Oracy Month: 100K Getting Oral Out Loud

Your Best Two Minutes 

Michael Sedano 

When U.S. national leadership scoffed the impending pandemic was a political ploy, that failed leadership sent the nation headlong into a perversely widening gyre that on vote-counting day, lumbered into D.C. to be great again. It wasn’t. 

An election’s coming and that rude beast could roar again.

Get out the vote: register, verify registration, vote with friends. 

Other than voting, Resist! offers personal agency in the political arena. Social distancing and Masking, continue to offer personal safety from the GOP Plague. Poetry continually refreshes mind and soul. Good prose is no exception.

 

For  a few weeks, it looked like we’d be having poetry readings again. People behaved with caution. Still, Covid-19 Delta Variant changed it all back to how it was last year, this time. Life is not sin esperanza.

 

Last year, this time, and for the past eleven years, poetry has been a method and voice of resistance. It’s been a worldwide phenomenon, the “it” being 100 Thousand Poets for Change. 

This year’s 100 Thousand Poets For Change global event takes place on Saturday, September 25, 2021.This is an action day for poets. 

Here, at La Bloga-Tuesday, our event is September 21.

we won't be gathering in live poetry readings for a long time

 

Your Best Two Minutes 

A Video Read-Your-Own-Stuff On-line Floricanto

Tuesday, September 21 La Bloga

 

Use any recording technology to create a two-minute presentation of you, the writer the poet, reading your own work. 

 

Your best two minutes isn’t limited to three themes motivating 100K Poets for Change--Peace, Justice, Sustainability--though any work of Chicanarte inherently responds to those virtues.

 

La Bloga wants you to share your name, and your best two minutes worth of writing. Push Record, read for two minutes, the two darn best minutes you’ve ever read out loud to anyone. Of your best stuff, two minutes of it.

 

Think about what Sherman Alexie told Neko Case about reading his own stuff to people:

 

“I write this shit for you!” But a lot of writers won’t admit to that, a lot of artists won’t admit to that. They’ll get artistic, or pretentious, or, you know, talk about some “higher calling.” The fact is, I want to move rooms full of people. I want to move someone sitting alone under a reading lamp. I want to move someone sitting on a beach. I want to make them laugh and cry. I want them to see me and come running up to me and tell me how the books made them feel. I love that!

 

Write your two best minutes, or pull it out of the files. That’s about two pages of prose. Three or four one-stanza poems.

 

Make it a project. Due date: September 14.

 

Public speaking—reading one’s stuff—ranks high in many people’s lists of least-preferred activities. For many apprehensive readers, the fear of catastrophic consequences can be debilitating. Fortunately, for most who suffer stage fright, that’s a temporary state that succumbs to effective preparation. That means work.

 

A recorded reading is no different from an in-person reading: preparation takes work. Audiences usually listen with one ear, as above. It doesn't have to be like that. People love to be engaged.

August is Oracy Month at La Bloga-Tuesday. I’ll be reviewing tips and techniques for engaging oral presentation, and finalizing procedures for qualifying for our prizes and awards.