About

Karaoke poet­ry is a meet­ing place for some of the poems, writ­ing, ideas and mis­cel­la­neous col­lec­tions of words that I’ve thought about, con­tem­plat­ed, writ­ten, typed or scrib­bled down on scraps of paper since what only seems like yes­ter­day. In real­i­ty, it’s been a lot longer than that, although my con­cepts of time might be dif­fer­ent than yours.

Some poems have been pub­lished pre­vi­ous­ly in books, a lot of them have been per­formed live at var­i­ous read­ings and gigs (most­ly in pubs), and some of the writ­ing has been released into the wild only on the day it first appears here in karaoke poetry.

Many of the poems and writ­ings in karaoke poet­ry are in a con­stant state of shapeshift­ing. Words and turns of phrase that sound­ed great to me 15 years (or even two days) ago sud­den­ly don’t look quite so hot in the cold, harsh flick­er of the com­put­er screen. As a result, some of the poems may change between vis­its. Or they may not. Real­i­ty is much the same, I guess.

Why karaoke poet­ry? I guess it’s because I like the idea of poet­ry and writ­ing being per­formed stand up — read out aloud in front of a par­tic­i­pat­ing audi­ence, the poem comes alive because of the atten­tion giv­en it, even if, in the end, it’s like bad karaoke and the applause is as loud as the flame of a match extin­guished in the rain. I like the idea of total strangers get­ting up and read­ing out aloud the writ­ing of the poets that have made an impact on them and in their lives. Some poems might be famil­iar to the audi­ence, some might not. Much like karaoke.

I hope you enjoy karaoke poet­ry. One day you may see it per­formed live some­where at a place near you.