Spoken Word Podcast Chambered Nautilus. Directed by Stephanie Vlahos. Words in your ear. Bringing Voice to the Spoken Word.

It’s said that if you hold a conch shell to your ear, you will hear the ocean. It contains, the vitality of ambient sound as it moves through the shell’s multiple chambers.  And, the conch shell is a horn. It amplifies the Spoken Word.

Chambered Nautilus brings voice to what matters in words that resonate in 10-minute podcasts. We feature poetry, flash fiction, rap, lyrics, unexpected moments, satire, verbal pictures lyrically documenting how we live and who we are. 

Robert Burns

Scottish-American actor Ian Buchanan gives the gift of Robert Burns‘ “A Man’s a Man for A’That”

What’s My Book About? Pt 1 and 2 – Stephanie Vlahos

For the groovy literary agent: a swinging synopsis of the book Mercury’s Wake as beat poem.

with Stephanie Vlahos and Wayne Peet Ensemble jamming on the album Blasto!

Danse Africaine – Langston Hughes

read by Bridget Graham

Los Angeles vocalist, songwriter, and multi-media performer, Bridget Graham performs “Danse Africaine” by the great Black American poet, Langston Hughes.

“Danse Africaine” is an early poem of Hughes (1901–1967). His poetry reflected on Black awareness and African roots. It explored the lyrical connection between music and poetry.

I’ve Known Rivers – Langston Hughes – Spoken Word

read by Anindo Marshall

Kenyan–American, master teacher of Dunham Technique, percussionist, and composer, Anindo Marshall, reads Langston Hughes seminal ode and witness to the history of humankind from the beginning of civilisation through the eyes of the Blacks experience. As Charlotte Stevenson wrote in the online magazine for York St John University, “Words Matter,”

“What Hughes stresses is the need for that ‘flow of human blood in human veins’, all of those voices who have remained in silence, to persevere in being heard no matter what it takes. That straightforward honesty is vital to the thoughts he shaped and put out into the world to make positive change.”

The river represents a meaningful, traumatic, and hopeful reflection.

Roi Kwabena’s Deep Obeah – Spoken Word

Celebrating the memory of the author of Deep Obeah, Dr. Roi Kwabena.

Roi Kwabena was a cultural anthropologist but not an academic. His work was done entirely outside of the walls of academia.It was a form of cultural activism that inspired others.  He was an artist, a musician, a poet, a teacher, an essayist, a researcher, and a publisher. What distinguishes Roi Kwabena .…was his combination of art and analysis, culture and politics, publication and public engagement, in the service of a committed critique of imperialism and neo-colonialism. A man from “the periphery,” he operated across the periphery and the centre. —Professor Maximilian C. Forte from Zero Anthropology

My thanks to Professor Maximilian Forte for permission to share Dr. Kwabena’s words and music, they are powerful.

Julia Fulton shares Trapped in Heaven

Actor/writer/director, Julia Fulton reads her poem, Trapped in Heaven.

“Stand up,” she said

Actor, singerGwyn Mackenzie reads a poem from the book and podcast, Mercury’s Wake.

We ARE VOCAL sees artists as thought-leaders always searching for new mediums of expression. We believe that the virtual space is a stage with an intimate engagement through soliloquys transforming into theatrical mindscapes.

Nothing can replace the visceral energy of a stage performance, being inches from a great work of art, sitting in the womb of a resonant concert hall hearing every gesture of the cellist, but…increasingly, we purchase tickets to virtual Broadway and opera, download mp4s, pore over an artist’s oeuvre on an online gallery.

We can seek to offer an alternative to a night out at the movies or a binge out on your favourite series. We offer entertainment that will make you think and a continuing relationship with art. 

From the art of the possible to art of the probable. We Are supports performers, writers and directors.

 “The Chambered Nautilus” explores themes of growth, transience, and the pursuit of knowledge. Drawing inspiration from the nautilus’s construction of its shell, the poem encourages readers to continually evolve and expand their understanding. Its use of vivid imagery and metaphor sets it apart from other works of the period, which often employed more flowery language. The poem’s structure, with its focus on the nautilus’s spiral growth and the speaker’s evolving interpretations, reflects the cyclical nature of human experience and learning. By comparing the nautilus’s journey to the quest for knowledge and enlightenment, the poem conveys the idea that growth involves shedding old ideas and embracing new perspectives.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes –
American physician, poet, professor, lecturer, and author.
Writer of the poem The Chambered Nautilus