This article is part of the

 Beat generation

 British Poetry Revival

 Concrete poetry

 Imagism

 Modernist poetry

 The Movement

 Objectivist poets

 Parnassian

 Performance poetry

 San Francisco Renaissance

 Sound poetry

 Symbolism

Sound poetry is a form of literary composition in which the phonetic aspects of human speech are foregrounded at the expense of more conventional semantic and syntactic values. By definition, sound poetry is intended primarily for performance.

While it is sometimes argued that the roots of sound poetry are to be found in Oral traditions, the writing of pure sound texts that downplay the roles of meaning and structure is a 20th century phenomenon. Among early sound poets are Hugo Ball and Kurt Schwitters, whose Ursonate (1922-32) is a particularly well known early example. Later prominent sound poets include Henri Chopin and Bob Cobbing.

Listen to a short extract from Kurt Schwitters' Ursonate. (160kb; )

• List of sound poets with links to audio files