A link to a pedagogy paper (on using multi-voice in the Classroom)

Whale road Review published my pedagogy paper about Teaching how to write multi-voice poetry (for students and educators) in their Spring issue. Published April 1 2017. Please have a look:

a link to a pedagogy paper

http://www.whaleroadreview.com/mcgowan/

An interactive play about domestic abuse

My mate Paul HD, an interactive play about domestic abuse

Please try to perform this play with me now!

THE MULTI-VOICE POETRY CHALLENGE.

Just give a credit to the author (me) and please do not use poem as part of an event that exploits animals or humans. Then perform this poem to rapturous crowds. Then, post to you tube.

Two versions of this multi-voice poem are given very different interpretations by the two different acting and poetry groups below.

Many Voices (a multi-voice poem)

Author Ashby McGowan

Performed by

Kelsey Amelotte,

Ainslie De Sousa,

Jamie Lester,

Zunaira Munir, and

Manon van Mil

of 

Queen's University, Faculty of Education

 Kingston, ON, Canada,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpLCnGoNsKs

Many Voices Poem

Produced by Rachel Jury (Artistic Director conFAB)

Written by: Ashby McGowan

Acting Director: Iwona Glowinska

Film Director: Pete Hastie

Cast:

Ashby McGowan

Berta Cussó

Jessica Phillippi

Miriam Sarah Doren

Robert Przekwas

http://youtu.be/ym3r-Rh4w5M

Many voices POEM written by Ashby McGowan (Timed at 2 minutes and 20 seconds.) 
Any acting or poetry  groups are welcome to use and post to You Tube (just a credit to the author and please not used for any event exploiting animals or humans). 
Postings at:    http://youtube/ym3r-Rh4w5M 
And at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpLCnGoNsKs 
The poem is multi-voice so lines at the same height get read at the same time. If there are dots it means that there are words not spoken-I use this when someone carries on speaking the final parts of someone else’s words. 
Performers have to sometimes complement the other performers’ words but they sometimes have to “fight” for their own words. See the multi-voice film on you tube. 
Timing needs to be exact or the poem doesn’t work. Lots of rehearsal needed. Exact timing comes with lots of rehearsal. The most difficult part of the poem is when someone carries on speaking words spoken by someone else. This looks great (for an audience) but is very difficult to do and cannot be rehearsed on one’s own. It is useful to have a Director to direct the actors or poets. Try to make the film as good quality as possible. 
Usually, all performers face front and do not look to each other for cues-but use your imagination. 
Audiences appreciate the difficulty of the multi-voice. (Hopefully they go, “Wow!”) 
The third part (Destiny) is basically a single voice poem with four other voices supporting the rhythm. There is a slight pause between the last two lines of the Destiny part.

There's a rhythm

Misunderstandings

 

I know a lot of people go through this scenario at the end of a relationship. Is there a way back through Counselling or something else? I hope so. [Try: http://www.relate.org.uk/ ] But I think that the fact that this stage has been reached, must be addressed by both people in the relationship. And never accept violence!

 

Speaker 1                                             Speaker 2

 

                                                      You arrived as a part of an alien landing

                                                      Bringing gifts of hate and misunderstanding

                                                      Your words are empty, your promises broken

                                                      Your mouth full of lies, waiting to be spoken

 

Once I loved you, but now we are strangers

All we have is distrust and unspoken dangers

Your kindness distorted, your beauties are shaded

We sleep apart, even lust has faded

 

                                                      Each evening we sit, as time drains away

                                                      Living in silence, each night and each day

                                                      We can’t even party, at the end of the week

                                                      Two people, once lovers, who can’t even speak

 

“Did you get the food OK tonight?”             

                                                     “Do you think I am stupid? Of course I did”

“Don’t raise your voice at me!”                            

                                                     “You’re the one that is shouting”

 

We don’t……………                                         …………don’t want to fight

But we play this game………                              ……………each night

Nothing that we can do

Time to say,

                                                      “It’s through?”

 

 

 

DESTINY a multi-voice film

Chromatic Voices 2 explore the theme of: Destiny

SAVING A MULTI-VOICE POEM USING THE“PRINT SCREEN” COMMAND.

SAVING A MULTI-VOICE POEM USING THE“PRINT SCREEN” COMMAND.

This takes up a bit of memory but I am trying it out to see how it works. Peace is a 4 part multi-voice poem. I have a version on rich text Microsoft Word that is eight point Lucida Console (a monospace font). I have this poem on a couple of my sites already (as html) but have not yet tried this way of saving the poem.

