Saturday, January 30, 2021

The revival of interest in blending music with poetry seems to be intensifying. On a popular culture level, of course, music and poetic lyrics found themselves enjoying an unusual amount of public admiration in the 1960s, a transnational moment that veered off into the subcultures of punk, hip-hop, and rap in subsequent decades. In turn, the poetics of those efforts influenced performance poetry and spoken word. In personal retrospect, one of the most interesting collages in the music-poetry mode was Liza Richardson’s post-midnight show in the early 1990s, “MAN IN THE MOON,” on KCRW, which complemented the Lollapalooza tours from 1991 to 1997.

More recently, along with video poetry, various publishing outlets have been encouraging and featuring collaborations between musicians and poets. One of the best of these efforts announced itself in my email earlier this morning:

Bioluminescence Can Be Ours

“BIOLUMINESCENCE CAN BE OURS”
by Lynn McGee
with music by Bill Parod

*. *. *. *. *.

For more information on Lynn McGee:
https://www.lynnmcgee.com

TRACKS (2019)
http://broadstonebooks.com/Lynn_McGee.html

Lynn McGee is the author of the poetry collection Tracks (Broadstone Books, 2019); Sober Cooking (Spuyten Duyvil Press, 2016), and two award-winning poetry chapbooks: Heirloom Bulldog (Bright Hill Press, 2015) and Bonanza (Slapering Hol Press, 1997). Recent publications include Lascaux Review, Tampa Review and The Night Heron Barks. Poems by Lynn McGee have also appeared recently in Upstreet, Lavender Review, Stonewall’s Legacy (an anthology celebrating the 50-year anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising), The American Journal of Poetry, Cordella Literary Magazine, Potomac Review, The American Poetry Review, Southern Poetry Review, Storyscape, In From the Margin and The New Guard (one poem a finalist and one a semi-finalist in the Knightville Contest judged by Donald Hall).