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My Lost Poet this week
Mal Dewhirst
My Lost Poet this week is not so much
lost but yet to be discovered by most, despite having a well respected
international reputation.
Marcio Andre (1978- ), as I mentioned above he is a amongst other things
a sound poet, sculpting not just words but the manipulation of echoes,
reverberation and sustained waves of sound into audio vistas.
This is not music and poetry, not talking over a jazz drum and bass line.
The sounds that Marcio Andre produces often do not sooth and seduce the
ear when they start, they often differing clashing sounds which as the
piece progresses merge into an audio vista, which has all the wonder of
the earth being formed. You have to stick with them, let yourself become
accustomed to them, let you mind have time to work out what is happening
and how to respond.
A tree grows so slowly that we do not hear it and we can appreciate the
full grown beauty of it as it takes its place in the genius of the
landscape. Yet if it grew from a seed to a full grown tree in seconds,
morphing from the land, then all the sound that it makes as it grows
happens all at once and every creak and ache would rupture the air
filling it with sound as if something was being destroyed. The end
result would not be any less beautiful, still the tree, still in its
place in the landscape, but the noise would resonate and maybe change
how we view the tree.
To me Marcio-Andre does this with his sound poems, providing us with the
opportunity to stand in the landscape or enclosed space and hear things
that we would not otherwise hear or even conceive.
Marcio-Andre is the first living poet to be included in this list, he
has a significant body of work for his young age and is still developing,
experimenting and following his thoughts, it is therefore inappropriate
from me to try and encapsulate him as the poet in a few paragraphs, it
is best that you search him out for yourself, on the web and in
performance.
If you get the chance to hear Marcio-Andre sound poems live then it is
an experience not to be missed, there is a video on website (no 7) of
his performance at Night Blue Fruit at the Tin Angel, but it doesn’t
capture the electric atmosphere of actually being there, the building,
the shabby furniture and the audience were all part of the experience,
it was as if the whole performance was viewed and heard from inside the
loud-speaker, that you were not an observer/listener, but you were a
channel for the sound, a biological-amplifier that was plugged into the
sound system.
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