I view the poem on the file and zoom in until the poem fills the screen. I then do a print screen command (on my PC this is “Ctrl” and “Print Scrn” keys at the same time). I open a new Microsoft word file and paste in the file. I click on the screen shot illustration to pick it then: Save As Picture. Save this as a png (portable network graphics) photo file. This is a good quality format. I have then clicked on this file (to pick it) and Opened With [an option given] Serif PhotoPlus X5. I cropped this till only the poem and none of the extraneous bits are showing. I save this as a PNG file (but there are other options too). I will try to load this onto my web site and see how it looks. This is easy to do but I cannot see how I can do it for a two page poem (i.e. two screen shots).
I had to choose google chrome for my browser before the file would add.

Ashby

LOVING YOU

[This poem contains a few swear words.

I have used asterisks in these words

but when performed obviously the word is performed as intended.

This is a performance Poem for two (very over the top) Voices]



              LOVING YOU

Voice 1                                          Voice 2

Love you                                       …………….
……………..                                     Love you   

I love you                                      …………………
………….                                         I love you
I love you                                      ……………..
…………..                                        I love you
I love you                                      I love you
I love you                                      I love you
I                                                     ………..
………………                                    Love
You                                                …….
………………                                    I love you!
I love you lots and lots                  ……………..
…………………                                 I love you more than life itself
I love you more                             ..........
than anything else                         ……………………….
………………………                           I love you more than the stars 
…………………………….                    love the sky  
I love you more than the               ………………………………
Sea loves the shore                      ………………………………
…………………………..                      I love you more than anyone has 
………………………….                       ever loved anyone else
I love you more than                     ......................
anyone has                                    …………………………….
ever loved anyone else                 …………………………
……………………………                      I love you more than that
And I love you                                ........................
much more than that!                     ……………………….. 
……………………………..                    I love you the most!
No you don’t                                  …………………
…………………………..                       I do
Don’t                                              …..
………………………………                   Do!
You only love me when                  …………………
you want something                      ……………….. 
…………………………….                     Rubbish!
You used to love me,                      …………………..
but now you’re only                       …………………
Nice to me when you’re                 ………………….
drunk and you’re randy                  ……………………..
…………………………………..              You Ba***rd!
You Bas***rd!                                 ………………….
You F***ing Ba***rd!                      You F***ing Ba***rd!
I love it when you talk dirty,           ……………..
Say some more                              ……………………
………………………                            I really do love you, you sweet 
…………………………                         And lovely Ba***rd 
Ohhh! Darling, I love you!                Ohhh! Darling, I love you!  

How to use Web Editors

There are a few reasons why you use a web editor to write material for your website and don't rely on using an ordinary text package like Microsoft Word. As one example, a package like Word will place its own formatting onto your writing which can mess up things when you go to insert it into your website. If you have to use Word then Save As "Rich Text" (which will get rid of some of the formatting you don't want) before you Paste it into your site. Some people paste their Word writings into a Web Editor and then paste that into their website. I am writing as a beginner in html and I feel that is still a useful viewpoint to write from e.g. I genuinely know the difficulties that other beginners suffer in getting their writings published onto their website. As regards multi-voice poetry, there seems to be two ways of adding your writings to your website. One is to use preformatted text tags and monospace fonts. The other is to use html and possibly CSS and make up from two to six columns of text (using Div tags). You can cut and paste the html structure from one of my previous articles in WordPress. If you are good at html and CSS then you can probably make up the html structure yourself. The html would be written in an html editor. As would the preformatted text tag variant. HTML does not recognise more than one white space at a time. It does not recognise more than one line break at a time. It does not wrap text to the next line when you come to the end of a line. And it doesn't recognise tabs. Using preformatted Text: When you use the preformatted text tag before a piece of writing and a end preformatted text tag after the end, then you will have a piece of writing where all the white spaces and line breaks are kept. You need to use a mono spaced Font because ordinary Fonts have different widths for different letters and for different punctuation. If you use a monospaced Font every space, letter, and punctuation mark will be the same width. This is what you need. Courier is not an attractive font and I use Lucida Console (which I am using just now). But there are many monospaced fonts to choose from (Including a Courier New, and Andalel Mono). So you would use-

<p><!DOCTYPE html></p>
<p><html></p>
<p><head></p>
<p><title>usingpretags</title></p>
<p></head></p>
<p><body></p>
<p><pre></p>
<p>your text here</p>
<p></pre></p>
<p></body></p>
<p></html></p>





