John McDonald CD & a challenge

I've received a pleasant surprise. Scottish haiku poet, John McDonald, has self-produced a magnificent CD of his poems which arrived in my mailbox last Wednesday. As he does in his books, John first reads each haiku in Scots, then in English. There are three tracks on the CD, one for each of his books, over an hour's worth of John reading his wonderful poems with that superb accent.

With John's permission, here are a couple of clips from the CD:

John McDonald clip one

John McDonald clip two

The amazing thing about John's CD is that the recording was made with a handheld digital voice recorder. I think you'll agree that the quality is surprisingly good, very good, in fact. Inspired, I recorded myself reading three of my poems last night:

Curtis Dunlap clip

I purchased my digital voice recorder a few months ago from the local Wally World, the cost, a reasonable $35. It has a USB port, plugs directly into my computer. On its best quality setting, sound is recorded and formatted as a WAV file. I use Audacity, a free sound editing software program to trim, delete, or silence certain parts of my recordings.

Fellow poets, I humbly suggest and challenge you to find the time and means to record yourself reading your poems. Some of you may be thinking who would want to hear me read my poems? I can assure you, someone will read your words someday and wonder what it was like to hear the poet's voice…family, friends, other poets, future generations. Think about it. Our time on this world is limited. We are all just passing through. Not only is it important for us to preserve our poems through written word, but we should also preserve our poems through spoken word and, yes, have them archived at some location.

For those of you interested in receiving John's CD, copies can be obtained for the price of postage. Email John at jazzertimes6@yahoo.com for specifics.