Expanding the Words into Sounds

The site for all of our "Two Poets…" gigs: Counter Culture in Santa Fe.

A year or so ago, I wrote the line: "Jazz always left stains on her mind…"

The other night, I had the opportunity to figure out more fully what that line means.

I read a new poem about illness, death and secrets to a full house at the Two Poets and a Piano gig in Santa Fe. The poem was potent, heavy with sadness. I have only ever heard it as my voice, solo, but from now on, I will associate it with the music that accompanied it.

In rehearsal, I asked to create a conversation, a  call and response with New Mexico's most astounding horn player, Arlen Asher. I proposed reading a line from the poem, and having Arlen play a line in response.

I asked for a deep sound. He chose his baritone sax. That's as far as we got. We never tried it together until the audience was in front of us…

…and the audience was so quiet. I read; Arlen played. Again and again. Line by line by line. The music flowed out of his horn and into me, and my words moved back toward him. Our two forms and sounds came together seamlessly, and the audience stayed quiet.

Arlen and I have both lost necessary people. That's how we knew what to say and how to say it. 

And those words belong with that music. The music that Arlen played has definitely left stains on my mind -- and on that poem.

Reading Poetry to Greater Effect

Young actor August Markwardt in Theaterwork's production of The Tempest.
The Tempest was the Company of Poets first co-production.

I met with Theaterwork Director David Olson the other day to rehearse and determine a direction for the poems I will be performing at our "poetry performance" on April 20th, and as a follow-up to some play performances. 

It is wonderful to work with someone who appreciates poetry as much as David does, but also someone who "hears" language in such a visual way. For a theater director, language "lifts" in places; it expands and contracts. It moves into the room, and in doing so, pulls the audience along. 

David has a tough eye for nervous jitters that will distract an audience. The fluttering fingertips, the foot maneuvers, the moments words drop off. He has no tolerance for the sing-songy style some poets read in these days. 

There is, and should be, power to the words we are speaking. When we distract, the audience member loses - and if he or she loses even one word, one precious word -- the poem is less. It is uneven, an important part has been taken from it.

 Even if you aren't an actor, there are ways to begin to learn a style that grabs the audience member, grips them, captivates them, makes them each feel that you are talking directly, specifically, to them. It is this that we, as poets, need to strive for - making our words do what we intend of them.

Jazz and Poetry - Part 2 - Tonight's Performance

Santa Fe's most versatile horn player Arlen Asher

Performing with musicians is an unexpected thrill. For a poet, hearing your words with even more melody and actual sound than you ever could have in your head or at your desk is an unparalleled experience. 

I look for opportunities to do this as often as I can. I crave the improvisations that musicians create in different configurations, and I am always looking for a way to bring my medium into that kind of musical group interaction.

In the last post, I mentioned the next jazz/poetry performance in an ongoing, loosely biannual series.

I'm the only female, very musical but with no direct understanding of music. When we rehearse, I talk to the musicians about what I want using my poetic vocabulary instead of their terminology: I need more energy here. Could you do something  angular or anxious at this part of my poem?

Somehow our languages meet, and they give me a sound that makes my poems more alive, more real, darker, more potent, more dramatic. I slow to meet the music, my voice deepening or reaching; or I stop in places and let the musicians stretch out on their instruments, play a coda, or the head of the tune. I breathe deeper, and they play. 

Please join us!

Chris Ishee - piano, Arlen Asher - reeds, Paul Brown - 

bass/oud, 

Lauren Camp and Richard Atkinson - poetry

Co

unter Culture, 

Santa Fe, New Mexico

March 22 - 7PM

One Day Before the Performance

Another one of the photos on display at the National Hispanic Cultural Center.
This one was taken by Soledad Cordoba. It is one of several that still
 haunts me with its beauty and strangeness.

I keep thinking about the Women and Women performance at the National Hispanic Cultural Center. I suspect the audience will feel like they are sitting inside a stereo system, and the sounds will be soothing and difficult and, above all, thought-provoking.

Using primarily our voices - both words and sounds, Jamie Figueroa, Valerie Martinez, Shelle Sanchez and I intend to give the multiphonic experience of really looking at the photos, of deconstructing them into the main character, or the woman shooting the photo, or someone else observing. And then, we move away from that, and talk instead about us, and how each photo affects us.

We've rehearsed and rearranged our script several times now. Sometimes I recognize what I wrote; other times, I've taken ownership of someone else's words, the words I'll be saying. I know enough of the script to feel comfortable with it, not enough for it to be stale.

The flow is remarkable.

It's heady stuff - writing about women, with other women, until you don't know - exactly - which of the many voices are truly yours.


Five Poets Respond to "Women & Women," Photographs by Spanish Women
Saturday, March 19 , 2011
6:30 pm
Domenici Education Center
Free

Performance Poetry - The Collaboration

A water photograph and female portrait by Gabriela Grech.
This is one of the pieces in the NHCC exhibit that the four poets responded to
- and will present to the audience on Saturday evening.

When I last wrote about the Women and Women performance I'm coordinating at the National Hispanic Cultural Center, the three other poets and I were in the throes of cutting up sentences into phrases, phrases into duets and triplets of words. We compiled our varied texts, all responses to the photos on display -- a thought from me here, and then a thought from Val or Shelle or Jamie. We moved words in and out until it became difficult to tell who wrote what.

We happily created something entirely new, something equally poetic, but somehow more than anything we could have done on our own.

The performance is this Saturday, March 19th at 6:30 PM. We will be offering our intermingled text in the room where the photos are - at the Domenici Education Center, an open, light-filled gallery at the National Hispanic Cultural Center on the south edge of Albuquerque. It's a glorious space. It will feel intimate. It will be powerful.

Performance Poetry - Where it Starts

Ouka Leele, one of the photographers in a show called Women & Women 

In March, words will blow around me like a storm. 

Slowly, over the next weeks, I plan to tell you a bit about three performances I have scheduled – all are poetry-based, but each one unique.

One of the events is a collaborative word-response to an exhibit at the National Hispanic Cultural Center in Albuquerque. The exhibit showcases enormous photographs by five female artists. I am working with three women poets to create a group response. 

The first step was personal. A few weeks ago, I stood in front of each photograph and looked at it. I looked into the room of each photograph. When words came to me, I wrote them down. I wrote sloppy descriptions, and I wrote about how each photograph made me feel. I wrote words like “polywog clouds” because that’s what I saw.