Poetry and Music, Sister Arts Allied

Poetry infuses words with aspects of the other arts’concrete poetry makes use of visual arts techniques, and music is everywhere in poetry, in the words themselves, the rhythm, rhyme and meter of spoken poetry, and in the setting of poems to music, the integration of poetry with its sister art. In the poetry news items we’ve seen this year, there are poets and musicians collaborating everywhere—a great flowering of musical poetry and poetic music. Here are just a few examples:

from UpSurge! Jazz Poetry Ensemble in Oakland, California:
First Annual Bay Area JazzPoetry Festival
“The great poet T.S. Eliot wrote ‘April is the cruelest month.’ But this year in Berkeley it will be the coolest month! Jazz Appreciation Month (JAM) and National Poetry Month (NPM) have married and their offspring is the First Annual Bay Area JazzPoetry Festival. The event takes place on Friday, April 27, 7:00 pm at Berkeley’s venerable Hillside Club.” The lineup of poetry/jazz collaborators includes New York City alto saxophone sensation Saco Yasuma paired with New York poet Golda Solomon, Bay area poet Avotcja performing with her band Modupue (“Mow-dew-pway”—voted Jazz Group of The Year 2005 by the West Coast Blues Hall of Fame), Berkeley’s revered Adam David Miller working with classically trained cellist Gael Alcock, world beat band COPUS (“part jazz, part classical, cerebral and sexy... the love child of Jack Kerouac and Grace Jones,” says Music Connection Magazine), and UpSurge, “with their unique fusion of eclectic jazz and courageous poetry that reaches deep into your soul.”

from the Winston-Salem Journal:
‥Words and Music: Joint production is an adaptation of epic poem about the Civil War,” by Ken Keuffel
“John Brown’s Body, Stephen Vincent Benet’s epic poem, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1929. It is regarded as one of the most vivid, accurate accounts of the Civil War ever written.” The Little Theatre of Winston-Salem and the Piedmont Chamber Singers are presenting a “reader’s theater” version of the poem—not a play production, but a reading of the poem by the actors in collaboration with the singers, who will provide the soundtrack by performing a “score [by Fenno Heath] that does everything from evoking the moans of captured slaves on a ship to transforming lines of poetry into ballads and spirituals.”

from Atlantic Center for the Arts in Florida:
Master Artists-in-Residence Program
ACA offers a program of three-week residencies specifically designed to foster interdisciplinary artistic collaboration. Each session has three master artists of different disciplines, who select talented, emerging artists to participate as associates. “During the residency, artists participate in informal sessions with their group, collaborate on projects, and work independently on their own projects. The relaxed atmosphere and unstructured program provide considerable time for artistic regeneration and creation.” This year, the master artists include such poets as Marie Ponsot, Alice Notley, Michael Burkard and Cornelius Eady.

Related articles:
Listen to the woodlark’s song: “Lullula” (2006)
Jazz & poetry on the road together in Copenhagen, Amsterdam & London (2005)
Are songs poetry? (2004)
Poetry + music, an inspired collaboration (2004)
Caught in the Act, The making of a live poetry + music CD, by Whitman McGowan (2004)
Ngoma: Entering the Dreamtime with Music and Poetry (2002)