Sound Poetry Festival: The Four Horsemen and Re: Sounding

Sound Poetry Festival

Artists: The Four Horsemen and Re:Sounding

Date: October 2, 1982

"The experimental poetry performance group which calls itself The Four Horsement, began in 1970, when after a joint reading by b.p. Nichol and Steve McCaffery, Rafael Barreto-Rivera proposed that they should get together along with Paul Dutton and "jam." 

In 1973, they issued a record, CaNADAda, which contained their first early work, such as "Matthew's Line", "Allegro 108", and "Seasons." They recorded live performances given in Vancouver and Edmonton in 1974 and these were issued as Live in the West (1977). They have also published a great number of books individually as well as collectively. 

The Four Horsemen have resisted the temptations of tape technology and remained true to their purist conception of sound poetry as what can be produced by the unaided human voice.

The Four Horsemen emphasize the sound of language, as the primary expressive means and material of their work. They use such techniques as chant, repetition and the counterpoint of four voices speaking simultaneously to foreground the physical nature of their medium and prevent the audience from hearing it merely as a conveyor of meaning." 

Re:Sounding was performed in 1978 as a group project in poetry and sound text performance. Its central members wee Douglas Barbour and Stephen Scobie. Collectively they have published The Pirates of Pen's Chance and have co-edited The Maple Laugh Forever: An Anthology of Canadian Comic Poetry. 

SoundPoetry Festical News Release, Open Space Archives, Victoria B.C. (Boc 6, 1982: R5a)