Mary Meriam's Drag Zoom Reading: the recording
 

The recording of Mary Meriam's Drag Zoom reading is up on YouTube now, here.

With featured readers
Rita Book aka R. Nemo Hill
Paddy O'Furniture aka Mary Meriam
Matt Quinn
Marjorie Feather aka Mark McDonnell
Carolyn Boll
Sam the Man aka Samantha Pious
Markus Milner aka Marcia Karp
Joshua Mehigan
Siham Karami
Tootight Lautrec
Thank-you to all involved.

And extra special thanks Mary Meriam for the whole body of her work.

Nemo

Pools of June, her latest book can be ordered here

www.exotbooks.com

This was very enjoyable, with some odd characters and some disturbingly attractive raids on the dressing-up box. The readings, one and all, were very well done. Lovely poems of longing and desire. I don’t have much of a poetry collection but will now explore Mary’s back catalogue.

I usually prefer to see the text as it is read. But these readings worked well for me. Can anyone recommend any websites where poets read their own stuff? Many poets have their own websites but I wonder if there are any places where the content is curated, where poets can submit videos for inclusion ? I’d like to see a site where I could see and hear the poet and follow the text. (I know there is no shortage of performance type poetry online, and some of it very good, but I am getting tired of shouty identity politics you get in slam poetry events. I’m probably getting old and insensitive. )

Hi Joe,

Glad you enjoyed it. It was great fun and you should definitely dig into Mary's wonderful back catalogue.

Well, you're in luck! That sounds like a perfect description of "The Ballsians", a YouTube channel Mary and I started a couple of years ago. Lots of poets simply reading their poems and the text of the poem printed in the video information underneath. Inevitable time commitments have meant we've neglected it for a while but there's lots of good stuff on there.

Mark

Excellent Mark! Just what I was looking for. More please.

My interest was, predictably, not selfless. I had a villanelle published in Snakeskin a year or two ago and I thought it would lend itself to some sort of performance. So, a couple of days ago, I put this up on YouTube. "My dog has no nose"

All a bit amateurish, with phone held in portrait rather than landscape. But hey.

Thank you, Nemo, for hosting, and for putting up the video so quickly. I couldn't make the event but am now all caught up.

Thanks also to the many beautiful readers, and of course to Mary for giving them such beautiful material.

Nemo, the beginning of your intro essay was a bit cut off. Will you be publishing or posting the text?

Julie, when you click the link the video starts at around the 5 minute mark for some reason. At least it does for me. But if you scroll back it should be all there (including Mary's gorgeous folksong intro).

But yes, I'd love that essay to be available to read too.

Ah! I didn't notice the timestamp before Nemo's channel marker. Here it is with the timestamp edited out. And with Mary's lovely singing at the start!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNut...nel=R.NemoHill

Thanks, Julie, I fixed it in the original link.
Joe, that's a great recording of you reading, thumbs up!

Nemo

Beautiful record of a great event, Nemo! The singing beginning is sooo poignant!

Such rich readings. It was a real pleasure to attend.

A thousand thanks, Nemo, and Mary! And to the wonderful readers.

(Love your reading, too, Joe!)

Cally