Voice Alpha

’twas the night before Christmas – Jim Meskimen

Nic Sebastian — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 03:52:27 +0000

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.

ouch

Nic Sebastian — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 13:54:26 +0000

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.

Watch & listen to this!! – Robin Robertson

Nic Sebastian — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 15:03:51 +0000

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 most of all. (From the Guardian’s Close-up poetry series.)

In other Close-up poetry news, a nice reading from Scottish poet Liz Lochhead here. Relaxed yet focused delivery and she makes us feel the menace and tension. As mother of two boys, had to laugh in emotional recognition – I bet I’ll be the same when my boys are old enough!

Other Close-up series posts on Voice Alpha

‘Letter to a City Under Siege’ – Carolyn Forché readings

Nic Sebastian — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 03:00:03 +0000

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’

Nic Sebastian — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 10:20:28 +0000

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 … putting the poem in oneself, in one’s memory and mind … leaves the poem in me, it creates a new channel of intelligence in me that isn’t mine at all .. and that feels extraordinarily valuable to me as a poet.

Very interesting. Perhaps akin to one of my favorite themes: the impact of reading a poem aloud for an audience – voice is an organ of investigation that brings you information not otherwise available to you. Voice and memorization = interiorization in related ways.

Related Voice Alpha posts:
“To read or recite?” by Dave Bonta
“To read or recite? Dramatic vs Epic” by Dick Jones.

what can you learn from watching/listening to others read their work aloud?

Nic Sebastian — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 04:08:25 +0000

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 this coming—improved my work. Whether a writer steps behind a microphone to brave a cheapo sound system and a sea of empty chairs, or alights before a standing-room-only crowd; something important happens when a writer shares his work out loud. There are lessons to be learned from attending reading series. Here’s what I’ve learned so far:

‘Close-up poetry’

Nic Sebastian — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 04:02:05 +0000

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 both voice and visage – reading in this one by Yorkshire (love that accent..) poet Simon Armitage.

Not so much this one by Jo Shapcott – her voice and face are both trying too hard for my taste.

Look forward to seeing who goes up next – the site has an RSS feed so you can add it to your reader and get them as they are posted.

your voice too, shall age

Nic Sebastian — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 10:23:53 +0000

The physical side of getting old is generally about getting stiffer, slower and more wrinkled. I was recently reminded that our voices, also, age with us, and get stiffer, slower and more wrinkled. (And yes, of course I *knew* they did, but I have to confess I didn’t really *know* it.)

At the Woodberry Poetry Room’s Listening Booth you can listen to Denise Levertov in 1960, and then, further down on the same page, in 1986. Hear the voice difference.

Why do I even point this out, since we all *know* we get old, all over, and all at the same time? I don’t really know, but I have been thinking about this particular aspect of aging — of voice — today. I can’t decide which of the Levertov readings I prefer, and whether the change in voice quality has any relevance at all.

Here is Hilda Dootlittle up at Penn Sound reading from Helen In Egypt. A very old voice, but still reading beautifully.

Buffalo Dusk!

Nic Sebastian — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 11:20:38 +0000

Yes, I know – I’m a hopeless Carl Sandburg fan when it comes to reading poetry aloud for an audience (other gushings here and here). The Poetry Foundation had him up again yesterday as the Poem of the Day:

poem text
36 secs

using text vs voice in videopoems

Nic Sebastian — Sun, 16 Oct 2011 16:02:50 +0000

[cross-posted from Very Like A Whale because I think it's relevant to the Voice Alpha ethos]

I wrote this a few weeks ago with the first text-only videopoem I made:

I remembered that in Tom Konyves’ videopoetry manifesto, he categorized videopoems according to their usage of text, with two key distinctions drawn between sound text and visual text. (He also asserted that visual text is ‘charged with leading’ the videopoetry genre, although I’m not sure I agree with that.) I realized that what with Whale Sound and Voice Alpha and now this interest in videopoetry, I’ve been engaged with ‘sound’ text almost exclusively for months now. The idea of making a videopoem without voice and with only visual text was therefore appealing.

I’ve now put together three vpoems with text only and no voice (links at bottom of this post). This is what I have learned so far, and, very interested, continue to ponder:

- Text is not a ‘poor relation’ to voice in videopoems. Not sure why or how I had absorbed this ‘fact’, but I had. Text is a different mechanism from voice. In videopoems text can be as strong (or stronger, if the voice alternative available is relatively weak) a mechanism as voice.

- Text used in videopoems is not like text on the page – it is more a text/voice hybrid, a halfway mark between both.

- This is probably because a) text on the page is a block, all visible, all together, in front of you while b) voice is a ribbon of sound unfurling for you – each word takes the place of the previous one, which disappears in front of it.

-Text in a videopoem takes on the ‘ribbon unfurling’ aspect of voice – each word takes the place of the previous one, which disappears in front of it.

- Text can be an active, communicative character in the performance that is videopoem.

- Text-as-ribbon can very competently (or more competently, depending on the strength of the voice alternative available) convey the nuances that voice-as-ribbon conveys – font, font size, text animation, sound/sense byte, pace – all these are elements that can convey feeling, cadence, tone, emotion.

- Text-as-ribbon, like voice-as-ribbon, is not a great respecter of linebreaks and other page-centric devices – the best way to present a sound/sense byte as text on the screen is not necessarily the way it is laid out on the page.

- Videopoem makers who are tired of or don’t trust the sound of their own voice need not be limited by the ‘voicings’ available to them, by whatever means – have at it with text, people!

Text-only videopoems:

the situation on Thursday by Nic Sebastian
you never thought by Nic Sebastian
No. XLII by e. e. cummings