Scope and Contents Henri Chopin Avant-garde pioneer of sound poetry Frédéric Acquaviva Tuesday February 5, 2008 The Guardian: "Towards the end of the second world war, Henri Chopin, who has died aged 85, escaped from a forced labour camp in Olomouc, in what is now the Czech Republic, after it had been bombed. He then spent time with the advancing Red Army, until, recaptured by the Germans, he and inmates of concentration and extermination camps were sent west on a Nazi "death march." Thousands died on those journeys and it was then that he listened to the voices of his fellow marchers, sounds which would infuse his work for the rest of his life. In the 1950s Henri created sound poetry, capturing breaths and cries made by his voice and body. He was, said his friend William Burroughs, an "inner space explorer", but the Frenchman remained a solitary figure, outside any artistic grouping, almost the only exponent of his art, and almost certainly the only poet to record sounds and movements by swallowing...