Posts Tagged poem
Video: Séjours linguistiques
Posted by Angela Brett in Holiday Highlights, video on August 21, 2011
I’ve been wanting to do this for a while, if only because it was an excuse to make a fort out of language books. Here is a video of my reading my poem Séjours linguistiques (originally titled ‘Discours inférieur’ in order to have a tenuous link to the playing card of the week.)
Valentine Day Massacre chapbook
Posted by Angela Brett in News, Publishing on February 10, 2011
Just in time to arrive late for Valentine’s Day, Červená Barva Press have released a chapbook of poems mentioning the word ‘heart’, which were posted on Fictionaut in response to a Valentine’s Day challenge. I’m going to assume they removed the customary apostrophe and ensuing S in order to avoid any unintentional SQL injection. Anyhow, this book includes my scientific love poem, Chemistry, which you can see me reading while wearing two fake moustaches here:
The words and explanations of the science behind it can be found on a few previous blog posts, so I’ll just link to one of them.
Feel free to buy a copy of the chapbook for yourself or your valentine. I don’t get any money from it, and neither does anyone else except for the publisher, because apparently we did it for love, but if you buy it, you’ll get to read quite a varied set of poems, which will make you happy. Alternatively, you could read the poems on Fictionaut by searching the site for ‘Valentine’s Day Massacre’.
On the subject of fake moustaches, I recently went on a cruise with Jonathan Coulton and many of his famous friends and fans. The cruise featured a moustache formal, so if you would like to see how my moustache has changed over time, here’s a picture of me at the formal. I’ll probably post more about the cruise later, if I can come up with a sufficiently creative way of describing it. In the mean time, you could enjoy the many videos I took of the cruise.
Video: Return of the Pants
Posted by Angela Brett in The Afterlife on February 6, 2011
You remember those red pants I wore in the ‘A Laptop Like You‘ and ‘Love Letters‘ videos? They weren’t mine. My sister gave them to me years and years ago, and after seeing how much they improved those videos, she wanted them back. So when I went back to New Zealand in May 2010, I took the pants with me. This is how it went down:
Since then, I’ve thrown the weird underwear I’m wearing in the beginning at Paul and Storm, because that’s what I do with weird underwear.
Here are the words to the ‘poem’ part, minus the oattakes:
YouTubers, I have a confession.
Two tubes in my possession,
once used to belong to my sister.
From before she was fat,
and she’s no longer that,
so in keeping them, I think I’ve pissed her.
While I wasn’t at fault just to wear them,
when their owner was not even near them,
to not give her credit was rude.
While they’ve not made me famous,
They’ve saved me from shame, as
They certainly made me less nude.
So it’s time to put things right.
I’ve suitcase and pants and a flight,
some chocolate to sweeten the deal and,
with a smile and a wave,
if the volcano behaves, (this was just after flights resumed after the Eyjafjallajökull eruption)
I’m off to see Liz in New Zealand.
Liz: I’m sure glad she’s coming;
the lack of pants is numbing.
I had to grow pubic hair to cope. (Note: this was originally ‘leg hair’ but she only had pubic hair handy)
After many a year
in just underwear
I’d just about given up hope!
Me: Here you go, sis, have your trousers;
their stardom is greater than ours is,
so go in the bathroom and strip.
Liz: I got my big bum in,
and my gruts hold my tum in
though I can’t quite do up the zip.
The rimshot-like thing and the word ‘pants’ which you hear after that come from Christian Davis’s recording of Jonathan Coulton playing ‘Mr. Fancy Pants’ at Park West on 28 February 2009.
You might have noticed I changed the theme of my blog. This was because there was at last a new variable-width theme with a customisable header, and I thought it might suit my ‘Creative Output‘ picture better. Unfortunately, the title of the blog covers most of the picture, so it didn’t really work.
Poem: Soardough
Posted by Angela Brett in Old Stuff, The Afterlife, Writing Cards and Letters on July 11, 2010
By request, here is the pantoum that restarted it all. I wrote it in 15 minutes during a workshop on pantoums at the Geneva Writers’ Conference in 2006 after a long time without writing, and the positive reception it received convinced me that I could still write if I tried. Two barren years later, it inspired me to embark on the Writing Cards and Letters project to so that I’d try more often. I still haven’t come up with a good name for it.
I dreamed I was flying around on a biscuit
raised by the bakers of the bread of life,
their hands cleansed by hand, and not sterile.
Many hands make gloves expensive.
Raised by the bakers of the bread of life,
I put bread in the shivering hands of the poor.
Many hands make gloves expensive.
I wish I could have done more.
I put bread in the shivering hands of the poor.
They ate, and wept in gratitude, and came back hungry.
I wish I could have done more.
By serving their need I prolonged it.
They ate, and wept in gratitude, and came back hungry.
They could not bake their own bread without flour.
By serving their need, I prolonged it,
I added dark minutes to their darkest hour.
They could not bake their own bread without flour.
I have flour, sugar, chocolate chips.
I added minutes to their darkest hour.
I dreamed. I was flying around on a biscuit.
Six of Hearts: Synaesthete’s blues
Posted by Angela Brett in Birds of Canada, Schmetterlinge, Writing Cards and Letters on July 13, 2008
Two vodka oranges ’cause now I’ve got the blues
I cannot see the letters in the colours that you choose.
To start, the way you write your S
imparts a way-too-bright fluoresc-
ence, but it is for you, synes-
thete, near enough to true finesse.
‘Twould not be such a foreign ges-
ture, if it were an orange S,
but it’s a sin for you, es-
thete, saying it’s a blue S.
Two votes to orange S ’cause now I’ve got the blue S,
I cannot see your letter S in the colours of the true S.
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Creative Output 