Category Archives: CLMOOC

(This is for the Slice of Life challenge, hosted by Two Writing Teachers. We write on Tuesdays about the small moments in the larger perspective and then all through March — every single day  …  You write, too.)

What can you expect,
with kids, on a morning
like this, hoping for the best
on a day of difficult tests?

Even the best of them
lose focus, hoping for a little
hocus pocus, and find the silly:

like the friends across the room
playing a furtive game of rock
paper scissors under tables

or the one in the corner pretending
to paint flowers and feathers in air,
with imaginary ink and care

or the finger drummer making
silent beats from his seat on the
table top drum top won’t stop

and, you know, maybe,
I’m the noisiest one of us
in the room, shushing them
from nine ‘til noon

Peace (in the noticing),
Kevin

(This is for the Slice of Life challenge, hosted by Two Writing Teachers. We write on Tuesdays about the small moments in the larger perspective and then all through March — every single day  …  You write, too.)

A soft guitar plays
As their wedding vows are made;
Wonder at the day

Peace (lovely),

Kevin

I was watching with interest as my friend, Alan Levine, was playing around with a coding project that mixed and remixed voice audio files, and wondered at the possibilities for a multitude of voices poetry project through the CLMOOC community.

Alan was very helpful in all sorts of ways — first, by hosting his original projects over at Github, which allowed me to fork it and make a copy, and then he was patient with advice and answers to my questions about changing and manipulating the underlying code.

The result is a pretty cool project that allows you to remix voices for a small poem I wrote for the project. Give it a try. Hit “Make New” then “Play” and then “Make Another” to remix the voices.

Thanks to all my CLMOOC friends who played along with me, and sent me their voices. You can read more about the project over at the CLMOOC website.

I also did one further remix. Instead of cutting audio into smaller segments, as used in the Voice Remix site to create the string of voices speaking the poem, I wondered how I could bring all of the big audio files together, layered on top of each other, and whether that chorus/cacophony would be something interesting.

Well, it is something … and best listened with headphones.

Peace (in pushing the limits to our poems),
Kevin