Phase Four -- Sound Poetry

Steve McCaffery, for the catalogue to the 1978 International Festival of Sound Poetry in Toronto, divided sound poetry into three phases -- that roughly divide as follows: the tribal chanting liturgical phase, the modernist teleological attempt to recover said liturgy, and the post-Henry Chopin investment in technology to externalize and transcend the human body (which all sounds very Marshall McLuhan). The Four Horsemen, while chronologically third phase, have a distinctly second phase element in their investigation of the full expressive range of predenotative forms: grunts, howls, shrieks, and etc.



Tonight at Revival, for the Coach House Book launch, I saw further evidence of a fourth phase of sound poetry. ang.rawlings closed the night with a stellar performance of sound poetry based on her new book with two other women (whose names I will track down). What separates this kind of sound poetry from the three phases mapped out above is the choreographic and performative consciousness. Whereas each of the three phases above ultimately resolve into a negotiation between an isolated self and their experience of the world (either controlling the gods with prayer, attempting to uncover the lost/root integrity of the world, or else pioneering into new space), the performative sound poetry begins conscious of itself existing within a discursive context -- is aware of its audience and is not hostile to its audience.

This is not a postmodern trick of complicated contrivance intended to disappoint and outsmart its audience ('Fooled ya -- ya really thought that was a 'real' murder in this postmodern detective story didn't you? well, that's just the hegemony of the masterplot for ya isn't it? Ya've only yaself to blame.'). Inviting, challenging, inspiring, and provoking. Fluid and dynamic, yet controlled and sharply focused. It is a new level of professionalization of sound poetry -- seen in Christian Bök's new sound work and in Björk Gudmundsdóttir's most recent album, which features (amongst others) Canada's own Tanya Tagaq.

Culturally rich, intellectually savvy, and consummately performed: I haven't heard too much of this new kind of work, and I certainly haven't heard enough. I'm definitely on the look-out for more of this kind of work. I expect, at the least, ang will be developing her "three" minute performance tonight into a longer show -- something to look forward to.