Another difficulty -for me- with using code is that I am doing two things with my multi-voice websites. The first is to show my multi-voice poems to you. The second is to teach you how to place your own multi-voice poems onto your own website. Here I show you the code that I use to prepare my poems for my site. However, putting code onto a site means the site tries to turn the code into a poem. To stop this and let you see the code behind the poem-the code has to be "wrapped" in a particular type of protective code that will stop it being changed from html (or CSS).
When downloading a web editor make sure you do so from a trusted site. I have used the first Notepad (version 1) but found it not at all user friendly. I usually use Microsoft Expression Web 4. This is user friendly and gives you an Edit html mode and a Design mode (which shows you what it thinks a Browser will display). There is also a Preview Browser mode which allows you to take the code into a browser to check it more accurately than in Design mode. I believe that this package is now free for Download. Dreamweaver is the best known web editor package. It is similar in aims to Microsoft Expression Web 4. I have not tried it and cannot comment on it. It is not free. To try out other packages (to know which to recommend), I Googled "freeware web editor" and "free html editor". I got about thirty names. Most were not free and were only on limited trial offer. Some of those that remained are partial versions of full price packages (which obviously the makers want you to buy). I never downloaded any that were for expert web Developers. I tried out these eleven that were free and that I could easily download (I had trouble downloading some others but that may have simply been my lack of expertise): NoteTab Light, Website X5 Free, PageBreeze 5, Lauyan TOWeb V6, TextMorph28, WDL Website Builder 4, Notepad2, Alleycode HTML Editor, Blue Griffon, Coffee Cup Free HTML Editor, and EditPad Lite 7 (I wrote the main part of the article using EditPad Lite 7,than pasted this into CoffeeCup Free html editor to re-do in html). It is worth at least trying out a Free Text Editor instead of using Microsoft Word. Here is a beginner's guide to five free Text Editors designed for writing for the Web (I could not say that any were, excellent): Edit Pad lite 7: Very basic. Has a preview in browser mode (but no html mode). You write text that goes straight into your website. There is no spell check though. Text Morph: Very basic. Can also show HTML in html VIEW mode. But you cannot edit the html. Text goes straight into your website. Not user friendly. Note Tab light: Very basic. Not user friendly. Lauyan TOWEB: Is a text editor but is mainly for making complete websites. Worth trying if you are hosting your site as well as writing for it. Not for me. Incomedia Website X5 Free: A text editor as part of a build an entire website package. Extremely basic. Not for me.
Here are six html editors. I recommend that you if at all possible try to learn how to use an html editor! A few seem excellent but need to be tried out by you: Notpad 2: Not user friendly. Not for me. I think this is aimed at experts. Pagebreeze 5: Looks good. Has a visual WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) view and html editor. Also has a preview browser view. Blue Griffon: Looks good. Has a WYSIWYG view mode and an html editor Coffee Cup Free HTML Editor: Looks good. Has a split preview mode (to see html code and WYSIWYG). Can preview in browser. WDL Website builder 4: Looks good. Has an html code view and a WYSIWYG view. Has a preview in browser view. Alleycode HTML Editor: Looks ok. A bit basic. Has a split preview mode (to see html code and WYSIWYG). Also has a preview browser view. When I first started to try putting multi-voice poetry into my WordPress site I tried the Visual Editor and used Microsoft Word as a text editor. This took a great deal of time and was never completely accurate. Eventually my WordPress site could take up to four columns using html coding given in a previous article on my WordPress site. But WordPress could not cope with five or six columns where the text was very small. My Blogger website has only once failed to correctly take the html I have entered into that site. I recommend that you pick one of the four best HTML free editors mentioned above. Get to know how to use it. You might even enjoy using it. I use WordPress and Blogger for my multi-voice writings. WordPress does not seem to suit all types of multi-voice. Also, I have read (on a poetry blog) that Blogger may be on the way out. I hope this is not so! But it means that I have had to look for another free website host. Blogger has no ads. So far I have had few ads on WordPress. I couldn't find a new website without the possibility of ads being there at some point. Again, a couple of times I had thought I had found a free website host only for my account to change from Free to Premium (paid) meaning I had to cancel that site. The most suitable free site looks good though. I have started a multi-voice site on, Yola. It is Free and you have a Free mark on your site which is good. I will keep you updated. My Yola site is: multi-voicepoetry.yolasite.com
Addendum. To give you an idea of the difficulties you get doing simple things in html (not trying to put you off using it though!) I know that different browsers react differently to the same bit of html. In the above article I used the correct html to "wrap" the source code of a bit of html I wanted to show you. This is a very basic thing. It worked fine in Yola. I found that using WordPress, I had to change the "wrapping" code. I needed to search Forum's in WordPress to find out how to do this.  If I can get it working, I will use it in my WordPress site.
In Blogger, the "wrapping" code did not work at all. There is a fix but it seems very difficult. If I can get it working I will use it on my Blogger site.

AMNESTY

The performance poem AMNESTY, is meant to be read aloud by six people.

Each verse commences when the person reading that verse knows the previous speaker

is about to speak the trigger phrase, which is in italics at the end of the previous verse

(both people read the trigger phrase at the same time).

The readings should pass through the group and then back to the beginning (I will)

to then pass through another cycle (two cycles should be enough to avoid reader and audience fatigue).

