Kevin: I write about my family, and my street, and my home.
Kevin sharing “Painted Session”, the clip is incomplete...
She can’t paint without taking her clothes off and painting...
…Now she has a blue belly
You’ve heard of the containers to wash out with a hose
She licks them out, seriously comparing the tastes of red, blue, and yellow
I remind her that if she mixes colors all she will have in the end is muddy brown
She nods like a wise monkey and disregards me
I have a blue demon, blue armed, rolling blue, blue hair here in the yard
I hose her back to something like my child
I’m calm, distant, middle aged, the color barely showing in my face
Andres: How has poetry changed your life?
Kevin: Poetry changed my life by introducing me to other poets. Other poets became close friends and we were able to share our poems.
Salome: How has poetry made you a better person?
Kevin: That’s a very good question. I don’t think poetry has made me a better person. I think poetry could have made me a worse person that I might have otherwise have been. I don’t think you’d ever write poetry to make yourself a better person, but it does make me more of a person. It makes me more aware of the things that are happening around me and I don’t know if that makes me better but it makes my life very full and very interesting.
Salome: When I write poetry I feel like I’m relaxed, it helps me express what I feel.
Kevin: Yes it does, and also when I write poetry I forget about time. I just forget where I am and forget about time passing, and hours can go by and it seems like a few minutes, but I don’t know if that makes me a better person, maybe drawing is like that for you too.
Salome: Sometimes I don’t know why I draw, I just like it.
Kevin: Yeah, it’s exactly like that for poets with poetry. You are lucky that you’ve got something that you can do in that way, so keep doing it. Good luck.
Pablo: There no seasons in Colombia it is just sunny. We are close to the equator and close to the equator there are no seasons.
Kevin: Is there a lot of forest and jungle in Colombia?
Pablo: Yes there is the Amazon. And we are in the Andes mountains. … Do you write rhyming poems or free verse poems?
Kevin: I mostly write free verse. Free verse means that you write the poem in lines, but the lines don’t rhyme, at least not all the time. I cannot find the poem that rhymes right now, but, sometimes I do but not very often.
Sara: Do you like poetry or do you feel forced?
Kevin: ...Writing poems is what I would do all the time if I could. It is the only thing that I really feel comfortable doing. And I think it’s because my mind is a little bit messy and I cannot keep on topic very easily, and poems let me do that. Poems let you drift around in your mind, and poems let you be a little bit messy in your thinking, so poetry is the only thing I’m capable of.
Kevin: Hello Gabriel, have you been falling out of trees?
Gabriel: I was playing on the table and I fell.
Kevin: Were you playing on the table?
Gabriel: Yes... ...Did you get inspired from another poet? If so, who, and why?
Kevin: Thank you Gabriel. Did you make up that question or did someone give it to you?
voices: I did. Everybody.
Kevin: I’ve been inpsired by many poets. One of them is Pablo Neruda, do you know him?
Gabriel: No.
Kevin: Pablo Nerudo wrote a book called, just before he died, he died in 1973, he wrote a book called “The Book of Questions” and I’d like you to ask your teachers to buy that book and review those poems because they are very magical. Make sure that Chris goes out and buys Pablo Neruda’s book of questions, and make sure that he reads them to you, in English and in Spanish.
Isabela: Is the poetry you write an expression of your imagination?
Kevin: That is another good question. Yes it is. Last year I wrote a book of paragraphs, do you know what a paragraph is? It’s about half a page of writing. And all of those paragraphs I wrote as soon as I woke up in the morning. Sometimes they were about my dreams, and sometimes they just popped into my head. And I wrote about fifty or sixty pages of those paragraphs last year and it was published as a book called “Radar”. So yeah, whatever comes into my head or out of my head I try to write down. And I guess you could call that my imagination. Do you write poetry?
Isbela: Yeah, in my class, not in my house but in my class I do.
Kevin: That’s good Isabela, do you write it in Engish or in Spanish?
Isabela: In English.
Kevin: Hmm, that’s very impressive.
Rachel: Isabela has been to Australia and has a cousin in Australia.
Kevin: Where is your cousin in Australia?
Isabela: Melbourne.
Kevin: Yes, that’s where I live. Do you know what suburb she lives in?
Isabela: No.
Kevin: Are you going to visit her one day?
Isabela: Yeah, I’ve been there.
Kevin: Have you? What do you remember about Melbourne?
Isabela: I don’t remember anything because when I went there I was so little.
