In 2000 I began what I hoped would be an epic prose poem exploring the concept of love in our culture through the mythology of soul mates. While I had done much of the research (an unfinished interdisciplinary thesis on light being the core of it), I had a course list of books to read on the changing conceptions of love in Western culture but sadly lacked the funds not only for time to research and write the epic poem but even to buy the two dozen books I thought would be most helpful. So nothing more was written beyond this fragment.
And perhaps that’s all it was ever meant to be. A fragment. The fragment almost became a performance of about 8 dancers, singers and musicians in 2001, but that show collapsed at the last moment.
I was invited by Nik Beat at the suggestion of our mutual friend Mikala to read it on his Sunday afternoon radio show on Toronto’s CIUT FM in November 2000.
An old friend, Christopher Reibling, kindly and without being asked, recorded the show and gave me the tape, otherwise it'd be lost to the fires of time. :-)
And that is what I have uploaded. Because recently I resurrected this prose poem in a videopoem called, ‘Poetic of Light/ Poétique de la lumière, which I’ve uploaded to my website’s Videopoetry page along with a link to the full text of White Fire. I thought that perhaps for the one person in the next 10 years who might be interested in hearing a reading, that, rather than producing a new one, this rather charming radio show would be more fun (lol, everyone who stops by is unique and honours me by their presence!:-).
So, unique one-of-a-kind reader of prose poems/listener of poetry radio shows/watcher of YouTube videopoems, enjoy!