Titles of each verse can be carried by the speaker on A3 card. Speakers on the left (of the page) dressed in white.

“Figure in Black” and “Prisoner” do read at the same time: it is meant to be a bit chaotic.






                                      AMNESTY



[Amnesty Member]

I will do what I can do
For you bear more than you can take.
I will hold a candle for you,
Like a star, high in the sky


[Prisoner]                                                      [Figure in Black]
                                                  
High in the sky, yet caught in the bars,                        High in the sky, and under the sea,
A waxing moon bleeds cold light through the damp air            Death comes to all, no one is free
Splashes of white fall on my hands, light up my chair,          And guns have a price, you can buy them from me
And the tight-clenched page, with the words that you wrote



[Condemned to Die]

The words that you wrote, are prayers filled with hope
But my future, “they” tell me, is tied up with rope.
A chance to forgive, a chance to cry
And no one to judge, and no one to die


[Victim of Domestic Abuse]

And no one to die, a chance to be free 
Not a wife, not a lover, a chance to be me
To walk down the street and no-one stares
In this world of dreams there is someone who cares


[Child Soldier]

Someone who cares, reaches out through the night
When I shake and I turn on the light.
I will let the bad dreams end,
For I have, at last, found a friend.

ADDING HTML TO YOUR MULTI-VOICE WEBSITE

To write multi-voice poetry for your website you have to –in my opinion – write it in html. It has been almost impossible for me to get the words in a complicated multi-voice poem to fit where I want it to without using html to put everything exactly where I want it.

Having said the above I have yet to read a book on html which deals with putting complicated text onto a hosted site (like WordPress or Blogger). I am a beginner at html but I do know that html does not in practise always do what you think it is going to do. Browsers, limited screen size, and the theme of your site may change what html wants to say. I have read 20 books on html, CSS, and on building websites but I am genuinely a total beginner. Web books seem to either spend all their time taking you on a tour of pretty website themes. Or they go in the other direction and talk about writing up your own websites from scratch. There is none I have read that I can recommend.

When you cut and paste your code your site does not see white space or page breaks or tabs. That is why you have to mark everything with tags in html.

To get your html seen by people. You have to firstly write it in your editor. Notepad is free and comes in two different versions. I use Microsoft Expression Web 4 which you pay for but it is excellent. Whatever editor you pick (and there are a few) you need to stick to it to get to know it. You secondly have to get your html to work on your website. Thirdly you have to have it translated (I think that is a fair word to use) by a browser. Then lastly it gets displayed on a screen (which could be any size).

The Infiword WordPress theme is free and is said to be html friendly.  It is produced by the Zurb Foundation. It also does a wide screen format. I have asked Infiword for more information re its suitability for multi-voice poetry.

I quite often tour sites looking for a theme with a wide screen. I am still looking for a free WordPress.com one that can take CSS in a poetry post without causing conflicts.

I have also tried putting html only (no CSS) poetry onto my WordPress site but even then it does not always work. I have spent an awful lot of time looking at different themes and at suggestions for different themes. None of which have worked for me. I have looked at WordPress forums and help websites but none deal with what I am trying to do i.e. put lots of html coded columns into a post (or if they do, I have tried them and they don’t work).

To try and get up to six columns of text on a page you usually need width.  So, find a theme that allows you full width of the screen.

Luckily monitors are wider than they are taller. This helps. They are landscape mode. When I write most multi-voice poems I have the page set to landscape mode instead of portrait mode. I write my first version in Microsoft Word. But if I am pasting into an editor for eventually posting on my site I then Save As, Rich Text Format. Websites accept this format better than most others.

When using your website theme make sure you set preferences to make your site as wide as possible whilst still ensuring that it will be seen on different size monitors. I just presume that I cannot write material that will show on a small screen.

On your theme make sure you don’t have borders taking up space.

On your site, make sure you have set your margins to left and right as near to the edge as you can. All these things need to be tried out on other monitors than yours- if you get the chance.

What works in one browser make not work on another.  What fits on one screen won’t necessarily fit on another. Some editors allow you to preview what different browsers see (e.g. Microsoft Expression Web 4).

I have worked for many years with the – I think –best multi-voice group in the World. But no publisher has been interested in commissioning me to write a book about the subject. I believe that multi-voice is a new and important form of poetry.

I have always said that Multi-voice looks good on the page as well as on the stage. It is only now that quite a few new poetry magazines are starting to use my multi-voice. I think it does also look good as something visual. In the past an artist was meant to turn my multi-voice poems into paintings for a Refugee event. Unfortunately it never happened as the organiser became sick. I think that - surely -  people looking at multi-voice for the first time in the website will find it visually appealing (as well as having all the usual poetic attributes).

