I have been invited to attend the release party of this edition of The University of Baltimore‘s Literary Magazine, Welter (on Tuesday, May 16th) and to perform “Eviction.†My poem by that name was recently accepted for publication by the Magazine.
All posts tagged performance
Piles of Paper
I got up on stage last night to do a spoken word performance, and I think the crowd liked it! Normally, when I do something between musical acts, the audience is thin. People go to the bathroom or the bar between bands, and they expect anything they hear coming from the microphone to be a mike check, or silly stuff about how the band’s CDs are for sale.
I went up after Lizz King, Vox Populi, and before the N.U.R.B.S., and I was armed to the teeth. I’ve spent the better part of the last week digging through a pile of everything I’ve ever written.
My recent move to Baltimore has given me an opportunity to have everything I own in one place, for the first time in almost ten years. With all my notebooks and boxes of papers together again, I could spread them out on my floor, and sort them. Honestly, I threw most of those papers away. Many of them were redundant copies, obsolete drafts, notes, etc. Many more of those papers were bad teenage poems.
My best friend Luke called me last night to say that he’d been reading over an old issue of Apocalypse Playground. He was laughing, right at me, when he called. He has a point, though. In retrospect, a lot of that stuff is laughably bad. What was it we liked about that stuff again?
I managed to find a fair number of surprises in that pile of paper, though. I took them to the stage last night, and aired them out.
I’m going to the beach this Thanksgiving, but while I’m gone No Categories will faithfully publish a collection of poems that I have rewritten and salvaged from that enormous pile of paper.
What should I do with the bad ones?
The Performance Bug
Inspired in no small part by my friends’ performance at The True Vine, and encouraged by the time I’ve spent this week, digging through piles of my old poems, and finding some gems, I’ve decided to give another poetry reading. The last reading was a sucess, but it has been a while. I’m out of shape. I’ve been thinking of doing some “covers”, which should fit right in, considering that the next likely venue for such a performance is Saturday’s jam session at the other end of the Copycat Complex.
These are three songs whose lyrics I would like to perform as spoken word:
Re-humanise Yourself
Words by Sting
He goes out at night with his big boots on
None of his friends know right from wrong
The kick a boy to death ’cause he don’t belong
You’ve got to humanise yourself
A policeman put on his uniform
He’d like to have a gun just to keep him warm
Because violence here is a social norm
You’ve got to humanise yourself
Re-humanise yourself
Re-humanise yourself
Re-humanise yourself
Re-humanise yourself
I work all day at the factory
I’m building a machine that’s not for me
There must be a reason that I can’t see
You’ve got to humanise yourself
Billy’s joined the National Front
He always was a little runt
He’s got his hand in the air with the other cunts
You’ve got to humanise yourself
Re-humanise yourself
Re-humanise yourself
Re-humanise yourself
Re-humanise yourself
I work all day at the factory
I’m building a machine that’s not for me
There must be a reason that I can’t see
You’ve got to humanise yourself
A policeman put on his uniform
He’d like to have a gun just to keep him warm
Because violence here is a social norm
You’ve got to humanise yourself
Re-humanise yourself…
Darkness
Words and music by Stewart Copeland
I can dream up schemes when I’m sitting in my seat
I don’t see any flaws till I get to my feet
I wish I never woke up this morning
Life was easy when it was boring
I could make a mark if it weren’t so dark
I could be replaced by any bright spark
But darkness makes me fumble
For a key
To a door
That’s wide open
Instead of worrying about my clothes
I could be someone that nobody knows
I wish I never woke up this morning
Life was easy when it was boring
I can dream up schemes when I’m sitting in my seat
I don’t see any flaws till I get to my feet
I wish I never woke up this morning
Life was easy when it was boring
Invisible Sun
Words and music by Sting
I don’t want to spend the rest of my life
Looking at the barrel of an Armalite
I don’t want to spend the rest of my days
Keeping out of trouble like the soldiers say
I don’t want to spend my time in hell
Looking at the walls of a prison cell
I don’t ever want to play the part
Of a statistic on a government chart
There has to be an invisible sun
It gives its heat to everyone
There has to be an invisible sun
That gives us hope when the whole day’s done
It’s dark all day and it glows all night
Factory smoke and acetylene light
I face the day with me head caved in
Looking like something that the cat brought in
There has to be an invisible sun
It gives its heat to everyone
There has to be an invisible sun
That gives us hope when the whole day’s done
And they’re only going to change this place
By killing everybody in the human race
They would kill me for a cigarette
But I don’t even wanna die just yet
There has to be an invisible sun
It gives its heat to everyone
There has to be an invisible sun
That gives us hope when the whole day’s done
Spoken Word & Live Music
This is the flyer for my next reading, in Shepherdstown at Reynolds Hall on Saturday, 9 PM. The performance will also be broadcast on 89.7 WSHC FM.
my set of poems for the event
I would like to help everyone who helped me pick them out. It wasn’t easy. For some reason, I’ve been nervous about this.
The Poets
Ethan Fischer edits Antietam Review and teaches English at Shepherd University. His book of poetry, Beached in the Hourglass, was recently published by Bunny & Crocodile Press. Ethan’s poems have been published in many literary journals, including Pembroke Magazine, Potomac Review, Tuscarora Review, Dickinsonian, and Mountain Pathways. His work was honored by inclusion in Wild Sweet Note: Fifty Years of West Virginia Poetry.
Todd Young is currently an adjunct professor of English at Shepherd University. Todd has performed his poetry in various venues around the Shepherdstown area and has most recently appeared onstage as Falstaff in the latest production by the Rude Mechanicals Medieval and Renaissance Players. Performing poetry with musicians is something that Todd enjoys, having been involved in several local experimental music projects such as Vox Populi, A Thousand Names, and Veritas.
Dylan Kinnett has been an active writer, poet & performer in the Shepherdstown community for a decade. Dylan spent the late nineties producing the local zine, Apocalypse Playground. He has written a stage play about a street preacher, several published short stories, and the occasional dirty limerick on a bathroom wall. Dylan is currently writing a novella in hypertext, To Win, Simply Play which began as an undergraduate writing thesis.
paradigm9 is a group of sound designers and recording artists who, for the last 6 years has produced music for films, plays, eclectic art installations, and the occasional good old fashioned live rock n’ roll show. Dani Seiss, Jim Pilato and Curt Seiss started the Shepherdstown-based experimental music label, Magnanimous Records in 1999 and have since grown to include a modest roster of both local, national and international recording artists. Recently paradigm9 composed a score to local film-maker Lars Wigren’s “Animus” and have just completed their fifth original score for the (not-so) traditional Rude Mechanical Medieval and Renaissance Players, directed by Shepherd University’s Dr. Betty Ellzey.