Phono-Poetry
The Archive of the Now is a growing collection of experimental poetry from the UK, with digital recordings.
But recorded poetry has a long history, and so we are taking three poets from the archive back in time - just over 100 years - to be recorded onto wax cylinder and played on phonographs.
Phonography may be old, but it allows for all kinds of interesting tricks such as recording two layers on the same cylinder, and live recording and playback.
We are bringing phonography and the digital Archive together at a live event on 30 August 2013 in Brighton, UK at the Nightingale Theatre. 10 of a total of 50 tickets are available on the door if you would like to join us!
Featuring Redell Olsen, Holly Pester and Jeff Hilson - plus some other phonographic treats including poems from the Mass Observation Archive. All these poets have expertise in working with sound technology in the form and texture of their writing, so they are perfect for an experiment in phonography.
Our phonography expert is Aleksander Kolkowski whose archive Phonographies includes many contemporary musicians and sound artists, all recorded on wax cylinder to haunting effect.
What We Need
Your contribution will enable us to buy blank cylinders, pay for phonograph recording sessions, pay the poets' train fares to Brighton, and hire a venue so that the poets can perform live alongside phonograph recordings. We have already received a generous donation of £500 from Queen Mary (University of London) towards the costs of this event, and will also receive a small income from ticket sales which we will split with the venue.
We don't think that artists should perform for free, so we would like to pay the poets a small fee each to commission new work specially written for the phonograph, exploring the relationship between past, present and future vocal sounds.
Any money raised beyond our indiegogo target will be used to develop the Archive of the Now, to extend ways in which users can interact with and make use of the recordings.
Pledges are collected via the Barque Press paypal account and all money goes directly to Phono Poetry - these payments are not being used to support Barque Press.
Perks
In return for your support we will send you
- an MP3 recording of one (or all) of the poets being played back on wax cylinder (£3 to £8)
- a unique mini dictaphone tape recording plus a signed typescript of work by one of the poets (£20 - only 9 available)
- a wax cylinder recorded with one of the poets (£90 - only 6 available)
- some swarf from our recording session plus a fragment of original manuscript, in a presentation box (£250 - only 3 available)
