An ode to a river, a parrot, a woman

What is the sound of a poetry work emerging from a fascinating, haunting, remote (for the poet) territory?A reverberation, a story, a journey within a journey, moving through spaces and beings. Awe and gratitude for merging voices temporally scattered. An original 55 second recording, an Indigenous woman calling to a parrot on the Purricha river, a diary, two students – Jonathan Ambache and Richard Saumarez Smith - their anthropological research and a summer trip to Chocó Department, Colombia, 1965.We hear therefore we feel, in a process of listening to archived sounds, screeching ghosts, deep listening into ourselves, with body and soul, listening across species and time, listening against, as a political stance of resistance. Calling and answering to connect and become memory. And then receiving, page by page/jpeg by jpeg, the 1965 journal written by our travellers, and zooming and corresponding with a fellow artist who by chance is an anthropologist, Colombian, learning with Chocó’s riverine communities and she is amazing.Walking. My Pitch (born a dog in this life), my Zoom H6 and JRF hydrophone, daily interviews with our friends, the Bacchiglione river, the mesmerising bee-eaters, herons, cormorants, crows and a rooster at the foot of the Euganean Hills (Italy). Writing and accompanying lines and rhymes on a modern lyre, the Lyra8 organismic synth, like a modern poet. For words and their soundscape are just part of a shared macro-micro-layered ecosystem, as the experience you are about to have.Poem: Ode to a River a Parrot a Womanwe hear you loud, raucous shriek screet screet screetfrequency of kindivine communing, lorascreech in the air, call to uswe are calling to yougurgles & burrows through the river, Purrichaspeak of your fiery thirstburst & boost the uncanny acrossthis land, a marsh-threshold gold they mined, & stillstories gold unfolds a butterfly idling, sidling, gliding*chew & spit & make chicha gentle woman, wife of Narciso your mirror codeis calling to usemerge & interrupt our noiseyour voice persists aglowthroughout the moist forestyou too wear feathersprecious gold-maize plumageancestral heritage, resist restore bonds, your sound echoes centuries of strugglewe hear you*line from the 1965 diary (page 17)Spanish spoken word te oímos/ llámanos/te estamos llamando/te oímos/fermento en la boc/fermento colectivo/fermento de reexistencias de ríos/llamados de ríos a traves de loros/ es un canto/ actos mimeticos de reciprocidad/te oimos/llamanos/te llamamos/sonidos portales a otros/tiempos a otros universos/memorias ribereñas/vidas en reexisntencia/quién oye a quién/quién llama y quién/chicha ferment/aguas compartidas/de boca en boca/aguas que fermentan y alimentan los cuerpos/cuerpos de agua cuerpos de río/ríos de oro ríos de sangre/ríos que son testigos de esclavitud y violencia colonial/supervivencias sónicas/portalComposition:Poem: written and read by Ilaria BoffaSpanish spoken word: written and read by Colombian anthropologist and artist Elizabeth Gallon DrosteSoundscape: field recording taken by Ilaria Boffa inside the Bacchiglione river and at the ‘Anello dei Colli Euganei’ in Padua-Italy w/ JRF hydrophone and Zoom H6 recorder. Intro and outro, Lyra8 organismic synthetiser, by Ilaria Boffa. Acknowledgements:My grazie from the bottom of my heart to the Purricha river, that parrot and all the birds in Chocó department, to Narciso’s wife and all the Indigenous people mentioned in the diary, and to Jonathan (1945–1968) and Richard (1945-2023).Special thanks to artist, anthropologist and researcher Elizabeth Gallon Droste (https://elizabethgallondroste.net).Chocó woman calling a parrot reimagined by Ilaria Boffa.———Part of the project A Century of Sounds, reimagining 100 sounds covering 100 years from the collections of the Pitt Rivers Museum at the University of Oxford. Explore the full project at citiesandmemory.com/century-sounds