[{"id":"9277","cataloger_name":["Ella,Hooper"],"partnerInstitution":["Concordia University"],"collection_source_collection":["SpokenWeb AV"],"source_collection_label":["SpokenWeb AV"],"collection_contributing_unit":["SpokenWeb"],"source_collection_uri":[""],"collection_image_url":["https://archiveofthepresent.spokenweb.ca/_nuxt/img/header-img_1000.fd7675f.png"],"collection_source_collection_description":["SpokenWeb Audio Visual Collection"],"collection_source_collection_id":["ArchiveOfThePresent"],"persistent_url":["https://archiveofthepresent.spokenweb.ca/"],"item_title":["SpokenWeb Podcast, S2E1, Deep Curation – Experimenting with the Poetry Reading as Practice, 5 October 2020, du Plessis and Camlot"],"item_title_source":["SpokenWeb Podcast web page."],"item_title_note":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/deep-curation-experimenting-with-the-poetry-reading-as-practice/ "],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Podcast"],"item_series_title":["The SpokenWeb Podcast"],"item_series_description":["Series of podcasts by the SpokenWeb network."],"item_subseries_title":["The SpokenWeb Podcast Season 2"],"item_series_wikidata_url":["https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q117038029"],"item_series_uri":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/spokenweb-podcast/"],"item_identifiers":["[]"],"rights":["Creative Commons Attribution (BY)"],"rights_license":["Creative Commons Attribution (BY)"],"access":["Streaming and download"],"creator_names":["Klara du Plessis","Jason Camlot"],"creator_names_search":["Klara du Plessis","Jason Camlot"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/124151352052252602758\",\"name\":\"Klara du Plessis\",\"dates\":\"1988-\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Producer\"]},{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/90740324\",\"name\":\"Jason Camlot\",\"dates\":\"1967-\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Producer\"]}]"],"contributors":["[]"],"Publication_Date":[2020],"material_description":["[]"],"digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"title\":\"\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://cdn.simplecast.com/audio/28a9da1f-8cca-410c-b5d7-8165a73f9394/episodes/2e2272f2-55cd-4126-9504-959fca8bda69/audio/ea743428-b8dd-4aa5-b204-c8d72da6416b/default_tc.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"swp-s2e1-deep-curation.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"44.1 kHz\",\"duration\":\"00:56:13\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"54,035,897 bytes\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"MP3 audio\",\"title\":\"swp-s2e1-deep-curation\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/deep-curation-experimenting-with-the-poetry-reading-as-practice/\"}]"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"2020-10-05\",\"type\":\"Publication Date\",\"notes\":\"\",\"source\":\"\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"venue\":\"Concordia University McConnell Building\",\"notes\":\"\",\"address\":\"1400 Boulevard de Maisonneuve O, Montreal, QC, H3G 1M8\",\"latitude\":\"45.4968036\",\"longitude\":\"-73.57792785757887\"}]"],"Address":["1400 Boulevard de Maisonneuve O, Montreal, QC, H3G 1M8"],"Venue":["Concordia University McConnell Building"],"City":["Montreal, Quebec"],"Note":["[]"],"Related_works":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"Print Recordings:\\n\\nBernstein, Charles. ed. Close Listening: Poetry and the Performed Word. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.\\n\\nBourriaud, Nicolas. Relational Aesthetics. Dijon: Les Presses du Réel, 2009.\\n\\nBrown, Lee Ann. In the Laurels, Caught. Albany: Fence Books, 2013.\\n\\nChristakos, Margaret. charger. Vancouver: TalonBooks, 2020.\\n\\ndu Plessis, Klara. “Santa Cova Muscles.” Unpublished.\\n\\nKellough, Kaie. Magnetic Equator. Toronto: Penguin Random House, 2019.\\n\\nLongair, Sarah. “Cultures of Curating: the Limits of Authority.” Museum History Journal 8.1 (2015): 1-7.\\n\\nMiddleton, Peter. “How to Read a Reading of a Written Poem.” Oral Tradition 20.1 (March 2005): 7-34. Web. 25 December 2016.\\n\\nNakayasu, Sawako. Texture Notes. Seattle: Letter Machine Editions, 2010.\\n\\nObrist, Hans Ulrich and Asad Raza. Ways of Curating. New York: Faber and Faber, 2014.\\n\\nRadford, Deanna. Poems. Unpublished.\\n\\nRobinsong, Erin. Rag Cosmology. Toronto: Book*Hug, 2017.\\n\\nRogoff, Irit. “Curating/Curatorial.” Ed. Beatrice von Bismarck, Jörn Schafaff, and Thomas Weski. Cultures of the Curatorial. Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2012. 19-38.\\n\\nVidokle, Anton. “Art without Artists?” Ed. Beatrice von Bismarck, Jörn Schafaff, and Thomas Weski. Cultures of the Curatorial. Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2012. 216-226.\\n\\nWheeler, Lesley. Voicing American Poetry: Sound and Performance from the 1920s to the Present. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008.\\n\\nPoetry Recordings:\\n\\nDeep Curation 4th Space. Feat. Margaret Christakos, Kaie Kellough, Deanna Radford. 7 November 2019. Personal archive.\\n\\nDeep Curation Boston University. Feat. Lee Ann Brown, Fanny Howe, Sawako Nakayasu. 30 January 2020. Personal archive.\\n\\nDeep Curation Mile End Poets’ Festival. Feat. Aaron Boothby, Klara du Plessis, Canisia Lubrin, Erin Robinsong. 24 November 2018. Personal archive.\\n\\nSir George Williams Reading Series. Feat. Jackson Mac Low. 26 March 1971. https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/jackson-mac-low-at-sgwu-1971/#1\\n\\nFour Horsemen. Two Nights. 9 and 10 October 1987. http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/4-\"}]"],"_version_":1853670549464547328,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:53.966Z","contents":["Who chooses what words will be heard at a poetry reading, in what order, and why? Since 2018, Montreal-based poet and researcher Klara du Plessis has been developing her own practice of poetry reading organization by heightening the curator’s role in its production. She calls this experimental practice Deep Curation.\n\nThis episode – the “Season Two” premiere of The SpokenWeb Podcast – chronicles different phases in the evolution of Deep Curation as a poetry reading curation practice, from its earlier iterations with Klara merely choosing the poems read by the authors and the order of their presentation, to its more robust form, with excerpted and intertwined works creating a thematic, cohesive arc. The eventual collaborative, choral, and sometimes improvisational nature of this project raises questions about authority and authorship. As such, this episode conceptualizes shifting degrees of responsibility between curator and authors, and the dynamic space created as a result of this shared and mobile agency. Poets featured from Deep Curation archival audio, include Lee Ann Brown, Margaret Christakos, Kaie Kellough, Sawako Nakayasu, Deanna Radford, and Erin Robinsong.\n\n00:03\tTheme Music:\t[Instrumental Overlapped with High-Pitched Voice Begins] Can you hear me? I don’t know how much projection to do here.\n00:21\tHannah McGregor:\tWhat does literature sound like? What stories will we hear if we listen to the archive? Welcome to season two of the SpokenWeb Podcast: stories about how literature sounds.\n00:35\tHannah McGregor:\t[Instrumental Overlapped with High-Pitch Voice Ends] My name is Hannah McGregor, and each month I’ll be bringing you different stories of Canadian literary history and our contemporary responses to it created by scholars, poets, students, and artists from across Canada. Picture yourself at your local arts cafe for a poetry reading with some of your favourite artists and writers. You settle into a nearby seat and the hum of idle chatter around you begins to fade as the poet’s ready to take the stage. Now ask yourself: who chooses which artist reads first? Who chooses what words will be heard at the poetry reading and in what order and why? Since 2018 Montreal based poet and researcher, Klara du Plessis has been developing her own practice of poetry reading organization by heightening the curator’s role in its production. She calls this experimental practice Deep Curation. This podcast episode chronicles different phases in the evolution of Deep Curation as a poetry reading curation practice, from its earlier iterations with Klara merely choosing the poems read by the authors and the order of their presentation, to its more robust form with excerpted and intertwined works, creating a thematic cohesive arc. Poets featured from Deep Curation archival audio include Lee Ann Brown, Margaret Christakos, Kaie Kellough, Sawako Nakayasu, Deanna Radford, and Erin Robinsong. Here is Klara du Plessis with season two episode one of the SpokenWeb Podcast “Deep Curation: Experiments with the Poetry Reading as Practice.” [Theme Music].