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ABOUT THE AUDIO EXPERIENCE
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 – just as speed dating doesn’t normally lead to a dedicated marriage of heart and mind a mere 24 hours later. 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. ‘Something Of My Own’ simply flew into my mouth – I knew this poem almost at once. Yet 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.
– Mac Andrews / April 2016