Poetry and Performance (7) – World Poetry Day
Herzlichen Glückwunsch zum Welttag der Poesie!
An alle Dichter und Denkerinnen, Liebhaber, Selberschreiber und alle, die ohne Poesie nicht aus dem Haus gehen wollen. Mit dem Ende einer Woche voll Poesie und Performance kehren wir zum gemeinsamen Urgrund zurück und feiern mit drei bahnbrechenden Poesie-Performances das Aufkommen und die Vielfalt poetischer Performancekonzepte, ihre Weiterentwicklung, ihre internationale Sprengkraft und ihr DADA-Potenzial. Hier sind Ausschnitte aus Kurt Schwitters Ursonate gelesen vom Autor, Jaap Blonks Performance Ursonography der Schwitterschen Ursonate und Anat Picks Part 1 der tongueTrum (N’ur so nata).
World Poetry Day Congratulations!
To all poets, performers and poetry lovers! This is our final posting in a week full of poetry and performance recalling the very basis of all performative poetry: With Kurt Schwitters´ Ursonate (primordial sonata or sonata in primordial sounds), Jaap Blonk and Golan Levin performing Ursonography and Anat Picks Part 1 tongueTrum (N’ur so nata) we want to celebrate poetic performances and their further development, their international impact and their dada potential.
Listen to the whole piece performed by his son Ernst Schwitters at/ die gesamte Sonate gesprochen von seinem Sohn Ernst Schwitters auf: Kurt Schwitters Ursonate UBU
Noch mehr Versionen von Jaap Blonk auf/ more versions at Jaap Blonk Ursonate UBU
Anat Pick foto: gezett
tongueTrum (N’ur so nata) Pt. I by/von Anat Pick (Textvorlage/script at/auf lyrikline)
Auf ein neues Jahr voller Stimmen, Laute und Gedichte, die man hören muss!
To another wonderful year of sounds, voices and poems that want to be heard!
Anat Pick and
Jaap Blonk at lyrikline
Poetry and Performance (6) – Sound out loud!
Performativity is a central characteristic of sound poetry: Poetry and sound become one. Written notices are only of supportive function and help to realize the poems as sounds. Voice and body of the performers are part of the event that can be a bodily experience for both performers and audience. Sound poets are known for their extreme dedication. They scream and whisper fighting or praising the word and its acclaimed meaning.
[a playlist for World Poetry Day 2016] sound poetry
We asked sound poetry-performers Pierre Guéry, Jaap Blonk and Eirikur Örn Norddahl about their personal artistic view on performance and their experiences with it. And once more we find out, that the term performance has a wide range that differs a lot in both its theoretical understanding and its – performance!
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Bei Lautpoesie steht die Performativität der Gedichte unangefochten im Mittelpunkt: Laut und Gedicht sind eins, schriftliche Notizen dienen meist nur als behelfsmäßige Gedächtnisstützen und stehen als solche hinter der Realisierung des Gedichts im Laut zurück. Stimme und Körper der Performenden sind unmittelbar mit dem Ereignis verknüpft, das auch für das Publikum zu einer körperlichen Erfahrung werden kann. Lautpoetinnen und -poeten sind für ihre außerordentliche Präsenz, ihre Lust am Experimentieren und ihre unübertroffenen Hingabe auf der Bühne bekannt.
[a playlist for World Poetry Day 2016] sound poetry
Pierre Guéry, Jaap Blonk und Eirikur Örn Norddahl beantworten für lyrikline Fragen zu ihrem Verständnis von Performance und berichten aus ihrem Erfahrungsschatz. Die englischen Interviews werden durch Videos ergänzt, die Guéry und Norddahl in Aktion zeigen. Und Blonk? Den zeigen wir am Welttag der Poesie.
Blonk (foto: gezett), Norddahl and Guéry
What is a performance – what is not performative?
Pierre Guéry: Concerning poetry, a performance is not a simple reading. Above all it is the whole poet’s body into space creating an energetic contact with the audience. With a text of course, but with a type of text that can involve the entire being of the poet: what he means with words, for sure, but also what his body suggests, what his voice impacts. For a performance the poet cannot remain into distance with his creation – whether he’s alone or with other artists on stage. Basically, he’s got to recall the specific pulse that was inside him while writing and give it back to the audience in its nudity. He’s got to have a strong will for transmitting and sharing this pulse sincerely, not being afraid by his fragility or violence. The audience knows very well whether this happens or not, and there is no possible cheating.
