Talk To Me

Anna Fern is making her inaugural visit to Queensland Poetry Festival to present unique brand of spoken word. As a first-timer she laughs that she expects the three-day poetry binge to be “A bit of a poetry orgy.” Having debuted her wares for Queensland audiences at Woodford Folk Festival, trepidation has been somewhat allayed by the Sunshine State's largely unconditional enthusiasm so far. “I got a little taste of poetry in Queensland,” she admits, “so I'm really excited about going there because it seems like a really vigorous, interesting scene up there.” An editor and musician by trade, Fern performs sound poetry – a combination of traditional poetry, music and performance art. It's an unconventional practice, but one with a long history. “The sound poets are a small tribe,” she says, “and I think we're perceived as being a lot more out there than everybody else. I've had a sideline in music, [but] I joined this really wacky vocal group and we started to explore some sound poetry from the Dada era in Europe; I went to my first poetry gig doing that. I've always done poetry but never dared to perform it. I just got more and more sucked into the verbal side. So I try to combine sound with words with a performative aspect.”

Considering that the origins of modern sound poetry – as Fern explains – can be found in the Dadaist movement of the early 20^th Century, it's unsurprising that the form has a surreal edge: a single word can be drawn out and wrung for the last connotative drops and multiple meanings. Misconceptions about the intention and purpose of sound poetry, particularly as practiced in the beatnik era gave rise to the stereotype of poets standing in darkened rooms banging drums and talking nonsense in front of glum art types. In fact the practice plays on phonetics and the innate human attraction to sound; our virtually involuntary need to attribute and find meaning. “We're really oral creatures,” says Fern. “Sound poetry explores the full range of the human voice; getting every drop of emotion from words. [It] explores the sounds of words themselves as well as their meanings more than ordinary poetry.

“I really prefer to present my work in sound form just because it puts my stamp on it. If somebody else reads your poem it can be really totally different to how you intended it to be. I like to perform my own work and to be heard in spoken form. I observe my world. I'm kind of sentimental in a way I like to write about old forgotten things. It's about the ordinary but there's a sense of wonder and joy.”

Coming from Melbourne she says of her hometown circuit, “There's a huge grassroots scene. Sometimes there's like two or three gigs in Melbourne on the same night. It's very tribal but we all love each other.”