\n02:18\tKlara du Plessis:\tI’m Klara du Plessis. A poet and PhD student in English at Concordia University. I’m doing research on the history and practice of the curation of poetry and performance. [Instrumental Strings] About three years ago, I saw a friend in Toronto and we sat on a terrace with our drinks. Our conversation felt energetic and I shared a new idea that I was excited about. So excited about that I continued not only thinking about it, but doing it. I call this doing Deep Curation.\n03:00\tKlara du Plessis:\tDeep Curation is a practice of experimental poetry reading organization that I developed and theorized over the past few years. Through it, I deliberately heightened the curator’s role while questioning assumptions of who gets to shape the poetry reading, why, and what the implications of those choices are.\n03:29\tAudio Recording:\t[overlapping voices as sample of Deep Curation performance]\n03:29\tKlara du Plessis:\tDuring the initial phase of experimentation and in my role as a Deep Curation curator, I would choose the poems read by the authors and the order of the presentation.\n03:41\tAudio Recording:\t[overlapping voices]\n03:41\tKlara du Plessis:\tDuring the later phases and in Deep Curation’s more robust form, I worked to create a thematic arc, to re-contextualize the poet’s work, to place poems in conversation with each other through proximity, but also excerpting and formal experimentation.\n04:05\tAudio Recording:\t[Overlapping Voices]\n04:06\tKlara du Plessis:\t[Begin Music: Strings] The idea for Deep Curation hit me after almost six years of field work organizing the monthly Montreal-based Résonance Reading Series. [Music: Strings increases volume, includes overlapping audio of background event chatter] While this series precedes Deep Curation, it forms the foundation of my experience in thinking about curation. It was a big deal for me to wrap up that series. [End Music: Strings] It was such an ongoing, almost durational part of my curational life. I’ll never forget the final closing event of the series, held on 7, August 2018. [Audio Recording: Background Chatter]\n04:42\tAudio Recording:\t[Klara du Plessis] Can everyone hear me? Amazing. It’s a really huge turnout, which is amazing and I’m so, so happy to see all of you. There are some extra fold up chairs kind of by the front door, on the right-hand side, opposite the counter. So, if anyone wants one, they’re there. Please help yourself. Or ask me to help you. Yeah, I can’t believe I’m saying this, but, welcome to the final Résonance reading! [Cheering and Clapping] Yeah, it’s been six years of plus minus 10 readings per year, which makes that give or take 60 meetings right here on this stage. So, I’m gonna allow myself to be nostalgic for a moment because Résonance kind of started by accident in a way, like I just finished my Master’s and decided that I was going to take some time to do my own writing. And that led to me actually working here at Résonance Cafe in different capacities. But then of course I noticed the stage. I was like, okay, well it’s a perfect venue, let’s organize one reading. And so, I invited some friends to read and it was a huge success. It was super fun. And it kind of, then we decided that, “Oh, well, we can just as well start doing it again and again.” And I started organizing events on a monthly basis, but like one month by one month. And if I can give any aspiring curator advice, never organize month to month because it’s incredibly stressful. Like every couple of weeks, “Oh my gosh, I still need three readers, where am I going to find them.” And it just feels like you’re constantly organizing. [Mechanical Sound]. So, there was a point that I realized I needed to step up. And I started organizing the readings way in advance, like up to a year in advance. And this shift in attitude also kind of became a shift in who it was booking. So, I started inviting people who I thought wouldn’t say yes, you know, so I can be like, “who do I want to see on stage?” “Who do I really, really admire?” And then I’ll just reach out. And like the amazing thing was that pretty much everyone I’ve ever invited has said yes. With a few exceptions, with very legitimate reasons that they can’t come. And yeah, so I just realized that people [Metal Clanging] need a platform, people want to share their work. And yeah, that felt like a major kind of shift in what Résonance became. [Mechanical Sound] And then people started asking me to read people —agents and publicists started contacting me — and Résonance became larger, kind of like national in scope. It felt more serious and it felt like  way more responsibility. This is maybe like three, four years in. And then I very slowly started thinking that Résonance had become a form of authority in the sense of being able to offer or withhold opportunity. Those high standards are one of the reasons that I ended up deciding after six years that this kind of like the end of an era, in a sense that if Résonance were to continue, I would want to keep doing better and doing more. And as like one woman doing this, I don’t have the time or the resources to do that. But I do want to say that curating Résonance has been an absolute joy. It has been fun. It has been fulfilling. It has been challenging, energizing, and I’ve learned so much and I’ve met such great people [Audience Member: Woo!] So, thank you. [Clapping] That’s like the longest speech I’ve ever given here. [Instrumental Strings]\n09:01\tKlara du Plessis:\tI had heaps of experience organizing and hosting literary events, but Deep Curation was somehow different. I wanted to curate a poetry reading. I wanted to really curate a poetry reading. I wanted to invite poets whose work I love to read. And then I wanted to tell those poets which poems to read and in what order. “Oh”, my friend said, “yes”, my friend said. “That is a good idea.” [Instrumental Strings with Percussion]\n09:33\tKlara du Plessis:\tWhenever I chat with art historians or exhibition curators about the research that I’m doing, they always have one of two reactions. They either insist that curation in the visual arts is grossly under theorized and not thought about critically at all, or that the word curatorial has been overused and they couldn’t stand hearing it one more time. Coming from a literary perspective, though, it seems to me that the visual arts has done a tremendous job of sussing out critical vocabulary surrounding the presentation, dissemination, and structures of collaboration inherent to curating. For starters, practitioners of the visual arts and museum studies have theorized a very useful division between the terms of curating and curatorial. I’d like to quote scholar and curator Irit Rogoff on this rift. Rogoff suggests quote: [Begin Music: Upbeat Instrumentals] “the distinction is of curating as professional practice, which involves a whole set of skills and practices, materials, and institutional and infrastructural conditions. Developing the concept of the curatorial has been about getting away from representation and trying to see within this activity, a set of possibilities for much larger agendas in the art world. The curatorial then defines the larger frame” End quote. [End Music: Upbeat Instrumental] When I think of most poetry readings that I have been involved in, and especially those that precede Deep Curation, I interpret curating versus the curatorial as a division of labour. Often the poetry reading organizer takes on the work of curating. I mean that the organizer invites the poets, they book a venue, promote the event on social media, they check the microphone and adopt a responsibility of care towards presenters and audience. They ensure that everyone is having a good time. In contrast the poets themselves enact the curatorial role. The poets choose which poems they will share, how these poems will be framed by anecdote and preamble, and in which order they will be performed. As critic Peter Middleton says, choosing which poems to read is quote, [Click] [Begin Music: Upbeat Instrumentals] “a fiercely held prerogative of the poet.” End quote. [End Music: Upbeat Instrumentals] [Click] All of this implies that the organizer of the event has little to no input into the work performed at the poetry reading. They don’t know whether they will like the specific works chosen by the poet. They also don’t know whether the works by different poets will enter into relevant dialogue with each other, [Audio Recording: Echoes of chatter at an event] or whether there will be a thematic or conceptual arc to the event as a whole. Differently put the literary curator has little agency to shape or mediate the event as a cohesive relational platform for the presentation of art. I spent a lot of time reflecting on this division of curating and curatorial and how it impacts the organization of literary events. I became obsessed with trying to shift this dynamic, to play with it, and to get material answers to theorist Nicolas Bourriaud’s pivotal question: [Begin Music: Intermittent Strings] what does a form become when it is plunged into a dimension of dialogue? This isn’t a new question. As Bourriaud historicizes in terms of the visual arts, a paradigm shift occurred after cubism resulting in a radical turn away from human deity and human object dialectics and a turn towards human to human relationality. Starting mid-century and swelling through the ‘70s, into the ‘90s, happenings, gatherings and participation-focused art, place sociability and the relationships between human experience center stage. [End Music: Intermittent Strings] At the same time, collaboration and interactivity became a source for exploration in the literary world.