I had been trying to put all my text in xx small but as the expert in a previous post on my site commented, that is not always the best way. However, it does have to be smaller than usual to fit so many columns onto a page. This can be hard for those with bad eyesight to see but there is no way round this that I can think of. Many themed sites have a default of large text.

When you are posting material that you have written on Notepad or Microsoft Expression Web 4 or whatever, then you may experience the text overflowing in one of the columns. This is usually because you need to resize the columns. If you have numerous columns then in total you need to be using a bit less than 100% of the width of the page. Often I spend a lot of time changing the width of columns to fit.

It may be that you simply have too many words per line in a column. Then you have to go back and change it to fit i.e. have shorter lines.

I also have to add hundreds of break tabs to get verses of spoken text to fit each other (vertically aligned) on the page.

Sometimes I have had to fit additional text for comments at the end of the page into a table. This has been because the text wanted to join up with one of the columns. This was even though the html coding was ok. I presume there was some conflict in the browser or in the WordPress theme. A WordPress expert did try but was unable to solve this mystery for me.

When I put CSS (the language that adds additional effects and styling to html) onto a WordPress.com post in my website it does not like it. I will try finding a theme that does accept it. I will also try writing with no CSS (tried it and it didn’t work).

WordPress so far has been great for everything but some complicated multi-voice. As I understand it, WordPress themes have their own set of CSS to set the theme up. The addition of your CSS may cause (often has caused for me) conflicts where text does not fit and code gets shown on the page.

Blogger has coped with every bit of html and CSS I have posted. I use the simplest theme possible and don’t know if that makes a difference. I don’t know if a complicated theme would come with its own CSS settings that would cause conflict.

Blogger and WordPress.com are both free and both are hosted (so I don’t need to set up my own server etc.) so that is why I use these for my multi-voice sites.

Tumblr is also free and is hosted but I have not yet been able to try it out properly.

On WordPress the visual Editor is ok for prose but I need to use the text editor (the html editor) to put in complicated poetry. I have toured lots of different Forums. I have visited hosts of FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) sites but am still unsure about many of the most basic steps in adding complicated text to a site.

WHAT I DO IN PRACTISE. I have a copy of the text of the poem printed out in front of me. I then go into my files and paste into my web editor the framework for a 2, or a 3, or a 4, or a 5, or a 6 part poem.  Then below that I copy and paste the (rich text format) text for my poem. I then work from the first column to the last column on the right putting text in the right place and checking that lines in columns that should be at the same height as lines in another column are at the exact same height. My web Editor has a Design mode to check how the poem looks when the code is applied. I also once in a while check preview browser to see how it looks in my browsers (e.g. Internet Explorer 9).

Half of my time is spent on fitting in the text. The other half is adding line Breaks in html. These take the text onto the next line. Remember there is no white space in html. Sometimes I have to use ten line breaks at a time and I just cut and paste these ten at a time.

I then check all column widths are at the optimum and occasionally add in a 5% width at one column and take it off another column. Making sure it all adds up to just under 100%.

When I cut and paste the code into the html view of my website then I can see if it works or not.

Some code is seen as being out of date by different browsers and different editors. The standards are changing as to what is acceptable in html. So a lot of the code I write comes up as out of date on a web editor (when using a compatibility checker) but it will work on my site. Likewise, when you test your code in an editor you can see lots of failures but usually they are just out of date code that at the moment still works ok on websites.  There are different error messages for major faults like not using closing tags when needed (e.g. to stop a style that you have been using). Editors will check both for code errors and for html incompatibility. There is a validation site you can go to and discover the dozens of errors you have made: that are usually just code being out of date, “hopefully”. So I won’t give you that site in case you worry too much.

This sounds long and involved and sometimes just does not seem to work but when it does work there is some kind of a “Wow!” feeling. Please try and post a multi-voice poem on your own website. Start with a two column poem that you have written. And cut and paste the html code for two column multi-voice that is on my website: code for two to six columns has already been shown on my WordPress site. Below I reproduce the two column code. I hope you get the same “Wow!” feeling as me.

 

WEB 4.

THIS is from a previous post on my site. It relates to me trying again to get code to work on my multi-voice sites. I then posted my query on a Web 4 Forum

 

I use Microsoft Expression Web 4 (2010). I write multi-voice poetry which requires me to write text in up to six columns.

I write multi-voice poetry at home and after work place it into Web 4. I am a total beginner in html. I believe that web 4 uses xhtml. I have had poems work on Design mode and in preview browser mode. But then not work when placed onto a website. Sometimes the columns over run and sometimes the initial coding is left on display. Should I be using html5?

I contacted WordPress Forum and they could not help with this particular problem. I presume that when the html is placed into their text editor that it gets altered in some way. That is more or less what they told me.

So I have been using Blogger to place my multi-voice poems. I have eventually managed to get all of them working apart from the multi-voice poem I am working on now- called Roadblock.

