AUDIO POETRY....

Testing. One...two...three....

Recently I was invited to send some of my 'audio poems' to Lipservice Journal - Maurice has included my work in his online journals for the past few years, and now he has branched out into the spoken word.

My first thought was great. Very quickly followed by - I have no audio poetry...how do I do that?

So after quite a few hours playing around with my computer I found how to record my voice. In some ways that was the easy part...choosing what to read was one of the hard decisions.

There a few that I recite that I consider spoken word rather than serious, on the page poetry. These are what I considered. But then a few 'on the page' poems had great imagery, and I thought perhaps they could work as well. It took longer to build a collection of poems to choose to read than I had considered. Day one gone.

The next spare day I began to record some of the said poems. I learnt a lot. Heavy rain on the roof makes for an interesting effect, which does NOT work with most of my poems.

Power going on and off- and on and off- and on and off during said heavy rains and storms are also not conducive for recording poetry.

And of course there is that initial cringe when you listen to your own voice - that whole 'is that how I sound?'

But on another level you come to realise there are so many different variations on reading a poem. How you stress a word, or even a phrase- do you read this part fast, this part slow- do you work on the rhythm or do you deliberately pause and break it so that the listener is forced to listen.  So many questions. So many takes of one poem.

Day two vanished. In the end, after what I consider to be some good audio poetry, I sent them off only to discover a problem. Another few hours on another day tinkering (don't you love forums!) and fingers crossed everything is out there waiting to see if they are selected or not.

It is very strange to have a poem end up looking like a bit like this...


Even stranger when you are half way through recording a poem to have your cat demand, loudly, some of your attention as it has decided now is the time for food. A very demanding MEOOOWWWWW at a decisive point is not necessarily for the good.

But I did learn a lot, and thanks to a friend, Miss J, who has sent me information on other forms of recording my work....I can do more.

Audio poetry gives another aspect to your words. They are offered up in the way you want them delivered, the intonations and format, the rhythm or lack of it - that you envisaged when writing.

It is definitely an interesting form to work with.


Vicki



Comments

Popular posts from this blog

UNTITLED....

PLANNING AHEAD...

FRESH START....