\n13:19\tAudio Recording, Jackson Mac Low:\t[Inaudible/Multiple voices reciting poetry over one another] Opening quotations number. Open quotations. [Inaudible] Closed quotations. Semi-colon. [Inaudible]\n13:30\tKlara du Plessis:\tA good example [Audio Recording from above continues faintly] is Jackson Mac Low’s communal readings using volunteers from the audience to perform elaborate scriptings of his poems.\n13:37\tAudio Recording, Jackson Mac Low:\tSemi-colon. Evan. [Inaudible]\n13:43\tKlara du Plessis:\t[Audio Recording continues faintly] These readings often resulted in cacophonous chaos. This audio clip is from Mac Low’s appearance at the Sir George Williams reading series on 26, March 1971.\n13:54\tAudio Recording, Jackson Mac Low:\tX [inaudible] capital E. A. V [Inaudible] R.Q. comma. semi-colon. period. K. N. Apostrophe. P. 6. D. [Inaudible] Dash. Dash. Dash. Dash. Semi-colon.\n14:14\tKlara du Plessis:\tAnother relevant example is the so called Four Horseman: BP Nichol, Steve McCaffrey, Paul Dutton, and Rafael Barreto-Rivera. [Begin: Audio recording, inaudible] These four poets exploded the potential of sound in their polyvocall joint compositions. This audio clip is taken from the 1988 record, Two Nights.\n14:51\tAudio Recording, Four Hourseman\t[Various Vocal Sounds, inaudible]\n14:58\tKlara du Plessis:\tDeep Curation clearly stems from a rich tradition of experimental collaborative poetry performance. It is also engaging though with contemporary vocabulary from the visual arts and importing it to explore literary potentials. I want to listen to some audio clips from three Deep Curation poetry readings curated between late 2018 and early 2020. But I also want to linger on the shift that is activated when some of these theoretical questions come into play. The division of labor between curating and curatorial with poets themselves often deciding how to present their work upholds the familiar concept that poets perform their own roles as authors on stage. Contemporary authors voice their own work as a display of authority and authenticity. [Sound Effect: Box Opening] As scholar Leslie Wheeler suggests [Sound Effect: Box Closing] poetry readings are manifestations [Begin Music: Instrumental] of authentic authorial presence. There is of course also the opposite danger of tipping the scale of authority away from the author to the curator. This is something that curator Anton Vidokle relevantly critiques in terms of the visual arts. He says, curators have begun to assume the appearance of something with authorial characteristics. Vidokle warns that curators can easily usurp credit from the artists or poets and rob the voice of their creative work. [End Music: Instrumental] One of Deep Curation’s key points of investigation is to trouble the notion of static authorial authority by distributing curatorial agency between author and curator alike. The curator of a Deep Curation poetry reading aims to direct the presentation of poetry by facilitating polyvocal dialogues between poets and between the works of those poets. Yet poets always retain authorship over the poetic output. Poems and excerpts of poems are placed deliberately alongside each other to create thematic narrative and conceptual arcs and arguments. The poetry reading is no longer a series of random poems placed side by side. Rather, the poetry reading presents a cohesive entity of combined poems that collaborate towards a larger sonic event. By directing, scripting, but also working together to design the poetry reading in this way, agency circulates from the poets to the curator, and back to the poets. Poets and curator constantly navigate a dynamic balance between control and freedom, individual authorship and collaboration.\n17:07\tKlara du Plessis:\tI’m going to share audio clips from three phases of my Deep Curation experiments, narrating the project’s development, and illustrating shifting approaches in my practice. [Begin Music: Instrumental] The audio clips will further inspire a discussion on this relationship between control and freedom. [Music Intensifies] Deep Curation: Phase One: Resonance. [Music Continues] One of the first Deep Curation experiments I curated, I invited poets Aaron Boothby, Canisia Lubrin, and Erin Robinsong to participate. I knew that their poetry would form a relevant conversation and I could imagine a reading that centered ecology, language, and loss. In hindsight, my tentative curatorial strategy was just a buffed-up version of a normal poetry reading. And of course, I realized how fraught the word ‘normal’ sounds. For the most part, I scripted the order and interlay of poems by the different authors, but I rarely excerpted or initiated any kind of material intervention into the structure of the poems and their coexistence. I also included some of my own writing. And so, the four of us read together at the vegan jazz bar Résonance Café during the Mile End Poets Festival on 24, November 2018. Here is a short audio clip from this reading. Erin’s poem “Cortes” is deliberately positioned beside a section from an early version of my long poem, “Santa Cova Muscles”.\n18:49\tAudio Recording, Erin Robinsong\tThe mountain told my eye / its sparkling name / and in return, I answered / from the ashes/ and green /gathered round/ and echoed /along the windy heights/ O my friends/ if you are alone / stretch out both brains / and lash together a middle one/ thus three-way / we waited for the dawn/ fresh and rosy fingered / as the backs of animals/ when evening falls / nobody / yet saved his skin/ so we ourselves untie / the ship took places at the oars/ and seek again / an island where /with burning clouds / and loyal dark / we soon rouse\n19:48\tAudio Recording, Klara du Plessis\tDespite density a kind of stupidity crushing words/ into a pulp of intelligence /no /air /allowance/ Instead, a breakage into sight /breakwater from words, hieroglyphic impotence / gathering light through the eyes, tearing it out/ salt, water, ocean writing, / organic prismatic/ I stumble over my love for the sea and rest my head on mountains/ I’d like to posit a theory that we’re all descendants of headstones/ The soft jagged edge of the mountain range / where I walk daily for three weeks, then leave/ encumbered by the definitive brains inhabiting every boulder/ This mountain intelligence, reasoning beyond the usual kind. I reject truth, but fixate on beauty/This might imply a material privilege, visual impulse, / but this banal state of mind is reversed to a vibration, the vibratory / relation exceeds the eye, yet enters everything through the surface of the eye/  to inoculate everything/ Heading towards the garden, which is the museum, / this ontological greenness…\n21:13\tKlara du Plessis:\tI love how green and eyes weave a connecting thread. When Erin says [Audio, from Mile End Poets Festival: Stretch out both brains and lash together a middle one] I respond [Audio, from Mile End Poets Festival: Encumbered by the definitive brains inhabiting every boulder, this mountain intelligence reasoning beyond the usual kind] thematic coherence and a similar affective register bind these independent poems together. They become perceived as a unit, or at least as a conversation. Despite Erin and myself each composing our poem separately at different times and with different intents. They merge here in this reading through adjacency to create a temporarily shared authorship. In this case, I am both an author sharing my writing beside other authors, and I am the curator of the event as a whole. This implies that my authorship oscillates between a kind of directive stance towards the event as a combined performative entity and the embodiment of intimate listening in proximity to other poets while collectively sharing our poetry. I returned to Résonance Café, the venue for this Deep Curation event in order to jog my memory about the reading, but also to record myself in a less formal, more journal-like way. One could say that I’m [Begin: Echo Effect] Deep Curating my voice through time [End: Echo Effect] as I collage archival material from 2018, formal narration for this podcast, and soundscape audio from the field.