What is not performative: a simple reading with a great musician or a nice video! This is not enough to call it performance, though it is very current. Poetry performance (especially what is called sound poetry), as well, is not just yelling words like a mad person! A poetic performance is not just melting different arts to give the poem a beautiful suit.
Jaap Blonk: For myself it is 100% clear if I am performing or not. It’s a matter of turning a switch from 0 to 1 and back.
In the case of most poets I have seen on stage, supposedly performing, it wasn’t so clear if they were actually doing a performance or not.
Eirikur Örn Norddahl: My idea of performance is very much connected to the idea of “live” – a recording of a performance is closer to being text, which is then only performative at the moment of writing.
How important is loudness to your work?
Pierre Guéry: Loudness is just a help and can be fun. I use it quite often and create some effects that amplify what my voice wants to give. It is only a tool in my work and I never base on it because I want to keep a certain nudity. I do not want to count on technology to find something that I don’t possess myself.
Jaap Blonk: I assume by loudness you mean volume (dynamics in musical terms). This is of eminent importance for my work. I give it the utmost care in all gradations.
Eirikur Örn Norddahl: There needs to be a framed spectrum – the spectrum doesn’t have be great, but there needs to be an upper and lower border within which the artwork functions, for there to also be a breaking point, a point where the border is pierced and/or crumbles. It can never be so loud that you cannot – through effort – still make it a little bit louder if needed. I have also often thought of the connection between loudness and power as being interesting, not only because we often see the correlation – whether it be shouting police dogs or bombs – but because loudness is also a mask for the powerless, just as silence is a mask for the powerful.
What must the audience provide?
Pierre Guéry: There is no « must »! The audience provides or not, and it provides what it provides if the poet himself provides something strong – otherwise no feedback!
Jaap Blonk: There’s nothing the audience ‘must’ provide. However, I very much appreciate it if their interest goes deeper than just attending a performance, and also stretches toward the permanent objects of art, such as books and recordings.
Eirikur Örn Norddahl: Presence. Humanity.
What was the greatest thing that happened to you onstage?
Pierre Guéry: So many great things happen all the time! The greatest thing is probably, most often, what is unexpectable – when the feedback is a total surprise (and consequently gives an unknown and new meaning to the piece that is performed).
Also when work involves another artist and when both poet and artist touch a state of grace by « making love to eachother » onstage – I mean find their own soul in the other one’s soul.
Jaap Blonk: Crossing what I had so far considered ‘the border of madness’, and finding out that the audience was not embarrassed at all, but touched by a genuine artistic utterance.
Eirikur Örn Norddahl: I don’t know if it can be considered great, but I once for a moment thought I had killed the great Jacques Roubaud with my poetry. He was sitting at the front at a show at the Days of poetry and wine in Ptuj, Slovenia, on a shaky stump of wood. When I started my show – which consisted of all sorts of weird noises and conceptually and politically motivated wisecracks – he started laughing. And he just kept laughing. When I broke into a ten minute shoutfest consisting of 17th century Icelandic zaum-nonsense he laughed so hard that he fell of his tree stump, stumbling on to the sidewalk. He was 80 at the time and half the festival panicked and got up to see if he was OK, and I still had eight minutes left of my shoutfest, looking out the corner of my eye feeling very insecure as to whether or not I had accidentally murdered one of my idols and whether or not that meant I should stop. (He was fine; and I didn’t stop).
I once had a whole platoon of finnish teen girls and horse enthusiasts chant along with one of my poems with great energy, I have had children go mad with joy, running around glowing – but I’ve also had people boo me, throw stuff at me, I have had people cry, shout, and one person even had an epileptic fit when I was on stage. And then I hadn’t even started reading yet.
The place where I write: Jaap Blonk [The Netherlands]
The Place of Jaap Blonk (photo: Rozalie Hirs)
Better late than never…
Today I took some pictures in my workspace, but I wasn’t happy with the result.
Then I remembered that I still had some pictures, taken two years ago by Rozalie Hirs (April 15, 2011).
I’m sending you one of these, along with a brand new piece, recorded today.
It’s entitled “Reading Light (for Raoul Hausmann)”.
It will appear on a new cassette with the title “Songs of little Sleep”
Jaap Blonk, Arnhem/The Netherlands
lyrikline blog 
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