Download audio file (moreancientmariner_carman_cs.mp3)
(03:30)

Short Poetry Collection #95 – various authors

Malade is a sickbed poem, straightforward and elegant.
Download audio file (malade_lawrence_cs.mp3)
(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.
Download audio file (onewoman_lawrence_cs.mp3)
(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 …

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.)

Download audio file (explanation_kipling_cs.mp3)
(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.

Download audio file (coffeebreak002_navajoliturgy_cs.mp3)
(4:40)

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:
Download audio file (blackbeauty_01_sewell.mp3)
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. :)
Download audio file (downthebayou_townsend_cs.mp3)
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:

Download audio file (piratesownbook_26_ellms.mp3)
10:04min (128kbps)

I have a few other things very close to finishing … this will have been a super-productive month, all in all!

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 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.

More information about the Talking History podcast here. Or listen: Download audio file (julia-ward-howe-1870-proclamation-and-poem-mother-mind.mp3)
(03:44)
(Howe is Segment 2, Segments 1 and 3 are titled “The Good Mother: A History of American Motherhood.”)

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.
Download audio file (elegiacsonnets_078_smith.mp3)
(1:17)

http://librivox.org/elegiac-sonnets-and-other-poems-by-charlotte-turner-smith/
(1:22:53 of 3:04:49)

Paradise 101

* Alternative site, with other tracks.

Download audio file (asetordre_36_allais_64kb.mp3)
(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!

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?

Download audio file (subjectionofwomen_08_mill_64kb.mp3)
(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.

Download audio file (themillersdaughter_tennyson_cs.mp3)
(1:09min, 1.1MB)