Join Bowerbird for its first event exploring sound poetry, an artistic form that bridges literary and musical composition.
As Joan La Barbara reminds us, voice is the original instrument. Even when text is simply read aloud, the prosody (the rhythm, stress, and intonation of the speech) conveys as much information, if not more, as the words themselves. As early as the 1600s, poets like Benjamin Johnshon began to see the possibility of merging text and the voice as a sound making apparatus. More recently, sound poets such as Raoul Hausmann, Christian Bök, Henri Chopin, or chris cheek, have created extremely bold texts yielding some of the most extreme forms of vocal performance.
A program for the uninitiated and the more seasoned prosodic travelers, writer and editor Danny Snelson has assembled a survey of texts, micro-lectures, and instantaneous digital publications to be performed by a cast of emerging sound poets. Testing the "catalog of effects" at play in the practice of sound poetry, this event queries a broad database of historical forms to consider potentials for the contemporary application of poetic performance at the very limits of the human voice.
Admission is FREE