Arts & Crafts now available

Arts & Crafts is now available for download at my website: www.jeffstumpo.com/stage.html.

There are two missing files - the video essay "Collaboration" will be uploaded this weekend. Tim Weaver's version of "ADD TV" will follow whenever he's done with it.

Please feel free to share this with anyone - email, torrent, put on CD, whatever. It's a free album.

Why free? Because I can, because I think I ought to, and because it will help me get exposure.

As a graduate student, I have access to free recording equipment, though I myself am not a great videographer (you'll easily be able to tell who did professional recording and when I just set up a camera myself). That means that it cost me nothing but time to put this album together. Jeff Morris, Danny Yeager, and Janet McCann helped out with recording equipment/space. Tim Weaver videoed the Bryan slam team at NPS2007, and Poetry Slam, Inc. allowed me to use that footage gratis. My friend Carl is hosting the files on his website, which is a huge bonus. Buck, Byron, Stephen, Travis, and Logen all let me use their likenesses/voices for free. With all that in mind, I'm able to put these recordings on the web for "nothing."

I'm not releasing this album to make myself out to be an expert in performance poetry, but I do want to help explain a few things about the genre. Based on the fact that "ADD TV" and "There will be no reinvention of the wheel" are being taught in university classrooms, I can (without a great deal of vanity) say that I've done a few things right. I want to unbox those for curious poets and people interested in poetry. It's a happy obligation.

The last reason is not entirely cynical. I haven't been a touring poet. I don't have great exposure on the national scene, except as part of the Bryan team in 2007 and for a foray into the top 10 in Famecast.com's poetry contest a while back. I would love to get more gigs, especially at universities. I'm far more interesting in person than on video, and I can work a classroom as well as a stage. If you're a student and you like what you see and hear, press your professors to bring me in. I'm not that expensive anyway :-)

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If you like "ADD TV" and are willing, drop by www.bookhabit.com, register, and vote for that poem before December 7. If I'm at the top of the stack by the end of that day, it'll be $500 in my pocket.

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For those of you near Bryan-College Station, this Sunday will be my last Mic Check. I'll be back in April (I'm teaching a two-day workshop in performance at the Poetry at Round Top Festival - think about registering), but this will be the last time I perform in a while. Nothing fancy, but it's as close as I'll get to a send-off.