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Poetry Spoken Here

An online source for the finest poetry, read and performed.

January 10, 2016

Brian Laidlaw: Poet and Songwriter

by Charlie Rossiter


Brian Laidlaw, poet and songwriter.

Brian Laidlaw, poet and songwriter.

Brian Laidlaw, poet and songwriter.

Brian Laidlaw, poet and songwriter.

Brian Laidlaw, featured in the Poetry Spoken Here special program on poetry and music, is a poet and songwriter currently living in Minneapolis who began setting his songs to his music while an undergraduate at Stanford. After working seasonal jobs and touring for several years as a solo folksinger, he moved to Minneapolis for an MFA at the University of Minnesota. He received a Songwriting Consultant credit on the Grammy Award-Winning album Can You Canoe? By the Okee Dokee Brothers.

There are a lot of poets who incorporate music when performing their poems. However, Laidlaw has an unusual approach to putting poetry and music together. Rather than presenting a poem with supportive musical accompaniment, he alters the original poem to make it more effective as a song lyric. Often, when altering the poems he looks for ways to increase repetition of key ideas in order to give listeners a better opportunity to keep up with the flow of information being presented.

Brian knows that it takes conscious effort to reach excellence as both a poet and songwriter and so he keeps pushing his skills in both arenas. The product of that effort, The Stuntman, a book of poems from Milkweed Editions, comes with a companion album. Click here to listen to a sampling of music that goes with The Stuntman.  Additional songs are posted on his website. To hear him talk about his strategies, as a poet, for writing songs check out the Music and Poetry episode of the podcast.

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