The Sound of a Room: Memory and the Auditory Presence of Place

What does a place sound like – and how does the sound of place affect our perceptions, experiences, and memories? The Sound of a Room takes a poetic and philosophical approach to exploring these questions, providing a thoughtful investigation of the sonic aesthetics of our lived environments. Moving through a series of location-based case studies, the author uses his own field recordings as the jumping-off point to consider the underlying questions of how sonic environments interact with our ideas of self, sense of creativity, and memories. Advocating an awareness born of deep listening, this book offers practical and poetic insights for researchers, practitioners, and students of sound.

Seán Street holds an Emeritus Professorship at Bournemouth University. Previous works on sound include The Poetry of Radio and The Memory of Sound (Routledge, 2013/2015,) as well as a trilogy published by Palgrave, Sound Poetics ( 2017,) Sound at the Edge of Perception (2018), and The Sound Inside the Silence: Travels in the Sonic Imagination (2019.) He is a published poet, and a radio programme maker for the BBC and other broadcasters.