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Other ways to stay in touch
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As featured in…
"The title says it all. Read Me Something You Love invites literary lovers to select a piece of writing which excites them. Steve Wasserman, then trundles around to your home with his mobile recording studio in an attempt to translate the pleasure of the reading aloud experience to a wider audience.
“One of the joys of doing this is being open to the experience of how other people’s enthusiasms will wing their way into your life and get you all gee’d up about stories or poems you might never have glanced at twice,” says Wasserman.
Anyone can take part, just email your suggestions to Steve. The only real requirement is that your selection has proved spine-tingling to you in some way. Readings are limited to 20-25 minutes, so a short story, a well-chosen extract or a poem are perfect.
Time to start practicing in the mirror methinks."
"I don’t know about you, but seeing someone read a book on the Tube often gives me a warm, fuzzy feeling knowing that this potentially wasted part of the day is enriched by a good book. The rarity of book lovers gracing the seats of the Underground these days makes me feel both sad and like I’m in a secret club that is only acknowledged by a sideways glance at the books of fellow commuters.
So on discovering the Human Reading Being blog, part of the Read Me Something You Love project, I was terrified that I’d spot a terrible picture of myself reading something embarrassing and then overjoyed that this humble daily habit is being celebrated.
Read Me Something You Love involves Steve Wasserman asking authors and non-authors alike, to read a piece of literature they love before leading a discussion on the piece. If you love submerging yourself in the imagination of others, come and celebrate this dying pastime."
Posts by Read Me Something You Love:
RMSYL 50: Tooth by Michael Burkard (read by Ryan Van Winkle)
May 8th, 2013
“”What the hell the tooth is doing there, I don’t know, but I love it.” Ryan Van Winkle
DISCUSSED: Unfolding Poems; Illogical Teeth; The Lost Son; Coming Open To Closed Poems; She is Fucking/Human (Divergent Synapses Firing); The Misery That Is Going To Pass
Podcast: Play in new window
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RMSYL 49: The Wonderful Focus of You by Joanne Kyger (read by Marcus Slease)
April 6th, 2013
“The poetry I’m interested in most of the time is open-ended: inviting the reader to participate in the process of questioning, meaning, and everything really.” Marcus Slease
DISCUSSED: Writing Personally To Get Out Of The Straitjacket Of Self; Big Things, Little Things, Trivial Things; Nice; Reclaiming the Vernacular; What Holds A Year/Your Life Together; Echo Mess Internet; The Poem As A Mind Graph; Living In The Moment (Argh!); Daybook Poetry
Marcus’s website: marcusslease.tumblr.com Follow Marcus on Twitter: https://twitter.com/postpran‘ YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/postpran Read The Wonderful Focus of You online: http://tinyurl.com/bqh93vmPodcast: Play in new window
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RMSYL 48: Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut (read by David Shields)
February 28th, 2013
“We’re all bozos on this bus. We’re all lost, we’re all confused, we’re all presenting a civilized veneer. But in our own hearts, we’re all kind of madmen in various ways. ” David Shields
DISCUSSED: Building A Bridge Across The Existential Abyss of Loneliness; Let’s Not Get Past The Contrivance; Compression, Concision & Velocity; Enough With The Furniture Moving Already; Warp Speed Culture; Gun To The Head Prose; Vonnegut’s Jaunty Tone; The Trapdoors to Howling Despair; Clear Thinking About Mixed Feelings; Loyal To The Moment Texts; Putting Your Intimate Cards On The Table; Stuttering as an Existential Gift; The Mirror Turn Lamp
David’s website: http://davidshields.com/ Read the first chapter of Slaughterhouse-Five: http://bit.ly/XoBxTvPodcast: Play in new window
| Download (13.9MB)
RMSYL 47: The Flower by George Herbert (read by Jane Davis)
February 7th, 2013“The wonderful thing about poems is that no matter how many times you’ve read them before, they still feel new if you’re reading them in a live way.” Jane Davis
DISCUSSED: Uncomfortable Praise; Highs and Lows (Interaction); Patterns of Creativity - Losing and Finding; Smelling, Relishing, Budding; Email To A Future Self; A New Vocabulary for Mental Health; The Mother Root; Angry Fathers; God as Inhuman?; Turning Away From Life, And Back Again; Poems as Mantras; Spacious Readings; Lines that Move Within
Read the poem online: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/181059 The Reader Organisation: http://thereader.org.uk/about-us/ Jane’s blog: http://readerjanedavis.wordpress.com/Podcast: Play in new window
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RMSYL 46: Trout Fishing in America by Richard Brautigan (read by Vera Chok)
January 29th, 2013
“There’s so much naughtiness and pleasure in overturning the ridiculousness of taking ourselves so seriously.” Vera Chok
DISCUSSED: What Does Richard Brautigan Taste Like?; Exciting Familiarity Versus Unfamiliar Excitement; Trout-Based 60s Cornerstones; Marston Bates (File Under: Captain Pugwash?); Finding a Rationale for Culture; Serious Questions or “Serious Questions” (i.e. Silliness); Chok-Inspired Neolexia; Chasing the Mayonaise/Mayonnaise; The Upsetting Space of Beauty; Bygone Names; Ambivalent Mayonnaise; Caring Mayonnaise; Mayonnaise As The Ultimate Signifier.
