The first clue: after half an hour just trying to get this image to be right side up (yes, I used the edit functions, yes I renamed it, yes I tried various other image variabilities) it’s going to stay this way now.
At the beginning of this little project I thought that’s great, I’ll learn how to do make a video and post other poems on my blog…
Backstory: A poem was accepted by Vallum for its ‘Chase’ theme, Issue 15:2, and I agreed to make a video of the poem for Vallum’s digital issue.
The experience was not a happy one, at least I wasn’t happy with the results after trying about twenty versions. What fun it is to think you’ve got it, then the video makes you look like a loon on funny drugs. Or you get halfway through the poem and screw it up. Read the wrong word. Skip a phrase. I managed to do things like that quite a few times. (recalling how, in grade three, I was a really great oral reader…)
And don’t I look terrified! I realize the light is wrong so move downstairs, laptop, accompanying cords, mouse and mouse pad…Try again as the parrot is asleep and Ted is out so it’s quiet. Go through the whole miss-a-word, add-a-word, forget-a-phrase sequences until finally, it’s going well…and Ted walks in and Desirée the parrot starts to sqwawk.
And it’s only a little poem!
Here I am banning my husband from his own house and shutting an innocent little bird into the bedroom. For about a minute’s poetry that will remain somewhere in the universe forever and be seen by perhaps seven people, all related to me, or who owe me favours. Or who just are too kind. Or who do not want to see me cry.
Result: Not great, but it is what it is. Thank you Vallum, for suggesting that I try this and for the digital publication. No pain, no gain. Sometimes pain and little gain…But I did it! That much I can be proud of. (insert apology here for saying I’m adding a video without following through…)
And now that I’ve written this post I find that I am not able to add a video to my post. So I will send it separately on Facebook, even though the process was excruciating.
Probably someone knows the trick to inserting a video into a blog post. All I know is that I will not be giving any workshops on how to do it. Not yet, anyway.
claudia radmore 