\n22:36\tAudio Recording, Klara du Plessis:\t[Background Noise] So here I am in Résonance Café, the venue of many, a poetry reading over the course of six years. All kinds of background noises: [Microwave Beep] cleaning the fridge, pots [Coffee Grinder] the coffee machine. Many readings were ambiently disrupted by the coffee grinder. [Background Noise] With me is Isis Giraldo. She’s one of the co-owners of Résonance Café.\n23:27\tAudio Recording, Isis Giraldo:\tHello!\n23:27\tAudio Recording, Klara du Plessis:\tDo you want to say hi?\n23:27\tAudio Recording, Isis Giraldo:\tHi!\n23:27\tAudio Recording, Klara du Plessis:\tAs already mentioned the second Deep Curation event with Canisia, Erin, and Aaron, also happened here in Résonance Café. And, this is really one of the spaces where I’ve listened the most deeply I’ve ever listened on the stage being in such close proximity to the people around me on stage. Because we hadn’t rehearsed very much and because we had such minimal scripting for the reading we were very attuned to what the other readers were doing to make sure that we didn’t miss a cue or forget where and when to start reading. And so just the degree of listening between the four of us on stage was very acute. I remember in particular that Canisia was reading a lot slower than me and that as the event progressed I kind of matched my pace to hers  — it was an element of kind of like empathetic performance where we really tried to listen and adapt to what was happening sonically and collaboratively.\n24:41\tKlara du Plessis:\tThe four of us were in this together. We were on the stage together. But perhaps counter-intuitively, our togetherness came at the cost of remaining separate. Each poet’s reading is extremely clear and articulated in solitude. Each poet’s words remain their own words and as fellow performers we each respect the sonic space needed for another poet to project their work into the room. The images of Erin’s poem make eye contact with the images in my poem, but they don’t overlap or resolve into chaos.\n25:15\tAudio Recording, Erin Robinsong:\t[Inaudible]…and seek again an island where with burning clouds and loyal dark, we soon rouse\n25:22\tKlara du Plessis:\tPoems touch, but don’t merge.\n25:31\tAudio Recording, Klara du Plessis:\tDespite density, a kind of stupidity/ Crushing words into a pulp of intelligence /No air allowance.\n25:36\tKlara du Plessis:\tAs the curator of this event, my intention was to create a dialogue between the different poetries presented, but I was also clearly hesitant to overstep my own adopted authority. I felt strange to excerpt poems that I had not authored or to demand borders between poems to be blurred. This is of course symptomatic of the fact that this reading was only the second experiment in a series of Deep Curation poetry readings. I was still figuring out my own project of taking control of the poetry reading’s form. I was trying to strike a balance between directing the reading and maintaining the authorial integrity of the authors and of their works. Here is another excerpt from my audio journal, now seated on Resonance’s patio.\n26:17\tAudio Recording, Klara du Plessis:\tI’m sitting on the patio outside now. And I’m still thinking about this Deep Curation event that I did with Aaron, Erin, and Canisia. And I’m thinking back and reflecting on the extreme release of energy that happened directly after we performed together that night. And just this like real recognition of the potential of what the project held and what we could feel it, the project could still develop into. And I remember kind of talking to Aaron, Erin and Canisia and, you know, asking how that felt about the very small instances of excerpting, you know, whether they felt comfortable with that after the fact. And they really made it clear to me that while I was being very tentative about excerpting and intertwining, those are really the moments that were the most valuable. And that going, moving forward with the project what I really needed to do was to be less careful, be less tentative and be more dramatic with the process of putting poems in conversation with each other and that this approach would really define, should really define what Deep Curation was and how it made it different from other poetry reading events.\n27:35\tKlara du Plessis:\t[Begin Music: Instrumental] Our conversation excited me and I felt inspired to design stranger, more exploratory Deep Curation scripts. Deep Curation: Phase Two: Fourth Space. [End Music: Instrumental] With a green light go ahead from Erin Robinsong, Aaron Boothby, and Canisia Lubrin, I started formally experimenting with what I now call refrains. These are longer, highly excerpted sections that combine lines and a theme from different poets and different poems into a new whole. Conversations with friends occasionally introduce the words, remix, or cento in relation to these refrains. Borrowed, poetic language repurposed as a new creative body of work. I often fantasize about creating an entire Deep Curation poetry reading using this technique. The following audio clip illustrates this refrain style. It is taken from a Deep Curation poetry reading featuring poets, Kaie Kellough [Audio Recording, Kai Kellough: The author’s voice drones, harmonizes with the room’s ambient hum.], Margaret Christakos [Audio Recording, Margaret Christakos: Listen, they’re not listening], and Deanna Radford [Audio Recording, Deanna Radford: Voices everywhere, talk talk]. Most of the text is from Kaie’s book Magnetic Equator, Margaret’s Charger, and Deanna’s still unpublished work. The event took place on 7, November 2019 at Concordia University’s Fourth Space, a venue dedicated to the sharing of new scholarly research.\n29:05\tAudio Recording, Kaie Kellough:\tThe author’s voice drones, harmonizes with the room’s ambient hum.\n29:08\tAudio Recording, Margaret Christakos:\tListen, you’’re not listening.\n29:12\tAudio Recording, Deanna Radford:\tTongu, words. Sibilant chorus.\n29:19\tAudio Recording, Kaie Kellough\tThe author’s voice fuses with the electric zzzz amplified by a ventilation shaft.\n29:26\tAudio Recording, Deanna Radford:\tA room holds sounds unfolding.\n29:29\tAudio Recording, Kaie Kellough\tThe author’s voice drones, harmonizes with the room’s ambient hum.\n29:44\tAudio Recording, Deanna Radford:\tP- p- p- plosives and t- k- p- voiceless and d- g- b- voiced\n29:50\tAudio Recording, Kaie Kellough\tThe author’s voice fuses with the electric zzzz amplified by a ventilation shaft.\n29:53\tAudio Recording, Deanna Radford:\tWords as traces.\n29:57\tAudio Recording, Margaret Christakos:\tI am listening\n30:02\tAudio Recording, Kaie Kellough\tTurning back, is this a beginning? Is it preferable to be erased, to have a voice that does not know the chorus\n30:10\tAudio Recording, Margaret Christakos:\tvoices mime rooms\n30:24\tAudio Recording, Deanna Radford:\tA room holds sounds unfolding.\n30:24\tAudio Recording, Margaret Christakos:\tTry to listen.\n30:24\tAudio Recording, Deanna Radford:\tVoices airborne. Talk talk.\n30:24\tAudio Recording, Margaret Christakos:\tAll of us, ears\n30:27\tAudio Recording, Kaie Kellough\tThis entire country and ear facing upward and listening,  listening, receiving signals from the world.\n30:37\tAudio Recording, Deanna Radford:\tWe whisper. Lip to ear. Through glass. Walls. Plastic. Light scope.\n30:44\tAudio Recording, Kaie Kellough\tThe author’s voice drones, harmonizes with the room’s ambient hum.\n31:03\tAudio Recording, Deanna Radford:\tP- p- p- plosives and t- k- p- voiceless and d- g- b- voiced\n31:03\tAudio Recording, Kaie Kellough\tThe author’s voice fuses with the electric zzzzz amplified by a ventilation shaft.\n31:10\tAudio Recording, Deanna Radford:\tWords as traces.\n31:12\tAudio Recording, Margaret Christakos:\tI am. Listening.\n31:14\tAudio Recording, Kaie Kellough\tTurning back. Is this a listening? Is it preferable to be beginning? To have a voice that does not know the chorus?\n31:22\tAudio Recording, Margaret Christakos:\tRooms mime voices.\n31:28\tAudio Recording, Deanna Radford:\tA room holds sounds unfolding.\n31:28\tAudio Recording, Margaret Christakos:\tTry. To listen.\n31:34\tAudio Recording, Deanna Radford:\tVoices airborne. Talk talk.