Publikacija SEP 2011 - Vilenica

hand, as well as Gertrude Stein and some of her key works on the
other. The most important thing to note is that sound poetry, in the
course of its own development, from Velimir Khlebnikov and Henri
Chopin to Charles Amirkhanian and John Cage, has discovered its
boundary – the space between voice, word and sound. More than
that, this type of poetry is on the boundary. And this boundary, sadly,
separates it from traditional poetry. If slam is radical in its act of performing,
then sound poetry is radical in its act of exploring language
and its semantic, syntactic and phonetic value.
IV. Dadaism and Its Impact on Literary Performance
Dadaism is an avant-garde movement, which has played a key role
in expanding the boundaries of performing literary works (not only
works of poetry), crucial to the conception of sound poetry, as well
as to later understanding of slam poetry. It represents an approach to
performance that, as is characteristic of many avant-garde approaches,
is based on opposition to the existing, calls for change and is in search
of the new. It was truly an important change: it was not merely a
variation on previous approaches to performance (such as we are seeing
nowadays), but a change which produced the act of freedom in
poetry performing. Costumes, “verses without words”, various kinds
of intonation and stress, as well as singing. In 1916, the German poet
Hugo Ball established and also ran Cabaret Voltaire, a sort of Dadaist
club, which organized art events, such as the one mentioned earlier.
With his definition verses without words, Hugo Ball became one of
the fathers of sound poetry; however, what is central in the context
of poetry performance is his style of performing, his approach to interpretation.
His interpretation is a complete discharge, liberation,
improvisation. As I am not focusing on sound or slam poetry in this
text, what matters is only the Dadaist element of performing, the element
of approach to performing one’s work. It is true that most of the
so-called traditional poetry is meant to be read in silence. This type
of poetry is, when it comes to performance and in line with what has
17