Altered States of Poetry (Raj808 Headliner Poetry Gig )

Altered States of Poetry

In Liverpool, on every first Tuesday of the month at Ma Boyles (a central pub and eatery) poets gather for one of Liverpool's best, most well-known open mic nights, Liverbards.

Organized, and compared by Ali Harwood, I was honoured to be offered the headliner set for the Month of May 2023 which I have videoed and edited entitled - Altered States of Poetry.

My set included eight poems I read out and a creative collaboration of music and poetry between myself and Hive account@nickyhavey which included the Poem 'Engulfed in Sonder' mixed cleverly into a Drum'n Bass track .

Nicky Havey's music can be found on YouTube under that name on this link.

Nicky Havey's music is on the following sites:

Beatport - https://www.beatport.com/artist/nicky-havey/480860/tracks

YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@NickyHavey

Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/artist/71fCU3XxNavTx2w7tA9AZx?si=ZkiTUH5lRbCnFZkMzY58sw

Apple Music - https://music.apple.com/gb/artist/nicky-havey/516238029

The word Sonder is a neologism, which means a word that expresses a feeling that has no traditional word attached to it, I believe from my research it comes from a German word, in this case the meaning of "sonder"is:

The realization that each random passer-by is living a life as vivid and complex as your own populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness

And his version of the track can be found here: Drum & Bass | Nicky Havey & Mainly Poetry - Engulfed in Sonder.

This track, Engulfed in Sonder experienced some technical difficulties on the night, but through the magic of video editing, I created it as I meant to perform it (the track starts at around 16.35 mins) and played out the session with the Drum'n'bass vibes I wanted.

Here is a full list of timestamps which is also included in the YouTube drop-down description:

0.00 Opening Intro
0.11 Compare Introduction Overall Theme
0.50 Compare Introduction Headliner
1.50 Rowan Joyce Introduces Set
2.49 Opening Up to the Light (Poem)
4.02 The Beginning is a Condition (Poem)
6.55 Rowan Joyce Explains Altered States of Poetry
7.46 The Space Between Worlds (Poem)
10.25 Dionysus' Sojourn (Poem)
12.20 A Soulless Shoe (Poem)
13.47 Sacred Symphony (Poem)
14.50 The Mother of Oceans (Poem)
16.15 Engulfed in Sonder (Mixed Media Music/Poem)

Creative collaboration on the Hive Blockchain

For the last month, I have been sitting on the recording (posted above 🔼) of my first full headliner poetry set. This basically means the night is billed and promoted with my 15-20 minute performance at the centre stage of a performance poetry event, with an open mic for other poets to read out their poetry in 5 minute slots. I waited with bated breath as Hive account@nickyhavey organised getting a creative collaboration of a Drum'n'bass song he'd made, which features my poem, Engulfed in Sonder ready for distribution through his label and various media outlets.

It has been a dream of mine to feature some of my poetry alongside some decent electronic music for as long as I have been writing (over 25 years), and now thanks to Hive account@nickyhavey my work will be out there paired with music. The icing on the cake is that it's Drum'n'Bass music, which has long been my favourite type of Electronic dance music (EDM). This achievement marks something I've wanted to make happen for a long time.

Thanks for helping make this happen Nicky 🙂

The Importance of Creative collaboration & Grassroots Promotion of Hive

Creative collaborations used to be much more the norm on ~~Steem~~/Hive, as I have made a few in the past including a multi-post poetic/photographic adventure with Hive account@soyrosa 🎉

@raj808/the-dereliction-of-time-poetry-photography-collaboration-by-raj808-and-soyrosa

@raj808/morning-chorus-photography-poetry-collaboration-by-raj808-and-soyrosa

@raj808/life-through-the-window-pane-ekphrastic-poem

These three poems, from 2018 were inspired by Soyrosa's photography and number among some of my best poetic works, especially 'The Dereliction of Time', which brings me to my next point. These types of creative collaborations used to happen on here a lot more, and in many cases were exhibited (as with my poem Engulfed in Sonder) outside of Hive.

I created edited flyers for the event, using a template Ali had already made and placed these on everyone's table promoting hive and inviting poets to join the 'Blockchain Poets' community.

This type of Grassroots promotion used to go on all the time with art exhibitions, musical artist collaborations and as I remember it a hive user called tibfox who was planning on making a short film, and asked out in the hive community for creative artists to provide either scripts or short stories they'd be happy to turn into scripts for his project.

To cut it short and not get too preachy, I simply think that the Grassroots promotion that the creative professionals of Hive have done is often undervalued, or even unnoticed.

Which is a shame.

Check out Hive account@nickyhavey post announcing their release of the track 'Englulfed in Sonder' on their hive blog on this link:

@nickyhavey/dance-weekend-new-hive-artist-collaboration-poetry-vs-drum-and-bass

Thanks for reading/listening 🙂🌿

I would like to give a big shout-out to Hive account@stickupcurator (and Hive account@stickupboys) for their amazing contribution to supporting music, art and all things creative on hive. If you haven't already, you should go check out their account for music, crypto podcasts and much much more 🙂👍