Putting scent into words

Poet Açelya Yönaç shares her storytelling process to bring AMNIENS to life through spoken word.

Açelya Yönaç has been writing poetry since she was a young girl, growing up in Istanbul before moving to Milan at the age of eight. Today, she splits her time between Milan and the beach – speaking to us from the stone steps of a plaza in sunny Liguria, with the sounds of vibrant Italian life providing the backdrop to our call. “When I was younger I thought you needed to be ‘inspired’ in order to create art,” she says, “but I’ve learned that you can’t wait around for inspiration, you have to work for it, to go out and find it. So when something ignites my curiosity I will research it, and that will open doors in my mind and lead to a journey… It’s always about intention.” 

Sound, and the scene it can set, is at the heart of what Açelya creates. Though she writes all manner of words, it's the spoken word that allows her to bring another dimension to the concepts and ideas she conveys. For the last eight years she’s been part of a three-woman poetry collective, performing live in Milan, and the medium has naturally evolved to become part of much of the other work she does, too. AMNIENS’ founder Jonas saw a poetic video she made for a renowned design studio in Milan and, recognising the parallels between spoken word and scent, wanted to explore how the two could work together to create a sensory world. 

Inspiring connection & imagination 

“It was about trying to convey what the feeling of each scent might be like,” she says, on creating the spoken word video that brought the AMNIENS scents to life. “I think it’s a very smart way to do it, because the person can take whatever they feel, understand or need from it. With spoken word it’s never meant to live on the page – and I always lose my notes! – or to be published. It’s about phonetics and the sound experience. I like the performative aspect, playing with the voice, finding the words that sound a certain way; it’s very soothing.”

“What I created with AMNIENS isn’t supposed to be the perfect explanation of the scents,” she continues. “It’s more of an invitation. An added touch. An experience that you can make your own, depending on what you connect with in the moment you’re listening to it. The whole idea of connecting, with memory, with the scent, with the sound, is what I wanted to do when I wrote this. I wanted people to be able to imagine, without being too precise or specific.”

Memories sparked by the senses

“I think I’m very sensitive to scent, it’s something that can quickly transport me to a particular place or memory. We have a rose garden where I grew up in Istanbul, and when I went back recently after not having visited for six years, the minute I entered the rose garden, the scent –,” she pauses, almost lost for words. “It’s strange, because the perfume I picked out a couple of years ago, one that a friend wore and I liked, I didn’t read the ingredients initially. When I went back and looked at it again, it’s actually the scent of Turkish rose. If you asked me, I wouldn’t say I especially liked the smell of roses, but there are some things that are so embedded in your memory they become part of who you are without you even realising. You smell a scent, and suddenly you’re reminded and taken on a whole journey.”

Explore the scents of Nebbia all’alba and Colpo dell’onda, and see where they might transport you.