Radio, Radio: Making Poetry Sound
Spoken word and film poems are on the rise, celebrated artists are working with voice, script and sound in innovative ways, and Radio 4 – the most famous talk radio station in the world – now even has an official Poet in Residence. But what are the skills needed to make poems or poetic drama for sound alone (either live radio or recording), when the performer is not entirely present? In this course, we are each others’ audience. You will make recordings with and for each other, memorise our poems as actors do, and learn to convey images and sounds that are dramatic to the ear, formalising what we’ve done into scripts. Inspired by work from sound installations by Lavinia Greenlaw for Artangel to Dylan Thomas’s original radio verse play Under Milk Wood, from spoken word shows on the radio to the inclusion of a spoken word segment in the magazine show Saturday Live, we will write new radio-ready poems and mini verse dramas sensitive to changes of pitch and tempo, mutter and oration, utilising stage directions, sound effects, and recaps for listeners tuning in late – all while never straying too far from voice and the play of voices, and always being respectful to the raw conditions of sound.
This is a private group. To join you must be a registered site member and request group membership.