Tuesday, September 21, 2021

Small Piece of a Global Event: My Best 2 Minutes

Aside from the ability to think up something and write it compellingly, a writer’s most important skills are reading aloud, and marketing the work. Gotta be able to write, que no? Equally, if you want your writing to find an audience, a writer needs to read aloud effectively.

Reading your stuff to an audience forms the central role in marketing the work. Marketing is the part after publication when the publisher or more often, the writer whip up interest in buying the poem. A reading in a bookstore is the heart of marketing: it churns up interest and produces sales.

A sale is the sole measure of good marketing. If you read well, someone's going to buy your product.

Standing in that bookstore, looking out at three people, looking out at twenty people, the writer needs to read out loud as compellingly as they wrote those words. Do that, and people will buy the book right there, reinforcing the bookstore’s hosting readings.

Some day, ojalá, After we’ve licked the plague and returned to normal public readings, video readings will continue to hold an important place in marketing your work. For writers whom expression itself measures all the satisfaction the writer needs, video is the right tool to document the moment.

This Saturday, September 25, One Hundred Thousand Poets For Change  (link)  stages a global event linking people around the world in a demonstration/celebration to promote peace, sustainability and justice, and to call for serious social, environmental and political change.

As our contribution to the global event, La Bloga made an open call to writers to share a "my best 2 minutes" video of the writer reading their own work.

What is “my best 2 minutes”? Not what you might think. Oracy comes in all flavors and volumes. 

Public speaking is organized civilization’s oldest educational curriculum. Back in ancient Athens, when society practiced unsophisticated problem-solving with swords, Aristotle said it was equally unthinkable a person could not defend themselves with words, or sword. Words civilized the world.

Every presentation is your “best” 2, or 5, or 15 minutes. Right here right now, it’s all the audience gets, there’s no good better best. 

Video you can edit and make stuff better. You get to confront yourself on that screen. Identify and name the reader’s skills. Plan to keep those next reading. Identify a single skill that needs eliminating or changing next reading. Work on that in rehearsal, and re-record.

Oral presentations have consequences. No one wants their audience on a death bed to be angry at you for wasting two minutes of their lives with a lousy presentation. They will want those two minutes back, so make that unnecessary. Think about your words, then give a good two minutes to that angry at you dying listener.

“I am Cinna, the Poet!” the character in Julius Caesar tells the angry mob. Someone who attended his readings says, “Kill him for being a bad poet!” Consequences, gente.

Whatever your gave us in that two minutes is your best.

Today, La Bloga-Tuesday takes pleasure sharing the work of Augie Medina and Lisbeth Coiman with you as La Bloga’s contribution to the global event.


 

 

Augie Medina


George Cried ‘Momma’

 

When the angry white man

Called young George the “N” word

George cried “Momma”

 

When the security guard

Constantly dogged him in the store

George cried “Momma”

 

When the teacher said to George

College was probably not for him

George cried Momma”

 

When the prospective employer

Asked him if he was a felon

George cried “Momma”

 

When the city librarian

Asked what he was doing in a library

George cried “Momma”

 

Each time the police stopped him on the street

Because he looked like “someone we’re looking for”

George cried “Momma”

 

With the assassin’s knee

On the back of his neck

George cried “Momma” --

for the last time

 

Now a nation cries for George

Why wasn’t George heard before?

He had to die to gain respect?

 

George only wanted to feel

Like “all men are created equal”

In the land he called his home

 

 

Guanajuato Sunrise

 

I was there before dawn’s bleary eyes opened 

to reveal the sun lifting from night’s repose.

I felt glorious seated in my little canoe

watching the palm trees along the bank 

sprout a glow of orange

 

The river rippled gently underneath 

a refrain to the call of the unfolding sunrise

the river thanking Helios for another day

in the land of the Aztecs

land of an orange cast

 

The outstretched warmth of the sun

coaxed fragrance from the palms

calling to memory

the same fragrance 

that perfumes my hometown’s air

where sister palms grow

and memories fuse

 

 

 

Lisbeth Coiman


Lisbeth Coiman reads "Above Sea Level," from her just-released collection, Uprising/Alzamiento. Please listen to Lisbeth via the Facebook link below.




 











16,076 Feet Above the Sea 

https://www.facebook.com/messenger_media/?thread_id=100000305869212&attachment_id=924766751469207&message_id=mid.%24cAABa83ZEAL6CNaggBF8BF_y3QD9U

 

16,076 Feet Above the Sea

By Lisbeth Coiman


Single file march  

plastic bags wrapped around bodies  

Hope and oxygen is scarce above the tree line

But Papa Bolívar knew how

Paramo Berlin, Colombia

16,076 feet above sea level

A two-way road along through this stretch in the Andes

121 miles between despair and uncertainty


On the perilous stretch

Marchers discover death by hypothermia

Between Cucuta and Bucaramanga

Accept food and clothes from the Samaritans of the mountains


On the way down to an unknown future

Bodies regain heat despite starvation

And litter the road with broken promises

Single file march out of inferno

4900 metros sobre el nivel del mar

By Lisbeth Coiman


Marcha en fila india

Cuerpos envueltos en bolsas de basura

Esperanza y oxígeno escasos por encima de la línea de los árboles

Pero Papá Bolívar supo qué hacer


Páramo Berlín , Colombia

4900 metros sobre el nivel del mar

Una carretera doble vía atraviesa este estrecho andino

194 kilómetros entre la desesperación y la incertidumbre


En este trecho peligroso

Los caminantes descubren la muerte del mal de páramo

Entre Cúcuta y Bucaramanga

Aceptando bondades de samaritanos de montaña


Cuesta abajo en camino a un futuro desconocido

Los cuerpos comienzan a recobrar el calor 

Incluso en la frialdad del hambre

Desechando una estela de promesas incumplidas

En su marcha fuera del infierno



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