Poetics of Listening

In Poetics of Listening, renowned sound studies scholar Brandon LaBelle brings critical attention to listening as a practice, one that can wield significant impact onto individual, interpersonal and community wellbeing. From self-determination to social participation, somatic healing to collective repair, political recognition to ecological engagement, listening is vitally influential in negotiating our most fundamental challenges. Through thoughtful examinations of listening’s role across society, Poetics of Listening convincingly shows listening to be not only important to social struggles, but a form of poetic imagination and communion.

It moves listening toward a broader application and view, which includes the ability to listen across human and more-than-human worlds, to listen into or with one’s body, or to listen out for futures to come as well as addressing unfinished histories, and it challenges us to think more broadly about what it means to hear and be heard within today’s complex environments.