changed thread header from: Re: retaliation (aside re Quadrant Grumbles)
Interesting discussion about actors. I want to ask if anyone has any interest
in writing verse and/or poetry for (physical) voices other then the voice a
poet may use to read their work?
I'll start by going over some of the stuff I have been playing with. I had
this vague idea of wanting to write for a voice and voices that were not
necessarily my reading voice. Perhaps something that could be multi-track
recorded using multimedia technologies and could be multi-voice in this
sense. Then I thought it could be put into any format and then it could be
licenced under the GNU free documentation licence (a Richard Stallman
innovation which brilliantly hacks copyright law so you get to keep copyright
ownership yet anyone can copy and distribute) and then I thought why not let
the long poem (verse performance play?) be released in text as source code
and then anyone who wanted could compile it for any platform or media they
may wish, video, film, computer multimedia, stage performances. I then
thought that although I can make voice attributions, anyone else should be
able to change these or make other arrangements and even if so wish can make
minor changes to the text while I still own the copyright to the text and
then even major changes, in which case they now have a copyright of their
changes and all they need do is attribute the original as my copyright.
(Viral copyright or as Bill gates so wisely said: a virus.)
I have for some years been working on a long poem called Bar-B-Q which was
the work I wanted to do this with and I think I can do this with. Like
Pound's Cantos form is broken (something I learnt from Pound that is) and
several others including Auden's Orators. The main thing is in the first
draft, before voices are put in like a screen play (I also learnt heaps from
Gus Van Sant's fab film script My own private Idaho) the text has to work
like poetry. I have structured it in five parts complete with poem titles but
this in the final version can be removed, I suspect. Following is a draft of
section two with working title, Death of Superman.
Comments on any procedures most welcomed.... (I have to do some more textual
work on the below before I am happy with it, BTW, and if you suspect the
below is written in response to current events like 9/11 and Iraq you may
have to then explain why the draft this is taken from was written in 1993.)
Anyway, below is a draft
[Death of Superman]
and superman is proclaimed king today
spilt blood rolls boulders to mountain tops
desire lines
a comic book page
faces of generations innocent adolescence
cling wrapped in clear polythene with a comic poster funeral parade
from desire to economic gain
on the third day
(marvel comics made superman dead)
ten year old memories make preparations when death comes
and superman's king today
flies at half mast joins the parade
passing pleasure ripples running
electric tastes taken prisoner
propelled do it please feed me
sweet every inch a king's large
fortune blast science laser
guns with high pitch squeals
(fear to tread and fools rush in)
tongues make fools deflowered with greed
and almost full blue moon shines through
thin cloud and flying foxes on morton bay figs flap
awkward zigzags not graceful straight soars like
eagles high gliding to dots and swooping to plains
kidnapping for top god pleasures (oiled profits)
tease open the hole in the ground and let it flow
stand hard quick banging strokes nice slippery
(terrorists forbidden)
You! my appollo greek god
adorned today in sweet form your waist and ways slight you mince
a recipe to go fly a kite ecstasy cuts dragon's laughter shakes
a silver line into a spoon lit by moon fierce light the syringe
plunges in laughing full moon stare
city back lanes glow in the dark
syringe empty of heroin apollo
taste smack in mouth back
i come from an era and a generation pass
(we done things in a different way)
best wishes (and I hope the spaced cesuras and line breaks are not broken by
email transmission)
Chris Jones
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