Aussie Performance Poet
Last week we hosted Joel & Heidi McKerrow during the “Parisian” part of their more-than-a-year-long tour around the world. Heidi is a contemporary dancer and Joel is a performance poet. I thought I would share a some of the words that I bathed in last week. Although YouTube is not as riviting as seeing Joel stand up in our living room and let loose one of his poems….still, I think you will find him quite inspiring.
Thanks a lot David for sharing these videos.
It was a rare and great pleasure to meet your friend Joel, who is a true poet, a true prophet, a truly inspired writer and performer, with no concession to ‘Zeitgeist’. And an unextinguishable flame burning in his heart.
Thanks for sharing this, David. Joel is a true inspiration. I believe that poetry is indeed an oral art form. Though I have done some poetry readings, my poetry is largely that of printed word. Therefore I appreciate those poets who publicly proclaim. In a way we have two streams of poetry in America that were set from the earliest days of our country’s beginnings. Walt Whitman’s words were boldly orated by the poet and are best appreciated in oral form. Emily Dickinson on the other hand was unknown except to a small circle of family and friends until her poetry ear published after her death. Her words are concentrated and live best in the printed page where the reader can dwell with them in silence. So to this day we have both streams of poetry. Both streams are to be celebrated, and Joel is a wonderful representative of publicly proclaimed oral poetry.