“What is sung poetry and why do I need to know?”
This site is designed as a resource for people interested in fresh practical takes on performing poetry.
Sung poetry can be described in terms of both its construction and its applications, so the history section is really to give a flavour of the scope of the sung poetry that has been created globally. Sappho through to Ewa Demarczyk. It isn’t and couldn’t be a complete history, and if you know of other traditions, I would love to hear about them.
The Lyric Cornish project has been undertaken as an investigation into what has constituted sung poetry in other cultures, and what might feed into a constructive approach to singing poetry in Cornish for contemporary audiences. If you are more interested in the output than in the research process, you might prefer to focus on the Tips and Showcase sections, but the bibliography is worth a look, as you would then be able to draw your own conclusions.
There’s an experimental section, showing what my collaborators and I have been trying ourselves – some thoughts on this feed into the Tips section..
There’s a more theoretical look at prosody and the link between linguistic and musical prosody, metre and so on.
There’s a project bibliography – primarily this has been an artistic endeavour, rather than an academic one, but some research acts have been committed and I’d like to share the outcomes with anyone else who might be interested in the subject..
If you’re a poet and frustrated performer, I hope you find this useful – please get in touch!
Fiona O’Cleirigh
Lyric Cornish 