Reference Number:
TE2/1978/126
Sound & Syntax International Festival of Sound Poetry, Jeremy Adler, Steve McCaffery 1978
Additional Information
Performances by Jeremy Adley and Steve McCaffery of their poetry. Begins with Adler taking the stage and reading a ‘Particle Poem for a Lady Rhyming on a Postcard’ - a series of conjunctives and pauses without meaning, followed by 3 semantic poems of fairly similar form. Adler then invites Bob Cobbing to perform a sound poem with him, after which Adler does a whispered, breathy sound poem into the microphone with specific words inaudible. At this point (about 7 minutes in) Bob Cobbing, B.P. Nichol and Steve McCaffery join Adler for a 4-voice piece employing ululating, abstract vocal and non-vocal noises. At 10 minutes the tape cuts to McCaffery, who begins his section with a ‘found-sound poem’ based on a Babylonian Cuneiform text, going from unrecognisable sounds to regular speech at the end. After this he performs ‘The Precepts’ where he reads alternately from two separate sheets, one with a list of infinitive verbs, the other a list of definite nouns (eg. to [verb] the [noun]). Further performances follow, including ‘Anti-Face’ where he holds a sheet of paper up against his face, draws on it, makes sobbing sounds, eventually bites through the paper, drops it and finishes laughing maniacally. ‘Contributions to Futility’ consists of McCaffery performing various actions including rolling dice, turning the key on a music-box, hitting the floor with a hammer, sawing a piece of wood and speaking fragments of sound poetry. A couple more pieces follow, including one where he adds Italian suffixes to English words, before the tape is cut off whilst he introduced his last piece. The image quality is patchy, the camera work relatively static with a few pans and zooms.