PEMBROKE, NH – For decades, critics have been making the claim that “poetry is dead,” gone the way of the dinosaurs and dial-up, obsolete, relegated to a unit in high school English class that students approach with the same enthusiasm they have for dental work.
While for many, this may be the case, for others the fine art is still very much alive and breathing. And maybe poetry hasn’t died, it simply evolved beyond its analog form on the printed page to merge with the technologies of the modern world.
Sayeth Rob Azevedo, the gregarious radio show host of “Granite State of Mind” and co-owner of Pembroke City Limits in Suncook, a man who has spent his life doggedly promoting all things artistic in Southern New Hampshire, and who recently released his first spoken word album titled “Motionless on the Side of the Road”: “There’s no validity to saying that poetry is dead. It might not be as popular as it was once, but it lives on. There are poets everywhere.”
“Motionless on the Side of the Road” contains seven poems/tracks and weighs in at slightly under eight minutes. It is free to download or listen to on all major music platforms. Azevedo calls the album a labor of love, not something he is interested in monetizing.
“It was the same thinking that I have with everything else I do that doesn’t make money,” said Azevedo. “I do it strictly out of a need to fulfill myself, to keep alive and pursue those things that mean so much to me—poetry and words and music.”
Azevedo reads his original poetry pulled from his two published collections, which he wrote during the pandemic—“Turning on the Wasp” and “Don’t Order the Calamari.”
“Motionless on the Side of the Road” also includes original music and audio produced and mixed by musician Eric Ober, the co-founder of the popular local band, The Rippin’ E Brakes, at Wrongtown Studio in Concord.
The process was “very much a collaboration,” said Azevedo. “Eric created a musical landscape based on how I read the poems. He was really easy to work with,” he said.
For Ober, who has used Azevedo’s spoken word poetry on the last two Rippin’ E Brakes albums, the process of producing an album with someone who is not a musician was a “great” experience and a unique collaborative effort.
“For the most part Rob would come down to Wrongtown with a couple poems, and I’d just have him riff,” said Ober, who has been playing in bands in the area for the past 25 years. “If you know Rob, just letting him cook is definitely the way to get the best results. We would record the vocals, and then I’d have Rob tell me any ideas on the soundscapes, or feelings he wanted to convey with the accompaniment. Once I had the vocals and input from Rob, I’d just try and let the poem tell me what it needed.”
For anyone familiar with Azevedo’s writing, the poems in “Motionless on the Side of the Road” are rife with his signature grittiness, the people from each piece seeming sprung from a Charles Bukowski book. In fact, one of the pieces, “Broken Boils,” placed second in a Bukowski poetry contest.
The subjects and speakers in these poems are misfits and degenerates, homeless and toothless and broken. When choosing the poems, Azevedo said that he deliberately avoided the self-indulgence and solipsism found in so much poetry.
“I picked poems that didn’t have anything to do with myself, introspection or loneliness. At 56 years old, I couldn’t be more bored with myself these days,” said Azevedo. “Poetry doesn’t have to be so drippy and downtrodden. It can have life to it. It doesn’t have to be focused on misery or broken love.”
As for future projects, Azevedo said that the final phase will be to attempt to have the poems animated. “Animation will be the last piece of shit that I’ll throw against the wall and see if it sticks,” he said.
You can listen to “Motionless on the Side of the Road” on Spotify, Amazon Music or YouTube (included below).
You can check out Eric Ober and The Rippin’ E Brakes on any online music platform as well. Ober will also be playing alongside Dusty Gray in and around the Concord-area.