October 31, 2011
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Return of the Hallowe’en Poetry Challenge
(originally posted in 2009)
Record yourself reading some of your favorite scary poems and upload them!
Think of this as a continuation to Saakara‘s masterful take on the subject. He has a better reading voice than I, I’m afraid. (Check out the Faeries poem especially.)
We should keep Saakara’s original idea going.
“The Bells” by Edgar Allen Poe
(Rough one to read, there at the end–I need to work on my breath control.)“Hallowe’en in a Suburb” by H.P. Lovecraft
“Vampire Sestina” by Neil Gaiman
(If you don’t know what a sestina is, it’s a bloody difficult-to-write form of poetry.)“The Hidden Chamber” by Neil Gaiman
Let Saakara or I know when you’ve uploaded your own scary poetry recitations! If you can’t think of any poems to read, I recommend “The Highwayman” by Noyes, “The Raven” by Poe, Donne’s “The Apparition,” or the Witches’ song from Shakespeare’s Macbeth.
Participants thus far:
Saakara
Myself
Jill Pole (Not a poetry reading, but the next best thing.)
Comments (6)
This is so great Chris. Poetry means so much to me, and it is so under-appreciated. Thank you for doing this.
I can’t believe that you were able to finish “The Bells” so smoothly! To get a steady chant for “The Fairies” I had to re-record the bloody thing a dozen times. Were you able to do it in one go?
Also, I think you have a perfect voice for recording. Every time you finish, I expect to hear you say “This has been a BBC audio production.”
@Saakara - Hah–no, not at all. Partly because I fumbled over the words several times, and partly because my wife called in the middle. The version that finally got posted is actually two versions spliced together (yay for Audacity!)–if you listen closely, you can hear my voice suddenly get slightly louder between the “golden” and “brazen” stanzas. (Even in this version, I know I dropped at least one “bells” near the end.)
Great! I’ve done some stuff with Audio, and some of my guest posters did as well. Sounds fun, Chris!
Hm, now I’d really like to try my hand at “The Bells.”
Have you heard the Rachmaninov recording of “The Bells”?
I know, I know, it helps to understand Russian… but still. It’s well worth your listening.
re-props!