind. Yet the tradition of a poet speaking to, and on behalf of, a nation has been somewhat clouded since Petrarch celebrated "the poet in laurels crowned" all those years ago. In Britain, it has often carried something of a stigma – one thinks of the radical young Wordsworth who was accused by his fellow Romantics of becoming a "turncoat" and supplicating himself to the conservative establishment "for a handful of silver" – although the incumbent, Andrew Motion, has managed to avoid that taint. Kgositsile is adamant: "People think that to be poet laureate turns you into some kind of official clown, but I will not be called upon by anybody to praise them anywhere."

He has, notwithstanding this, written poems in honour of the ANC’s birthday celebrations, or state-representing pieces such as "South Africa salutes Uzbekistan". On the other hand, many of Kgositsile’s poems take the form of private ‘epistles’, dedicated to certain individuals (his latest collection, This Way I Salute You, is comprised solely of these tributes) and a veil of obscurity covers many of the personal references. As Lionel Abrahams wrote of this reviewer’s own poetry, "my curiosity is engaged but I can’t solve the puzzle" – and this does not make for poetry accessible to an entire nation.