A poem comes alive when it is read out loud, changes and with an audience it becomes three dimensional; poem, reader, audience. Poetic Voices is a sound archive for all poets so that as many people as is possible can hear them read their poem. I hope that it continues long beyond me so that it everyone can be heard for all time. At least that is my dream.
Looking into the future!
It began when I was puzzling over how visitors to the Dugdale Arts Centre could listen to poems. I struggled with the idea of a tablet with jukebox programme, exhibition stand but none seemed safe and stable and all were rather costly. I then thought “jukebox” and found a company who sold reconditioned pub jukeboxes that had a touch screen and Windows operating system on the computer and it weighed 90 kgs. so it would not walk! Once I had fitted two sets of earphones and mastered the mysteries of meta data the Jukebox Poetry was born!
The jukebox with Clive Jones and me looking rather too proprietorial!
The poems are loaded into an album of about 10 to 12 tracks which are then uploaded to the jukebox. So there are about 12 albums and I need to upload some more.
Back to Poetic Voices so far we have some 63 poets and about 150 poems. More are need so please contact me via the contacts page if you would like to have you reading your poems added to the site. It has hits from all over the world which is just lovely.
Just for fun have a listen to Polyglottal Londinium. It is an Audio Visual of all 28 translations of my poem Londinium. The idea came to me as I was travelling to Liverpool Street Station and the carriage seemed to be full of the world speaking at the same time. I did not understand a word but it was thrilling.
