Interesting post Yasmin. I've tried both: using phonetics - especially with birds - and descriptive words. I find I prefer describing sounds directly or using synonyms to evoke sounds for the reader that they might know, but sound definitely forms part of my attention to the environment when I am writing about landscape and place. It's hard to do sometimes as we're such visual creatures and it can help to remove that sense to take notice of sound - to pause and to listen closely. To touch too...I love approaching place this way - easier in some settings than others though!
Thank you for your response, Ian. I agree, it is easier in some settings than others. I really want to try and capture all the sounds of place, if that's possible, in words. Even birdsong is difficult though!
These are interesting thoughts on sound in landscape, Yasmin. I will take them with me as I travel to the Outer Hebrides this week. I too follow Nicola Chester, and have a copy of Gallows Down.
I'd be interested to know what sounds you hear in the Outer Hebrides, Sue. And how you might write them. Have a wonderful trip and do check in with some of your observations when you get back.
You post some really interesting questions Yasmin! I think that in the poetry world the more experimental approach to representing sound would be more openly received but I do think readers can struggle to engage with unusual typography. I was trying to write the sound of a crow recently and it is incredibly hard to do but I enjoyed your suggestions for using symbols. I think about sound a lot in my work and often pause on my daily walks to listen to the noise around me, picking out the different strands, often surprised by what I can hear.
Our eyes tend to dominate the lived experience and we have to pause in order to concentrate and focus on the sounds around us.
Do you think that readers of poetry have more time to dwell on texts than those who read creative non-fiction? Maybe they are prepared to 'study' a poem and welcome being held up by strange non-existent words!
That might be true, but even more than that I think poems are encounters or experiences and have a different relationship with their readers. They can be playful spaces and spaces that push the formal limits of language, questioning the sovereignty of what we think we know and mean so while the visual or image is central, so is the search for meaning through the use of rhythm and sound that might be startling or unusual as a means of nudging us to consider the world in a different light ....
Have you read Lev Parikian's piece in The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/mar/10/country-diary-in-a-bitterly-cold-cemetery-the-sound-of-early-spring ? As well as being a writer, Lev is a conductor, and it's as if he hears individual birds as instruments in an orchestra. Our sense of smell is another hard sense to write about. In the English language, we have woefully few words to describe smells, and yet they are so much a part of our enjoyment of life... of food, nature, people (as so many found when they lost their sense of smell after having Covid). Interestingly, there are other, some would say more primitive, languages that have many more words. Maybe we've just forgotten 'how' to smell, how to listen, how to describe our senses? It's a fascinating subject.
It's a super piece of writing from Lev Parikian. Thanks for linking it here, Jane.
This is exactly what I'm thinking about: 'And you can hear it in the voices of the birds: the “tsee bada tsee bada tsee bada tsee bada scabba diddle oo” of a goldcrest, the indeterminate jangle of a dunnock, the insistent two-note chirrup of a great tit. '
My thoughts oscillate. Does it help the reader when a writer uses non-words? I'm not sure. It looks pretty on the page, and you get the message of course, but does it interrupt the reader experience - confuse? delay? agitate? Or does it add a layer of beauty to the vocabulary and illustrate? embroider? and deepen the reader experience?
I'll check out Merlin - it's been mentioned a few times as being a wonderful app. Thank you so much for your contribution to this discussion. It's lovely to have you here.
For me, it definitely adds to the experience. I love non-words. I make words up all the time, especially when there isn't a standard word that quite fits. Isn't that the beauty of language?
I forgot to say, I've just started using an app called Merlin to identify bird song. If you use the sound/recording facility it shows you the bird song visually. Just seeing the spectrograms makes it easier to recognise the song in the future. It's worth having a look at (it's very highly rated within the nature community). I take it with me everywhere now, and make recordings to help me write about what I've heard. https://merlin.allaboutbirds.org/
This is a really interesting idea, trying to represent sounds directly with phonetics, one I don’t think I’ve ever encountered in my reading before. I just spent some time in Tuscany and being spring there, the birdsong was irrepressible. A cacophony of noise that began at about 5am every morning and added the soundscape to the idyllic setting. I remember thinking to myself I wish I could capture this in my substack but wasn’t sure I could so I didn’t try. Wish I’d come across this idea earlier!
I'm sure there'll be plenty of opportunity in the future for you to try writing down the sounds you hear. Birdsong is so wondrous I think writers have always tried to capture it. But what about the other sounds? If readers are to be immersed in place we have to somehow rise to this challenge.