Using similar coding-to what worked before- I get coding showing at the top of my intended web page. I also get run on from the first column putting text out of place. In web 4 the text does not seem to be too long in each line.

I have all settings on Web 4 on default. i.e. 10 left and 10 right for margins.

In Blogger I use a website with no border (to cut down on the width I need). Also, I have it near maximum width in settings.

I alter text to xx small to allow me to get in as many columns as I can.

I write poetry for the most well know multi-voice group in the World, Chromatic Voices 2.

I have tried the help user guide in web 4 but it seems to be mainly reference for those already expert in html and CSS.

If you can give me any help to enable me to get my Web 4 poems working on Blogger then I would of course credit you in my website. My website is half poetry and half help for those wanting to write multi-voice poetry for the web (there is no other site does this). I have nearly given up on placing complicated poetry onto WordPress but I still want to use Blogger.

There are a couple of poetry sites that deal with poetry and the web. They do not deal specifically with multi-voice but I sometimes keep them updated.

 

I have a multi-voice website. Web address is:

https://multivoicepoetry.wordpress.com/multi-voice-poetry-beginnings/

And at:

http://multi-voicepoetry.blogspot.co.uk/

 

 

 

THE REPLY TO MY POST (Their fix worked for my poem Roadblock: which I posted to  Blogger)

 

I enclose the Reply to my query on Microsoft Expression Web 4 Online Forum 7/7/2015. Many thanks to their expert KathyW2. (The multi-voice poem had shown great on Web 4 but changed when posted to my site)-

The font-size of your text on the page you linked is 100%. It is not determined by anything you did, it's part of the theme styling. And, since you have a block of style code displaying at the top of the page, clearly you can't simply paste an in-page style block into your post.

Your blog theme styles are not in Expression Web, so you cannot assume that what you do in EW will translate to your blog. You would need to learn how to add additional styles to your blog, or (better) use the ones it already has.

Font-size xxsmall is not something that is consistent across browsers, and is too small to read. If WordPress had really shown your text in that size, it would not have been very useful. Font sizes should be in ems or %. But in your case, you should leave them alone and let the blog theme styling do its job. The number of columns you get is not determined by the font size, but by the number of floated divs you have, and that they have widths that add up to less than 100%.

Look at the page in IE, in FireFox, and in Chrome. You'll see some differences. For Firefox and Chrome, you have a table that doesn't clear the preceding floats and sits up where your columns are. I can't tell you what causes that difference - again, you are subject to the styles in your blog theme - but you could try adding an explicit style="clear:both" to the table element.

ROADBLOCK

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RTLM Radio is with you …
it follows you the
whole time while …
you are at the road-blocks,
night and day.
… that is how RTLM Radio is …
it supports our own people.

I would also ask that
each neighbourhood
try to organize itself
to do communal work,
to clear the brush,
to search houses,
beginning with those
that are abandoned,
to search the marshes
of the area to be
sure that no inyenzi,
no cockroaches, have
slipped in to
hide themselves there...
so they should
cut the brush,
search the drains
and ditches...
put up barriers and
guard them, choosing
reliable people
to do this,
who have what they need...
so that
nothing can escape them.




Fight them with
the weapons
that you have at hand.
You have arrows,
you have spears...
go after the enemy,
blood flows in their veins
as it does in yours.

All who try to
protect themselves
by sympathizing
with both sides,
they are traitors.
It is they who tell
a lot to the cockroaches,
to the enemy. It is they
whom we call accomplices.
They
will pay for what they have done











Hello my dear friends
and listeners,
hello to our army,
hello the whole
Rwandan population
and a particular salute
to those inhabitants
of Kigali
and elsewhere,
throughout the
whole country,
making the nightly rounds each day.

Victoria













































Nothing can escape them. The Militia are
everywhere. But, if I can get through one more road block,
I can get to the Church. I will be safe at the Church.
I pray that I may get to safety.
Oh! Please God! I am weak. I cannot
fight them.






















 Give me some time to pay you.
I gave my watch
and all my money to
the men at the last Road Block.
I have nothing left.
You have nothing
to fear from me.
I am your neighbour.
Hello my dear friends



















Hurry! Choose! I can choose to die,
or choose to die. You are
Christians. Let me visit the Church
to pray with my Pastor. Then
you can do what you like with my body.
One final request.
Let me visit the Church.

At the roadblock (1st voice)





































































You will pay for what you have done.
Come here Cockroach.
Take off your clothes so I can search
you.
Give me your money, your life.


















Each day, I have to listen to cockroaches like you begging for their lifes.
If you pay me well, and do your best to please me,
you will die from my bullet. If you are too mean to pay me,
then you will feel the well-used edge of my machete.
I have much work to do tonight.
Hurry! Choose!





