‘Carrying the Thing On’: Bob Cobbing and Translingual Sound Poetry Performance in the UK and Chile

Interpreting sound poetry as a practice that draws on and generates translingual creativity, this article interrogates the British poet Bob Cobbing’s approaches to sound and performance, the collaborative pedagogies he developed through Writers Forum from the 1950s onwards, and the ways in which these have subsequently enabled the emergence of poetic practices and communities connecting the UK and Chile. The translingual aspects of Cobbing’s own practice, formed in the context of post-war neo-avant-garde internationalism, created new possibilities for Chilean poets working in London and performing poetry in English as a second language in the early years of the twenty-first century. These included Martín Gubbins, who went back to Santiago to develop Foro de Escritores, a Chilean version of Writers Forum, and the Chilean-UK artist collective montenegrofisher, for whom the interface between the visual and sounded aspects of performance became a means of extending community ecologically, voicing presences of minoritized languages and advocating for non-human others. I will show how the connectivity offered by sound poetry responds to its translingual history and enables dialogues across cultures, and how the recent adaptation of these longstanding relationships to new digital and international contexts reveals the enduring influence of Cobbing and his collaborators. A focus on performance highlights the internationalism of the British Poetry Revival and its significance for subsequent generations of poets working in English as a second language.