Introduction

One of my favourite things about spoken word poetry is that nothing is ever really finished. Publish a poem in a book, and it becomes set in stone, at least until the volume is re-issued. With spoken word, all you can do is record the current state of a constantly evolving work. There are pieces that I have been performing for years, and the versions that live in my head now bear only a passing resemblance to the originals. Texts grow, change; they get broken up into pieces and cannibalised by other poems.

So treat this section of the site as a collection of polaroids, rather than a gallery of oil paintings, and don’t believe everything you see.

Audio

This is where you can experience the next best thing to a live show. You can stream the audio online or download mp3 files for future listening.

Video

Visit this section for recordings from live performances, collaborations with video artists, documentaries and candid camera clips.

Text

This is where you can actually read poetry. As the section develops, it will be updated with sneak previews of new texts, non-performance poems, translations, and other experiments not necessarily meant for the stage.

Intellectual Property Note (Not As Boring As You’d Think)

This may not be the best place for a discussion about intellectual property law, but I thought I’d take a moment to assert my firm belief that art should be available freely, so creative people can gleefully borrow from one another, build on each other’s achievements, and use existing work to kick-start their own creativity.

And so all the poems posted on this site are made available to you under a Creative Commons “Attribution/Non-commercial/Share-alike” license. This means you are free to use the texts, audio files, and videos in any way you see fit – remix them, rewrite them, translate them, and generally have your way with them – as long as you credit me (and any other artists who may have been involved in their creation), do not use my work for commercial purposes, and share your resulting creations under similar conditions. And if you do use them for anything, please let me know!