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Zydeco Gallery One
In August of 1989 and 1990, I attended the Zydeco Festival in Plaisance, Louisiana, a small community just west of the town of Opelousas. The festival’s one stage was set up in the middle of a field....
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Part 2: “I hate my birthday!”—Or, what do elegies by New York school poets...
Yesterday, I wrote about the ways in which the tip-of-the-tongue experience is helping cognitive scientists to learn how the mind stores and retrieves information. When we struggle to remember...
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Zydeco Gallery Two
I’m continuing my series of photographs of Zyedco musicians from the Zydeco Festivals of 1989 and 1990. As before, I’ve given the names that I recall. If anyone reading this recognizes anyone else,...
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Zydeco Gallery Three
More photographs from the Zydeco Festival of 1989 or 1990. If you know the names of any unidentified musicians, please let me know in the Comments box below. (Photo: Camille Martin) (Photo:...
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Zydeco Gallery Four
Here’s the last gallery of photographs from the Zydeco Festival of 1989. (Photo: Camille Martin) (Photo: Camille Martin) (Photo: Camille Martin) For more information about the Zydeco...
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Majlis Multidisciplinary Arts: Figure of Speech
What do you get when you cross edgy poetry with Renaissance music? Find out at “Figure of Speech,” a collaborative performance of poetry, dance, and music. I’m incredibly honoured to be performing...
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The Majlis Collaborative Experience
The Majlis “Figure of Speech” multidisciplinary experience was intense and rewarding. Tricia Postle, the organizer of the series, selected the members of our motley crew, which consisted of Gauri...
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Majlis Multidisciplinary Arts: “Figure of Speech” concert photos
Here are some photos of our multidisciplinary concert on Saturday, August 29. The performers, in order of appearance in the photos: Hallie Fishel-Verrette John Edwards Camille Martin Gauri Vanarase...
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Musicality in Poetry
The continuation of this essay is the next post, “Barbara Guest’s Musicalities.” 1. “Tin” or “to die for”? It’s easy to say that some poetry is musical, and when we come across such poetry, we...
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Songs from Sonnets (glitch fixed)
I’ve been composing song settings for some of the poems in Sonnets and wanted to share some of the results here. Below are the audiofiles with scores that I uploaded to YouTube. The program that I...
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Poetic Polyphony in Scott Thurston’s Internal Rhyme
Shearsman Books, 2010 In a previous post on musicality in poetry, I discussed the translation of simultaneity in music into a comparable literary expression. By simultaneity in music I mean...
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Om Kalsoum: A rare live recording of the Nightingale of Egypt
Years ago a friend slipped me a cassette of a young Om Kalsoum recorded live in what sounds like a cafe full of spontaneously appreciative audience members. I’ve never heard...
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“Poetry, Art, Music—and the Gift of Synesthesia” (an image essay in Talking...
A couple of years ago, Talking Writing published some poems of mine from Looms, a manuscript that has recently been published by Shearsman Books. Martha Nichols, one of the editors, recently...
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Mamma and The Messiah: An Alzheimer’s Tale of Music Weaving the World Back...
“There’s one and there’s two and there’s three, and it just seems like they don’t go together.”—my mother on what it feels like to have Alzheimer’s My mother grew up loving music in Hayes, a...
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