Reading the Poem: a First Video

At last.

I’ve finally created my very first poetry-reading video and uploaded it to YouTube.

Quality is not of the greatest because I recorded it directly with my laptop. In the past I have tried to work with a video camera; but the resulting waltz of frustration among the various demands of camera, editing programs, and computer capacities meant that nothing was ever completed. So this time I decided it was more practical to simplify the process. Now at any rate, there is a video. :)

I chose to read my Thistles at Midsummer, a poem from last June, written as I watched the quiet blue skies here on my hillside, knowing that elsewhere across the globe a grand solar eclipse had just been visible.

Here is my reading. I hope it will be a precursor to many more (and those eventually of higher quality once I get into the swing of this!)

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For those who would like to read along, here is the text:

Thistles at Midsummer

Somewhere beyond the many seas, the sun
Was ring of fire round a mighty moon;
But here the bright midsummer’s just begun.
The sun shone simply amid skies of June;
The blue skies played at tag with thunderheads
Until the blue won out; meantime the brash
Refulgent pink of thistles held their heads
Aloft on stalks as tall as I, to stash
The pantries of the goldfinch and supply
A sip to many a swallowtail; the gold
Of tiny bird and broad-winged butterfly
Near-brazen on the blossoms' pink, their bold
Green foliage arabesqued with spines.
Nearby Queen Anne's lace lifts a froth
Of white, its display elegantly fine,
Its frippery for June a dainty cloth
Spread out atop the meadow on a day
Of silence on the solitary hill.
I hear a redbird chatter on its way
From wire to tree; all else today is still.