2026 National Poetry Month, Day 23 Sound-Poetry

This 1923 cover is for About That (Про это), a poem by Russian Vladimir Mayakovsky written during the self-imposed two-months "exile" after a row with Lilya Brik, the woman featured on the cover. Her expression is somewhat akin to mine on this topic.


NPM 2026, Day 23 Sound-poetry

Hoo boy.

Sound-poetry, it's vocal and often abstract. (Reminds me of scary adults "speaking in tongues" in my youth, at church.) It's been around for some time but its experimentation seemed to have gained intensity beginning with the 50s and 60s beat poets, dadaism, and the onset of affordable tape recording technologies.

If you have any thoughts and special appreciation of this genre, I'm sure many who read this hope you'll comment.

Feel free to create and share an original poem. Or tell an anecdote. Find a connection with an existing poem you know and share that. Or post a link to music, film, essay, book.

NPM 2026, Day 23 Sound-Poetry, rabbit holes filled with video links with sound as would be expected...

And what a rabbit hole it has been! I watched so much of it because it was not previously in my wheel house and it was strange. (Be glad I paired down the shared links here considerably.) Yet, some of it is quite appealing.

What is Sound Poetry? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPkTX1jVUqU
The Youtube channel creator from the UK, Pete the Temp, who himself is experimental in his poetry and music, explains, "...sound poetry, in the words of Hannah Silva *, makes language strange. And in doing so it temporarily alters human consciousness in the tradition of shamanic chanting...going beyond language to evoke, to change the brain waves and the frequency...using the voice that most ancient of human instruments to alter human consciousness. Sound poetry disrupts it disfigures it, deranges language. It goes beyond it completely." Hannah Silva is a contemporary sound poet performer.

UnSightly's Sound Poetry https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDOpfr0P_40
Now that you know what it is, or an idea of what to expect, here is a great introduction to the wide variety of Sound-Poetry in a 17 minute sequence of poems. Highly recommend if you are interested to take a short dive into the breadth of the genre.

"Professor" Stanley Unwin (1911-2002) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UJZF5iRhNg
Lighter fare! A commentor on Facebook, an apparent fan, described British Unwin as "Flowersy brewmaster. Tricklus down the throocus warms the cockley of the heartload." Give him a whirl in the link above, a bit of gobbledygook from the master of it. A poet? Well, maybe not precisely but dang, he made me laugh and fits in the vein of Sound-Poetry.

Rike Scheffler Interview: Poetry as a Performance https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Grce9u9c5LE
Here's one I could really feel and love. German Scheffler has a beautiful voice and lot of intentions to communicate are in her performance work. In the interview she explains her art and its aspects of language and experience.

Sound Poetry - Is this Art ? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoZMWvND2Qs
Hate the question. But love the video. I believe it might be taken from the 1982 Ron Mann documentary, Poetry in Motion. Another film now on my list, features 24 North American poets performing their art (available on Amazon Prime Video, possibly elsewhere.)

Interestingly, this is an area of poetry where I did not come across a preponderance of US poets, a lot of Canadians, though. Maybe the U.S. is less keen because many of our politicians are doubling as Sound-Poets, speaking in tongues, forked tongues, double-speak, nonsense. But I digress...

For more Sound-poets, see the Poetry Foundation's search results for "Sound Poetry." https://www.poetryfoundation.org/search?query=sound%20poetry

Did you know the Poetry Foundation also has podcasts? I didn't. Here's one "Gone Is the Word as Word: A Discussion of Bob Cobbing's Portrait of Robin Crozier" https://www.poetryfoundation.org/audio/76749/gone-is-the-word-as-word-a-discussi... I plan to go back to it and listen, and also seek out other podcasts now that I know they are there.

The closest I'll probably ever come to this genre...

Machine Chatter
--Debi Cates

Fridge has a smooth light hum,
a gentle giant
lets me know it's keeping
my cilantro bundle safe.

AC clicks on and off,
a braggart, attention-seeker
telling me often it has
expensive tastes.

Cell phone dings this way,
that way, all day, no matter
how much I hold it, coddle it.
The youngest and spoiled child.

