Poems by Holly Pester

My speech-based compositions mostly exist through performance and audio works. Every text is written to an aural/audio shape, picking up themes of linguistic algorithms and error, everyday speech and humor. Lately, I’ve been interested in noise and interference in sound media and the parasitic quality of sound poetry. Other than that, pulsars, scrimshaw, sea shanties, and space travel.

On one hand I see my work as tragically British — born out of British surreal comedy and performance, artful failure, nonsense rhyme, and folk verse. On the other hand the formal aspects of my work and my approach to poetic practice are an utter tribute to North American influences. I should start with Peter Jaeger, with a direct hand on my practice (is this cheating?) as my tutor, but also as a model for how-to poetry. His direction and work outlined a “sky’s the limit” approach to conceptualizing and composing a text, with such enthusiasm for experimentation, filtering K. Goldsmith’s “uncreative writing” into my work, bpNichol, and Steve McCaffery, and all Canadian Sound Poetry. My work particularly grew through engaging with McCaffery’s work and wonderful critical writing on sound poetry as a dimension of literature, and poetry as a performance event. I also have a lot of respect for the sci-fi exploits of Christian Bök. On a more intuitive level I have been long drawn to Hannah Weiner’s edgy, willful, experimental texts. And I felt, once I’d found it (!) that I’d been following the thread of Code Poems for a long time in my thinking. And I’d add Susan Howe, and her inspirational model for playing the deviant in the archive.

Process: the speech was taken from online minidocumentaries about the role HAM radio operators played during the Hurricane Katrina crisis in New Orleans. HAM radios are amateur, licensed radio network operators. During the storm all official emergency communication networks failed and only HAM radios were operational. This left large groups of essentially volunteer radio operators fielding and assisting distress calls. The documentaries featured extracted recordings of conversations between people trapped in flooded areas and HAMs in outposts around Louisiana.

The texts were composed by listening to the audio of the documentaries (with headphones) and reciting the heard speech into a voice recorder. The text was then transcribed from the recording of my recital. The following script is a file compression. It begins with the sound of the wind.

BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB
roger roger eye ball reflector i’ve already put that out ok i’ll tell ray
do you have any other radios or helicopters? ok
one of the things you can do is talk through me w5julietbravo
papa i’ll make sure the proper people get it
sure as hell i will I’ll
see if i can get some help for you
right now
so y’all know
we’ve got about 250 hams in Louisiana
they’re well organised they’re doing a good job but
they can’t do it forever the
biggest problem is Mississippi at the moment
there’s a lot of transport and travel
and there’s no place to stay so
that’s the other problem we have and
i’ll be working on that tonight tomorrow tonight but
we’re doing everything we can you guys are doing a great job
Roger i understand
we’ve got another call for you ok
earlier today we had a problem Louisiana state Charlie Charlie 2 alpha oh hell
his name’s David they were in that area and i believe they’ve got a list of
names of people that are ready to go as soon as they can go
ok i just wait for a phone call
yeah is anyone else going out that way
ok does anybody else need me
ok i’ve got a quick quick question
go ahead
my name’s Bruce
i’m getting some calls from some folks picking something up from wtzx a ham radio
it’s listed as running traffic
i’ve just got home from work
has anyone heard about that today
arraawaaawaawaawaa i don’t know the detail i couldn’t get the time
i had no problem the only information said, call this radio station
this is papa
there’s something going on i
don’t know what kind of call that is
can you give me some names some information
my name is Douglas
i’m at the hospital in Mississippi
ok Douglas go ahead i can help you
ok you can get the equipment back up and ruining
klm over
ok Douglas let me rebroadcast just in case anybody does anybody listening from the administration hospital
anyone hear that call in the last hour or so Douglas i’m not getting a response so
we will pay attention to that i suggest you hang around for a little while
we’ll see if we can pick them up copy that
3.935 they’re going to be a bit disturbed when they hear you but
i’ll keep up the good work
this is klm494 this w5393 check back and forth between the two frequencies ok
stand by there’s a query the party was looking for information on roads is it possible for any assistance to get
in
cos this family want to bring food and clothing to this family that is in that area do you have any idea i have no idea but i imagine if they’re coming in from the west
they’re evacuating to Huston so that is escape
ok i’ll give her a call i’ll try state police i cant find anything at all
echo echo
this is w5julietbravo papa
this is risky5 calling in Louisiana
we’re taking some messages down here at the lake crossing
they’re a little bit hard
i understand you’ve got yourself a site full of arms haven’t you
i’m telling you there’s tornados everywhere
and i see three trees three trees smashing tweed daddy’s barbecue
i’ve got some messages
we’ve tried to set up some communication with the locals who have no traffic and needles to say
any infrastructure
all the power lines, everything is down
we went to the eye wall and it was stuck
i can imagine well
i can’t guess what they’re gonna do until sundown
move from 35 i don’t know about hw traffic actually i have three pieces of traffic here i don’t
know what you’re going to do with them i roger that well
the frequency that these messages are on all around the country
are just frantic and everything and pretty stressed out
and they’re just
what we’re gonna do is we’re gonna post messages in and out right here and
hopefully the communication will try and slide down
tomorrow
we will try and get down to 3935 tonight
build some antenna systems
we’ll just try
get on this frequency
40 metres and at least try and get some of these messages out
i’ve got traffic is that what you’ve got
Victor Victor