Toronto sound poet Christian Bok stood before a room of people in LNCO on Sept. 23 and made the sounds of a bubbling fish tank.
He then calmly stated, “That poem is called ‘Seahorses and Flying Fish,’ by Hugo Ball.”
A sound poet, or “an eclectic avant-garde poet,” as Bok characterizes himself, is someone active in the invention and application of new poetry techniques.
Red-faced and concentrating, Bok recited his poetry with intense rhythm and passion, hardly stopping for a breath as he spurted poems with lines like “Judo kick a ding dong bell” and poems that consisted of five minutes of meticulous beat boxing.
“Poetry reading was becoming like church,” Bok said-boring and serious. “I wanted a black belt in performing; I didn’t want to be serious.”
Powered by a love of words and the sounds they make, Bok took on what he calls the enthralling style of chaos with order 20 years ago.
“I felt that I wasn’t making any important contributions with traditional poetry,” he said. “I wanted to exceed the envelope of my own thinking.”
The product was Bok’s series of poems that focus on the phonetics of words. His poems include a wide range of sounds: English, “jibberish” and drum sounds.
The 45-minute reading kept the audience laughing as Bok showed off his ability to make sounds rapidly without tripping over his words.
“This took me four to five months of effort,” he said. “I used to be able to do it all from memory, but time, age and alcohol has taken its toll on my memorization.”
He said he has no idea what he’s going to do with these skills, but audiences seem to enjoy them.
Bok’s book of poetry, Euonia, has sold 15,000 copies.