I do like D. H. Lawrence’s poetry. It’s mostly well-written, thoughtful stuff, without (too often) being stuffy, pompous or boring. So, last month I recorded a couple for the LibriVox Short Poetry Collection.
Malade is a sickbed poem, straightforward and elegant.
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(1:43min)
One Woman to All Women is harder for me to get my head around. There’s some sexist bits and some feminist bits, and mostly I like it and sometimes I’m oddly annoyed by it. So, I recorded it, and people can decide for themselves.
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(2:34)
Visit the LibriVox catalogue page for the links to sources (both taken from Gutenberg texts) and more free poetry. And so far this month, I’ve only recorded one poem for the next collection, but there’s time, there’s time …
Yes, I have indeed been at the poetry this month … another two pieces of mine have just hit the catalogue.
Rudyard Kipling’s The Explanation was last week’s LibriVox Weekly Poetry, and saw quite a good turnout – I’m one of 16 people who recorded it. A simple little poem, it was something quick to warm up the vocal cords and test my new recording arrangement. (That still needs some work.)
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(1:08)
A very different piece can be found in the Coffee Break Collection #2 – Multi-Faith. These “Coffee Breaks” are themed collections of short recordings (up to 15 mins. Actually, the entirety of this particular collection would fit into a decent-length lunch break, but anyway.) A number of religions were represented, but it took me some hunting to find something suitable, since I don’t know any religious literature all that well. And, although the book I read from was titled Pagan Prayers – that’s pagan with a little ‘p’, being the old-fashioned definition of “any belief not Christian, Jewish or Muslim”. I’ve no idea of the provenence of the Navajo Liturgy, nor am I quite confident it fits into the collection in terms of being uplifting or thought-provoking in quite the way some might find Psalm XXIII for instance. But I think it’s a lovely piece, and I hope listeners like it.
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This month, I have catalogued a book, some collaborative contributions, and — finally, more pirates!
I’ve been working on my solo recording of Anna Sewell’s “Autobiography of a Horse”, Black Beauty, all summer, as its short chapters and positive attitude were a pleasant change from the intense modern non-fiction book I was recording for Audible (not yet released.) Black Beauty was catalogued at the start of the month, and is averaging 30 downloads a day, which isn’t bad going for a book which has previously been recorded for LibriVox.
Listen to Chapter 1 here:
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5:03min (128kbps)
Then there was a poem which I found for the LibriVox Weekly Poetry reading. This is more of a challenge than you’d think; finding a shortish poem, by an author who died more than 70 years ago (to maximise the countries in which their work is in the public domain) and which is in some way interesting for multiple readers to try recording, and hopefully, that then has differences in the interpretations that’ll appeal to listeners. Down the Bayou by Mary Ashley Townsend fits many of these criteria, to my mind. I did find I had to check I knew how to say “bayou” correctly, but once I’d done that, I was away! (Along with 11 others. :)
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1:15min (128kbps)
There are three other poems, pending cataloguing … that should happen shortly, since both collections are nearly full. I’ve not read poetry for a while, so it’s been really nice to come back to it.
And finally, lady pirates! Yes, my long-ago-read chapter on the “Adventures And Heroism Of Mary Read” has now been entered into the catalogue, and you can hear it as part of The Pirates Own Book by Charles Ellms (Authentic Narratives of the Most Celebrated Sea Robbers)! Or here:
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10:04min (128kbps)
I have a few other things very close to finishing … this will have been a super-productive month, all in all!
Every now and again I search YouTube to see what people are doing with LibriVox files or saying about the site. And found a really lovely video – this is a dance to a remix of Robert Frost’s poem Fire and Ice. You can hear my read along with lots of other LibriVoxers (it was a Poem of the Week, so remixers have lots of versions to choose from.)
From the Youtube description:
Cera Byer, the visionary behind Damage Control Dance Theatre and Shoebox Studio, dances to “Fire and Ice” from Manko Eponymous’ 2008 cd “Kaihealoha.” Original poem by Robert Frost, performed by librivox.org volunteers.
I’ve just found that a poem I recorded a long time ago, by Julia Ward Howe, has been used as part of a history podcast. The segment starts off with a lovely combined voice recording of her Mother’s Day Proclamation, and then continues with my own recording of her inspired Mother Mind. The show was released on 7th May, which I think fits in with the US Mother’s Day celebration … though we in Britain did it somewhat earlier on 22nd March.
I must confess, I hadn’t read this poem in a “Mothering Sunday” light at all, nor had I realised the poet had written “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” I am now better informed and have thought about the poem further. I like her idea of a Mothers’ Peace Day observance far more than the commercial orgy of flowers and chocolates. Nothing says “Happy Mother’s Day” like your children being alive, safe and happy, rather than wounded or killed in any kind of war.
