K-A-B ART + SOUND LITERARY SALON creates SONIC CHAPBOOKS #1 : ROUTES

Calling writers, poets, lyricists and any other creative who wants to explore how sound can support and extend their writing practice.

You are invited to join the Kinetic Audio Band’s Art + Sound Literary Salon at the Essex Writer’s House. This is part of Metal's HOSTED AT programme and the Essex Book Festival.

You will form part of an intermedia arts group workshopping across three sessions in June. You will develop a new piece of written work while exploring audio recording methods, listening and sound exercises as complementary tools.

Using this year’s Essex Writers House theme of ‘routes’, we’ll explore pathways, habits, journeys, returns, detours, and the places we pass through or carry with us, thinking about how sound sits within those experiences. This might be the sound of where you’re from, a sound that signals arrival, something that has stayed with you over time or something else.

Across the sessions we’ll experiment with:

• deep and active listening
• sound walks and sound mapping
• recording audio samples
• basic sampling, looping and sequencing
• text scores and graphic scores

The focus remains on developing writing - from fragments and abstract text to poems, lyrics, essays or stories - with sound used as a creative tool to open new ways of thinking, structuring and expressing ideas.

Participants will create a handmade Sonic ‘Penny’ Chapbook: a rough, work-in-progress pamphlet containing text, notes, scores, drawings, visual material, and links to audio pieces. Chapbooks have a long history as small, low-cost printed booklets, originally sold cheaply and widely circulated, often containing ballads, stories, poems, and local news. Because they were inexpensive and easy to produce, they became a way of sharing ideas outside of formal publishing.

In the mid-20th century, chapbooks were taken up again by writers and poets - including those associated with Beat culture - as a way to experiment, self-publish, and circulate work quickly and informally. They allowed writers to test ideas, share drafts, and develop new forms without the pressure of producing a finished, polished book.

This project works in that spirit.

The series ends with a relaxed in-house sharing session - writers' room style. There is no obligation to perform, but participants may choose to read work aloud, play audio, or share chapbooks for discussion. All participants retain full rights to their work.

You do not need to identify as a writer, musician or sound artist to take part - only a willingness to experiment, create and participate.
Details

• 3 x sessions: Thursdays June 4, 11 & 18
• Time: Starts 6:30pm sharp (doors 6:15pm) - 8:30pm or 9:30/10pm on the last day
• Price: £45 total per participant
• Advance online booking required
• Bring your own laptop, tablet or phone if possible
• Writing materials and notebooks encouraged
• Basic chapbook materials provided
• Bar open onsite
  

Led by Kelly Ann Buckley (artist moniker K-A-B), an interdisciplinary practitioner working across music composition, writing, performance, experimentation and participatory sound work. Her practice explores listening, environment, soundscape ecology, and the relationship between sound and narrative form.

This workshop is a pilot project for the Kinetic Audio Band c.i.c / Art + Sound Literary Salon series - an evolving framework for collaborative sound-based workshops, performance and experimental practice.

You can find out more about Metal.

Image caption: John Cage’s graphic score for Water Walk (Creative Commons).

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Host or Publisher Kelly Ann Buckley (Artist moniker K-A-B)