An Endangered Species - VideoPoem

tomasocarthaigh

An Endandered Species

Once upon a time a phonebox
In the days when I was young
Was the height of technology
And from where taxis were rung
Or worried mammys and daddies
By youth out upon the town
A little palace from the rain
A place of universal renown.
A place of advertisement
That would be well known all right
From Get rich quick schemes to taxi numbers
To numbers of ladies of the night
But mobile phones have killed them off
Those phone boxes once so grand
Now the phone is in our pocket
And few kiosks today stand.
There's nothing left of the olden days
Their worth we don't realise
Even the gurriers among the youth
Wont have them to vandalise!!!

pickarooney

I like the idea of the video poem, but the music in the background is really awful!
You also speak a little too quickly and flatly so the opportunity to breathe life into the words is kind of missed. Your voice doesn't modulate at all with the three exclamation marks at the end.

Regarding the poem itself, it's very good and not so good in patches. Try look at the lines where the natural flow is forced to fit the rhyming structure and try find words which would sound less contrived and still fit in with the rhythm of the poem.

The first 4 lines, for example, jump back and forth between two sentences. Ignoring the rhyming scheme, the normal sequence would be

Once upon a time in the days when I was young
A phonebox was the height of technology
from where taxis were rung

Moving 'a phonebox' to the first line is an example of sacrificing the natural flow of the language to fit the rhyme. A phone box was never the height of technology either, in fairness

I'm not a poet by any stretch of the imagination, but if I were writing it I'd concentrate more on getting a nice word flow and less on the rhymes. Silly example:

Once upon a time
in the days of my youth
A man wanting a taxi
had to head for the booth
and queue with young drinkers
whose daddies and mammies
waited and worried
at home in their jammies

tomasocarthaigh

pickarooney wrote: »

I like the idea of the video poem, but the music in the background is really awful!
You also speak a little too quickly and flatly so the opportunity to breathe life into the words is kind of missed. Your voice doesn't modulate at all with the three exclamation marks at the end.

Regarding the poem itself, it's very good and not so good in patches. Try look at the lines where the natural flow is forced to fit the rhyming structure and try find words which would sound less contrived and still fit in with the rhythm of the poem.

The first 4 lines, for example, jump back and forth between two sentences. Ignoring the rhyming scheme, the normal sequence would be

Once upon a time in the days when I was young
A phonebox was the height of technology
from where taxis were rung

Moving 'a phonebox' to the first line is an example of sacrificing the natural flow of the language to fit the rhyme. A phone box was never the height of technology either, in fairness

I'm not a poet by any stretch of the imagination, but if I were writing it I'd concentrate more on getting a nice word flow and less on the rhymes. Silly example:

Once upon a time
in the days of my youth
A man wanting a taxi
had to head for the booth
and queue with young drinkers
whose daddies and mammies
waited and worried
at home in their jammies

:oMy accent... I can do little about it... bog Offaly with a strong overlay of Longford - its my natural speech pattern.

:cool:The music is not the nicest, but is the closest discoesque music I could lay my hands on at the time!!!

:rolleyes:Booths were not the height of technology as such, but as for telephones they were as high tech as any got before the advent of the mobile!

:pac:As for your verses, a nice twist on the theme... you should try throwing together a few yourself, for fun if nothing else. You got a little something there!!!

Thanks for the feedback and the suggestions, I take them all on board, but this one will be left be as Im too lazy to redo the video!!! rotfl!:D