The ‘making’ of movement and words: A po(i)etic reading of Charlotte Spencer’s Walking Stories

Abstract

Abstract This article proposes an understanding of Charlotte Spencer’s Walking Stories (2013) as ‘moving poetry’. It navigates through possible perspectives on the ‘poetic’ to discuss how recorded text and movement interact in this audio-walk for open spaces. In doing so, it moves from Genette’s structuralist analysis of poetry to Kristeva’s notion of the heterogeneity of poetic language to highlight how poetic texts unsettle signifying processes. While recognizing the value of the metaphors that can be constructed through literary approaches, the article proceeds by arguing that a focus on the ontological dimension of poetry can lead to a notion of the ‘poetic’ that engages with the transformative possibilities of choreographic practices in which movement and words intersect. Tracing a line between Gadamer’s and Rancière’s discussions of poiesis as speculative and productive activity, it articulates a reading of Walking Stories as an event that produces as well as being produced. Specifically, the article suggests that, through its use of recorded sound and text, Spencer’s work engages with strategies through which time and space are ‘made’, advocating a rethinking of how subjectivity and community may be configured.