美国国家公共电台 NPR--Raymond Antrobus uses spoken word poetry to portray a diverse experience of sound

Raymond Antrobus uses spoken word poetry to portray¹ a diverse experience of sound

Transcript²

Raymond Antrobus was born deaf. When he came to poetry, much of his work was built on the history and foundations of poetry slams and spoken word performances.

"I really felt a lineage of poets in music, poets in voice, poets in performance," Antrobus says.

The author of two poetry collections – The Perseverance³ and All The Names Given – Antrobus has now released an album of spoken word poems called The First Time I Wore Hearing Aids. It was produced by Grammy-award-winning music producer Ian Brennan.

Brennan had read Antrobus' poems before, but it was just a few months ago – in June this year – that he heard the poet perform on stage. "It was such a beautiful night," he says.

Realizing that he and Antrobus were both going to be at a festival in London the following month, he wrote to the poet to collaborate⁴. And Antrobus was excited by that.

"I came to poetry through so many poets who also record their work," Antrobus says. The poet played some of Brennan's past work to his then 10-month-old son, who responded well to it. "I wanted to be part of that enterprise with this album and with my poetry."

Antrobus' poems often reflect the experience of a person who hears sound in many different ways. Brennan – whose own sister was born with Down Syndrome⁵ and is deaf in her left ear – was interested in those dimensions.

"[Music] was always one of the things that she was the most connected to, and certainly more sensitive to than others who had full hearing," Brennan says of his sister. "I don't sound the same to you as I would to another person and I don't sound the same to Raymond as I would another individual or vice⁶ versa."

In July, when Brennan and Antrobus met to record the album of his spoken word poems, they recorded enough to fill up two records.

"Most of what's there is Raymond," Brennan says. "So even the sonic elements you're hearing are Raymond, it's his voice."

Of the 16 tracks that made the album, some – like the track "Closer Captions⁷" – recreate sound as experienced by those in the non-hearing world.

"We were at a festival and it meant that I had limited charge on my hearing aids," Antrobus says. "And there were points where between takes, I had to take off my earpiece and kind of just sit in this – not quite silence, but a kind of quieter, muffled⁸ kind of sound."

The artists recorded most tracks in one take. That meant Brennan sometimes played music in the background. Speaking of the track "Captions & a dream for John T Williams of Nuu-Chah-Nulth tribe," the producer recalls a special moment from the festival. He'd met a musical group the day before the artists recorded the album.

"[The group's] instrument builders built me a Ndzendze. It's a very rare instrument – a two-sided guitar. So it's eight strings⁹, four strings on each side," Brennan says. "I could kind of play it intuitively because it's a string instrument."

Here's an excerpt¹⁰ from the poem:

He fell facing away from the police officer,

four bullet holes on the left side of his body,

hands holding a block of cedar¹¹ wood

and a three-inch blade he used to carve

canoes and faces into totem poles.

(announcing it is not over)

The police officer said:

I yelled at him to drop the knife.

(sound of something left out)

It took five seconds to shoot.

"The poem is about a deaf individual being killed by the police who was a carver, who lived by the water and carved canoes," Brennan says. "And I'm playing this instrument that has been handmade and carved by somebody who carves canoes."

Antrobus, who is Jamaican-British, often captures the experience of police violence in his work.

"The borders of identity are so heavily protected and policed and patrolled," Antrobus says of these poems. "And look how dangerous it is for certain people when we cross those borders. You quite literally¹² could end up with a gun in your face, a bullet in the back."

He also often writes of how that experience can be especially traumatic for deaf individuals, who without trained interpreters, have high chances of being misinterpreted by law enforcement.

"That's why so many of the elements on the record are Raymond's voice, but Raymond's voice changing – maybe being double-tracked or triple-tracked," Brennan says.

Other sonic elements on the album include sound recorded underwater, such as on the track "Miami Airport Immigration."

"When we think about how much of the earth is covered with water, it's maybe the majority of the sound environment on the planet," Brennan says. "Yet it's something largely unfamiliar¹³ to many people."

To that, Antrobus adds that the human body is made up mostly of water, which then creates an atmosphere where we question exactly what we are made of. "Where do we belong? What is truly being questioned? What are the true reasons for this confinement¹⁴ of identity, of language, of experience, of ideas?"

