Tobias has expanded my horizons a bit further. And this post notes the inception of a project. We can still call it Spoken Folk. So, carry on. Music enhances voice and words enhance music; together they help sustain and enhance life. This is the hypothesis, the big theme. There are two aims and an emerging … Continue reading Project-ing Spoken Folk
Tag: poetry
Spoken Folk
An evolving post of signposts to a process, a performance and then an archive of texts and recordings.
X-Files
An atheist, materialist, anticapitalist poetry that trusts no one, not even itself? What kind of cultural capital does poetry have? How is that capital distributed and redistributed? And how does the distribution of that capital relate to the distribution or redistribution of any other kind of capital?
Verve Poetry Festival Celebration of Live Poetry
I am celebrating in Birmingham tonight at the Hippodrome for the Verve Poetry Festival https://vervepoetryfestival.com/ celebration of four different Brum open mic scenes. There will be a few open mic slots. I hope to get one but won't mind if I don't. Should be an inspiring night. Poetry filling a big theatre.
What I want from my poetry
I like clusters, soups and smoothies, putting things together and feeling the energy generated between the one and the many. My cluster of three: individuation, compassion and capacity. Individuation: each person, place and thing is unique, a moment, a point, an instance. Compassion: treat each and all with kindness. Capacity: know your shit; have allies. … Continue reading What I want from my poetry
Poetry in the sauna
The time I recited one of my poems to a Premier League player in the sauna of a local gym
Spoken Folk
Spoken Folk is what I/we do. Spoken Folk is/are public and/or performances (piece/s) of (mostly) words punctuated with music. There may be print and images or objects but words drive Spoken Folk. The scale can be adapted to venue and event. Spoken Folk could be a small piece of something bigger, or an organising principle … Continue reading Spoken Folk
Reflecting on process
Forty years ago I started on a journey that I had been planning for at least a couple of years before that. I wanted to be a poet. I came to Oxford to study language. I liked to say, as a sculptor needs to know how stone cracks, a poet needs to know how language … Continue reading Reflecting on process
Living in instances
Most artists do not inhabit all the instances of their art once they have released the piece in whatever form it may take. Performing writers, poets, monologists inhabit the moments of their performance but not that of each of the audience, who brings all their "stuff" to bear: difficult upbringings, hard money, out of the … Continue reading Living in instances
Riffing on the big themes
Nature, War and Love were the three headings in When Life Looks Like Easy Street. I still believe poetry has to engage with such big themes: archetypes and myths. And it has to live in instances. I have undertaken to submit five poems to the Verve Poetry competition. They are to have been never published, … Continue reading Riffing on the big themes
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