A life on stage

Yesterday I was part of a show at the House of Literature (Litteraturhuset/Literatur Haus) here in Oslo. I read a few of my new poems. They are funny and easy to read. The audience was nice and I got more praise afterwords than I’ve ever gotten before. My old poems tend to leave people confused and full of thoughts, and people often don’t know how to respond.  These new ones are different.

Last weekend, as I anounced here on the blog in Norwegian, Peterson Toscano visited Oslo. He is a comedian, actor and performance activist (among other things). As I helped him prepare for the show on Saturday, we talked about being on stage, how things cease to be personal once they become a text or part of a show.

Almost ready for Transfabulous!

I’m very excited! This weekend will be my first trip to London. I’m invited to keep a workshop (actually a speak and reading poetry) at this fabulous festival for transart. The title of my workshop is «My body is my logo», a quotation from Framandkar.

I’ve worked on translating a lot of my poems the past few days and realize that I should have done it a long time ago. As you may have discovered; I don’t write english flawlessly… I’m doing my best. Hopefully someone will see the need to make better translations and publish some of it in english. And actually, I’m doing better at the translations than I thought I’d do originally.

My voice

Thanks to my friend Mette, I’ve been able to record some of my poems in Norwegian. She gave me a microphone for my computer, so I could install skype and talk to her for free. One of the first things I used it for, was to record some of my poems. They are now uploaded to my website http://www.tarald.net. Go directly to http://www.tarald.net/framandkar/opplesning.html Each number is a link to a reading of one poem. The numbers signify where you’ll fint the poem in my book. I guess they don’t make a lot of sense if you don’t understand Norwegian, but at least they document my voice before starting testosterone.

It’s strange how one percieve one’s own voice. I’ve always been surprised when I’ve heard recordings. It’s nothing like how it sounds in my head. OK, I know that is pretty normal. But to me, it resembles how I see my image in the mirror. I’ve always thought I looked more like a boy than a girl, and for a while I tried to cover it up with makup. Now, after realizing that I am a boy, I’ve discovered how much my self-image differs from the image others see. It’s just so strange.