Transmission
© Rommi Smith BBC Artist in Residence for the Commonwealth Games 2002

Written about Transmission, an internet arts' collaboration between young people from Manchester and Zimbabwe, which works to raise awareness of sexual-health. The poem is a Villanelle. Villanelle's originate from France and are based on the repetition of two rhyme endings. The first and third lines in the first triplet are repeated through out the poem. First performed on Vanessa Kirkpatrick's Saturday morning show 1st June 2002.

We learn so much about ourselves through words
Through cyberspace, strangers share ideas
Songs and souls rub shoulders in this world

New lines meet create a unique verb
Self-esteem is birdsong to the ears
We learn so much about ourselves through words

The right of youth to be seen and heard
Illumination chases blank-faced fears
Songs and souls rub shoulders in this world

Turntable time; thirty-three and a third
Spins advice, through art to last the years
We learn so much about ourselves through words

That paint and ink change lives may sound absurd
But watercolours' truths use up spent tears
Songs and souls rub shoulders in this world

Awareness is an ever-growing bird
Two countries speak, two cultures cross frontiers
We learn so much about ourselves through words
Songs and souls rub shoulders in this world