Vera: http://www.verachok.com/ TwitterChok: https://twitter.com/Vera_Chok The Brautigan Book Club: http://www.brautiganbookclub.co.uk/Podcast: Play in new window
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RMSYL 45: The Folding Star by Alan Hollinghurst (read by Charles Adrian Gillot)
January 20th, 2013
“I’m always very pleased when I start going out with somebody and I find they have a habit that annoys me, yet I I still like them. That’s a minor triumph for me, that’s romantic.” Charles Adrian Gillot
DISCUSSED: The Carnal Discomforts of Sex in Tents, Being Cornered in Your Own Head, Filtering, Pretending To Be Sophisticated, The Delusion or Otherwise of Being in Love, Predatory Hugs vs. Comforting Ones.
Adrian: http://charlesadrian.typepad.com/ Page One (podcast): http://charlesadrian.typepad.com/pageone/Podcast: Play in new window
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RMSYL 44: Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak (read by Colin Heinink)
January 7th, 2013
“There’s all this action going on, this rumpusing, but the bit that sticks in the head, well for me at least, is the him-and-his-Mum aspect of it. And the food still being hot.” Colin Heinink
DISCUSSED: Text-based Monsters versus iPad Monsters; Playing at Punishment; Self-Engendered Worlds; Trying On Adult Behaviours; Post-Rumpus Sadness; The Loneliness of Responsibility; Doing “The Trick” (AKA How To Become King of The Monsters); Going “Home” to Love; Like The Way You’re Sitting; Fighting Because You Care; The Heat of Anger/Love/Dinner
Colin’s website: http://www.thedogwhatblogs.com/ Sendak’s reading of WTWTA (with pics from the book): http://bit.ly/Y1QVDdPodcast: Play in new window
| Download (21.2MB)
RMSYL 43: What the Living Do by Marie Howe (recited by Kim Rosen)
December 28th, 2012
I’ve felt like I’ve needed to learn poetry this year. By heart.
You might have had this feeling too? You may have thought, or perhaps even said these words aloud to someone sitting across the way from you on the sofa reading Joan Didion: “I need to learn this poem, Trevor. I need to commit it to memory. There is something in this poem that I need to digest slowly and carefully and with utmost concentration.”
Where does this need come from? Why poetry? Why share it with the Didion reader, or anyone else for that matter? These are questions I cannot fully answer, though I’ve been having a go at finding my own answers for a while.
A woman who has been learning poetry and thinking about what it means to do so for over a decade now is Kim Rosen. Some of my burning questions were answered in her thrilling and moving Saved By A Poem book. Others she addressed in our RMSYL chat a few weeks ago, as well as reciting and talking about Marie Howe’s What the Living Do.
Podcast: Play in new window
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RMSYL 42: The Strange Hours Travelers Keep by August Kleinzahler (read by Niall O’Sullivan)
November 21st, 2012
Imagine a small tribe living on the edge of the savannah.
A tribe with it’s requisite, antler festooned Poet-Philosopher-Shaman doing her shape shifting, neologising, bewilderment making best to entertain us.
What he or she presents to the tribe on a daily basis is fruit of a kind of psycho-poetic labour. Maybe couched in a technically tricky and arcane form like a sestina, or terza rima, stuffed to the gills with near and slant rhymes, the individual quest is synthesized for collective consumption.
So important is this work for those who gather to listen or read that the creator of these poems is rewarded with the highest accolades. For her cooking pot: the tastiest morsels from the hunt. For her feet: incredibly warm and cosy winter slippers made from aardwolf pelts.
Fast-forward a million years, and we (the tribe) still need and thankfully have such people amongst us, such as Niall O’Sullivan, and his Mundane Comedy project (which alas, is no more, but all the work remains online).
For me the Mundane Comedy was a 1o pm thing. Each night, just before going to bed, Niall’s daily posting about fatherhood, Herne Hill, fair trade houmous, Star Wars, monarchism, the London riots, or whatever he thought needed to be processed that day for himself and us would pop into my inbox, and suddenly I’d be made a few stanzas more savvy about the world and my place in it.
[Read the poem before listening to the podcast + some more info about Poetry Unplugged which Niall hosts each Tuesday at the The Poetry Café
in London]
Podcast: Play in new window
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RMSYL 41: What The Doctor Said by Raymond Carver (read by Nicholas Pole)
October 25th, 2012
Nick Pole is good for your soul. Well, he’s good for my soul.
Nick and I ran a Mindfulness Based Practitioners group together for a while, once upon a time.
I remember our third or fourth session where Nick offered to do something on mindfulness and poetry for the group that month. It wasn’t the best attended of sessions, but it was the best session we had (IMHO).
I think it was also at that session that I must have thought, why can’t other people see the POWER of poetry the way Nick is able to communicate the POWER of poetry? Which perhaps planted a seed for this wee project (thank you Nick).
Also: if Neil Nunes ever decides to step down from continuity announcing on Radio 4 - Nick is the man to step into those BASSO PROFUNDO shoes.
Podcast: Play in new window
| Download (19.1MB)
