Sound poetry in Brazil and around the world:

an updated revisitation

Abstract

Sound poetry is a specific genre of experimental poetry that explores the human vocal tract in an extended mode, leading to domains that precede speech intonation. This paper begins with a conceptual presentation about sound poetry and proceeds with a historical retrospective from Dadaism, Lettrism and Ultra-Lettrism, which shows the predominant European roots of this kind of art that later was internationalized. The domestic use of magnetic tapes at the end of the 1940s interfered directly with this production, which started to reconcile vocal expression with the use of technological resources. This possibility was intensified by the diffusion of digital resources comprising both hardware (computers, interfaces and boards) and software equipment, whith became increasingly accessible. Despite its late start, Brazilian sound poetry has a considerable production, a topic that is also considered in this paper.