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 explores the reciprocal relationship between poetry and sound/music. It investigates 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. At the same time, it considers the musicality inherent to current poetry: the ways sound and music are present in poetic texts and their performances in both form and content.
Conference program
Venue: Warburg-Haus, Heilwigstraße 116
Thursday 20.06.2024
14.00
Welcome and Introduction by Prof. Dr. Claudia Benthien, Vadim Keylin und Kira Henkel
Panel 1: Oral Poetry between Tradition and Innovation [EN]
14.30
Gardy Stein (Hamburg): Farafina Goes Spotify: From Griot Oral Traditions to Multimodal Representations of Contemporary West African Music and Languages >Abstract (PDF)
15.15
Rachel Bolle (Vienna): Words that Sound like a Bass Line: Low Frequencies and a Poetic of Musicality >Abstract (PDF)
Coffee break
Panel 2: Poetic References in Music – Musical References in Poetry [DE]
16.30
Gregor Herzfeld (Regensburg): Flow like Poe: Lit-Hop zwischen Dichtungstheorie und digitaler Pädagogik >Abstract (PDF)
17.15
Beata Kornatowska (Poznań): Chopin in der neuesten polnischen Lyrik: Tradition und Neuinterpretation im digitalen Zeitalter >Abstract (PDF)
20.30 Lecture-performance
Jakob Schweppenhäuser (Aarhus): EYE AM DISAPPEARING. Sounding a Dark Anthropofugality [EN]
Institute for Historic Musicology, Neue Rabenstraße 13, Room 1002 >Abstract (PDF)
Friday, 21.06.2024
Panel 3: Musical Settings of Poetry in the Digital Age [DE]
09.30
Kira Henkel (Hamburg): Zur musikalischen Spracharbeit in zeitgenössischen Liedkompositionen: Eres Holz, Sich einstellender Sinn (2011) >Abstract (PDF)
10.15
Susanne Kogler (Graz): Zur Funktion der Dichtung im zeitgenössischen Musikschaffen >Abstract (PDF)
Coffee break
Panel 4: Sonic Sites of Poetry [EN]
11.30
Holger Schulze (Copenhagen): Affective Situated Listening in Digital Poetic Sound Works: Memory Loops (2008) and Audio.Space.Machine (2019) >Abstract (PDF)
12.15
Birgitte Stougaard Pedersen (Aarhus): Attuning in to Situated Poetry Reading: The East Village Poetry Walk [EN] >Abstract (PDF)
Lunch break
14.00
Zoë Skoulding (Bangor): The Sound of Contagion: Poetry and Community in Language is a Virus [EN] >Abstract (PDF)
Panel 5: Ecocritical perspectives in musical Spoken Word [EN]
14.45 Uhr
Alison Maggart (Austin, TX): Listening Through the Light: A Posthumanist Ecofeminist Interpretation of Bioluminescent Baby (2019) >Abstract (PDF)
Coffee break
16.00
Cornelia Gräbner (Lancaster): Emergence and Immersion: Water, Music, Song and Sound on Estuary (2017) >Abstract (PDF)
16.45
Jacob Kingsbury Downs (Oxford) and Nicola Dibben (Sheffield): Intermedial Environmental Aesthetics in the Music of Erland Cooper >Abstract (PDF)
Saturday, 22.06.2024
Panel 6: Musicality of Poets’ Voices [EN/DE]
09.30
Juliana Hodkinson (Aarhus): Ecstatic Reading >Abstract (PDF)
10.15
Valentina Colonna (Granada): How Do the Voices of Spanish Poets Sound? Voices of Spanish Poets: A Project for the Experimental Study of Poetry Reading >Abstract (PDF)
Coffee break
11.30
Frieder von Ammon (München): "How can I escape this?" Aufbegehren mit dem Gedicht: Rike Schefflers 'Loop-Lyrik' >Abstract (PDF)
12.15
Concluding remarks
Attending the conference is free of charge. To register, please contact Vadim Keylin(vadim.keylin"AT"uni-hamburg.de) per e-mail.
CfP “Poetry, Music and Sound Art: Recent Medial Correlations” (PDF)