'This 8th edition of Bob
Cobbing’s 1965 ground-breaking polylingual sonic abecedary unites Jennifer Pike
Cobbing’s cover design for its original publication as Sound Poems with the
typeset text of later printings and a new introduction by Robert Sheppard which
investigates its character, pre-history and subsequent realisations in
performance.' (Adrian Clarke)
Veer Publication 067 [ISBN:
978-1-907088-76-6]
A5 size. 72 pages. March 2015. £6.00
A5 size. 72 pages. March 2015. £6.00
My
introduction begins:
Bob Cobbing’s ABC in
Sound is the nearest thing we have in English to Kurt Schwitters’ Ur-Sonate (1923) which it resembles in
being an extended, structured text, designed for sound poetry performance,
although the mode of structuring is not musical, like Schwitters’ ‘sonata’, but
fundamentally lexical, in being based upon the alphabet. As such it resembles
various non-concrete alphabet poems (see, for example, Peter Mayer’s anthology Alphabetical and Letter Poems), but the
alphabet is more often, though not exclusively, a cause of alliteration and
consonance, less an occasion for semantic or logical ordering. Cris cheek calls
it ‘a plurilingual abecedarian tour de force’.
My footnotes contain some web links which, of course, work better on this platform. They are
http://wiki.delia-derbyshire.net/wiki/An_ABC_in_Sound. (accessed 5th October 2014)
Cobbing's extended performance called ‘Variations on a
Theme of Tan’ (and other works) may be heard at http://www.ubu.com/sound/cobbing.html
(accessed 5th October 2014)
A group reading of the ABC at The Other Room, Manchester
Four individual performances of the ABC by Jennifer Cobbing made in 2013 may be seen at these
sites: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_qI7btPNAU;
http://vimeo.com/53839869;
http://vimeo.com/96296733;
https://www.youtube.com/user/jeffhilson1 (all accessed 5th October 2014)
I write about the Third ABC in Sound here:
http://robertsheppard.blogspot.co.uk/2005/03/robert-sheppard-bob-cobbing-two.html
and more generally about Bob Cobbing's work here:
http://vimeo.com/53839869;
http://vimeo.com/96296733;
https://www.youtube.com/user/jeffhilson1 (all accessed 5th October 2014)
I write about the Third ABC in Sound here:
and more generally about Bob Cobbing's work here:
http://robertsheppard.blogspot.co.uk/2005/03/robert-sheppard-bob-cobbing-and.html
and about the recent symposium on Cobbing's work here:
http://robertsheppard.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/robert-sheppard-bobliography-make.html
My book from Veer, Unfinish, may be accessed here.
and about the recent symposium on Cobbing's work here:
http://robertsheppard.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/robert-sheppard-bobliography-make.html
My book from Veer, Unfinish, may be accessed here.