\n31:34\tAudio Recording, Margaret Christakos:\tAll of us. Ears.\n31:35\tAudio Recording, Kaie Kellough\tThis entire country an ear, facing upward and listening/ listening, receiving signals from the world.\n31:47\tAudio Recording, Deanna Radford:\tA speech act for ears / speech acts for ears.\n31:50\tAudio Recording, Margaret Christakos:\tEars would be like metal or dreams of hallucinatoria.\n31:58\tAudio Recording, Deanna Radford:\tWe whispered lip to ear through glass, walls, plastic, light scope.\n32:04\tAudio Recording, Margaret Christakos:\tVaricose, inner ear exorcism.\n32:09\tAudio Recording, Kaie Kellough\tThis entire country an ear facing upward and listening/ Listening, receiving signals from the world.\n32:16\tAudio Recording, Margaret Christakos:\tSignal whistling for us chorally / come into my arms, darlings / come soft into this cloud.\n32:28\tKlara du Plessis:\tComposing these excerpted refrains on shared topics of listening and poetic articulation clearly took a high degree of familiarity with the author’s work. I needed to recall relevant lines in order to place them in thematic conversations. At first, my process was to mark up hard copies of authors’ books, but in time I realized that searchable PDFs hugely facilitated the process. A PDF allows quicker access to lines and the ability to copy paste excerpts into the refrain. Creating these refrains took a poet’s mind and an eye for composition. Lines were extracted from the original works. They were recombined into a new context and new conversation with lines from other poems and from the minds of other poets. This is a good example of the curator adopting the role of the author. As a curator, I was doing more than mediating the creative performance. I was also molding, creating and literally authoring a new script. Although I always worked with the consent of the invited poets, I was possibly also overstepping my role. My role as directive curator was productively challenged working with [Begin: Background Chatter] Kaie, Margaret, and Deanna, skilled performers and formal experimenters themselves. Kaie had graciously welcomed us into his home serving coffee and warm croissants as we settled into work on the script of our design. We discussed the arc of the event, performance cues and logistics. My memory of our discussion has Margaret questioning the possibility [End: Background Chatter] of opening up the script. She was curious about more organic instances of interjecting into another poet’s words, supporting them with echoes, or drowning them out with overlay. Margaret, Kaie, Deanna and I were all excited about this possibility of opening up the script and worked to integrate new strategies into the performance outline. Some poems needed to be read solo, to maintain the impact of the words’ meaning. But some sections were begging to be choral, to maximize the potential of three voices in performance. In the following audio clip, the three poets’ voices are organically interspersed. The poets borrow each other’s words and insert them into their own poems to create a dynamic and playful conversation.\n34:34\tAudio Recording, Kaie Kellough\tI never cared to be a pastoral poet wrote poetry, a small flatland  longings, a poet of evangelical strictures\n34:43\tAudio Recording, Deanna Radford:\tNo memory errors.\n34:45\tAudio Recording, Kaie Kellough\tRevolutions, oceanic futures written in the veins of the vegetal/ Tenements of Babel dense with voices/ Languages spilling out the summer windows.\n34:56\tAudio Recording, Deanna Radford:\tNo memory errors, nor errs/ Nor ers /Nor ors. But ore\n35:08\tAudio Recording, Kaie Kellough\tEarthen oar. Earthen tongue. [inaudible] speechless under death. Oar. Air. Weightless volume of big sky.\n35:12\tAudio Recording, Deanna Radford:\tNo memory errors /nor errors, not ers, nor ors but ore /for roses, for eros in decision making/ if edgewise among tongue that propriety.\n35:27\tAudio Recording, Margaret Christakos:\tErrors, airs, URS, oars, or roses/ name or summon arrows/ muse or crave savour moan or receive conceive arise or arouse.\n35:41\tAudio Recording, Deanna Radford:\tLike her name was inland/ a corpus yours/ Tongue yours and corp yours.\n35:51\tAudio Recording, Kaie Kellough:\tEarthen tongues ripple speechless under yours/ Air weightless volume of big sky.\n35:57\tAudio Recording, Deanna Radford:\tLaps and licks and skirmishes.\n36:00\tAudio Recording, Kaie Kellough:\tWriters circumnavigate the question with smiles and gestures that dismiss/They write from everywhere at once.\n36:07\tAudio Recording, Margaret Christakos:\tThe a-ha of poetic inspiration.\n36:12\tAudio Recording, Kaie Kellough:\tThe only places the a-ha/ The immediate port at which the next letter a-ha.\n36:18\tAudio Recording, Margaret Christakos:\t— a-ha!.\n36:19\tAudio Recording, Kaie, Deanna, and Margaret:\t— is detained, arrives, or vanishes. [Overlapping Voices] Thank God it exists. A-ha! The ah-a exists either here nor there/ Is every weather, where? / Which is here, which is nowhere.\n36:32\tAudio Recording, Margaret Christakos:\tA-ha. A-ha. The a-ha a poetic inspiration, shifted to an a-ha reflex of thank God it exists a-ha more is a-ha now I can have this and this to this a-ha this works.\n36:50\tKlara du Plessis:\tA-ha! The poets are taking a-ha! authorship directing the a-ha! performance, developing it and initiating exchange. They’re also leaving audile space for the semantic soundscape of different voices to be heard alongside each other. This is not always the case.\n37:11\tAudio Recording, Kaie, Deanna, and Margaret:\t[inaudible, voices reciting poetry overlapping one another] Press down to form home print that scattered over future service, entrusted. disclosed. incidental behavioural derived body unsettled my reaches organic my past and now my scaped spread evenly over my spaces my means of speech my body my body my personal info invisible presence a proxy my body my body is measured is measured is filled with water scattered future interested disclosed incidental my reach is organic my past image spread evenly over my face [inaudible] stretch. [inaudible]\n38:32\tKlara du Plessis:\tHarmony transgresses into cacophony. Deanna and Kaie read briskly over each other, while Margaret doubles words standing out to her and adds a third layer to the mashup. This is a true merging of voices. Separate strands are no longer clearly audible. Rather, an assembly of voices, tones, and timbres swell chaotically into a shared ownership of poetry.\n38:57\tAudio Recording, Klara du Plessis:\tHere I am, again, reminiscing on my audio journal almost a year after the Deep Curation event. I traveled down to Fourth Space, the venue of this Deep Curation event and imagined that I could see the event replaying itself through the glass walls almost photographically. So, today has been quite an odyssey. I’m now down by Concordia University’s Fourth Space, which, is of course closed. And I can — the most I can do is peer through the big glass windows and try and imagine again how this Deep Curation event happened with Kaie, Margaret and Deanna. And so, I’m kind of envisioning again the large screen that had a PowerPoint presentation projected onto it and the chairs that I had reconfigured into a circle so that the three poets and I kind of sat at the four cardinal points of the circle with the audience members interspersed in between. This really created the sense that audience was part of the performance, that they were inside the sound and you know that the sound was emanating from three different directions. Also, that the three poets could really make eye contact with each other. They weren’t standing in a line on a stage.\n40:15\tKlara du Plessis:\t[Begin: Instrumental Strings] There was strength in collaboration. Working with Margaret, Kaie, and Deanna on the design of this Deep Curation poetry reading developed it into an expansive, dynamic, and engaged performance. It also generated methods that I continue to use for Deep Curation as an ongoing project. [Instrumental Strings increase].\n40:39\tKlara du Plessis:\tDeep Curation: Phase Three: Boston University. [End: Instrumental String] Preparing for my first PhD field exam I stress-dreamed that I had to create a Deep Curation script in 10 minutes. “Oh no!”, I thought. “This is an impossible task.” “I haven’t spent months reading. In fact, I’m not familiar with the poetry at all!” Luckily in a happy turn of the nightmare variety, I solved the conundrum. In my dream, I created a set of performative cues for improvisation. In my dream, the poets had to choose their own poems, but they had to read them according to my design. The real life, non-dream Deep Curation event that took place at Boston University on 30 January 2020, definitely wasn’t limited to 10 minutes of preparation. But it did function as a broad structure with signals for the authors to move more freely. In other words, my authorship of the outline demanded reauthorship from the poets as they played and reworked their words collectively on stage. This reading included prerecorded audio of Fanny Howe’s poetry and the following audio clip features live performance by Sawako Nakayasu —\n42:22\tAudio Recording, Sawako Nakayasu:\tSo, where’s my werewolf pillow.