what's a sound song? and who's paul dutton?
"I’ve got lots of poems that incorporate words and sounds. And of course, all words can be sounds, and are exactly that, once they’re said out loud."
-Paul Dutton in interview with Emily Booth and Spencer in 2014
Paul Dutton was a sound singer and multiartist, best known for his visual and performance poetry. This webpage focuses on his method of creating language backwards, where syntax follows sound to create meaning, as opposed to "proper" syntax being the language master by which thought and commnunication are ruled.
His work, and the work of other contemporary sound poets, argues that language structures need not be entertained as a high tower guarded by the dragon-King of England. That Babel is actually a playground where we may all vacation.
In the study of linguistics, semantics may determine meaning, but through phonetics, phonology, and pragmatics, we are able to fully synthesize communication. Sound poetry puts phonetics and phonology to the forefront of attention, and asks listeners if they can still understand. Writers such as Paul Dutton, who took inspiration from beat poets and the Dadaist movement, worked to reshape our understanding of the historically rigid field of poetry, and made way for modern poets and noise artists to continue the practise of decolonizing artistic language.
It is simple to find Dutton's digital footprint, including this mysterious line from his archived League of Canadian Poets' profile: Special workshop available: "Poetry for people who hate poetry."
In the liner notes of 1970s Four Horsemen records, Dutton says this about sound poetry experience:
"A Four Horsemen reading is a unique and whole experience. Its nature is subtly determined by the emotional and acoustic ambience of the immediate setting. The group takes charge of the physical space, builds rapport with the audience and funnels the energy of the event into and out of a vocal tornado that is always arresting and sometimes overpowering. There is sound at the border of sense and sense at the border of sound, words torn into shreiks and squawks, paragraphs woven into a fabric of rhythmic grunts and heart-piercing yowls. Moments of freewheeling and raucous improvisation alternate with tightly orchestrated overlaps and ensembles. Now the mood is primitive, almost brutal ... now it modulates to a soft and delicate poignancy ... again it shifts to parody, self-parody or broad humour. Through it all there is an air of excitement and an uninhibited revelry not just in language but in all the capacities of the human voice."
~ CitizenFreak.com
example work
- Typewriter visual poetry: Plastic Typewriter
- Solo Soundsinging, 2000: Mouth Pieces
- Group Soundsinging, 2004: Five Men Singing
- Improv Jazz: CCMC
