New Sonic Practices in Canadian Poetry (Congress, ACCUTE), Montreal
The poetry reading holds a unique place in poetic discourse; it is both textual and performative, permanent and ephemeral. Poetry readings are the key site for the dissemination of poetic works—a permanent textual object—but as performances, they add non-semantic layers such as breath, hesitation, bodily movement, and ambient sound that indicate the emotional and cognitive engagement of both reader and listener. Vocalic elements of pitch, timbre, and tempo carry supplementary, non-textual information which differ according to each poet, elements which are lost when encountering only the written word. The proliferation of centers such as Penn Sound, Ubu Web, and Spoken Web indicate the importance of preserving this work, as they seek to subvert this ephemerality by developing sound archives and repositories of work like sonic poetry.
This creative writing panel seeks submissions of sonic poetry performances, either pre-recorded or to be recorded during the session, that will serve as a discussion point for what is lost in the transition between performance to text. How might we typologize different reading styles? What is revealed when our performance contradicts the scansion of the page? How does the poet acknowledge or interact with the audience, and does this affect the experience of the poetic work? These are questions that we seek to consider through the performances of this panel.
All submissions must go through ACCUTE's online submission form; any questions about the CFP can be directed to the organizers, Kelly Baron (k.whitehead@mail.utoronto.ca) and Andrew Whiteman (a_hitema@live.concordia.ca).
https://accute.ca/accute-2023-2024-online-submission-form/
Kelly Baron