Unwaveringly alternative, sound poetry is one of the more under-appreciated branches of literature. This might be primarily due to the fact that it escapes traditional language: words transform into sounds, and sounds become words. Behind this inversion hides a conception of language as a social practice, an idea carried the esthetic revolutions of the early twentieth-century avant-garde. It was a time of struggle against systems and dogma, starting with the rules imposed on language. Yet times have changed, and combats too. In today’s era of new technologies that format the verb, of omnipresent orality and speaking, sound poetry remains as pertinent and singular as ever.
Sound poetry is commonly defined as a form of poetry that draws on the possibilities offered by technological tools to transform the voice and sounds produced by the body by mixing them with all kinds of natural (from the real world) or artificial (made by various instruments) sounds. Above all, it is poetry that has…
