Poetry, Music and Sound Art: Recent Medial Correlations / Lyrik, Musik und Klangkunst: Neuere mediale Konstellationen
June 20-22, 2024
Conception and organization: Rebecka Dürr, M.A., Kira Henkel, M.A. and Vadim Keylin, PhD (SP2)
The third international and interdisciplinary conference of the ERC project “Poetry in the Digital Age” on the topic “Poetry, Music and Sound Art: Recent Medial Correlations” will take place on June 20-22, 2024, at the Warburg-Haus in Hamburg.
Poetry and music have been closely intertwined since ancient times – a relationship reflected in the very term “lyric” being derived from “lyre”, a musical instrument. While the modern era has been largely dominated by print poetry, the “secondary orality” of audiovisual media and the “tertiary orality” of digital culture have brought about a resurgence of diverse oral and musicalized poetic forms. They span the range from recent avant-garde transformations of the traditional genres like the art song, to pop and rap lyrics, whose ever-increasing prominence demands an expanded concept of the poetic, to sound-based art forms that exist fully outside of music – such as sound installations or soundwalks – and offer fundamentally new possibilities for sonic settings of poetry. At the same time, the popularity of new oral poetry formats such as spoken word has brought renewed attention to the musicality of poetic speech and the role of vocal stylings in the performance and perception of poetry. The international and interdisciplinary conference Poetry, Music and Sound Art: Recent Medial Correlations thus aims to explore how poetry is represented in musical and sonic forms in the digital age.
The conference is organised into two tracks, reflecting the reciprocal relationship between poetry and sound/music. Track 1 explores musicality inherent to current poetry: the ways sound and music are present in poetic texts, be it as an organising principle (through rhythm, intonation or form), or as subject matter. Conversely, Track 2 is dedicated to the various musical or sonic settings of poetry in the digital age: from contemporary art songs, to rap and experimental spoken word, to poetic sound installations.
CfP “Poetry, Music and Sound Art: Recent Medial Correlations” (PDF)