Reviewed by Magdalena Ball
Chords in the Soundscapes
By Michael J Leach
Ginninderra Press
ISBN: 978-1-761090928-1, Sept 2025, Paperback
Michael J Leach’s latest poetry collection, Chords in the Soundscapes, is tagged as ‘nonfiction poetry.’ This may, of course, be the case for a majority of poetry, but this collection leans directly into the personal, exploring coming-of-age, love, loss and grief against a backdrop of all sorts of music both human and otherwise.
One of the opening epigraphs by Brenda Eldridge likens music to ekphrastic poetry, but the poetry in this book is often ekphrasis based on music, taking its cue from the experience of listening. The result is poetry that is descriptive, rhythmic and often catchy in the way that popular music can be. The music takes many forms, soul, jazz, indie and classical music from James Brown to Alicia Keys, Radiohead, Regina Spektor, Steven Wilson, Baby Animals, Elena Kats-Chernin and Vivaldi to name just a few. Music appears in all sorts of ways – literally as the inspiration for many of the poems which focus on describing the music and its impact:
Sarah McLeod’s vocalisations
quell memories of nightmares
by sweetening the morning air
like the birdsong—
those towering, tinkering trills —
of the superb fairy-wren. (“Day of the Sun”)
There’s also the music of the natural world – birds, rain, “the lapping of sea water on asphalt”, even the sound of a clothes dryer or a loved person speaking Russian. Music is everywhere, and the interplay between sounds forms a backdrop to the work across sonic play, word rhythms, poetic techniques and sounds that create new forms of music through language. Many of the poems utilise techniques for sound such as repetitions, anaphora, the use of rhythms like “me up up up up” combining sound with visual elements like a poem about hearing in the shape of an ear:
Each voice rides the highs and lows of sound waves
at varying volumes and pitches, swiftly making its way
through the atmosphere. Each voice soon reaches the
ear. Each voice travels through the auditory canal then
beats out its groove n the eardrum. Each voice
has a butterfly effect on the complex anatomy
of the ear, making bones fluids membranes
and hairs move like machine parts. (“(H)ear”)
Leach is particularly adept at the concrete or shape poem and many of the poems form visual shapes that reflect the subject matter utilising design and typographical elements, caps, spacing, and word arrangements creating visual effects that create their own meanings. Poems become penguins, sound waves, wind chimes tinkle across the page, left and right justification, words that form a speech bubble, columns and words that spread across the page mimicking wind, liquid falling, or jagged lines:
I
Am
Afraid
That I Shan’t
Be able to think
In a straight line for
Yet another 24-hour cycle.
My old train of blue
Thought is still
Moving in a
Jagged
Line. (“Blue Thought”)
The book is divided into two parts, “The Science of Music” and “Love Notes”, with a brief haiku-like intermission poem that serves as a fitting separator. The first part of the book explores how music works and what it does–technically and philosophically, while the second part is more about music’s impact. Both parts are openly autobiographical, engaging with memories from childhood, personal experiences, and recollections. Though the subject matter is often sombre: a mother’s death, grief and nostalgia, these are playful poems, often creating little puzzles or games, such as “Numerology”, one of several number poems in the collection. This one identifies numbers used in music lyrics:
While tuning in
to ABC Classic 2
on a wintry afternoon,
I appreciate successive recordings
of Kats-Chernin’s Wild Swans Suite No. 2
+ Chopin’s Piano Sonata No. 2.
Switching across
to Double J
I pay attention to the studio version
of Radiohead’s ‘2+2=5’.
Or “Twenty-Six things I Remember about My Mother” which is, of course, a list poem that uses alliteration and anaphora (repeating the first word in each line) in humorous and often light-hearted ways that are both rhythmically pleasing and elegiacal:
1. Her aptitude for antiquities 2. Her briskly read books
3. Her celebrated celebrations 4. Her demure dresses
The mother, Judy Leach, is one of the people the book is dedicated to, and her impact runs through the book, from her love of soul music to her final moments in the ICU against Judy Garland’s “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”:
Judy’s angelic vocals
coupled with the soaring
instrumental arrangement
strike major chords
and render us
speechless. (“Over the Rainbow”)
Leach works easily across the boundary of science and art, technical analysis and emotion working in sync. It’s a heady mix that feels very natural and is perfectly presented in Chords in the Soundscapes.