Box fan is homely,
but steady, loyal,
my dearest night time friend
drones its lullaby.

My dog and I, we hear the machines.
But listen most to our footsteps around,
to the little verbal endearments
we chatter, between the living.

No Words

All the sounds
there are no words for —
are music

that's why I cry
listening to an Italian opera
only understanding English.

that's why I get goosebumps
witnessing the piano movement;
Clair de lune

That's why my heart
is filled with joy
whenever I hear your voice —

no matter what you say.

tonjae 04/23/26

>4 TonjaE: Lovely in every way...❤️

Your appreciation for music has a lot of breadth. Eminem and Italian opera. I love it.

I look forward to diving into this: my immediate thought upon reading >1 DebiCates: was, "Oh, would cut-up fit here?" thinking of Burroughs and Gysin and various experimental music techniques using word soundbites. Word collage. But I'm not sure cut-up fits, looking forward to figuring that out.

Bah!
--Debi Cates

bah bah humbug
poo-poo and poppycock
oh me, oh my, oh brother
sis boom....bah!

>5 DebiCates: Thank you :) I love to go to the opera!
I hope I get to see an Eminem concert one day too. Less likely, but I haven't given up on it yet.

>6 elenchus: I did think of Burroughs and those cut up poems. Did he ever recite them and did they record them, I wonder?

I figure it's definitely a dada influence thing going on in both the cut ups and sound poetry. It's about removing the linguistic logical sense, leaving just the either words or sounds, stripped of the "meaning," down to something primal.

What do you think? I look forward to your thoughts if you care to share as you figure it out. :)

As I understand cut-up, they didn't strip down below memes or even words, it was more about mashing together complete words & phrases. So in that sense, less breaking down of the inherent meaning at word level, more about breaking down the sentence-level meaning or overall narrative, and letting other meanings emerge from the juxtapositions.

Burroughs did a lot of cut-up using magnetic tape, so the result was an audio recording, but he didn't record a recitation of a cut-up poem, so much as he spliced together pieces of audio tape (randomly "cut-in" without hearing where he was cutting) and then replayed the result. The beginning and end words could be truncated, but the words in between were intact.

The original idea was cutting up words on paper and rearranging them. He could have done that and then recorded himself reciting them, and he did that to the extent he gave readings of his completed texts which were built that way.

>10 elenchus: Ah, I see. That finding emerged meanings makes it different than some of the "pure" Sound Poetry I listened to. Of course, even gibberish guttural utterances can evoke a response, a primal meaning, but that is unlike the Burrough's juxtaposed intention as you describe.

I kept thinking of something as I was listening to much of the Sound Poetry. I wonder if this will be before your time: have you ever heard The Firesign Theatre? It was a formative experience (ha) for me in the early 70s. Digging and mellowing out with friends to the fresh vinyl album, as of yet unscratched, I Think We're All Bozos on the Bus, and having my tender mind blown, that and the accompanying, er, herb.

I'm a bozo. Want to give my nose a squeeze?

Hm. Maybe you had to have been there.

You know you've moved on and gotten older when you can't listen to more than the first few minutes. Just isn't the same when heard in 2026... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmWFrMq3qNY and without "MaryJane" who I lost contact with long ago.

Spish spash
Blatter and clatter
Roundydown all over again

Upsydaisy,
Hello Miss Maisy
How are your tiggles and togs?

Splenified and fentified
It’s a womzerous day to die!

>13 Another_Bibliomane: Bravo! I giggled with delight all the way to the end, and then I laughed. Any day might be the womzerous day.

I never really "took" to this kind of poetry as I researched it. I even recently listened to a 30 minute podcast on The Poetry Foundation website, a panel of sound poetry affectionados, and even Jaap Blonk (a rather famous tireless sound poet) where they discussed the work of a pioneer sound poet. I was looking for some insight into what I was missing.

"Gone Is the Word as Word: A Discussion of Bob Cobbing's "Portrait of Robin Crozier"
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/audio/76749/gone-is-the-word-as-word-a-discussi...

I picked up on just a few ways to appreciate the form, but really, it's didn't convince me that it will ever become my thing.