Video post - You remind me of Tyson, Tamikka

Let me tell you something about poets. 

We're mercenaries, of a sort. When we take on a battle, it's always with a view to what we'll get out of it, artistically. Even if it's a cause we really believe in, we'll never be satisfied until we manage to get a decent poem out of the issue. 

So when I began working on the Tamikka Brents story for So So Gay, investigating her sponsors and the transphobic hate-groups who were declaring their support for her, I knew I was gonna be pissed-off if I didn't emerge from spending weeks mired in sports journalism without a decent poem to show for it. 

Well, tonight I wrote that poem.  

For the benefit of those unable to hear the poem, I've included a transcript below, in the previous post!

Live Word Show

Hey people - I realise there haven't been a lot of long and detailed posts on here for a while. This will probably continue for a while to be honest, as I'm pretty damn busy at the minute. I'll try to swing by and post the odd thing from time to time even if it's just to pimp gigs I'm doing or alert you to links.

Such as this: me reading some of my recent poems from the Newcastle Dr Sketchy's at Apples & Snakes Tyneside Scratch Club performance session back in April.:

Hat tip (and a heck of a lot more really) to Kirsten Luckins of A&S North East for organising the Scratch Club & posting the video to her Youtube channel!

On Looking Back Into the Mosh Pit

Off to a party tonight and may not be in easy reach of a computer for a couple of days because I'm off to another party the next day - I am so rock 'n' roll. So to tide you over, here's the poetry video I've been working on over the last couple of days.

The Astronaut's Prayer

All images public domain, thanks to the amazing people at NASA.

So yeah, poetry 'n' stuff

The other day I was cleaning out a cupboard, and I found something I'd looked for and failed to find about a week ago: my old recording mike. I last used this thing about a decade ago to record some poems for a probably-long-forgotten project at the Arc in Stockton, back when it was a new venue, but was pleasantly surprised to find that it still worked. I plugged it into my laptop and realised that this now meant I could record some of my actual poems.

Once I'd got over the horror of being forced to listen to recordings of my freakish voice, I did so. Then I looked into ways of uploading them to this blog, and my facebook page.

Turns out the easiest way to do this is to post them as videos. This, however, would entail me having to work out how to use Windows Movie Maker. So I sat my ass down and did so.

The first video, posted only to my FB page, was really just a test to see that the audio uploading worked. But I've spent tonight working on a new video where the images reflect the text, follow each other sequentially and last the whole of the video, giving you something to look at while you listen to me witter on. So, without further ado, here's 'Retreat':