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I am standing at the podium with a microphone turned up so loud my shallowest breath hollers across the room. Motionless faces watch me, waiting to be painted with expression. I open the notebook but of course it's empty. The journals, from which I'll read published work, have become thin, slight dictionaries, one definition to the page.

Despite this "Night Before the Poetry Reading Dream" I am fascinated with the act of reading and always eager for the rapt attention. I orchestrate the event beforehand, arrange the poems in themes, keeping in mind their variations in sound and tempo. Fully prepared and rehearsed, I can watch the audience, see which doors they've entered, which remain shut. I say very little between poems. They must speak and perform for themselves, the writer in the wings. Readings fulfill part of my job as a writer − communication and dialogue.

"Asking me why I read my work in public is like asking why I bother to breathe," Rosario Morales answers. "Not reading would be unnatural." Morales, who read the work of others out loud before she began to write her own poetry, says the public response to her poetry and fiction feeds her urge to keep writing. The excitement of seeing people applaud, cry, react to her words is far different than the pleasure of seeing the work in print.

For Rosario, me, and many other writers, the sound of the poem is invested early in the writing and editing process. Tino Villanueva compares his role as a poet to a carpenter who uses "breath groups" and pacing to build the house as strong as possible. "The seductive power of sound draws the listener in," he says.

Villanueva often sets up a background for the audience, unveiling the inspiration for the poem. "When you share your work," he says, "people get to know you and become aware of another facet of their communities." Part of cultural production, public reading continues the oral tradition.

Fiction writer Terry Farish finds satisfaction in reading her work to audiences because there are no barriers. "It's an instant drama, a character others can get right into. It's the positive of working years and years on a computer," she says. How is the reading useful to the work? It's the completion of a circle, it is the missing part.

Writing and revision happen in solitude, E. J. Graff explains, "but there's a point where it's too much. You want the immediate feedback of watching it affect somebody else." Graff reads her fiction publicly throughout the revision process, to find out what's awkward.

Poet Gail Mazur agrees that many writers use the readings to hear how specific pieces sound, to test and learn about them even thought they've been read out loud during the writing. For most people, she says, it's not the specific reaction and response of the audience, but hearing it read that's necessary.

Mazur has run the Blacksmith House reading series for 23 years. A poet herself, she has chosen the additional role of making the work of other people public and introducing new people to poetry. Readings help writers with the sales of their books, as well.

"Poetry is how I make my living," Maxine Kumin says simply. She reads for money and to promote her books. Unlike many other writers who have the public reading of the poem in mind during the entire writing process, Kumin does not. And unlike many who might use the audiences' reaction or feedback to further revision, she makes no changes after reading her work. Kumin is "evangelical about poetry" and a firm believer in work being read aloud.

Slam poetry and the proliferation of reading series are helping to make poetry available and accessible to those who have previously shied away from it. The more people hear our voices, the sooner fiction and poetry will become an everyday part of everyone's lives.

[Posted with permission of the author, this evergreen piece originally appeared in NWU's Rough Draft newsletter]

Denise Bergman is the author of Seeing Annie Sullivan, poems based on the early life of Helen Keller's teacher (2005, and later translated into Braille and made into a Talking Book), and editor of City River of Voices, an anthology of urban poetry. Her poems have been widely published.