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(03:44)
(Howe is Segment 2, Segments 1 and 3 are titled “The Good Mother: A History of American Motherhood.”)
Charlotte wrote these poems while in debtors’ prison with her husband … luckily, the collection was successfully published, which allowed her to pay for their release. David and I alternate on these readings … which took a bit over a year to finish (that’s my fault entirely; I procrastinate too much.)
They didn’t deserve that wait … some of these sonnets and poems are really lovely, though I’m not sure I’d listen to them all in one sitting, that might be pretty bleak! In amongst them is my new favourite poem title of ALL TIME. I’m so lucky that the order fell out right in order for me to record it, too.
Sonnet LXX. On being cautioned against walking on a Headland overlooking the Sea, because it was frequented by a Lunatic.
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Euterpe Archipelago* have been putting their pick of public domain recordings to music for a while now, and my voice has popped up there now and again. Just stumbled across one that’s new-to-me … it’s an excerpt from Paradise Lost, with original music.
I’ve spoken a bit of French, Latin and German within mainly English chapters, but my first beginning-to-end recording in a language other than English has just been released to the LibriVox catalogue, in Alphonse Allais’ À se tordre. I confess it’s only a *part* of the chapter, since the piece is a mini-play with four voices, but I’m proud anyway.
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(8:06; 3.8MB)
And one of my early recordings, a lovely E. Nesbit ghost story, is featured in this week’s Cthulu Podcast. I have a book of Nesbit’s other creepy stories, and really must get round to recording a few more of them.
So many books, so little time. It doesn’t help that I want to record nearly everything (old) I see … browsing the texts at archive.org, or the shelves at the nearest University library can be a very hazardous pastime. I currently have three official solos and a duet open, in addition to the usual collection of collaborative chapter claims. Let us not speak of the unofficial solo I somehow started yesterday. I urgently need more hours in the day!
It’s been quiet on the cataloguing front in the last few weeks … I eased back on the editing I was doing, having acquired (happily-intermittant!) tendinitis in my mousing arm, which is little better with a trackball and heaps of anti-inflamatories, as yet. And I’m in the middle of lots of projects, none of which are anywhere near the catalogue stage. There’ll be a flurry in another few weeks, I’m sure.
So, the only two new entries are the Compare and Contrast of a chunk of Mill’s Subjection of Women and a little poem by Tennyson — The Miller’s Daughter. Mill I recorded a while back, and it fell due during the below-mentioned behemoth, so Starlite kindly edited it for me. I look forward to hearing the whole piece, because I start towards the end of Chapter 3, where Mill asks, and then answers, the question:
No production in philosophy, science, or art, entitled to the first rank, has been the work of a woman. Is there any mode of accounting for this, without supposing that women are naturally incapable of producing them?
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(20:22min, 9.7MB)
As for Tennyson, I did that by way of a warm-up for a Lamda Grade 6 exam in the Speaking of Verse and Prose. Haven’t had any exam results back yet, though it was fun to do and I think it went well. The poem is in the catalogue as part of a Weekly Poetry set, and was also fun to do. One odd note — not how many women recorded it … but how many apologised for recording it. It is Tennyson being rather stalker-ly, but still. The non-gendering of any text is one of the nicest things about LibriVox. Sure, generally the major parts of plays are cast “appropriately”, and I think we’ve done a very tiny number of books with gendered casting for some reason or another — but the very vast majority of projects are run on the “you want it? you read it” basis. And even those that have been voice-cast would be open to another version being made with a very different voice. So much more fun than someone saying “sorry, you don’t sound old/young/masculine/feminine/english/welsh/canadian/australian enough” — and that being the end of the story.
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LibriVox loves Shakespeare, but getting his plays recorded has always been a very major undertaking. We have now only four completed as collaborative works, and one recorded as a solo. A fair number more are underway, but the task of cat-herding all the parts and bits and files and readers and pronunciations is unlike any other at LibriVox.
Laurie Anne did a MARVELLOUS job project managing this from the initial idea … starting the project on 21st April … marshalling a proof-listener, Brian, to check every file as it came in … and dropping me a note “hey, wouldn’t it be fun if you edited this?” I can’t quite imagine what I was thinking when I agreed to … and I can’t admit how long this actually took to edit. Even though I only did 4 out of 5 acts in the end (Laurie Anne did the fourth, I just ran out of time and energy.) But, lordy, it sounds great as an ensemble piece! And it has 440 downloads in 2 days. And I’m completely sure Will would approve.
Have a bit of a cold; hence I sound like a soprano Darth Vader. Interesting but uncomfortable, don't expect recordings sounding like this! 2010-01-13
Edited a quarter of the new mini-solo, while I impatiently wait for the right time to set up my new recording 'studio'. 2010-01-09
Trying to think up something simple for next week's community podcast (I may not have a lot of time for messaging/recording/editing nxt wk.) 2010-01-08
