@misc{10481/108352,
year = {2025},
url = {https://hdl.handle.net/10481/108352},
abstract = {Is it possible to distinguish and separate poetry from its voice? The history of literature has passed down a tradition of poets who sing, who “intonate” their voices in ways that make them recognizable. In fact, when we talk about authors (whether poets or writers, as well as singers), we often refer to them as “voices,” using a metonymy that ended up identifying them universally. On the one hand, voice, as a physical phenomenon, can be explored acoustically, focusing on its sonic substance, and perceptually, looking at its effects on the audience. On the other hand, literature has been considered a written medium for a long time, often without particular attention to its original vocal and reading dimension. Voice, by contrast, has been more prominently considered in oral poetry – performative and rooted in oral communities – especially since the 1960s (cf. Ong 1967; Zumthor 1983), when scholars began to delve more deeply into the vocality and orality studies, moving beyond the confines of the written page. But yet, if we combine and relate these two axes – voice and text – that have long been kept separate from each other, what benefits might we gain?
The intricate relationship between poetry and voice is delicate and essential: its research has been addressed from various perspectives which, in most cases, have in practice kept these two levels of observation and composition separate. However, in more recent time, besides poetry studies, psycho- and neurolinguistic, phonetic, musicological and anthropological approaches, among others, have approached this liminal terrain of research, combining knowledge to offer new insights (see Ong 1967; Cardilli and Lombardi Vallauri 2021; Tsur and Gafni 2022; Blohm et al. 2022; Colonna 2022). The main goal of this study is to approach poetry voice from an interdisciplinary and phonetic perspective, aimed at observing the relationship between written text and the resulting prosodic text in reading aloud. More specifically, in fact, this paper will consider the vocality of written poetry read aloud, mediated by the recording medium and preserved, and will not examine the equally interesting case of oral poetry, which would, however, require a separate study.
Interdisciplinarity is certainly a necessary interpretive key for an area of study such as this one. For this reason, diverse viewpoints and methodologies will be firstly introduced and then combined in this work, enabling a main dialogue between linguistics and literature, also rooted in archival, digital humanities, and music. After a brief theoretical overview, this essay will introduce Voices of Spanish Poets: Vocal Archive and Experimental Study on Poetry Reading(VSP), the first research project dedicated to the experimental and interdisciplinary study of Spanish poetic voices, as well as committed to conservation, enhancement and exploration of Spanish poetry recordings through a dynamic digital archive. In fact, the project involves an online platform1which enables users to listen to contem-porary poets reading their own poems and, in many cases, reading a selection of poems by Federico García Lorca, one of the greatest Spanish poets, and a member of the Generación del 27[generation of 1927], whose voice, however, has not been preserved. It also provides phonetic support to guide users through a first history of Spanish poetry reading. This is the result of part of the experimental studies on poetry recordings of the project, which adopt instrumental phonetics and psycholinguistic approaches to examine, on one hand, how Spanish poetry reading is characterized and has evolved over time, and on the other hand, to consider the perception and representation of the text through listening. Combining qualitative, quantitative, and comparative approaches, VSP aims to fill the gap in this research area in the Spanish context, providing new instruments and knowledge at an interdisciplinary level. The foundation of the VSP project was the previous experience of the Voices of Italian Poets(VIP) project. Indeed, thanks to previous experience with Italian poetry and language, VSP has been possible. Funded by the European Union, the project is hosted at the University of Granada (UGR) in collaboration with the Department of General Linguistics and Theory of Literature and Comparative Literature, and the Research Centre Mind, Brain and Behaviour (CIMCYC).
Following the introduction of the VSP-project, I will showcase two case studies, namely the voices of two prominent contemporary Spanish poets, Paca Aguirre (Francisca Aguirre Benito) and Ángeles Mora, to explore and describe, through the VIP-VSP analysis model, their main prosodic features as a practical sample of the valuable information which poetic speech can provide. In conclusion, a final discussion will allow the most salient findings, benefits, and perspec-tives of such an approach to poetic vocality to be highlighted as a contribution and starting point for new transdisciplinary research.},
organization = {European Union’s Horizon Europe - Marie Skłodowska-Curie (101109465)},
publisher = {De Gruyter},
keywords = {poetry audio recordings},
keywords = {Phonetics, Acoustic},
keywords = {Experimental Phonetics},
keywords = {Poetry},
keywords = {poetry reading},
keywords = {interdisciplinarity},
title = {Poetry Audio Recordings and Interdisciplinary Phonetic Study. The Voices of Spanish PoetsProject: Challenges and Two Case Studies},
doi = {10.1515/9783112213070-014},
author = {Colonna, Valentina},
}