\n42:24\tKlara du Plessis:\t— and Lee Ann Brown.\n42:27\tAudio Recording, Lee Ann Brown:\tBlockade.\n42:27\tKlara du Plessis:\tThis clip extracts poetry from Sawako’s book, Texture Notes, and Lee Ann’s In the Laurels Caught.\n42:36\tAudio Recording, Sawako Nakayasu and Lee Ann Brown\t[Overlapping Voices] Blockade is pink lemonade made from strawberry library books. The Totoro house hums a deep song in yonder glen. You’re a fragment of my imagination. Experience wafts its checkered travelers in with a thumbprint. Vexed then fixed. Seeing signs shaped like huge shoes Fox church road sprang up on her left. Bright blue-green beetle vale under a rock. Keats’ favourite letter was V. She spins it like a tiny DJ on her alphabet box. Wendy Mandy over the wall straggles in with beeping shoes, lit up like a kite.  The leaves are out of pollen or soon will be. Who are you calling a verdant lush. Here, mommy, hold this moss. Hold this mess. Don’t say to me. I don’t like to. Blap is my friend. He’s a boy. He’s a ghost who lives in New York. He painted with me. His hair is yellow.\n43:46\tKlara du Plessis:\tThis section of the Deep Curation script is constructed as a series of wave formations. Lee Ann begins by reading a poem up until the word yellow. Yellow serves as a cue for Sawako to begin reading her poem, “Texture of Needing Yellow”, in the background.\n44:09\tAudio Recording, Sawako Nakayasu and Lee Ann Brown\t[Overlapping Voices] Yellow! He painted. He painted pink hair. His hair is red. I am blap. Here are some pieces of puzzles for you. I will make some more for you. Are you a cat bus? We’re getting married. I married this train. We’re getting married. Cheeky Dickie married a Chickadee. You’re dead, Chuck with yourself. Scraping together, scraping away at a bleeding book and you should be too. So, where’s my werewolf pillow. So, where’s my werewolf pillow. Where is my werewolf pillow? Sawako.\n44:39\tKlara du Plessis:\tLee Ann improvises. She fixates on the weirdness of the werewolf pillow and transforms this poetic image into a direct question, addressing Sawako head on.\n44:51\tAudio Recording, Lee Ann Brown:\tSawako. Where is it?\n44:53\tAudio Recording, Sawako Nakayasu:\tWhere is your werewolf pillow?\n45:02\tAudio Recording, Lee Ann Brown:\tWhere’s my Totoro house that I want on the hill so I can go up there and see all those little puffballs.\n45:06\tAudio Recording, Sawako Nakayasu:\tIt’s down the old [inaudible] stomping in the Ramsey cemetery?\n45:06\tAudio Recording, Lee Ann Brown:\t[inaudible].\n45:06\tAudio Recording, Sawako Nakayasu:\tThat’s where you’re gonna find your werewolf pillow.\n45:22\tAudio Recording, Lee Ann Brown:\tIt’s up in the house. I love my pillow. That deep pillow song. That deep pillow collaboration and curation.\n45:22\tKlara du Plessis:\tThat deep pillow collaboration and curation? Ha! Reality is ousting any kind of script.\n45:28\tAudio Recording, Sawako Nakayasu and Lee Ann Brown\t[Overlapping Voices, Improvisation] That deep pillow collaboration and curation. [Inaudible]. These mountains are old mountains. Rockies. Where are we now. 5 million years old. What happens to the yellow you had here? Appalachians. 500 million. The texture of yellow. [Inaudible]. Which are plentiful here, like overgrown version of some families, private [Inaudible]. And the position.\n45:59\tKlara du Plessis:\tThe positions have reversed. The poets have exchanged words so that Sawako performs Lee Ann’s words, and vice versa.\n46:06\tAudio Recording, Sawako Nakayasu and Lee Ann Brown\t[Voices Overlapping] The positions reverse. Raised from [inaudible]. Yellow is a light that contains a friendly sort of heat. I am drawn to a newer [inaudible]. Maybe yellow is light which massages. [Inaudible] Carved. Straight path. Thus transmitting. Bumpy road to heaven. And then at a later moment. Existence for a straight arrow. Transposed. It’s an altogether different, similar. The way your friends are different, similar. That way. Here. The point of meeting yellow and it’s specific geography. Down on the bypass where someone wept. Maybe yellow as a geography that grows and shifts. Otherwise, known as now. The now of needing yellow. I need more yellow. That comes lower forth like an angel, the angel needing yellow. Needing yellow without needing yellow. Missing without being missed. Being close to needing yellow is close to not needing yellow. Needing yellow is all —it shows up becomes less being yellow becomes more needing yellow. Near being yellow from the distance or after or close at hand. More, more needing yellow. And more and more and more and more and more needing yellow in result of an explosion, which is yellow and is not needed. That’s enough.\n47:43\tKlara du Plessis:\tThat’s enough.\n47:44\tAudio Recording, Sawako Nakayasu:\tThat’s enough.\n47:44\tKlara du Plessis:\tSawako interjects. Self-reflectivity of both Sawako and Lee Ann’s performance amplifies their authority over the poetry reading at hand. By commenting on what they’re doing while they’re doing it, they showcase their awareness of their words. They actively take authorship of their poetic presentation by manipulating and reworking the words at their disposal. This is no passive replay of a script, but an engaged and playful [Audio Recording, Overlapping Voices] public display of fluid and fun authorial control.\n48:28\tAudio Recording, Sawako Nakayasu and Lee Ann Brown\t[Overlapping Voices] [Inaudible] Five. Million. Years. Old. Yellow that you had here. The texture of being yellow. The permutation of being yellow.\n48:28\tKlara du Plessis:\tDuring the Q&A discussion after the Deep Curation performance, Kate Lilley, poet and professor of Creative Writing at the University of Sydney queried the relationship between improvisation and script.\n48:40\tAudio Recording, Sawako Nakayasu:\tThe script [inaudible] opened some doors and then we opened some more doors in the moment.\n48:50\tKlara du Plessis:\tThat was Sawako.\n48:53\tAudio Recording, Lee Ann Brown:\tYeah, we just read through it a little bit yesterday. We had the script before, but we didn’t really do any of this yesterday at all.\n48:58\tKlara du Plessis:\tThat was Lee Ann.\n49:04\tAudio Recording, Sawako Nakayasu:\tYeah it was very — but I think we were just interested in listening to each other and —\n49:11\tAudio Recording, Lee Ann Brown:\t— Playing.\n49:11\tAudio Recording, Sawako Nakayasu:\t— Playing. Yeah. And Lee Ann and I have known each other for many, many years, which I don’t think Klara knew when she curated us. But there is a feeling of friendship that also contributed to the way it felt to be in conversation through our poetry in this particular moment. That was like a gift that Klara gave us.\n49:27\tAudio Recording, Kate Lilley:\tThat certainly came across.\n49:35\tKlara du Plessis:\tSawako’s metaphor of the door is apt. As the curator, I initiated gestures that opened doors between the writing of Sawako, Lee Ann, and Fanny Howe. But gestures are never static. The doors kept swinging open and shut as the poets themselves move through doorways and opened other entries and exits that I didn’t even know existed. I’d like the sense of play and improvisation as impetus for the poets to author their own work again, recurrently. I want to extend Charles Bernstein’s claim that each performance of a poem adds to its “fundamentally plural existence”. Not only is the poem multiplying into variant forms, but each performance allows the author to rewrite that poem in performance. By restructuring the conditions in which a poem was being presented and by placing that poem in new proximities to other poems, Deep Curation instigates a radical potential for dynamic and organic re-authorship. [Begin: Instrumental Strings] As the curator of a Deep Curation poetry event, I author the possibility for the poets to re-author their own poetry. [Instrumental Strings continues]\n50:56\tKlara du Plessis:\tDifferent curators have different approaches to curating and to the curatorial. Whether they’re working in visual arts or literary fields. Critic, Sarah Longair’s notion of curatorial authority, [End: Instrumental Strings] for example, imagines the curator’s role as that of resident scholar. The curator is