Janet Kuypers’ “Beginning Anew” 1/7/16 poetry feature/show with live music

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    Below are writing links, video links and images from a January 7th 2017 (1/7/17, or 20170107) poetry performance of Janet Kuypers’ Austin poetry feature through “New Year, New Poems” live in Austin Texas.

    The theme of the night with other features was about poetry and messages that reflected coping with upcoming changes in the future, and Janet Kuypers covered this very explicitly in her show of all 2017 poems that talk about taking charge in your life and making YOUR future the way YOU want it to be. Her “Beginning Anew” show was also accompanied by acoustic guitar from John, and in her second poem.

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Beginning Anew chapbook

    Before the show started she also released copies to most everyone there of a chapbook of the writings she was performing in her show (in the order they were performed), and all of the pieces from this reading were also released electronically in a “Beginning Anew” chapbook, which you can download as a PDF file for free any time.

Read the poems from the show:

“only choice is to build”
“our futures”
“Evolving, Connecting and Confounding”
“optimizing your odds”

Bonus videos include 3/4ths of this show being performed as one long piece at Kick Butt Poetry: Spoken and Heard the next day.

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Janet & John in show, photo by Thom Woodruff Janet & John in show, photo by Thom Woodruff Janet & John in show, photo by Thom Woodruff

Janet Kuypers’ “Akitu” 12/3/16 poetry feature/show with live music

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    Below are writing links and video links from a November 5th 2016 (12/3/16, or 20161203) poetry performance (with costume changes for every poem reading) of Janet Kuypers’ Austin poetry feature through Expressions: Festive Seasons live in Austin Texas at the Bahá’í Center.

    Because the theme of the night with other features focused on end of the year celebrations, Janet Kuypers included new writings about annual celebrations, solstices, and even Saturnalia and New Year’s celebrations (all with live electric bass music played with a bow).

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Akitu chapbook

    Before the show started she also released copies to most everyone there of a chapbook of the writings she was performing in her show (in the order they were performed), and all of the pieces from this reading were also released electronically in a “Akitu” chapbook, which you can download as a PDF file for free any time.

Read the poems from the show:

“open flame for the celebration”
“Every Soul Celebrates”
“endings bring light”
“Everyone Celebrates Together”

You can also enjoy these bonus poems read after the show (the YouTube playlist below also includes past readings of thes bonus poems):

[tubepress mode=’playlist’ playlistValue=’PLYa-AZK78_hqHO6mr3cG7DqwlVoamGGdU’ ]

Children Of Our Age Poem By Wislawa Szymborska

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Children Of Our Age – Poem by Wislawa Szymborska
We are children of our age,

it’s a political age.

All day long, all through the night,

all affairs–yours, ours, theirs–

are political affairs.

Whether you like it or not,

your genes have a political past,

your skin, a political cast,

your eyes, a political slant.

Whatever you say reverberates,

whatever you don’t say speaks for itself.

So either way you’re talking politics.

Even when you take to the woods,

you’re taking political steps

on political grounds.

Apolitical poems are also political,

and above us shines a moon

no longer purely lunar.

To be or not to be, that is the question.

And though it troubles the digestion

it’s a question, as always, of politics.

To acquire a political meaning

you don’t even have to be human.

Raw material will do,

or protein feed, or crude oil,

or a conference table whose shape

was quarreled over for months;

Should we arbitrate life and death

at a round table or a square one?

Meanwhile, people perished,

animals died,

houses burned,

and the fields ran wild

just as in times immemorial

and less political.