Once I had shown my poems to a few people there was an observation or two that they ‘sounded’ ok and it might be an idea to record them. This fitted in with my wish to combine various elements of the arts in one single project, and also facilitated my intention to make my poems more readily available to a wider public – a sort of ‘easier to digest’ aid to enjoying poetry.
One little problem arose. Who to turn to for the recordings? Destiny often provides its own solutions and at the time I had recently re-established contact with a friend of 30 years past and so the cooperation began, he recording the poems and I the ‘personal takes’ to accompany them.
Mac Andrews is a psychologist, author, actor and voice over artist. Author of Breakthrough Zone published by J. Wiley and Sons, General Webb in Last of the Mohicans, he runs a psychotherapy practice in Cambridgeshire
The audio Experience
Mac has had this to say about his experience of recording the poems.
Poetry is always a challenge for an actor, especially when it comes to a performance for audio production. The poet shapes the quintessence of an experience or an idea into just enough words to communicate it to the reader or listener. To hear a poem in your head is part of its personalised impact, an intimate intercourse between the inner world of the poet and your own inner world. Somewhere in the air between the two minds the poem finds its life. The actor can become a sort of interloper in this intimacy, running the risk of imposing his own interpretation, his experience, even to the point of hijacking words designed by the poet to express something vital to you, the listener. So, an actor has a challenging service to perform in this relationship between the poet and his audience, a service that must be as little tainted as possible by the preferences and opinions of his own character. One has to place oneself inside the poet’s head, representing him while at the same time getting out of the way and remaining a bystander – yes, all of this, all at the very same time.
Suffice it to say that this duty, privilege though it may be, carries a heavy responsibility. And this is especially so when one is servant to the work of somebody I could never have expected to turn poet – and what works they turn out to be!
A poem seldom gives up its treasures at first reading. A poem is an invitation to immerse oneself in an experience beyond the intellect. It must be tried on for size and explored to find its comfortable fit. Some of the poems in this collection fell readily into the rhythms of my own inner world. Others revealed themselves only after several visits. Each one prodded me to expand myself to meet it, and I found personal insight in each, without exception. I hope that you enjoy reading them as much as I have. I hope you enjoy reading them and comparing how you hear them in your own inner world with how they sound in mine.
These poems are the product of a man reflecting about multifarious aspects of living and dying and all manner of facets of life in between.
Above all, savour each as an opportunity, through them, to discover yourself.