‘Always Optional’ involves the sonification of a selection of poems from the ‘Happiness’ collection by poet Jack Underwood. The piece is an intermedium between literature and sound-art and is posited as a ‘text-sound-art’ or ‘’text-sound-composition’ piece as defined by the Fylkingen society for experimental music and arts, founded in Stockholm, Sweden in 1933. The poems are presented in a circular array of speakers and exhibit a variety of sonic interpretations and approaches in response to Underwood’s texts.