Bardic Bulletin.

I fought tonight at a front line of love - O'Connell Bridge - in the basement trench of the Westmoreland on Westmoreland Street and sought shelter with others wanting to sing so strongly of survival we left as one.

All are free to attend in any capacity they so desire, be it verbal artist setting the air ablaze with speech alone or a listener seeking to hear live poetry - in all its formatts and shades, from the downright dire to the most entertaining wafflers warbling in Ireland - dedicated and doing battle in our capacity as the soldier fighting for love.
at a front line where dreamers practice their public oral craft.

It's on every Tuesday and tonight was my fourth time back after an extended 10 month absence. The crucial fallow period in a part of one's poetic cycle in which the real and unconscious work is done by an annonyomous, absent voice - when all is undisturbed and the elements of chance and time work on silence in the environment where ghosts decide.

Gerry was there - as always - MC, heckler, stand up oral brawler, lover of the word and Dublin's premier abolotionist of the state subsidised wine and cheese brigade at national poetry HQ in the Iveagh Gardens.

The right to open one's gob and speak freely is the is the only one we share and Jo Jo was there with Birch, Fintan, Natasha, Jeremy, Mike and many others. It was a full house, much better than the first week when only four of us spoke.

Raven did a new one and is still number one in the absence of he who shall remain nameless, also absent tonight. Raven is from San Francisco and is Saul Williams stage partner whenever he's in Ireland. He holds his own with Saul and his performance sensibilty is second to no-one and when he speaks you listen enthralled. He is an old pro who cuts it live every time, almost. Tonight he was in the best form I'd witnessed for a few weeks and nailed a new one he wrote in the last few weeks.

Mike spoke of our contemporary poetic culture written in a verbal ink - with air on the stage to a sound of cheers and - by the end - jeers, giggles, wise cracks and bellylaughs.

Deep print crushing victory of making words echo ones inner feet treading its brew from humanity's turning cauldron of motion spinning upright bardic personae - some barred from the party for speaking of a stock jaded character routed to a truth in a million.

Come on down, all are welcome and I strongly advocate you attend as this venue will play host to the Leinster heats of the first All Ireland Live Poetry Championships in the early part of next year.

Hi there again, Ovid. Seeking refuge here, huh?

Your place on the Poem forum has been taken swiftly, I'm afraid, by Jeffrey Side, who is trolling with long sequential posts on avant-garde poetry. More pointless pretention than you can shake a stick at.

:rolleyes:

Anyway, thanks for this gig review!

It is through the shelter of each other we survive Jane and in the last 24 hours much has occured. The rattle and hum of live readings has seized me. I listened to three or four of yours last night and was thankful I listened to Keston whatsisname first. The stuff he recorded in front of a live audience was magic. but the poems he recorded alone were flat.

It is clear now that I am the poetic one in love with lingo and contentment abounds.

Ah, it's very tough indeed trying to make poems recorded alone sound anything near as electric as those in front of an audience. There must be an invisible charge leaping between poet and listener(s) that hooks onto the spoken word and carries it further and further ...

Without an audience, a poem needs to be very special indeed to stay vital. In the silence of your own head, that's different. But aloud is hard.

Stuff recorded solo can be OK, but from what I've heard, only if the recording quality is very high. Dominic Taylor in Limerick is on the ball with the way he records his open mic - White House Pub every Wednesday - and certainly the highest recording quality of live poetry I've heard.

I put a few of my own efforts out last year after becoming gripped with a desire to claim the sad statistic of being the first in Ireland to podcast poetry online and learned a lot from the whole process. I imagine that hearing the voice this way is the closest one can get to being in the audience and a useful tool in the kit bag.

I found that - the more I recorded - I became less interested in putting my own voice out there, rather work with other voices and this evolved into making found poems this way, cutting and splicing various lines from different voices and putting them together.

Tony Lamb in Cornwall produced a very good CD of poets living in that county, with specially commisioned music behind each one.

Also, Larry Winfield in California has an excellent online poetry show and the weekly poetry show on RTE Radio One hosted by the excellent Pat Boran- The Enchanted Way - broadcasts online.

You have to download Larry's show, which can take a fair amount of time, but The Enchanted Way is streamed and you will need realplayer to hear it, but there is now download waiting time.

Sundown Lounge

The Enchanted Way.

Check out an eloquent Mark Granier talking with Pat on the poetry of Sylvia Plath.