My Arts and Letters

Here are a few poems from my third book of poetry, (" The Wickedness Of Flowers " follow the link to purchase) and the first one that I self published (all self pub'd) as Josie Boyce rather than under my old name. The first one is a poem that took me many years to get to 'finished', though like Walt Whitman, one of the very few 'heroes' I have, I consider all my work to be mutable, and open to later revision. It's a dreamy worded piece that speaks in those dreamy tones about my youth growing up in rural New Brunswick, specifically, Sunbury County. Here is a video, followed by the text for those who don't like videopoems (pretty much everyone based on my hits.) In The Blue South Of Sunbury County In the blue south of Sunbury County a child with cherries     smiles  spinning knives                   teeth paint screams ghosted trains within                  pi...

So it's not all poetry with me. Here are some examples of some of my better (by that I mean ones I am most happy with) videos. I make a lot of videos using stock footage from internetarchive.org . But some are made from stuff i shot myself, often of myself, as I enjoy doing it all myself very much. I think my strengths are the cutting, editing and synching of sound and video. From decades of doing a/b rolls and synching sound and video, i have a keen eye for where to drop tracks. For me making these videos is like sculpting, like crafting a poem. you cut and tweak until it becomes what it is. Here are a few of my faves from my channel on youtube This one (above) was back in the Joe Daze, and is my okayish reading of "to Be Or Not To be, mashed with some video of the Parade of Lost Souls from a few years ago. This one above is more recent, from the summer, me messing around with lensflare and my iphone This is one of my best recent efforts imho. I watch thi...

So on to my second self published book (" A Cure for Mirrors ") from my pre transition era. This book also had a nice launch, as did Like Bukowski in Drag, which i launched once at the Bar called Bukowski's, but is now The Charlatan. Bukowski's was a great for a bar venue in the late nineties, early aughties for poetry, open mics. Local legend CR Avery did some of his very first shows there, most events were run but the Late T. Paul Ste. Marie, who was the best emcee I ever worked with. Someone sorely missed in the scene. RIP Paul. I have very fond memories of those open mics, and seeing so many friends and great poets every week. Anyway, my second book, which launched at the more recently disappeared cafe "the Prophouse"... a great evening with local musicians Rodney Decroo, and Wyckham Porteous, opening up for me, they opened for ME. So humbled by that to this day. A Cure For Mirrors also is inhabited by places of the past, nostalgia. Though written...

I used to be a pretty prolific poet back in the day. I seem to have let the poetic muse slip away a bit in favour of prose, It's just how the cards have fallen. What I would like to be able to do is update my myriad of blog pages that a few years ago I had intended to update far more regularly than i currently do. A lot of my projects are big novels though that i'm not ready to share, as far as that goes, and I have been slack with writing other things. Recently though I have decided once again that i want to try and figure out how to make my sidelines become more robust and maybe even be able to pay the odd bill with them. This year I have made almost 200 dollars from my paintings and photographs. Not very much right? but I never painted before this year, or tried to sell a photo. But it is encouragement. I was a bit down putting out my last poetry book - " The Wickedness of Flowers " , but first as Josie, and not old sad Joe. And for a myriad of reasons my ch...