[Ann Drysdale]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82heowFXVLY

[Jesse Anger]

Ernie dropped this a few years back:

https://www.ernesthilbert.com/elegies-and-laments/

Overall imo, though, spoken poetry rarely works when set to music. It's too much, too cluttered perhaps because poetry already IS music.

I guess one may count Current 93's catalog as poetry set to music, or even Nick Cave, and Cohen. But still the words are mostly sung, not spoken.

Hip-Hop is a whole other branch of this tree worth delving into. Big ups and respect to posters linking Aesop Rock - master with a pen:

EL-P
Doom
Ghostface
Raekwon

All master poets, imagists - sprung rhythm dripping from every line.

As far as writing to music goes, AMBIENT is the flex: throw this APHEX TWIN joint on and sob!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AWIqXzvX-U

and Goldmund, yes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1hq9W-d_z8

[Jason Ringler]

Interesting thread.

I listen to Chicago’s beginnings song or Gordon Lightfoot’s Sundown or Greatful Dead’s Turn on your love light and have those on repeat. Usually one song on loop for an hour. It’s nice to see others approaches.

[Martin Elster]

Frostiana - Randall Thompson - Exultate Choir & Orchestra

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzNKZEdTFC8

[Mark McDonnell]

Thanks for Edith Sitwell, Annie. I'm going to give that a full listen later. It sounds gorgeously eccentric.

Jesse is right. We've had lots of discussions here about poetic songwriters but spoken poetry with musical accompaniment is something different.

I love this idiosyncratic concept album, "Rehearsing My Choir" from the band Fiery Furnaces. I suppose it's a mixture of song and spoken word prose poetry/memoir set to music. I love the voice and the oddness and the hectic tricks it plays with memory and time. I find it moving. It's kind of unclassifiable but here's Wikipedia having a go…

"Released in 2005, it is a concept album featuring Olga Sarantos, grandmother of the band's Matthew and Eleanor Friedberger, narrating stories relating to her life. Though the instrumentation is as complex as on the band's previous releases, the vocals mostly take the form of spoken word. At points Eleanor Friedberger speaks or sings words corresponding to the character of a younger Olga Sarantos, the two engaging in dialogue. This aspect has made many draw relations between the album and a radio play. Olga Sarantos died on December 31, 2007"




https://youtube.com/playlist?list=OL...2uFvLbz eD6Sw

[John Riley]

Thanks for that, Mark. It's on Apple Music, btw

[Quincy Lehr]

I used to pop a few wake-up pills, listen to Motorhead, and read T.S. Eliot, but I'm a responsible adult these days.

[Mark McDonnell]

Thanks for that, Mark. It's on Apple Music, btw

Cheers John. Yes, I just checked and it's on Spotify too. I have it on CD with helpful lyric booklet. I'd love to know what you think of it. Stick with it...its charms creep up on you.

[Martin Elster]

Originally Posted by Ann Drysdale

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82heowFXVLY

Thanks, Annie, for this link to William Walton's Facade. That is a piece I heard many years ago when I was in music college (though I've never had the opportunity to actually play it with a chamber music group).

I thought at the time — and still do — that reciting poems in rhythm (rhythmic speaking) devoid of melody was a wonderful idea. Carl Orff also experimented with the technique of rhythmic speaking.

[Sarah-Jane Crowson]

Oh! And what a gorgeous thread this is. I have just had a massive fail trying to make an image, as clearly tonight is not the night for me for making.

I love all of this, but best,

John’s mention of Joni Mitchell and (later) of psychedelic drugs. Oooh. Maybe that's the image later. Mushrooms with glasses.

Chris’s mention of Gil Scott-Heron (I love Gill Scott-Heron’s The Revolution, it’s amazing)

John’s mention of John Cooper Clarke. He’s amazing, and I’ve heard him live. He came to Hereford (no-one ever comes to Hereford, so that’s a feat in itself)


Cam, you introduced me to Aesop rock through the unlikely form of the Napo playlist (on another site). I’ve not stopped listening to them since, they’re amazing. That playlist also introduced me to Loma (but it also was populated by a host of lovely people who love, love, love early eighties soft rock, so it’s a blessing and a curse, because there’s me listening to psychedelic Jazz when suddenly Jon bon Jovi, whether I like it or not, comes belting anthemically into my playlist).

Fliss, I think I was going after a kind of overwhelm of sensory experience. Like a cocktail, but without drinking. As if we could create a menu of poetry/music cocktails. The thread takes this idea into far more exciting and interesting spaces. But my cocktail of choice was Karma police and Love in the Asylum.

I write ekphrastic sometimes, I - this sounds weird- think art is often about context. So, when as a child I walked into the Rothko room somewhere in London, it inspired me in all sorts of ways. But when I see art on screen it doesn’t give me the same experience. So, no, I don’t combine the three things. I think I try to write from life mostly, or use the lens of surrealism to try to see the everyday in a different way. It’s a very good question, and thank you for asking it.

Mark - I play things on loop too when making. Remind me to introduce you to the Penguin Cafe Orchestra if you don’t know it already.

Ann- I sneaked a listen today and it’s amazing. Oh, for the weekend and some proper time!

Jesse - I wonder what you reckon to Tom Waits, as probably that’s the musician I associate most (with JCC) about early music/word combinations. I am excited to listen to your links later.

Jason! So good to see you here again. I love Grateful Dead’s ‘Don’t Fear the Reaper’ & listen to it on loop very occasionally. I’m trying to remember a band my older cousin (in a van) took me to at the Hammersmith Odeon in London way back when. Osric Tentacles? It felt very cool, and a bit GD anyway.

Martin - your links make me yearn to offer to start a playlist here, too. Thank you.

Quincy - Motorhead and Eliot? That has to be the equivalent of beer and vodka? If it were cider and vodka it’d be snakebite in the UK, but Eliot would probably balk at being cider, so apparently it’s a Vodkabeer (Eliot might be closer to dry sherry, but I can’t find a drink equivalent).

You’re all amazing. Ann/Annie gets a drink on the house because I can’t even go to imagine what her link would be as a poetic cocktail beyond a very, very dry G&T with loads of ice on a very, very hot day.

(Please don’t stop posting)

Sarah-Jane