Hazel Smith (writer)

Early musical career

Before becoming a poet and academic, Smith was a violinist, leading and recording with the chamber ensembles LYSIS and Sonant,^[5] becoming a member of the Philharmonia Orchestra, and working with notable classical and new music ensembles such as the London Sinfonietta^{[citation needed]}.

Poetry

Smith's early poetry in the 80s and 90s was centered on formal and linguistic experimentation which was aligned with British "linguistically innovative poetry"^[6] and American 'language poetry' as well as other modernist, postmodernist and lyric poetry traditions. This emphasis on formal experimentation has continued into in her later work but is accompanied by a stronger emphasis on social, political and psychological themes.^[7] In her review of Smith's Abstractly Represented, Joy Wallace explains that Hazel Smith's poetry uses "text sounds" to interact with technology.^[8] Chris Arnold terms her work "relentlessly experimental."^[9]

Smith's poetry volumes (some listed below) have received academic and critical attention. Broad discussion of her work has appeared in many books and journals.^[10] Major critical review books refer to her 'consistently experimental work' in poetry.^[11]

Her books of poetry include:

• Abstractly Represented (1991). In this volume of 'poems and performance texts 1982-90' Smith reveals "an analytic awareness of the main revolutions in twentieth-century cultural—and specifically linguistic—thinking", and "far from Kristeva's idea that music is prelinguistic the poems suggest that music and language have the potential constantly to reform each other.".^[8]
• Keys Round Her Tongue (2000). This collection comprises short prose, poems, performance texts and experiments with language. It includes the text of Secret Places with an image of Casuarina Woman (a woman made of casuarina needles) by Sieglinde Karl-Spence, a regular collaborator.^[12]
• The Erotics of Geography (2008). This work includes audio and audio visual pieces (on an attached CD) "to turn this moonlit map upside down."^[13]
• Word Migrants (2016). This poetry uses "mix-up" texts of quotes and phrases from the internet.^[14] Joy Wallace further notes that Smith's fourth volume of poetry is divided into thematic sections that cover Jewish history, ethical art, language, and loss and grief.^[15] Ann Vickery analyzes poems in this work in the context of dementia, which considers connections between fluency and language difficulties.^[16] Andy Jackson closely reads another poem in this collection, "The Poetics of Discomfort" to examine how disabilities and difficulties with language intersect.^[17]
• Ecliptical (Spineless Wonders, 2022) This work covers poetry creation, social and political concerns, human connections, identities and cultural differences, the female body, and time and perspective.^[18] Wallace characterizes the project's aims "to propel earthly dwellers on paths we cannot immediately discern but must help to carve out.^[19]
• Heimlich Unheimlich: A poetry and art collaboration with Sieglinde Karl-Spence (2024). This work interweaves women's stories, which are named after different types of cloth (Muslin and Hessian).^[20]

Performance poetry, multimedia work and electronic literature

Smith was also active in Australia in sound and performance poetry, as represented in her earlier volumes, and on her CDs and CD-Rom (see below). Subsequently, in multimedia and electronic literature, she has published and exhibited numerous collaborative works, involving her text and text performance alongside image and sound and has been described as "a foremost electronic poet".^[21] She has performed and broadcast her work in Europe, Asia, North America and Australasia and is a founding member of the sound and multimedia creative ensemble austraLYSIS.^[22] Most recently her performance piece of text and sound, Unbalancing was released on CD by them.^[23] There are several academic studies on her multimedia works.^[24][25][26]

Her electronic literature works include:

• Wordstuffs (1998, with Roger Dean and Greg White) is an early example of multiplicity of sound, image and text, to a competitive commission from the Austalian Film Commission. Given the period, a requirement of this piece was that it fit entirely on a single 1.4Mb floppy disc. It was displayed for 20 years on the web site of the Australian Broadcasting Commission (see the Wayback Machine, where it is no longer functional) but video traversals are available.^[27]
• Mid-Air Conversations (2007) is a moving and spatial algorithmic speech piece (a generative piece) from MAX/MSP patches that move between fragments of text.^[28]
• Motions (2014) with Will Luers (image) and Roger Dean (sound) focuses on human trafficking.^[29] It was first published in Electronic Literature Organization's (ELO) Electronic Literature Collection 3^[30] and then curated in The NEXT Museum, Library, and Preservation Space. The work uses HTML5 and jQuery to assemble images, video, and text to create a soundscape.^[30]
• novelling (2020) with Will Luers (image) and Roger Dean (sound) remixes novels as a generative work, using text, video, and sound was first published in Electronic Literature Organization's (ELO) Electronic Literature Collection 4.^[31] Alessandra Di Tella [wd] contrasts this work with Tristano, a hyper-novel by Nanni Balestrini.^[32] Fragments of text, video, and sound are presented in 6 minute cycles, with a change in interface every 30 seconds or at the reader's choice.^[33] This work was shown in libraries in Norway, Denmark, and Romania.^[34]
• Dolphins in the Reservoir, also by Luers, Smith, and Dean (2022).^[35]
• Inner Differencing: Alexander von Humboldt's thousand threads (2025-6), has text by Smith, and image, animation, sound and coding by Dean. It addresses inner differences in the earth, its flora and fauna, and in people, minds and societies, with strong reference to the ideas of Alexander von Humboldt. It uses a cyclic and rhizomatic progression, and both a traversal and a link to the piece itself are at.^[36]

Academic research

Smith's academic research has focused on the areas of experimental writing, contemporary poetry, relationships between literature and music, electronic literature and creative writing process and pedagogy.^[37] Sarah Law explains that Hazel Smith's academic criticism informs her poetry.^[13] She has contributed five major academic books, and numerous research articles. For example, she co-edited Practice-led Research, Research-led Practice in the Creative Arts^[38] which has >1650 citations.^[39] Her volume The Writing Experiment: strategies for innovative creative writing, was designed for higher education creative writing courses andis used internationally.^[40] Many of her academic publications are in her Google Scholar profile.^[41] She is also a co-editor of the creative arts journal of online sound, text and image, soundsRite^[42] and created its antecedent, Inflect, archived at the soundsRite site.

Academic Books

• Smith, Hazel and Dean, Roger T. 1997. ‘’Improvisation, Hypermedia and the Arts Since 1945’’, London and New York, Harwood Academic (now available from Routledge). (334 pages).
• Smith, Hazel. 2000. ‘’Hyperscapes in the Poetry of Frank O'Hara: difference, homosexuality, topography’’, Liverpool, Liverpool University Press. (230 pages).
• Smith, Hazel. 2005. ‘’The Writing Experiment: strategies for innovative creative writing’’, Allen and Unwin, Sydney (288 pages).
• Smith, Hazel and Dean, Roger T. 2009. (eds.) ‘’Practice-led Research, Research-led Practice in the Creative Arts’’, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 278 pages.
• Smith, Hazel. 2016. ‘’The Contemporary Literature-Music Relationship: intermedia, voice, technology, cross-cultural exchange’’, New York and London, Routledge (202 pages).