Peter Dayan

Why are we so often told that poetry is like music – or that it is music? Can music communicate meaning, as literature can? When words and music get together in song, what passes between them? Meer

An extraordinary fraternity of poets, painters and composers in Paris, between 1885 and 1945, built our modern notion of 'great art' on the principle that we must always think about the value of a work of art, not within the logic of its own medium, but as if it transposed the value of another medium. Meer

Why does poetry appeal to music? Can music be said to communicate, as language does? What, between music and poetry, is it possible to translate? These fundamental questions have remained obstinately difficult, despite the recent burgeoning of word and music studies. Meer

100 years after the Dada soirées rocked the art world, the author investigates the role that music played in the movement. Dada is generally thought of as noisy and unmusical, but The Music of Dada shows that music was at the core of Dada theory and practice. Meer