Let you visit the Church?
Why? It is an open Grave. We worked hard there,
destroying Cockroaches like you. Young and old.
Men and women.
We don’t discriminate against anyone.

At the roadblock (2nd voice)





































































You will pay for what you have done.
Come here Cockroach.
Take off your clothes so I can search
you.
Give me your life, your money.







































We don’t discriminate against anyone.
All are included.
 The cruelty of the cockroaches
can be cured
only by their total extermination.

Before the Poem properly starts, all the voices (apart from Victoria) loudly chant "Pawa, Pawa" ten times. This starts as a single voice whisper but gets louder and louder as more people join in. "Pawa" means power and in this context, Hutu power. It was a chant used by the militias. The original line (which was broadcast in French) “La cruauté des Inyenzi …”can be read through once after the chant and before the English translation starts the main body of the Poem. Road Block is a Multi-voice Poem. Words / Phrases that are underlined are to be be read at the same time. So, up to three voices may be reading at the same time. The Radio Announcer part in the above Poem uses translations of the actual words used by Radio Rwanda and Radio Télévision Libre Mille-Collines during the events of 1994. Voice 1 and Voice 2 wear the black, yellow, and red neck kerchiefs and hats of the Impuzamugambi Militia. Ashby McGowan. 2008.

writing Multi-voice poetry

 

Chromatic Voices 2 Live at Seeds of Thought

(performing, Poems Against War.)

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfmbDEZPWjQ

 

link to part 2 (which contains my poem Roadblock: featured in my next post)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i12R6_wQUCo

 

            A recently filmed poem about Humanity, Equality, and Dignity.

http://youtu.be/ym3r-Rh4w5M

As you know I have been unable to post quite a few multi-voice poems onto WordPress-as the settings go astray and I see code at the top of the page. I have mainly been using Blogger with which I get no difficulties with Code.  I enclose the Reply to my query on Microsoft Expression Web 4 Online Forum 7/7/2015. Many thanks to their expert KathyW2. (The multi-voice poem had shown great on Web 4 but changed when posted to my site)-

The font-size of your text on the page you linked is 100%. It is not determined by anything you did, it's part of the theme styling. And, since you have a block of style code displaying at the top of the page, clearly you can't simply paste an in-page style block into your post.

Your blog theme styles are not in Expression Web, so you cannot assume that what you do in EW will translate to your blog. You would need to learn how to add additional styles to your blog, or (better) use the ones it already has.

Font-size xxsmall is not something that is consistent across browsers, and is too small to read. If WordPress had really shown your text in that size, it would not have been very useful. Font sizes should be in ems or %. But in your case, you should leave them alone and let the blog theme styling do its job. The number of columns you get is not determined by the font size, but by the number of floated divs you have, and that they have widths that add up to less than 100%.

Look at the page in IE, in FireFox, and in Chrome. You'll see some differences. For Firefox and Chrome, you have a table that doesn't clear the preceding floats and sits up where your columns are. I can't tell you what causes that difference - again, you are subject to the styles in your blog theme - but you could try adding an explicit style="clear:both" to the table element.

Multi-voice poetry and placing it on your website.

 

 

I posted this extract below, quite recently, on the Via Negativa site (this site deals with posts about how to write and format poetry on your website):

http://www.vianegativa.us/2010/06/how-to-format-poetry-on-the-web-an-incomplete-guide/#comment-50607

 

As an html total beginner I got a WordPress expert to help me write multi-voice in up to six columns (in my website). However, when I tried to write very small text to allow me to put text into these narrow columns then it did not work in WordPress. I tried the poems that worked in Microsoft Expressions Web 4 but none worked in WordPress. Another WordPress expert kindly gave me some code but nothing seemed to work on WordPress. I presume the WordPress text editor alters the CSS or html? Anyway, after two weeks of trying (CSS and html) I gave up and have added a new multi-voice site created on Blogger where the small text columns (using the additional WordPress coding) work fine: multi-voicepoetry.blogspot.com
Ashby

 

My multi-voice poem Ripples has just been printed as a foldout in the very fine new poetry magazine, Raum. The paper and the design are First Class. Worth looking at. Here is their website:

http://raumpoetry.com/post/121346408307/the-launch-night-was-one-of-the-best-poetry

 

 

My multi-voice poem Many Different Animals is due to be used in the Wild Issue of DUPE magazine. Their website is: http://wearedupe.tumblr.com/About

 

 

Please Share my own multi-voice site if you think it any good. I am grateful to the many websites that have already mentioned my multi-voice poetry website. Thanks to them. They are:

 

 

 

A pro-vegetarian WordPress site: https://bo.wordpress.com/tag/vegetarianism/   Website called, Year of Lamb.

