Breaking Language Down: Taiwan Sound Poetry and its Ways of Saying

Bruno, Cosima

Abstract

This paper explores the appearance and rapid development of a genre that crosses the boundaries between art, music, drama, and literature, and that is being variously called ＂sound poetry＂ (聲音詩 shengyin shi), ＂language art＂ (語言藝術 yuyan yishu), or ＂text-sound art＂ (文本聲音藝術 wenben shengyin yishu). I argue that Taiwan sound poetry develops as an alternative genre to Chinese poetic tradition, forging a disorienting aesthetics that is disruptive of conventional ideas of artistic quality. I conceptualize this phenomenon in its unique history and politics, extrapolating some key features that include: a poetics that strives not for semantic extension or enrichment, but that radically aims at ＂semantic abjection＂; intervention in Taiwan language politics and translingual context, through its contribution to a ＂culture of the ear＂; a shift of attention from textual semantics to performance with audience/users' participation; strategic denial of a genealogy rooted in the Chinese tradition, with sound poets' pronouncements about their poetics as being an entirely Western import; double nature as local, Sinophone, and global.

Citation

Bruno, C. (2017). Breaking Language Down: Taiwan Sound Poetry and its Ways of Saying. Concentric. Literary and cultural studies, 43(2), 33-56. https://doi.org/10.6240/concentric.lit.2017.43.2.03

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Apr 5, 2017
• Online Publication Date: Oct 2, 2017
• Publication Date: Oct 2, 2017
• Deposit Date: Jul 13, 2017
• Publicly Available Date: Jul 13, 2017
• Journal: Concentric: Literary and Cultural Studies
• Print ISSN: 1729-6897
• Electronic ISSN: 1729-8792
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 43
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 33-56
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.6240/concentric.lit.2017.43.2.03