Introducing Digitally Produced Audio Poetry
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Poet Mark Goodwin talks about the digital revolution in poetry, and introduces some excellent examples of poetry in audio.
Definition: Digitally Produced Audio Poetry (or DPAP) is a kind of performance poetry that utilises digitally recorded, digitally manipulated and digitally generated background ambience and musical accompaniment. It is more often designed to be listened to through headphones. It differs distinctly from work produced by artists like Scroobius Pip in that the poetry content can be described as page-poetry that has been lifted into air to be heard. In some cases this poetry can be ‘difficult’ but attempts are made to make it more immediately accessible through its ‘musicality’ rather than its ‘meaning’.
For some years now I’ve been making straight forward but high fidelity recordings of myself reading poetry outdoors. The emphasis was always on clear reading and clear background ambience recorded in the moment – these recordings were not at all produced or manipulated in a studio environment. At the time I had no idea that I was actually heading towards becoming a maker of what I now call ‘digitally produced audio poetry.’
About a year ago I bought myself some sound-editing software. It was pretty fancy and rather professional, and very much aimed at music production and sound engineering. I started to wonder if I’d made a mistake buying such a complex and intimidating program – it had a huge range of musical instruments, synthesisers and audio filters, and was surely not suitable for a mere poet.
However, as I began dabbling with the astounding range of high quality sound output I became engrossed. As I explored different instruments and voice filters I realised that I was re-engaging with an aptitude for sound I had developed as a child. I remembered that I used to spend hours playing around with a small keyboard synthesiser.
It didn’t take long for an inevitable idea to occur – why not try expanding recordings of my poems by generating background ambience and ‘musical’ accompaniment?
The work that I’ve produced so far ranges from the comically disturbing and bizarre through to more gentle and serious walking-through-landscape pieces. At the moment what they have in common is narrative drive. I know that this kind of digital production can work with poems with no narrative drive, and I have already played around with this a little, but for now I mostly tend to choose poems that have someone telling someone about a series of events.
I’ve tried very hard to make sure that all the background sounds and musical elements are subservient to the spoken poetry (with greater and lesser degrees of success). I’ve had to learn to make my diction absolutely crisp, to make sure each consonant is fully pronounced, otherwise there is little chance of the listener picking up the words from amongst sometimes quite complicated soundscapes. I’ve obviously utilised a range of digital instruments, but I’ve also made use of high quality recordings of real world sounds, I’ve sampled online recordings, I’ve used loops, and I’ve also incorporated Nikki Clayton’s voice (my favourite example of this is Song of Shoes which consists my voice and Nikki Clayton’s only; although her singing is built up into a choir of voices spread over a number of different tracks).
I now have a problem – where do I send this stuff? (Any ideas will be gratefully received!) I’ve surfed the internet standing on my sore ears and as yet I’ve found very little out there that is quite like the stuff I’m producing (check David Stephens and poet Heather Taylor ). I’ve had some work put up online by London Poetry Systems, who are very interested in various digital ways of presenting poetry . A brilliant and very nice digital audio artist by the name of Augustine Leudar spotted my work on LPS and then invited me to submit to his experimental music website through-the-looking-glass , and bless him he then broadcast some of my work on his radio programme via Soundart Radio 102.5 FM, down in Devon. Jonathon Taylor of Crystal Clear Creators suggested Radio Wildfire to me – and I’m grateful that this very new online station has turned out to be very keen on my work. I’ve had a DPAPoem put up online in America with NoBoarders Poetry Radio.
At first that little list above doesn’t sound too bad, but really it’s very little. Perhaps I need to surf harder! However, I’ve realised that the best way to solve my problem of failing to find more places to air my wares is to encourage others to also make Digitally Produced Audio Poetry (or DPAP as Damien Walter has recently christened it).
You don’t actually need a lot of fancy kit to play this game. It can be done with most computers and a basic freeware audio editing suite like Audacity. All it needs is a love of sound and a willingness to experiment. So, please please poets play with noize – and perhaps we might get people listening to poetry who otherwise might not.
Some of my work (or rather play!) is online here: http://soundcloud.com/kramawoodgin
Related articles
- The Poetry Foundation: Is Rap Poetry? (huffingtonpost.com)
- Poetry, the Creative Process and Mental Illness (bbc.co.uk)
- Inge Laird: Poet who was a guiding light of New Departures publications and the Poetry Olympics (independent.co.uk)
