During his two year tenure, your new Hampshire Poet - Damian Kelly-Basher - will be writing a series of blog posts for us sharing what he has been up to, telling us his poetic plans for the future, and inviting you to get involved in poetry in Hampshire. Read on to find out what's happening in Damian's world!
In this blog, Damian looks at Sound Poetry.
Sound Poetry describes poetry that deliberately replaces the literary meaning of words with their physical sound.
From the early 1900s, female and male experimental poets from all over the world (e.g. Futurists and Dadaists) used these methods to challenge the literary rules of poetry.
Poets have continued doing this into the 21st Century.
Sound poetry doesn’t make literary sense but it isn’t meaningless. Some poets used onomatopoeic words (e.g Boom, Shhh) to express the trauma of war; others used just noises to express emotional or mental states.
Sound poems also borrow rules and structures from music or theatre performance. One of my favourites is ‘Ursonate’ written and performed as a musical score by Kurt Schwitters in the late 1920s.
But also listen to the astonishing sound poetry of late 20th Century artists such as Yoko Ono and Laurie Anderson.
Now, we have instant global access to any language, it’s harder to write a ‘sound’ poem that doesn’t accidentally have a word from another language.
Sound poems, like odes (Jan 2025 blog), can be an act of empathy and global friendship.
They remind us how every modern language is made up of words from other cultures. English is notoriously full of words from Latin, Scandinavian, French and German languages. When our languages become just sounds we realise we have a lot more in common.
Writing exercise:
Think of a topic.
Describe it vocally using sounds and noises not words.
Try and write down these sounds.
Read them out loud.
Have fun. Writing is about having fun with words.
Damian Kelly-Basher is Hampshire Poet Laureate 2024-26. The appointment of the Hampshire Poet takes place every two years and is jointly led by Winchester Poetry Festival and Hampshire Cultural Trust. The position of Hampshire Poet provides the opportunity for a Hampshire-based poet to undertake commissions, lead workshops and give readings and talks throughout the county, as well as acting as an advocate for poetry and poets.
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