Kevin: So you’ll have to go again. Tell your parents tonight that you have to go again. And you could even come visit me in Brunswick, in Melbourne, with your parents, and we could have a cup of coffee... Why is that funny? In Melbourne everyone drinks coffee.
Camila: Hi, I’m Camila.
Kevin: Camila? What a lovely ribbon.
Camila: What would be the name of your last poem to ever write?
Kevin: Gee... What would be the name of it? I think the name of the last poem that I ever write will be “Goodbye”.
Camila: And why?
Kevin: Because I’ve loved being here. I love being alive and I love being in Melbourne, but I would probably also love living in Colombia. And that’s what poets do, poets like to say something before they leave, so I would say goodbye and I would say a few other things about what I loved about being alive.
Camila: Oh, I love your ideas.
Kevin: That’s good. Good luck with your writing.
Kevin: Hello Mr. Hoodie. What’s your name?
Alejandro: Alejandro.
Kevin: Alejaaaandro. What is the question?
Alejandro: When you were a kid what did you want to be?
Kevin: When I was a kid that was a long time ago, that was sixteen years ago. When I was a kid I wanted to be an adult. I didn’t really know. I think I wanted to be a writer, but mostly what I wanted to do was be an adult and have plenty of time to read books. And my idea was that I wouldn’t have to do anymore homework. I wouldn’t have to go to school anymore if I was an adult, and I would be able to lie around and read books, but it hasn’t turned out quite that way.
Alejandro: So you really like to read?
Kevin: I really love to read. And I came from a family of nine children. How many children are in your family, Alejandro.
Alejandro: My sister and me.
Kevin: Only two? What a little family. When we went for drives we would all squeeze into our car. We had a tiny car so we would all be squeezed in, and I would squeeze myself in with a book. And I would just read and read and read while the car was driving. Sometimes at night I would take a torch under the blankets and read my book under the blankets at night with a torch.
Alejandro: Cool. And in the car you didn’t get dizzy when you were reading?
Kevin: No, no. I trained myself to read in the car.
Ellen: I’m Ellen.
Kevin: What’s that logo on your shirt Ellen?
Ellen: CNG, Colegio Nueva Granada. The school logo.
Kevin: How do you say your town’s name is it Bogota?
Ellen: Bogota. And so, what is your favorite poem you have written and why?
Kevin: My favorite poem and why... oh dear, I should have prepared something for this should I? I’ll just read the... I’ll read you my favorite line, and it’s something my mother said to me, and in fact it’s something my mother said to me many times, and my favorite line is, “My mother says I popped out like a champagne cork.” And why, because I think that I probably did pop out like a champagne cork and I think it’s a lovely way to enter the world. And I love my mother having that memory about my birth.
Pablo: Does your family affect your poetry?
Kevin: Well you know, I’ve had two families in my life. First I was a child in a family and I was a child with nine children in a family, and it was very noisy, there were lots of arguments, lots of pushing people around and running around and no privacy, and the only way I could be by myself was to stick my head in a book. So yes, my family turned me into a book reader. And then, as an adult I had another family. I have two children, I have a daughter named Sophie and I have a son named Ralph, and I like writing about them. So they have also helped me be a writer. I think the other thing that happens and you’ll discover this when you become a parent, you’ll discover that you become more of a feeling person when you are a parent. Your feelings come out much more, and that is important to a poet, to know about their feelings and to feel their feelings. So my second family has helped me to be more feeling.
Natalia: Do you know any of your poems by memory?
Kevin: There is a very simple answer to that question. No. I have a very bad memory and I apologize for that. I have to read everything I have written over and over again because I haven’t memorized them. That’s pretty bad isn’t it for a poet. Do you know poems by heart?
Natalia: No.
Kevin: So we should both memorize something.
Antonia: Have you studied poetry all your life?
Kevin: Not really, no. I didn’t even know what poetry was until I was about sixteen or seventeen. And then I fell in love with it. But I was reading lots of novels and reading lots of short stories, and reading, well I was reading everything I could read. I was reading advertising signs on shops, I was reading labels on clothing. Whatever I could find to read I read. And maybe some of that was poetry I don’t know. But I realized I liked poetry when I was a teenager. And I think that is a pretty common theme. I think lots of teenagers find that they like poetry for a while. You looking forward to being a teenager?
Antonia: Yes.
Kevin: Make sure you read some poetry while you are a teenager.
Antonia: Ok, thank you.
No comments:
Post a Comment