someone who dedicates her life to the preservation and dissemination of a body of work. For her, the curator embodies expertise about a certain collection and thereby gains authority to define and control its public representation. Thinking along very different lines, celebrity curator Hans Ulrich Obrist supports an organic model, providing a space in which experiences are generated according to the individuals displaying or interacting with artworks. Obrist is more interested in connections that may form when a curator comes temporarily into contact with a set of art or literary works. The curator never defines the work, never becomes a spokesperson for the work, but rather supports the audience in creating their own experience and understanding of the work. I want to quote Obrist on his curatorial practice. He says, quote, [Begin Music: Upbeat Instrumental] “curating is simply about connecting cultures, bringing their elements into proximity with each other. The task of curating is to make junctions, to allow different elements, to touch.” End quote. Deep Curation allows different elements to touch. I like that. Thinking back to the performative work of Jackson Mac Low, and the Four Horsemen, their experiments also allowed elements to touch, even to merge. But I wonder if they would have liked the term curation. [End: Upbeat Instrumental] I doubt it. Thinking of Deep Curation in terms of curation, as the name, obviously underscores, initiates a methodology at odds with past modes of collaborative poetry performance. Curation has a hipness to it, which some find off-putting. Curation also derives its concepts of collectivity, proximity, and relationality from the exhibition, the gallery space, rather than from performance practice. Curation projects the visual onto the literary, and then waits to see what kind of performance will erupt. Yet, Deep Curation is still in flux [Begin: Instrumental Strings] as a curatorial practice it keeps developing and transforming as my own interests as a curator change. But also as the work comes into contact with various poets and audiences and the world of expertise these individuals bring to the project.\n53:23\tKlara du Plessis:\tDue to COVID-19 Deep Curation has been on a break for six months and once life reconfigures itself, who knows how the project will have changed. I can see Deep Curation taking on gentler forms that are less labour intensive while still embodying the core tenet of creating conversations between poets and poems. I’ve also fantasized about ways of expanding the project, having more time and resources to work with poets for more extended periods of time to progress past the first draft of a performance and to create a truly integrated and rehearsed experimental poetry reading experience. In contrast, I’ve considered ways of creating a solo show. This might be limited to my own poetry, or it might be a way to include other poet’s work, but without their physical presence and performance. It might also be a re-curation of archival audio material from past Deep Curation poetry readings. Hang on to that thought. [Echo effect] Hang on to that thought. [Theme Music]\n54:54\tHannah McGregor:\tSpokenWeb is a monthly podcast produced by the SpokenWeb team as part of distributing the audio collected from and created using Canadian literary archival recordings found at universities across Canada. Our producers this month are SpokenWeb team members, Klara du Plessis and Jason Camlot of Concordia University. And our podcast project manager is Stacey Copeland. For more work from Klara du Plessis check out their freshly released second book-length narrative poem, Hell Light Flesh from Palimpsest Press, available now. A special thank you to Lee Ann Brown, Margaret Christakos, Isis Giraldo, Kaie Kellough, Kate Lilley, Sawako Nakayasu, Deanna Radford, and Erin Robinsong for their contributions to this episode. To find out more about SpokenWeb visit spokenweb.ca and subscribe to the SpokenWeb Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you may listen. [Begin: Overlapping Choral Voices] If you love us, let us know. Rate us and leave a comment on Apple Podcasts or say hi on our social media @SpokenWebCanada. Stay tuned to your podcast feed later this month for shortcuts, a brand-new take on audio of the month with Katherine McLeod, bringing us mini-stories about how literature sounds. [End Overlapping Choral Voices]"],"score":1.0},{"id":"9278","cataloger_name":["Ella,Hooper"],"partnerInstitution":["Concordia University"],"collection_source_collection":["SpokenWeb AV"],"source_collection_label":["SpokenWeb AV"],"collection_contributing_unit":["SpokenWeb"],"source_collection_uri":[""],"collection_image_url":["https://archiveofthepresent.spokenweb.ca/_nuxt/img/header-img_1000.fd7675f.png"],"collection_source_collection_description":["SpokenWeb Audio Visual Collection"],"collection_source_collection_id":["ArchiveOfThePresent"],"persistent_url":["https://archiveofthepresent.spokenweb.ca/"],"item_title":["SpokenWeb Podcast S2E2, Lesbian Liberation Across Media: A Sonic Screening, 2 November 2020, Tayler, Aubin, and Girouard"],"item_title_source":["SpokenWeb Podcast web page."],"item_title_note":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/lesbian-liberation-across-media-a-sonic-screening/"],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Podcast"],"item_series_title":["The SpokenWeb Podcast"],"item_series_description":["Series of podcasts by the SpokenWeb network."],"item_subseries_title":["The SpokenWeb Podcast Season 2"],"item_series_wikidata_url":["https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q117038029"],"item_series_uri":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/spokenweb-podcast/"],"item_identifiers":["[]"],"rights":["Creative Commons Attribution (BY)"],"rights_license":["Creative Commons Attribution (BY)"],"access":["Streaming and download"],"creator_names":["Felicity Tayler","Mathieu Aubin","Scott Girouard"],"creator_names_search":["Felicity Tayler","Mathieu Aubin","Scott Girouard"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/135137837\",\"name\":\"Felicity Tayler\",\"dates\":\"1977-\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Producer\"]},{\"url\":\"\",\"name\":\"Mathieu Aubin\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Producer\"]},{\"url\":\"\",\"name\":\"Scott Girouard\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Producer\"]}]"],"contributors":["[]"],"Publication_Date":[2020],"material_description":["[]"],"digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://cdn.simplecast.com/audio/28a9da1f-8cca-410c-b5d7-8165a73f9394/episodes/64f51444-cc3f-4556-93d0-59fbbe9bb06e/audio/b2b367e4-113c-462c-a30d-aa1822303fd9/default_tc.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"swp-s2e2-lesbian-liberation.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"44.1 kHz\",\"duration\":\"00:58:11\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"55,928,416 bytes\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"MP3 audio\",\"title\":\"swp-s2e2-lesbian-liberation\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/lesbian-liberation-across-media-a-sonic-screening/\"}]"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"2020-11-02\",\"type\":\"Publication Date\",\"notes\":\"\",\"source\":\"\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"venue\":\"University of Ottawa Hamelin Hall\",\"notes\":\"\",\"address\":\"70 Laurier Avenue E, Ottawa, ON, K1N 6N5\",\"latitude\":\"45.42380315\",\"longitude\":\"-75.68588224885067\"}]"],"Address":["70 Laurier Avenue E, Ottawa, ON, K1N 6N5"],"Venue":["University of Ottawa Hamelin Hall"],"City":["Ottawa, Ontario"],"Note":["[]"],"Related_works":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"Anger, Kenneth, director. Scorpio Rising. Ruban VHS, 1964.\\n\\nButler, Judith. Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of ‘Sex’. Routledge, 1993.\\n\\nGodard, Baraba. Gynocritics: Feminist Approaches to Canadian and Quebec Women’s Writing. ECW P, 1987.\\n\\nMedia Mothers, directors. A Working Women’s Collective. 1974.\\n\\nMoores, Margaret, director. Labyris Rising. V Tape, 1980.\\n\\nNavas, Eduardo. Remix Theory: The Aesthetics of Sampling. Ambra Verlag, 2014.\\n\\nNicol, Nancy, director. Proud Lives: Chris Bearchell. V Tape, 2007.\\n\\nRoss, Becki. The House that Jill Built. U of Toronto P, 1995.\"}]"],"_version_":1853670549473984512,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:53.966Z","contents":["This episode of The SpokenWeb Podcast is a little different than episodes you’ve heard from us before. It is a kind of “feminist memory-work” – An audio collage, a method, an approach to community building which aims to honor lesbian-feminist collective histories and renewed public attention to lesbian feminist culture.