I discovered some more rich seams of poetry recordings on the web this week. First off, there's the Internet Poetry Archive, an American site not to be confused with Britain's Poetry Archive. The Internet Poetry Archive very small, with recordings from only seven poets so far, but some significant names. I was pleased to find some recordings of Robert Pinsky, whom I've read but never heard. I clicked on his wonderful poem "Shirt" and was surprised to hear how slowly he reads it, as the structure and rhythm had always struck me as quite strong and driving.
By contrast, PENNsound is a vast respository of online audio and video. The authors represented are a mixture of prose writers and poets. It looks like most are American, but there are some significant exceptions: imagine my surprise and delight to find Hugh MacDiarmid there! It's the man himself reading, among other things the entirety of A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle (in four sound files).
While MacDiarmid is represented by a handful of files, some writers, such as Robert Creeley, have piles. I can see I'll be going back to PENNsound again and again and again. (Anybody know of some cheap storage?!)
.jpg)
Posts
1 comment:
Thanks for the link to PennSound - there are some treasures there. I'll be following up the post-war American poets, who have influenced me through their printed work, to see if the spoken words add a dimension.
By the way, I use an external hard drive (Western Digital USB drive)for media files and backups. I've ripped all my CDs so the originals can be stored in my loft.
Post a Comment