It’s an old seafaring term, meaning a ship sinking front end first. I just thought of it and laughed, remembering that it came to me as I sat listening to poets at last Summer’s SB Book and Author Festival. Most of them were great, but one poet was obviously – to me – uncomfortable with being on stage, at a microphone, in front of a group of people. I watched and listened and thought, “That poor woman is going down by the bow.” It struck me funny then too, and I’m only glad I didn’t blurt it out.
(You know that little switch in your head, that keeps you from yawping out thoughts best kept private? Do you think it can really be trusted? I’m never completely sure.)
Reading in public isn’t easy. We poets tend to be solitary when it comes to spelunking the caverns of our creative underworld. So to take one’s little offerings from the printer, carry them to a lecture hall or coffee house, and offer them up is an art or artifice in itself.
I consider myself well practiced in it, but I’ve taken on water and sailed off listing to starboard a few times myself.
All of which is prefatory to sending you off to mystic-lit, to read poet Joseph Gallo’s thoughts on readings. And you can read three of his fine poems too. … Aloud, if you please, if only to the cat or the living room wall. It’s all good practice.
Metaphor 
I recall the poet whomof you speak. I would offer she may well have been sinking by the stern, but either way gets you to a place that is a tad more challenging from which to embark upon an airy walk, plank notwithstanding.
I might have paid good money, Kyle, to hear you blurt that out. Not so much as an affront towards her, per se, but for the memory of a moment with long-range savor.
I certainly don’t put much stock in that censor switch in my head, I’ll tell you that. So will a few other folk.
Happy to know yours is in somewhat working order, my friend.
A poet who hasn’t listed to starboard at least once during a reading, simply hasn’t done it more than once. Good for them.
Sometimes, it is both a preferable and enviable position from which to launch into great discovery not only about the work, but about oneself.
Nothing worth its weight in gold is more valuable than the experience of risk. To step out onto that highwire with no guarantee it is even fastened at the other end is exhilarating and sublimely alchemical.
However, exhorting your readers to read aloud from my poems invites a decidedly ill-advised risk in your losing your readership.
They’ll never trust you again.
Kind Readers: Ignore Kyle on this point, please. You’ll be glad you did. 😉