In my research I’ve been using the term ‘Sound-Rich poetry’ and I have a statement of what that is:
Sound-rich poetry is fully aware of itself as an indissoluble union of speech and writing working along a spectrum, with sound as its life force and to which every aspect of the poem refers back. Sound-rich poetry has traces of music in the written form which works as a visual representation, or notation, of sound matter, and traces of song in its use of speech sound matter as material, as well as traces of song in fully realised vocal performances of that sound matter. My description of sound-rich poetry is based in a distinct way of working with sound through the musicality of language and structure, and through using the human voice as instrument. A vital form, continuously finding new sounds, structures and vocalisations, sound-rich poetry demonstrates awareness of, and draws on, developments in contemporary music and sound art practices. I’ve been using this statement to write a more detailed description and bring in examples to show what I mean by ‘sound-rich poetry’. But if you can get tongue-tied on paper that’s what seems to keep happening so I’ve shifted over to my blog to see if the informality of writing for that helps me to get from 'rambling around' to a detailed description. Below is an unedited excerpt from my first rambling around! I’ll begin with the first sentence and unpack that. Sound-rich poetry is fully aware of itself as an indissoluble union of speech and writing working along a spectrum, with sound as its life force and to which every aspect of the poem refers back. I started with this diagram shows the spectrum of the indissoluble union of speech and writing that sound-rich poetry is fully aware of itself as being: voice as instrument & musicality of verbal noise......sound poetry.....(speech-sound-writing).....visual poetry......visual noise visual ‘silence‘ verbal ‘silence’ sound art visual art song music Unpack, ‘an indissoluble union of speech and writing’ . . . And it’s here that I start stuttering and stop. Why can’t I explain this any further. Is it that I’m not convinced that that diagram is showing a spectrum of ‘an indissoluble union of speech and writing’ and that I even doubt the whole structure I’m giving to my description and suddenly think I should have started with examples of sound-rich poetry - Hopkins, Dylan Thomas, Finnegans Wake, Chaucer, early Greek poetry (according to Pound as I can’t, but would love to be able to, read Greek). Is it that I think I can (or should be able to) write this off the top of my head and when I find I can’t I stop dead. (I go and put the washing I’ve put in the machine to spin.) The fragmentation that I think (in my previous blog post) comes from how I’ve had to sometimes manage study time around work also comes in to how I write - or the conditions - when I am at home - all those daily goings on around which interrupt. I managed to do my BA and MA and still do all the stuff at home I’ve always done. The degree of thought needed here when I apply it makes me forget what time it is, have I got something out for tea, has it started raining and I’ve got two lines of washing out . . . And perhaps it’s that kind of scattiness I’m not used to submitting to! Bringing myself back to sound-rich poetry then. Sound-rich poetry has a distinct way of working with sound through the musicality of language and structure. This can be heard, and felt, in the language materials, the sound patterning and rhythm in the poetry of Hopkins, Thomas, Bunting. But in sound-rich poetry every aspects of the poem refers back to sound. Language is not sound alone, it is sense, movements of meaning and it has visual aspects. Sound is the driving energy of sound-rich poetry but it works with sense and the visual. Sometimes sound becomes noisy, sometimes it becomes silent and the visual becomes noisy instead, or there is a movement of sense which grabs the attention. Sound behaves differently, not uniformly, using all its resources. This is illustrated by the poetry of Geraldine Monk, Bill Griffiths and Maggie O’ Sullivan. Their poetry is aware of sound and concrete poetry in the way sound and the visual work together. Rather, than explore sound poetry, concrete poetry and sound concrete as separate concerns their poetry moves between these: A vital form, continuously finding new sounds, structures and vocalisations, sound-rich poetry demonstrates awareness of, and draws on, developments in contemporary music and sound art practices. To circle back - Sound-rich poetry is fully aware of itself as an indissoluble union of speech and writing working along a spectrum, with sound as its life force and to which every aspect of the poem refers back. As ‘an indissoluble union’ speech and writing can’t be separated so we can’t have speech without writing in sound-rich poetry. They work together along a spectrum, how, and what does this spectrum consist of? At the two extreme points of this spectrum speech becomes louder more noisy until it is verbal noise while writing recedes to reach a vanishing point of invisibility. Conversely, at the other extreme point of the spectrum speech becomes muted until it recedes into silence while at the same time the visual becomes more eye catching, more messy until it takes over the senses as visual noise. Isn’t this saying that sound-rich poetry encompasses sound and concrete poetry and everything in between? Does it bring certain conditions of these together in variable combinations and in search of new sounds and structures? I come back to review the whole 'ramble' to salvage and revise - including that diagram.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
LinksGeraldine Monk Archives
October 2017
|