mixing-editing software which is available free on the Internet.
The sound section of the UbuWeb website (UbuWeb Ongoing) is very
extensive and is an outstanding collection of sonic poetry/writing (as well
as an archive of historic sound poetry material). You can find pieces there
by most of the poets mentioned in this section. Try also the ethnopoetics
section of UbuWeb for fascinating recordings of contemporary renderings
of traditional songs and sound poems from a wide range of different
cultures.
To create a sonic poem (Exercise 1b) try some of the following strategies:
- Use parts of words (phonemes and syllables), make up your own
words, distort words and construct sounds that seem like words,
thereby emphasising the sonic properties of the words as much as their
meanings. For examples of this kind of sonic poetry see the work of
Maggie O’Sullivan, Bob Cobbing, Trevor Wishart (UK), Amanda
Stewart (Australia), Phil Dutton (Canada), and many others in Homo
Sonorus: An International Anthology of Sound Poetry (Bulatov 2001);
and also on UbuWeb: sound (UbuWeb Ongoing). Also see the work of
Canadian poet Christian Bok (republished) whose ‘Motorised Razors’
and ‘Mushroom Clouds’ (both from a longer ongoing piece called The
Cyborg Opera ) are represented on The Writing Experiment website.
These pieces use whole words, parts of words, and word- and syllable-
like sounds (as well as throat and mouth sounds). - Use repetition or permutation (see also Chapter 1) to draw attention to
the sonic aspect of the work. See the work of Brion Gysin (1962a;
1962b). See also the work of American musician and sound poet
Charles Amirkhanian whose Church Car, Version 2 (republished-a) and
Dot Bunch (republished-b) are on The Writing Experiment website.
Amirkhanian’s pieces are as much a product of technology as perform-
ance, though made in the days of analogue rather than digital
technology. Words such as ‘church car’ and ‘bang’ are recorded, cut up
and then spliced, reassembled and multitracked. Notice, for example,
how the words ‘church car’ blur into many others words such as ‘church-
yard’ or ‘cha cha’, and also into sounds which are not actual words. - Exploit the range of the voice through accentuation, dynamic and pitch
(without necessarily turning the poem into a song). Write down a
phrase and say it in many different ways. In order to do this, vary your
pitch, accentuation and dynamic. Alternatively, or in addition, make
the sound support, or even represent, the meaning. For example, Ania
Walwicz when performing her poem ‘bells’ (1989, pp. 143–5) accentu-
ates the words in a cyclic way which seems to suggest bell sounds. Try
also to exploit the range of the voice, from whispering to shouting,
Tongues, talk and technologies 219