A Little Poetry Contest: The Winner

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Sascha Cooper is our Little Poetry Contest winner.  Her poem, A Blank Canvas, is a meditation on the power of creativity in normal surroundings.  We didn’t get many poems for the contest so it only makes sense to pick a single winner.  Perhaps more poets will want to enter the next Little Poetry Contest.  But this poem would stand out in any group of poems.  Actually, I was quite surprised to receive a poem this good during the very first contest.

You can listen to the winning poem with the player above while you read it here.

A Blank Canvas

Inspiration comes from all seeing eyes.
Let the imagination run wild
With all colours that light up at night.

Outside the window looms a palace
With domes that stretch up to the sky.
Stuck in time, yet current;

Transporting me back to a time of
Princes, kings and queens.
Arabian nights coax and tempt me.

Back in the land of reality,
The box is blaring, mum is cooking
And my best friend is next to me.

The computer is on a small table
That was a shelf – makeshift, but handy.
Drink and numerous papers at my side.

White walls, sleek lines;
Carpet that’s light and not right,
Sliding doors of black and silver.

All this in a box of glass
Ready to be personalised.
A blank canvas.

Horror Podcast: Fear on Demand

Fear on Demand is an excellent horror story podcast.  Their latest offering is Room 412 by Michael Laimo.  The narrator is Gord Mackenzie.  When a man checks into a hotel during a business trip he is irritated by a constant thumping from the room next door.  What’s making that noise?  His terror mounts as the circumstances around room 412 become increasingly bizarre.

The story really had me sitting perfectly still with complete dread.

This story is not for very young listeners.

Listen to the Room 412 podcast.

Audio Poem by Walt Whitman: I Sing the Body Electric

471px-whitmaneakinsI Sing the Body Electric is a poem that celebrates the life of the body and its equal status with the soul.  Walt Whitman is probably the greatest poet in the English language since William Shakespeare.  Some might argue with this but there is no other poet who so muscularly tore the page to shreds with his wild, raging, soaring, lunatic language.  I think Shakespeare would have liked and admired this man because it is only he who is a match for Shakespeare’s fearless destruction and rebuilding of language.  I think that great poets always destroy before they create.  To read Whitman’s massive lifelong work, Leaves of Grass, is to wake up and realize that poetry is like blood exploding through your body and spraying its meanings and music out all over the city.  You cannot read Whitman and be the same as you were before reading him.  He is a shock to the system.

He lived from 1819 to 1892 and is often called the father of free verse.  His discovery of the loose free form of poetry is an astounding development that is still being worked out.  The problem for today is that Whitman still has the hardest punch and could do terrible damage to most poets alive and writing today.  It would not be a fair fight.

Here is the great I Sing the Body Electric, from Whitman’s Leaves of Grass book.

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Remember to enter a poem in our Little Poetry Contest.

Audio Story: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

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‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs’ is possibly the greatest fairy tale of them all from the Brothers Grimm. In this full 30-minute production you will hear a cast of characters, completely original orchestral music, songs, and fantastic sound effects. We tell the story in a way that is unlike any you have heard before. When we made this audio story we worked very hard for months to get it right. We made it as carefully as we would make a film. The entire production is cinematic in its scope and we think it is the most exciting story we have ever done. So turn off every distraction, dim the lights, and enjoy thirty minutes of incredible adventure.

We’d love to hear your comments and reviews of this production. Feel free to send your feedback.

In addition to listening, you can also read our complete original script for the production.

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Audio Story: A Chinese Fairy Tale

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This story is read by Alessandro Cima

This story was written in 1904, by Laurence Housman. He was from England and wrote many stories, novels and plays. This story first appeared in a book of stories called The Blue Moon.

A Chinese Fairytale tells of the young Tiki-pu who wants desperately to learn how to paint. But he is only a servant and must resort to trickery in order to learn his craft.

Duration: 00:18:33

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Audio Story: Peach Boy

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This story is read by Laral Andrews.

This is the story of young Momotaro, whose name literally means Peach Boy. The story is one of the most popular from Japanese folklore. Its theme of the unification of a people separated by hostility into an effective force for change resonates throughout history and applies to many different cultures.

More of our larger audio productions with music and sound effects can be purchased by joining our Sound Story Club for just $9.95 a year.

Duration: 00:05:57

All audio stories are Copyright © Candlelight Stories, Inc., All Rights Reserved. Do not distribute copies of our MP3 audio or video stories. They are for your personal use. If you choose to burn our MP3 stories onto a personal CD, do not make copies of the CD or distribute them to other people. Also, do not sell CDs containing our audio stories. All audio stories are copyrighted by Candlelight Stories, Inc.

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