 

 

A site dealing with the use of poetry in Education:

http://onnetwork.facinghistory.org/finding-your-voice-using-slam-poetry-to-explore-human-rights/

Facing Canada website. Article entitled: Finding your Voice: using slam poetry to explore human rights. I am in as a comment.

 

 

Canadian Lawyer website, Article on The poetry of human rights. In as a comment.

www.canadianlawyermag.com/992/The-poetry-of-human-rights.html

 

 

Tweetspeak website, article called: The unofficially official list of top poetry websites. In as a comment

http://www.tweetspeakpoetry.com/2012/02/29/the-unofficially-official-list-of-top-poetry-sites/                                     

 

If you like any of the multi-voice poems that I write or that Chromatic Voices 2 perform, then please try and write a two or three part multi-voice poem yourself. Or with friends rehearse and perform one of the poems on my website. I genuinely would like to see new MV poetry groups springing up around the World. Multi-voice is a technique that allows subtlety and complexity. It can be used in many different ways. Next time you are inspired to write a poem, try imagining a second or third voice and how it would take part in the poem. By take part I mean how it would be useful in terms of meaning and action. And how it would interact in terms of the voices acting for or against each other.

Consider how you would blend the voices, the actions, the meaning, and the emotions that make up this “theatrical” poem.

LIKE A MIRROR

 

The two speakers face each other up close, like looking into a mirror. To read the last line, both speakers face out to the audience.

The writing in Italics is meant to be translated into the language of the second speaker i.e. not English. There is a time line going down the page and phrases on the same line are spoken at the same time. Phrases on different lines are spoken at different times. The non-English language speaker can speak e.g. Urdu; and then the poem is repeated with another speaker speaking in another language (e.g. French) for the italic words, and then another speaker with another language. I wrote this at a time of troubles when some people in the U.K. were being discriminated against – worse than usual - because of their religion, colour, or culture.

 

 

First Speaker                            Second Speaker

 

We haven’t seen each other,              ----------------------

In years and years…                      In years and years…

I see with different eyes                 ----------------------

----------------------------              I see with different eyes

I hear with different ears                -------------------------

---------------------                     I hear with different ears

Is it better, or…                         -------------------------

-----------------                         Is it worse?

------------------                        Is it kinder?

Or is it crueller?                        --------------------

To be many                                To be many

Oh la la. Ohhh lala la.                   Oh la la. Ohhh lala la.

La la sa la                               La la sa la

Words: black, white, young, old,          Words: black, white, young, old,

Strong, weak, woman, man                  Strong, weak, woman, man

Religion or no religion                   Religion or no religion

Words seem different                      Words seem different

Emotions seem the same                     -----------------------

-----------------------------              Emotions seem the same

But we are one                             -------------------

---------------------                      But we are one

But we are one                             But we are one.

                           

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                Like a Mirror

Words for translation

Below are the words that need to be translated into other languages in order to be used as part of the multi-voice / multi-language poem, Like a Mirror.     

                          

In years and years

                          

I see with different eye

 

I hear with different ears

 

Is it worse?

 

Is it kinder

 

To be many                              

 

Words: black, white, young, old, strong, weak, woman, man

 

Religion or no religion

 

Words seem different

                                        

Emotions seem the same

                                        

But we are one.

 

 

 

 

                                LIKE A MIRROR      URDU

 

The two speakers face each other up close, like looking into a mirror. To read the last line, both speakers face out to the audience.

The writing in Italics (given above) is meant to be translated into the language of the second speaker i.e. not English. There is a time line going down the page and phrases on the same line are spoken at the same time. Phrases on different lines are spoken at different times. The non-English language speaker can speak Urdu; and then the poem is repeated with another speaker speaking in another language (e.g. French) for the italic words, and then another speaker with another language.

 

First Speaker                           Second Speaker (Urdu - phonetics)

 

We haven’t seen each other,             ----------------------

In years and years…                      Saal or saalo mey…

I see with different eyes                ----------------------

----------------------------             Mein alag ankh sey deykhta hoo

I hear with different ears               -------------------------

---------------------                    Mein alag kaan sey soonta moon

Is it better, or…                        -------------------------

-----------------                        Kya yey zyada kharab hay?

------------------                       Zyada acha hai?

Or is it crueller?                       --------------------

To be many                               Zyada

Oh la la. Ohhh lala la.                  Oh la la. Ohhh lala la.

La la sa la                              La la sa la

Words: black, white, young, old,         Lafs: kaala, soofeyd, jawan, boorha,

Strong, weak, woman, man                 Bahadoor, kamzor, aurat, admi

Religion or no religion                  Mazmab ya nahi mazhag

Words seem different                     Alag lagtey hain

Emotions seem the same                   ------------------

------------------------                 Ehsaas ek hee hain

But we are one                           -------------------

---------------------                    But we are one

Hum sub ek hain                          Hum sub ek hain.