including ‘sound’ in writing

I am so proud of my new poetry book ‘mnemonic – soundscape and birdsong’ (Chapel Street Editions, 2024) because it focuses on including sound in writing. Of the five senses (vision, hearing, touch, smell and taste), most creative writing focuses on vision. It is a bit of a challenge to include the other senses in order to give a more complete idea of the sensations contributed by your surroundings.

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My book includes bird song as a main part of the soundscape. It also includes other sounds: the singing of a rock skipped across a frozen pond, the call of the spring peepers, the clinking of ice in glasses, the sound of a kettle boiling over a woodland fire.

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For ways of including sounds in writing, you can look at some of my earlier posts here, and here.

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I think my favourite poem in the ‘mnemonic’ collection is about my Dad who took us along the Yarmouth shore to find iron pyrite (fool’s gold). The sounds in this poem focus on the shorebirds. Here is a short excerpt:

4.

he takes us prospecting

we wedge into crevasses

keen for pyrite gold

cube within cube

embedded in stone

we always forget the hammer

we chip and scratch with fingernails

reach across rock

dare the waves

5.

a sanderling cries

quit quit!

6.

shorebirds

befriend me

a dowitcher sews a seam with her bill

bastes salt water to shore

the sanderling shoos back the tide

terns

plunge into the ocean

and complain they are wet

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I hope you will have fun incorporating sound into your writing.

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All my best,

Jane