If you don’t remember why I call these things hypnagogics, read last week’s Friday audio post.
So. This is another of those weirdnesses. It’s a poem. I was thinking about rhythm; I’d been reading Y Gododdin and falling in love with Old Welsh. This isn’t that kind of rhythm, but it’s, well, it’s particular. The bad news is that I’m not convinced it makes sense. The good news is it only lasts 21 seconds. Enjoy:
http://www.nicolagriffith.com/audio/player.swf
Next week, I’ll get back to real readings, a good meaty ten minutes of something from Stay. Then, well, I’ve promised Karina a reading from “Touching Fire.”
Meanwhile, over on my research blog, Gemæcce, I have a post based on a delicious snippet of 8th C. Irish storytelling brought to my attention by Lisa Spangenberg. (Thanks, Lisa.)
Nicola Griffith 
I think it makes sense in that way verse has of making sense. Or maybe I just had to flash-write five poems that were due yesterday, so my brain is operating in that same senseless logic.And I love your reading voice. I wish I could borrow it when I have to read stuff in English. Especially now that I’ve spent a whole summer almost exclusively with my also Spanish-speaking wife. Vocal English has deserted me.“Touching Fire”. Yesss! Gimme.
Sometimes my reading voice sounds weird to me. I always prefer reading to an audience–just as I preferred singing to an audience–than to a blank wall in my offic (or a glass wall in the studio). I perform differently for people than for machines.
I love hearing your voice too. And I do enjoy these hypnagogic things. Maybe you would feel better with an audience, but this is the next best thing. Unless maybe you wanted to do some kind of live webcast thing, but that still wouldn’t be the same as being in the physical room.If I won the lottery, I think I would open a pub/cafe/library/gallery – maybe just for women. And I would have all kinds of books for people to check out, and I would try to get you and Kelley and other people to do readings, play music, etc on a regular basis. We could have an online feed and video tape the performances. I’d hire people who needed a job to run it and have a studio upstairs for myself.Looking forward to that lineup the next couple of weeks.
jennifer, that sounds like a plan!
I don’t know if it makes sense either, but one of the nicknames for depression is “the black dog”. Hate and love are both hot in poetry and in passion.That’s some kind of sense.
Yes, I knew about depression as the ‘black dog’. (Who was it that named it so? Some writer, I think, or maybe Churchill–someone famous.) But to me, this wasn’t about depression, it was about hurt and anger. Strangely, I wasn’t feeling the least bit hurt or angry when I wrote it.