LOOP Seminar: Poetry & Music

Update: the date has been moved to Monday 15 may 2023, 5pm-6.30pm

Poetry is often thought about in terms of its radical separation and essential difference from music. Students are advised to beware of the concept of musicality since it could only apply to poetry metaphorically, and hence vaguely. Conversely, other approaches emphasise the continuities between poetry and music, often quite literally with the idea that poetic language would be intrinsically musical (which would in turn distinguish it from other types of language, and make it specifically poetic). 

Beyond these extreme positions, we would like to interrogate the links between poetry and music as they manifest in a wide variety of often experimental and always continuous practices. What to make, for instance, of the many hybrids between poetry and popular or classical music, from rock poets and slam to the adaptations of poems for operas or even musicals? Is the poetic or musical value of an artefact to be determined by its internal characteristics or by its recognition in various social groups and institutions? 

We invite you to present material of your choice and discuss how it questions the relationships between poetry and music. We particularly welcome reflections about formats (songs, song lyrics, song-poems or poem-songs; musical and/or a cappella recordings; poems as musical scores; opera libretti; etc.) and theoretical issues (the musicality of poetic language and the poeticity of song lyrics; the relationships between musical and poetic rhythm or metre, etc.). 

The seminar will use the same participative format as the one organised by Bastien on audio archives. We will collect the material you wish to discuss and send it to the participants ahead of the session. To make sure that we have enough time for discussion, we would like the presentations to be as brief as possible and focused on the most salient issues in relation to the theme of the seminar. 

Proposals should be sent to Bastien (bastiengoursaud@hotmail.com) and David (david.bousquet@u-bourgogne.fr).

The seminar will be held online via Zoom:
https://univ-lille-fr.zoom.us/j/92845018116?pwd=M3VVS0pXbnB5Wk1nT1ZZTys4UlVYQT09
ID de réunion : 928 4501 8116
Code secret : 612722