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
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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