Interesting post Yasmin. I've tried both: using phonetics - especially with birds - and descriptive words. I find I prefer describing sounds directly or using synonyms to evoke sounds for the reader that they might know, but sound definitely forms part of my attention to the environment when I am writing about landscape and place. It's hard to do sometimes as we're such visual creatures and it can help to remove that sense to take notice of sound - to pause and to listen closely. To touch too...I love approaching place this way - easier in some settings than others though!
Thank you for your response, Ian. I agree, it is easier in some settings than others. I really want to try and capture all the sounds of place, if that's possible, in words. Even birdsong is difficult though!
These are interesting thoughts on sound in landscape, Yasmin. I will take them with me as I travel to the Outer Hebrides this week. I too follow Nicola Chester, and have a copy of Gallows Down.
I'd be interested to know what sounds you hear in the Outer Hebrides, Sue. And how you might write them. Have a wonderful trip and do check in with some of your observations when you get back.
Will do!
You post some really interesting questions Yasmin! I think that in the poetry world the more experimental approach to representing sound would be more openly received but I do think readers can struggle to engage with unusual typography. I was trying to write the sound of a crow recently and it is incredibly hard to do but I enjoyed your suggestions for using symbols. I think about sound a lot in my work and often pause on my daily walks to listen to the noise around me, picking out the different strands, often surprised by what I can hear.
Our eyes tend to dominate the lived experience and we have to pause in order to concentrate and focus on the sounds around us.
Do you think that readers of poetry have more time to dwell on texts than those who read creative non-fiction? Maybe they are prepared to 'study' a poem and welcome being held up by strange non-existent words!
That might be true, but even more than that I think poems are encounters or experiences and have a different relationship with their readers. They can be playful spaces and spaces that push the formal limits of language, questioning the sovereignty of what we think we know and mean so while the visual or image is central, so is the search for meaning through the use of rhythm and sound that might be startling or unusual as a means of nudging us to consider the world in a different light ....
Thank you for this insight, Juliette. I love the potential of poetry but have only ever dabbled (and made the water muddy)!
Have you read Lev Parikian's piece in The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/mar/10/country-diary-in-a-bitterly-cold-cemetery-the-sound-of-early-spring ? As well as being a writer, Lev is a conductor, and it's as if he hears individual birds as instruments in an orchestra. Our sense of smell is another hard sense to write about. In the English language, we have woefully few words to describe smells, and yet they are so much a part of our enjoyment of life... of food, nature, people (as so many found when they lost their sense of smell after having Covid). Interestingly, there are other, some would say more primitive, languages that have many more words. Maybe we've just forgotten 'how' to smell, how to listen, how to describe our senses? It's a fascinating subject.
It's a super piece of writing from Lev Parikian. Thanks for linking it here, Jane.
This is exactly what I'm thinking about: 'And you can hear it in the voices of the birds: the “tsee bada tsee bada tsee bada tsee bada scabba diddle oo” of a goldcrest, the indeterminate jangle of a dunnock, the insistent two-note chirrup of a great tit. '
My thoughts oscillate. Does it help the reader when a writer uses non-words? I'm not sure. It looks pretty on the page, and you get the message of course, but does it interrupt the reader experience - confuse? delay? agitate? Or does it add a layer of beauty to the vocabulary and illustrate? embroider? and deepen the reader experience?
I'll check out Merlin - it's been mentioned a few times as being a wonderful app. Thank you so much for your contribution to this discussion. It's lovely to have you here.
For me, it definitely adds to the experience. I love non-words. I make words up all the time, especially when there isn't a standard word that quite fits. Isn't that the beauty of language?
I forgot to say, I've just started using an app called Merlin to identify bird song. If you use the sound/recording facility it shows you the bird song visually. Just seeing the spectrograms makes it easier to recognise the song in the future. It's worth having a look at (it's very highly rated within the nature community). I take it with me everywhere now, and make recordings to help me write about what I've heard. https://merlin.allaboutbirds.org/
This is a really interesting idea, trying to represent sounds directly with phonetics, one I don’t think I’ve ever encountered in my reading before. I just spent some time in Tuscany and being spring there, the birdsong was irrepressible. A cacophony of noise that began at about 5am every morning and added the soundscape to the idyllic setting. I remember thinking to myself I wish I could capture this in my substack but wasn’t sure I could so I didn’t try. Wish I’d come across this idea earlier!
I'm sure there'll be plenty of opportunity in the future for you to try writing down the sounds you hear. Birdsong is so wondrous I think writers have always tried to capture it. But what about the other sounds? If readers are to be immersed in place we have to somehow rise to this challenge.