Poet and performer Tracie Morris read and presented her work on Thursday as part of the New Writing Series at the Black Box Theater at the Innovative Media Research and Commercialization Center on the University of Maine campus.
The poet, who is equally grounded in music, acting and sound, read both poems contained by page and poems which derive from sound and what Morris explained as the “feel of the audience.” Morris has won many awards and presented at places such as MoMA and the Whitney Bicentennial.
“I don’t write autobiographical poems,” Morris said. “It’s not about me but something I feel needs to be said.”
Morris’ poems include a variety of social themes including social equality and many cultural critiques. Her first sound poem, “A Little,” relates to the story of a young girl who was sexually abused.
A professor and the coordinator of performance and performance studies at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, N.Y., Morris’ sound poems are based on one line and music. “I try to grasp what is the best sound for this moment,” Morris said. She explained, “I’m just as surprised as you are,” about what sound she chooses.
“The only thing I know is the story and the title,” Morris said. She performed the first poem, in which she experimented with sound: “Project Princess,” one of her more famous poems from 1993. The performance involved her tapping the podium from where she spoke with a beat, which imitated the Double Dutch jump roping she spoke of in the poem.
Morris is influenced by hip hop and the way DJs take “non musical” sounds such as a car horn and turn it into music people enjoy. Yet during the question and answer portion of the reading, she explained her “almost political position” in her mind to not use technology to alter her voice. It is something she would say is cheating.
“My voice [is what I have]; I have to work hard with this instrument,” she said.
Steve Evans of the English department said in his introduction of Morris that the poet shows the listener that “the human voice is an astonishing instrument in its own right.”
Morris started her reading with the poem “Plutonic,” a page-based work inspired by the Greek Persephone myth. She chose to begin the reading with a few poems inspired by “older literature” because of a conversation she had with the Honors Cultural Odyssey class, many of whom were in attendance.
Morris’s reading was split into three sections, page-based poems, sound poems and questions and answers. Although Morris is trained as an actor at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London and as a musician, she considers herself “first, last and always a page-based poet.”
Morris’ newest poetry collection — which was raffled off at the event to sophomore Mike Schuman — is called “Rhyme Scheme” and includes a CD of her sound poetry.
During the question and answer section Morris spoke extensively about the differences in inspiration and process between her written and sound poetry.
Her page-based poems are more concrete while her sound poems change as she grows.
“They’re fragile,” she said noting the poems have to “sustain within her consciousness.”
Her sound poems often derive from the music she hears in walking down the street or taking a shower.
“They’re usually pretty stubborn, my poems,” she said.
“I hear all sounds, including musical sounds, as poetic in some way. So I think of music as poetry,” she said in an email.
This is Morris’ second trip to Maine but first trip to the university where she bought a “U of M sweatshirt,” which for her has dual meaning insinuating the M stands for Morris.
The next NWS reading will be March 27 in Hill Auditorium where Christine Hume — poetry and hybrid genre — will read.