Six Silk Purses


Reviewed by Todd Swift and found at http://toddswift.blogspot.com

Fortner Anderson (....) has long been one of my favourite performance poets - or as we in Quebec, Canada like to say - spoken word artists.

To my mind, Anderson gets everything right about spoken word, and discards all the pitfalls and pranks that are the practice's tempting ills - that is, his voice is subtle, melodious and full-registered, here threatening, now soft, then smoothly unctuous (then anxious), again enraged, giving voice to the gamut of emotional possibilities of human uttered expression; and, his writing, that is, the words he gives vented voice to, are daring, informed by a canny sense of the history of 20th century performative work (from Dada on down), and thoughtfully engaged with the political and social issues of our age - all this, without, as I said, dwelling in cheap camp, crass humour, or shock for its own sake. In short, Fortner Anderson is one of the most mature, impressive, and alarming of North America's poets who perform their words, and his long serious career has now exposed his craft and art over many decades. For this reason, I have several times anthologized his writing and work, and hope to again.

So: all this to say, it was good to finally get my hands on a copy of his latest CD, from Wired On Words, Montreal's indispensable poetry label, run by the hard-working poet Ian Ferrier, himself no spoken word slouch. This one's called Six Silk Purses (link below) and it is a good idea: Anderson has given six composers of soundscapes / music to do what they will with pre-recorded versions of his poems - the result - a thrilling investigation of how words and musics / noise / sound can be taped, mixed, looped, produced and finally meshed together to create a greater masterwork, a soundartpiece.

This avant-garde practice is one I myself explored with composer Tom Walsh, something of a pioneer in this field, and it is very heartening to see Montreal continuing to further deepen this worthwhile way of making poetry a part of media, and vice versa. I'll wrote more when I have listened to the CD a few more times. I'll also feature Anderson some coming Friday. In the meantime, anyone interested in innovative spoken word / poetry recording must own this.

http://www.fortneranderson.com/html/recordings/ssp.html

  

 

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SQUIDCO (found at www.squidco.com)

Fortner Anderson-all poems and voice / Sam Shalabi / Michel F. Cote / Chantal Dumas / Alexandre St-Onge / Alexander MacSween / Christof Migone

The work of 6 Montreal composers, each taking a recording of a poem by Fortner Anderson and transforming them into new compositional pieces. Fortner, an expatriate Tennesee preacher and long-time host of CKUT radio's "Dromotexte" spoken word show, is an active and published poet living in Monteral. His words present stark and strong images that as jarring as they are thought provoking. Here they are placed in unusual settings by a set of masterful musicians - this is not your typical set of spoken word pieces, but a set of electro-acoutic and unusual pieces that deconstruct Fortner's words and place them in new context. Fat booklet includes the text for each poem and a preface by each of the musicians. Fascinating.
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Blow Up #95, April 2006, Italy

Spoken words è il neologismo che corrisponde al piû arcaico poesia. E se l'espressione si accompagna a un commento sonoro costruito sulle attuali tendenze elettroniche legate a glitch e microsuoni, allora la sensazione di essere di fronte a un prodotto davvero avanzato potrebbe darci davvero qualche vertigine. In realtà, per quanto attiene la sua musicalità, la poesia di Fortner Anderson ha diverse cose da invidiare a un Ginsberg o an John Cooper Clarke qualunque. Continuiamo invece a rimanere ben impressionati dal fervore artistico e culturale che si muove dalle parti di Montreal (e ben tratteggiato anche nell'intervista a Foodsoon #93). Ottimo comunque il progetto complessivo che lega e-poets e musicisti di diversa estrazione. Per gli approfondimenti del caso si rimanda al sito www.wiredonwords.com .

Michele Coralli

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VITAL WEEKLY,number 521,week 15


SIX SILK PURSES: THE POEMS OF FORTNER ANDERSON (CD by Wiredonwords)

On this compilation we find music to the poems of one Fortner Anderson. Who he is, or what his poetry is really about, we don't know, will not know, since the selections from his work are just a few here. They are selected by six different Canadian composers, who were free to create a new recording from the original. We recognize the names of Alexandre St-Onge, Christof Migone and Sam Shalabi and see new ones: Chantal Dumas, Alexander MacSween and Michel F. Côté. Each of them treats the material in his own way, which can range from microscopic detailed slicing up of the material via multi-layered speech to almost minimal techno, but five of them seem to find it important that the original poem is still in there somewhere (only in St-Onge's piece it's gone). That is nice, since it makes this CD more coherent. His voice reminded me a bit of Gregory Whitehead, although the music is much different. Throughout it's been a pretty good job done on these poems, and there is a fair size of variety in here. (FdW)

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Adverse Effect (Vol.III.) #3, Winter 2006/2007 Edition

FORTNER ANDERSON 'Six Silk Purses' CD (Wiredonwords, Canada, 2006) Different musicians from his home city were enlisted to manipulate the six spoken poems here by Montreal's performance poet Fortner Anderson. Together, they conjure a world where their excursions to all from occasionally rhythm-addled musique concrète, electro-acoustic and even, during the last couple of minutes of Sam Shalabi's take on 'A Day', airy Middle Eastern music pinned down by a ney, play out a perfect accompaniment to the originally sourced poetry. Generally, it falls nearer Christian Renou's camp than, say, Henri Chopin's, but the steady ebb & flow of all the contributions creates a natural and exhilarating whole all the more remarkable for the fact it's only Anderson's second such album in around seven years. An exquisite listening experience that positively commands yr attention like little else. (RJ)