The artists hope that bringing listeners to these questions with the album will show them that the experience of sound – like most experiences – is not binary¹⁵.

1 portray   

v.描写，描述；画(人物、景象等)

参考例句：

• It is difficult to portray feelings in words.感情很难用言语来描写。
• Can you portray the best and worst aspects of this job?您能描述一下这份工作最好与最坏的方面吗？

2 transcript   

n.抄本，誊本，副本，肄业证书

参考例句：

• A transcript of the tapes was presented as evidence in court.一份录音带的文字本作为证据被呈交法庭。
• They wouldn't let me have a transcript of the interview.他们拒绝给我一份采访的文字整理稿。

3 perseverance   

n.坚持不懈，不屈不挠

参考例句：

• It may take some perseverance to find the right people.要找到合适的人也许需要有点锲而不舍的精神。
• Perseverance leads to success.有恒心就能胜利。

4 collaborate   

vi.协作，合作；协调

参考例句：

• The work gets done more quickly when we collaborate.我们一旦合作，工作做起来就更快了。
• I would ask you to collaborate with us in this work.我们愿意请你们在这项工作中和我们合作。

5 syndrome   

n.综合病症；并存特性

参考例句：

• The Institute says that an unidentified virus is to blame for the syndrome. 该研究所表示,引起这种综合症的是一种尚未确认的病毒。
• Results indicated that 11 fetuses had Down syndrome. 结果表明有11个胎儿患有唐氏综合征。

6 vice   

n.坏事；恶习；[pl.]台钳，老虎钳；adj.副的

参考例句：

• He guarded himself against vice.他避免染上坏习惯。
• They are sunk in the depth of vice.他们堕入了罪恶的深渊。

7 captions   

n.标题，说明文字，字幕( caption的名词复数 )v.给（图片、照片等）加说明文字( caption的第三人称单数 )

参考例句：

• I stared, trying to grasp the point of the picture and the captions. 我目不转睛地看着漫画，想弄清楚漫画和解说词的意思。 来自辞典例句
• Indicates whether the user or the system paints the captions. 指示是由用户还是由系统来绘制标题。 来自互联网

8 muffled   

adj.（声音）被隔的；听不太清的；（衣服）裹严的；蒙住的v.压抑，捂住( muffle的过去式和过去分词 )；用厚厚的衣帽包着（自己）

参考例句：

• muffled voices from the next room 从隔壁房间里传来的沉闷声音
• There was a muffled explosion somewhere on their right. 在他们的右面什么地方有一声沉闷的爆炸声。 来自《简明英汉词典》

9 strings   

n.弦

参考例句：

• He sat on the bed,idly plucking the strings of his guitar.他坐在床上，随意地拨着吉他的弦。
• She swept her fingers over the strings of the harp.她用手指划过竖琴的琴弦。

10 excerpt   

n.摘录，选录，节录

参考例句：

• This is an excerpt from a novel.这是一部小说的摘录。
• Can you excerpt something from the newspaper? 你能从报纸上选录些东西吗？

11 cedar   

n.雪松，香柏(木)

参考例句：

• The cedar was about five feet high and very shapely.那棵雪松约有五尺高,风姿优美。
• She struck the snow from the branches of an old cedar with gray lichen.她把长有灰色地衣的老雪松树枝上的雪打了下来。

12 literally   

adv.照字面意义，逐字地；确实

参考例句：

• He translated the passage literally.他逐字逐句地翻译这段文字。
• Sometimes she would not sit down till she was literally faint.有时候，她不走到真正要昏厥了，决不肯坐下来。

13 unfamiliar   

adj.陌生的，不熟悉的

参考例句：

• I am unfamiliar with the place and the people here.我在这儿人地生疏。
• The man seemed unfamiliar to me.这人很面生。

14 confinement   

n.幽禁，拘留，监禁；分娩；限制，局限

参考例句：

• He spent eleven years in solitary confinement.他度过了11年的单独监禁。
• The date for my wife's confinement was approaching closer and closer.妻子分娩的日子越来越近了。

15 binary   

adj.二，双；二进制的；n.双(体)；联星

参考例句：

• Computers operate using binary numbers.计算机运行运用二进位制。
• Let us try converting the number itself to binary.我们试一试，把这个数本身变成二进制数。