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In the peaceful refreshing early spring ambience of Fernworthy Forest, on Dartmoor, Devon, UK, I give a reading of my first significant poem in 27 years, composed on 17 March 2022: For Ukraine — A New Painting On My Wall, In Which…. I've added a lead-in and lead-out taken from other recordings of mine.
(N.B. I wouldn't normally post a complete creative work here, but in this case my reading of the poem is just part of of the 'nature poem' of the whole setting out in the 'wilds'.)
Having put the poem itself online, I then wanted to attempt a recording of my giving it a formal reading-out, in a harmonious and peaceful situation. It came to me that the interior of a reasonably dense stand of the main forestry tree species in Fernworthy Forest (Sitka spruce) ought to work very well, so I chose a fine sunny day to make that attempt (23 March 2022). Although gloriously sunny, the day was tempered by a quite chilly easterly breeze, so I had to take with me extra layers to put on for lingering during the recording session.
So, I hitch-hiked out via Chagford to the WSW end of Fernworthy Reservoir, then ambled up the rather unpleasant gritty forestry track that eventually comes out on the open moor opposite Teignhead Farm ruins. I'd got an idea that I might use the dense stand of the spruce trees just before that opening-out to the WNW on the open moor, but I paused many times, looking at other stands of the spruce, and pausing to listen to the level of wind noise in those trees. For my recording, that needed to be a very gentle background sound, for clarity not only for the poem but also for the birds.
The track was taking me consistently uphill, and this was keeping me and the trees fairly exposed to that breeze, but I had some confidence that if I found nothing suitable beforehand, that last dense patch of really tall trees before the WNW perimeter would do the trick because there one has come over the top of the hill, and the trees ought to become more sheltered as one continues that way.
That's how it worked out. Once there, I struck out to right of the track, through hilariously difficult terrain between the trees, much care being needed, and finally settled on a spot that seemed workable.
My plan for the session had to take account of my voice not being as steady as it used to be (I was 80 later that year), so a useful recording was not at all guaranteed, and clearly the best way to do this would be to do multiple 'takes', so that the end-product would be drawn from the best bits of the different 'takes'. Also I would do similarly, carrying out the reading at about twice the distance from the recorder. That would enable me afterwards to bring up the ambience, including reverberation, for that version.
In the event it all worked out according to plan, though the more distant recording was done second, and my voice was a bit more unsteady then, so that I favour the first, closer, one. I took a lunch break between the close and the distant versions, and recorded a bit of ambience then — and at the end I decided to record some more ambience, still from that same spot. Those two ambience recordings will be my next two uploads here.
Photos taken during this recording session, very close by where the recorder was.
Techie stuff:
The recorder was a Sony PCM-D100, with two nested furry windshields (Windcut, custom), and with its onboard mics set at narrow angle (90°) rather than my standard 120° for natural soundscapes. It was placed on a Sirui Compact Traveler 5C Tripod, which has fully and independently adjustable angle of each leg, and leg section locks that are quick and positive without any risk at all of getting painful and sometimes blood-drawing 'bites' that I got from the clip-type locks of cheaper tripods I'd been using previously.
Post-recording processing was to apply an EQ curve in Audacity to compensate for muffling from the furry windshields.
Please remember to give this recording a rating — Thank you!
This recording can be used free of charge, provided that it's not part of a materially profit-making project, and it is properly and clearly attributed. The attribution must give my name (Philip Goddard) and link to https://freesound.org/people/Philip_Goddard/sounds/670874/
Type
Flac (.flac)
Duration
5:29.334
File size
27.0 MB
Sample rate
44100.0 Hz
Bit depth
16 bit
Channels
Stereo
6 months ago
A belated further comment. I sometimes go to an excellent Nepalese restaurant about a mile from where I live in Exeter city centre, and a very young server there with little English is always drawn to me and seeks some conversation as they're not busy when I go there. He had the motivation to repeatedly visit my websites despite his language difficulty, and the last time I was there he showed me his smartphone with a whole lot of bookmarked pages on my sites, and even my YouTube presentation of this poem.
He said he'd listened to some of my music but didn't particularly like it (fair enough!), and went on to say he'd several times listened to this poem on YT, because even though he couldn't understand much of the English, it seemed to mean something important to him through the way I used my voice.
That really was touching to hear, when I know how ropey my voice was by then through the normal ageing process, and how hard I had to work to get it done even that well (in particular, nowadays I recognise that I missed a trick in reading the first line, and would really like to redo that, properly for once!).
1 year, 2 months ago
I should add that, decades ago, when I was writing my main poetic oeuvre, whatever the flaws in my publicly reading my poems, I always filled them with some sort of compelling 'fire', bringing out the drama. Indeed, there was one poem (called 'The In-Between People', which is in my self-published volume of my poetry on Amazon), which quite terrified some people when I did that one.
From about mid-way through, it rises in stages of crescendo from an intense tremulous frightened stage whisper to an immense deafening roared curse to "You gods or whoever you may be" (i.e., 'above')! I'd always break out into laughter then, all the more so as I looked at those surpised to really shocked / frightened faces — the people who took it all at face value and didn't see the funny side of my works and their sometimes dark moments!
Okay, I lost interest in doing that one because I didn't want to go frightening people, and I had other highly dramatic pieces that were not frightening, at least in that rather traumatizing way, and could be really moving.
1 year, 2 months ago
Hello Klankbeeld, and thank you for such appreciative words!
For anyone to follow it most effectively, it would be very helpful to read the poem and introductory background text at https://www.philipgoddard.com/for_ukraine.htm .
1 year, 2 months ago
Hi Philip,
Thank you. I can't quite follow it because I'm not a natural speaker, but the gist is clear to me. The power with which you recite this poetry for Ukraine in nature is wonderful.