A great day for neo-poetry

Yessir, it’s here, the Penultimate DVD! A new day, that from
eternity past was marked for newness; Neo-poetry: “We are
his poetry, we are new men / and if you don’t believe me
read Ephesians 2:10!“. Shout outs to urbanmissiontv for their
blitz clips of the awe-inspiring acts, giving a taster of the full
sets, now available to order from the verbswish.com store.
Much like the newness of this Ressurection Sunday, it’s great to
get, but even better to give as a gift. Thanks for all your
support in buying this DVD and supporting what we’re doing.
Enjoy the show, and let us know what you think.

March 23, 2008 | Filed Under announcement, neo-poetry

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Something to Love - a response

This post has been adapted from a response I made to Inua Ellams’ thought provoking blog post, Something to Love. The basic premise was that someone had suggested that happiness requires 3 things: Something to do, Something to love AND Something to hope for. Readers were invited to give their responses to what these things might be, here are mine:

I think the first question we have to ask is What is happiness? Otherwise we may well find that we are leaning our ladder against the wrong wall. Today’s definition of happiness is “pleasurable satisfaction”, however Aristotle, Moses, Jesus and other wise ancients held to a different definition: “Happiness is a life of wisdom, virtue and character”*. Once we’ve established that, only then can we approach the three rungs, or any for that matter, that are suggested… I’ll try not to babble or be weird but here’s what I think: Read more

March 21, 2008 | Filed Under reflections

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Facebook notification or ‘clamourfication’?

In the real world people get together and have no need of telling each other “what they are doing right now!” something facebook is designed to elicit. A face-to-face encounter always makes that question self evident . If they are organised friends and sometimes even if they are not, this same information has been ‘diarised’ a few days before and is, well… unremarkable and rarely revisited. “Meeting Jane for coffee” used to be confined to the pages of a filofax, now it is fodder for the facebooker.

Culture has taught us that advertisting need not be meaningful, it must just be pervasive and incessant,
and we have bought it. Bought what? Bought the air they sold to us, and after re-polluting it, resold it to whoever will believe our social networking proclamations. Read more

March 19, 2008 | Filed Under reflections

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Swish Spins

The first March session of records. I try to keep ‘em in the background, but these were distracting enough to note!

Sweet Bird - Herbie Hancock ( The Joni Letters)
I Need You - Da Truth ft Izzy (Open Book)
Mr Integrity - Frank McComb (The Malibu Sessions, The Truth Volume 2)
Grazing In The Grass - Hugh Masekela (Still Grazing [reissue])
Living Today - J’Nay (Pressed & Ready, Kindred Collective)
Waiting On The World To Change - John Mayer ft. Ben Harper (The Village Sessions)
Vietnam - Jimmy Cliff (Reggae Greats)
Tell Him - Lauryn Hill (The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill)
The Last Time I saw Richard - Joni Mitchell (Blue)
Your Word - J.R (Life In Stereo)
Park Bench People - Jose James (The Dreamer)
Honest Man’s Hustle - Mr J. Medeiros (of god’s and girls)
Beautiful - Sharlene Hector (Pressed & Ready, Kindred Collective)
Starstruck - Da Truth ft. The Ambassador (Open Book)
Been Such A Long Time Gone - Hugh Masekela (Still Grazing [reissue])

March 15, 2008 | Filed Under swish spins

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Don’t listen to verbswish poetry!

until you’ve watched this. What your about to watch is spoken word, but perhaps not as your use to hearing it. This is probably the best introduction to one of my particular fields - matters of religous truth and sprituality, and to properly appreciate what it is were trying to do with a lot of poems, you need to have watched the video first. It’s kind of a necessary qualifier. It’s about an hour long, and is done by Greg Koukl, one of my mentors. I suggest you find an hour when no-one will bother you, put the kettle on and watch/listen carefully.

Just as an opening illustration, a couple of years back I asked a well known poet (who I won’t name) the question, “Is it wrong to torture babies for fun?”, for clarity I added “I want to know whether the act itself is wrong, objectively so; whether at any time, anywhere, under any circumstances it could possibly be morally acceptable to torture babies for the pleasure it brings you?” and the poet responded with a chilling, “it depends”. I am not kidding you, this actually happened, it was a question borrowed from Greg who will explain in the video why the poet gave this disturbing response.

When you’ve watched, please come back and leave your comments and thoughts here - all viewpoints welcome:)

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-9219638402717265149&q=greg+koukl&hl=en

March 8, 2008 | Filed Under announcement

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verbswish newsletter || Well I’ll Be #9 (Mar ‘08)

Hey e’rybody! beware the (good) vibes of March, February was great - see the ‘Oh My Daze!’ post on
the blog, but in short had a great TRANSTATIC launch + joint b’day celebration with friend and band member Abimaro
You had to be there, so if you weren’t (tut-tut), we’ll try and do another one soon - dont sleep. In the meantime…

Well I’ll Be…

Running: up and down London like clockwork, or the sweat of a goldsmith near a furnace. Let me explain: Myself and full band play north London’s Clockwork Bar this Thursday 6th, featuring as part of POESY, a night of music and poetry.
(Doors from 7pm). 96-98 Pentonville Road, N1 9JB.Then on the 18th were at Goldsmiths University, which hosts a night of music called ‘Double Take’,
(Rm 167, nearest tube new cross, from 7.30pm)Finally, this month were at a night called Furnace in Balham, a meld of passionate, spontaneous
word, music, theatre fusion. (Georges Pub, Balham Hill, £5 otd, map).
Yessir - (aren’t you glad I explained that;)
Spinning: records. [verb]swish a DJ? I hear you say, well something like that, but it’s more part of an experiment we’re doing
here at TRANSTATIC that I’ve dubbed ’swish spins’. No rocket science here, we’re just curious about what people like, and whether they like what we like. The playlist from the first couple sessions have already gone up - as well as the rules. For this month’s competition, there is an album from one of the sessions up for grabs. To enter just email a request: info at transtatic.co.uk. So far I’ve been digging in the crates pulling out old Bacharach cuts, Masakela jawns, but also some new Daft Punk stuff, and some of Herbie’s Grammy winner.
Oh, in fact one tune has been so huge… I have to give it it own section >>>
Taking: ‘Every Step’ back (as in rewinding) - Tawiah’s etherial new single, it made i-tunes track of the week and is a good look for UK soul. Much has rightly been said about her twisted soul sound, but the lyrics and theme on this track have also won me over: “Can you hear the wind as it blows / without ears the leaves dance”.
Tipping: my hat once again to all for showing out for the launch. Big ups to Michaela, racking up yet more coach miles for TRANSTATIC. Check her new facebook page here. Thanks also to Shabazz for stepping out from behind the camera, for his amazing track‘Better Now’. Big ups to Tryumf on the decks, (Look out for his poetic single, ‘Proverbs 31 Woman’ on Ras Kwame’s 1xtra show, big in the game), last but not least shout out to globetrotting Ama in Rio, who desparately wanted to be there but couldn’t. Nuff Love.
(Re)reading: Eat this book - Eugene peterson, Tunesmith - Jimmy Webb, The Gospel of St Luke, Selected Poems - Langston Hughes