I am not surprised that this scene you are talking about is growing. All of these people are coming together to listen to people read their work. I said in my first post that poetry is meant to be heard rather than read. That is how poetry is made accessible. It needs to be appreciated by people who listen to it. It shouldn't require people study it alone with a deep analysis. Now you are telling me a poetry scene is growing where people want to listen to the best poets read their work. You are simply confirming my original point.
Not really...the vast majority of the people at those readings have already been reading the poems to themselves and had their books in hand to get them signed. They would have first read the poems in a collection or in a magazine and want to take the opportunity to see/hear the poets. It is a prize for a collection of poems published during the year - not for reading aloud. With this kind of poetry there will not be a great many people in the audience who know nothing about the poets, or haven't read them a bit already, and just want to hear poetry aloud.
I don't think if you interviewed audience members, they would mostly say that they find the poems inaccessible without being read aloud. In fact, as much as I enjoy seeing/hearing poets read (because it's just a different experience, or it's someone legendary like Seamus Heaney...etc), in many cases I really appreciate and get more out of the poems when reading them silently to myself. I've been to the T S Eliot Prize readings several times. Inevitably, I find that some poets read really well, some not that well. Some poems really open up when I hear them aloud, some are definitely better when read silently to oneself. The part that moves me the most is when they read a T S Eliot poem at the start of the evening, in tribute. Because he's still the greatest. I love hearing Eliot read aloud but I also love going away and wandering through the fine details of his work. With poetry like this, you will find something new every time you read it. It will be a different experience for you repeatedly throughout your life.
People who want to primarily access poetry as an oral art form go to poetry slams, which isn't so much my cup of tea. Some of us appreciate better through reading, than hearing, and some poetry is better suited to that. I can absorb it better when I read and reread, look at the whole poem at a glance, then absorb it line by line, then reread...etc. That's also mainly how I get inspired to do my own writing (as well as going out and having experiences, traveling, etc).
I just enjoy doing the "work" with poetry which requires more time, or digging, or whatever. It's part of the enjoyment. It is incredibly satisfying when something unfolds before me and the pieces fall into place. But I've always loved literature and a lot of it is instinctive for me at this point, I think.
Anyway, you're right, we're going to have to agree to disagree.
By the way, I like Langston Hughes, but I like Eliot and Celan better - among many others. I think there is a lot of extraordinary American poetry but unfortunately a lot of people in America who appreciate poetry have little or no knowledge of the great poets of other countries, including other English speaking countries. This doesn't seem to be the case so much with poetry lovers in the UK. (Although Eliot is claimed by both America and England, and does seem to belong to both. Celan, of course, is in translation from German, which raises a whole other area of difficulty and interest).