about Voice Alpha
A companion site to Whale Sound, Voice Alpha is a repository for thoughts, theories, suggestions, likes and dislikes and anything else related to the art and science of reading poetry aloud for an audience. If you would like to guest-blog at Voice Alpha, please email nic_sebastian at hotmail dot com.‘Dear Voice Alpha’ – poetry reading advice column
If you're trying to improve your poetry reading skills and would like some friendly critique to help you on your way, click here, where you will also find current examples of Voice Alpha critiques.Contributors
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- memorization ‘creates a new channel of intelligence’ | Voice Alpha on To read or to recite? Dramatic versus Epic
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Monthly Archives: December 2011
’twas the night before Christmas – Jim Meskimen
No mention of Christmas at Voice Alpha yet this year – getting these Jim Meskimen voice gymnastics in under the wire. Merry Christmas! More on Jim Meskimen at Voice Alpha.
Posted in voice
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ouch
OK, this is just embarrassing. If you can’t memorize your own poem, or the Guardian won’t spring for a teleprompter, how about just don’t participate..? Other Close-up series posts on Voice Alpha.
Posted in Close-up Poetry, tip: avoid this!
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Watch & listen to this!! – Robin Robertson
Wow, listen to this freaky amazing poem and watch how tremendously Scottish poet Robin Robertson delivers it! I’m bowled over by the performance. It’s all terrific, but for whatever reason, I’m loving that slow eye-closing thing that he does periodically … Continue reading
Posted in Close-up Poetry, voice
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‘Letter to a City Under Siege’ – Carolyn Forché readings
A Carolyn Forché reading up at the Poetry Foundation today. She reads well: 3 min 24 secs I also LOVE this 1992 reading, which is part reading and part recitation from memory. What a performance!
memorization ‘creates a new channel of intelligence’
Poetry Foundation’s Curtis Fox interviews Dan Beachy-Quick on memorization: 12 min 19 secs DBQ: I think memorizing a poem in a strange sort of way gives that poem access to you more than you are giving yourself access to it … Continue reading
Posted in poem-as-voice
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what can you learn from watching/listening to others read their work aloud?
Interesting read from a fiction writer here. (via Dave Bonta) Attending reading series with the devotion of a zealot has not only enabled me to construct the supportive network my writing life so lacked, it has also—and I never saw … Continue reading
‘Close-up poetry’
A nice idea from the Guardian: “A series of readings, in which poets choose a favourite poem from their own work, and recite it to camera.” There are two readings up so far. I enjoyed the understated comfortable – in … Continue reading
