WB Yeats longed for peace, far from the rumbling city, but still ached for the sound of lake water lapping; Thomas Hardy was redeemed from centennial gloom by the ecstatic sound of a darkling thrush, TS Eliot peppered his poetry with snatches of overheard conversation, while Emily Dickinson was wary of the taciturn: "I fear a Silent man" she admits, a sentiment seemingly echoed by Geoffrey Hill’s Speech! Speech!
So noise and its opposite number continue to battle it out, between Douglas Dunn’s The Noise of a Fly and Fiona Sampson’s Rough Music, Patrick Leigh Fermor’s A Time of Silence and Brian Turner’s Phantom Noise, between Brian Moore’s Lies of Silence and Robert Crawford’s Full Volume…
Come along and listen to the sound of guest poets reading poems aloud(!), their own or by other poets, on the subject of either sounds or silence, hubbub or tranquility, chatter or taciturnity. Listen to the sounds of silence-themed music, join the supersonic prize quiz and speculate (quietly) on who’ll win the night’s bonus prize for the best, or best-sounding, poem on the theme of sound … or silence.
