Aaron Murdoch – a conceptual duel between typewriter and sound.
Aaron Murdoch has spent three decades reading and writing material across open floors, cultivating a practice that is both iterative and restless. For Murdoch, repetition is not stagnation; every new piece is an evolving process, a reason to leave the house rather than simply retrace familiar paths. His work has appeared in underground anthologies and publications including antivirus productions’ Lastbench series, Twenty From Ten (2012), and The First Page of Fear Island (2017). Yet much of what he submits meets rejection, a fact he treats as part of the ongoing conversation between writer and audience…
His contribution to the 52 for 26 Poetry Project, A Typewriter Has Declared War On Sound Today, was written on Saturday, 23 August, and Murdoch regards it as one of his final pieces in this current phase of work. The poem functions as a conceptual sequel to The Beatles’ Cry Baby Cry, exploring an imaginative conflict between a typewriter and all sound. Structurally, the poem alternates perspective: lines beginning with “A” speak from the Typewriter’s point of view, while those starting with “As” voice the position of sound itself.
Beneath this inventive conceit, the poem engages with broader commentary on contemporary life, hinting at what Murdoch describes as the collapse into “uglier times.” The clash of mechanical and auditory voices becomes a metaphor for tension, disruption, and the uneasy rhythms of the world around us.
A Typewriter Has Declared War On Sound Today exemplifies Murdoch’s playful, yet perceptive approach. It is at once a meditation on creativity, a nod to musical and literary predecessors, and a reflection on the increasingly fractured soundscape of modern experience—an unusual but fitting addition to the Liverpool Noise 52 for 26 Poetry Project…
A Typewriter Has Declared War On Sound Today
A Typewriter declared War on sound Today
As the children mocked ambulance siren
A codeword observed and psychological
As torture as long as can’t take joke
A declaration astounding Typewriter blindsiding
As joint military drills misleading
A war cabinet seated how to plan things?
As the children mock broken choir of
As close to imitate siren’s pulse
A police car? Ambulance? Fire Truck?
As wished on by intent protest in garden
A Typewriter at war against sound
As one sided it appears noise and words
A pistol fired with each new sentence
As the wind still waited for any speech
A microphone alongside others bloom
As latest maps in graphics form shown
A summary of day’s action, news of losses
As first weapon the writing “Don’t believe hear!”
A standoff between noise spontaneous
As far as misinterpret spoken words
A formidable opponent Typewriter redundant
As getting up letters, come and published!
As long as never retaken, failed useless
As thought, cannot maintain this structure
As exactly in position to end up captured
A Typewriter already weeps for casualties
A Typewriter lifetime bleeds for tapping keys
A Typewriter if victor, dreams of tapestries
A depiction of Typewriter’s victories
As sound runs to parents of time
As sound made Typewriter look behind
As sound came before discovered fire
As sound negative pulse flares
As sound made important dull without words
As sound with no structure to letters
As sound random whatever drools out
A ceasefire a surrender
A traced wire a defender
A peacetime a correction
A kidding! Typewriter overthrown…
As swinging hung barbed wire noose
A rabble who are habiting couldn’t read
As luckily someone who can and following
A perfect audience for guidance
As recounting War of Typewriter against sound.