\n\nSpokenWeb network members Felicity Tayler and Mathieu Aubin originally guided a SpokenWeb listening practice session in which they led a discussion of diegetic and nondiegetic sounds in clips from three queer films: A Working Women’s Collective (1974), Labyris Rising (1980), and Scorpio Rising (1963). After the event, participants in the Listening Practice enthusiastically desired an expanded event where we would collectively watch, listen to, and discuss these films in their entirety. This led to the organization of a second event “Lesbian Liberation Across Media” sponsored by multiple institutions of queer cultural history and community, such as Labo de données en sciences humaines/The Humanities Data Lab, SpokenWeb, Lesbian and Gay Liberation in Canada Project, University of Toronto Media Commons Archives, and the ArQuives.\n\nEpisode producers – Felicity Tayler, Mathieu Aubin and Scott Girouard – cordially invite you into their feminist sonic memory world: A three-part audio collage of “Lesbian Liberation Across Media”. A virtual film screening and discussion held Summer 2020 in partnership with SpokenWeb, and featuring three iconic lesbian feminist films: “A Working Women’s Collective” (1974), “Labyris Rising” (1980), and “Proud Lives: Christine Bearchell”(2007). Through a weaving together of the voices of over 60 participants in attendance, along with original music scores, archival clips and more – we ask, how do we listen to Canadian lesbian liberation movements across media? Whether it’s a feature length film or a spirited virtual chat session, this audio collage episode invites you to experience a citational politics that makes audible the intergenerational relationships, conflicting concerns, nostalgic reveries, and a sense of togetherness while apart in the pandemic-related time of crisis.\n\n00:18\tHannah McGregor:\t[Instrumental Overlapped with High-Pitched Voice] What does literature sound like? What stories will we hear if we listen to the archive? Welcome to the SpokenWeb Podcast: stories about how literature sounds.\n00:35\tHannah McGregor:\tMy name is Hannah McGregor, and each month I’ll be bringing you different stories of Canadian literary history and our contemporary responses to it created by scholars, poets, students, and artists from across Canada. This episode of the SpokenWeb Podcast is a little different from episodes you’ve heard from us before. What you’re about to hear is a kind of feminist memory work, an audio collage, a method, an approach to community building that aims to honor lesbian feminist collective histories and renewed public attention to lesbian feminist culture. In this episode, producers Felicity Tayler, Mathieu Aubin, and Scott Girouard cordially invite you into their sonic memory world: a three-part audio collage of lesbian liberation across media, a virtual film screening and discussion held in summer 2020 in partnership with SpokenWeb and featuring three iconic lesbian feminist films: A Working Women’s Collective, Labyris Rising, and Proud Lives: Christine Bearchell. Through a weaving together of the voices of over 60 participants in attendance, along with original music scores, archival clips, and more we ask: how do we listen to Canadian lesbian liberation movements across media? Whether it’s a feature length film, or a spirited virtual chat session, this audio collage episode invites you to experience a citational politics that makes audible the intergenerational relationships, conflicting concerns, nostalgic reveries, and a sense of togetherness while apart in the pandemic related time of crisis. Here is Felicity, Mathieu, and Scott with Lesbian Liberation Across Media: A Sonic Screening.\n02:35\tVoiceover, Emma Middleton:\tOn June 10th, 2020, following the extreme social isolation of the first pandemic winter, over 70 people gathered over Zoom to watch three lesbian liberation films: A Working Women’s Collective, Labyris Rising, and Proud Lives: Christine Bearchell. In this podcast, we’ve created an audio collage record of the sounds of watching these films together.\n03:04\tMay Ning:\t[Zoom Entry Chime] I’m excited to see like what it’s going to look like with a hundred people.\n03:07\tUnknown speaker:\tI know. Yeah. [Instrumental Music] So when we were watching Bound and there was one person who hadn’t seen the movie before and she had her camera on, so everybody was like getting more, like they’re more excited about watching her reactions. I mean, they were excited about the movie too. But it was like her reactions for like the best version of the show.\n03:28\tRachel E. Beattie:\tAnd it’s so different when you’re doing an online thing, because if you’re at a talk or something, like you can see people smiling at you and like responding to stuff that you’d say. And I just feel like doing Zoom stuff is like speaking into the void. For the trivia night that I’ve been doing for the archives we had to turn off the comments and also video, like the people’s videos, because we had like, Zoom bombing and people doing offensive stuff. So, it’s like, I’m literally speaking into the void. I have no idea if people are enjoying the material that like, if they’re laughing at my jokes or like anything.\n04:03\tMichelle Schwartz:\tWhat time is it?\n04:06\tRachel E. Beattie:\t8:26.\n04:06\tMichelle Schwartz:\tWhen should I start letting people in? [Instrumental, Drums] I just let them in at 8:30 or earlier?\n04:12\tFelicity Tayler:\tI’d let them at 8:30.\n04:14\tMichelle Schwartz:\tYeah.\n04:15\tRachel E. Beattie:\tHow many people are in the waiting room?\n04:17\tMichelle Schwartz:\t17.\n04:20\tRachel E Beattie:\tCool. How’s it going May?\n04:24\tMay Ning:\tGood. I’m excited. I haven’t seen the films yet.\n04:27\tRachel E Beattie:\tYeah. I saw Mathieu sent me the Press Gang one, but I haven’t seen the other two. So, I’m really looking forward to watching.\n04:34\tMay Ning:\tI know, I wanted to save them to watch it with everyone.\n04:36\tRachel E Beattie:\tYeah.\n04:36\tFelicity Tayler:\tIt’s 8:30. I guess we can —\n04:41\tFelicity Tayler:\tYay.\n04:42\tVarious voices.\t— open the doors. (in unison)\n04:44\tMathieu Aubin:\tIt’s funny because I imagine when you would open the door and in a real office and then 36 people coming in at once, it’d be like —.\n04:52\tMichelle Schwartz:\tMuch louder.\n04:58\tUnknown speaker (masc voice):\tYeah. \n04:58\tFelicity Tayler:\tAnd also like more visually obvious [laughs].\n05:01\tMathieu Aubin:\tAll the bodies.\n05:05\tConstance Crompton:\tOh, it is sort of wonderful watching like everyone arrive and role in —\n05:08\tMathieu Aubin:\tYeah.\n05:08\tConstance Crompton:\t— I haven’t [inaudible] a lot of Zoom meetings, so I don’t get the waiting room feature very often. It’s just a very nice.\n05:15\tElspeth Brown:\tNice to see many friendly faces and the names in the list of participants, even if a lot of people don’t have their video on or their audio.\n05:25\tConstance Crompton:\tIt’s so true. Yes. Hi, to everyone who is sort of disembodied at the moment.\n05:29\tVarious voices:\t[collective laughter]\n05:31\tMichelle Schwartz:\tHi, to everyone who we might’ve usually seen in the summer conference season that we’ve missed.\n05:37\tMathieu Aubin:\tYes.\n05:37\tMichelle Schwartz:\tOur annual hangouts canceled.\n05:42\tConstance Crompton:\tAnd now with the combination of theaters being closed and bars being closed, I think this would be the kind of event that could blend both of those things, even if everyone’s in their own living room.\n05:51\tRachel E Beattie:\tYeah, totally.\n05:52\tConstance Crompton:\tThat’s great. Also, too. I think we had been expecting a much sort of smaller event and we can be like, “Oh, we can like, go around”.\n06:00\tConstance Crompton:\tWell, shall we dive in with official programming?\n06:06\tFelicity Tayler:\tZoom says you’re the host so I guess you got to make the decisions.\n06:09\tConstance Crompton:\tYes indeed. In which case I would say, take it away Michelle.\n06:17\tMichelle Schwartz:\tOh no, you’re first Connie. You’re supposed to welcome everybody.\n06:20\tConstance Crompton:\tAh! Welcome everybody. We are definitely touched by how many people have taken up the screening and just from the last week and a half. It was put together by several organizations, the Humanities Data Lab at Ottawa U, The SpokenWeb, the University of Toronto Media Archives, Lesbian and Gay Liberation in Canada Project which Michelle and I co-direct together, and the ArQuives.\n06:46\tMichelle Schwartz:\tWe as the organizers of this event are participating from Toronto. So, we have the University of Toronto and Ryerson University, from the University of Ottawa and from Concordia in Montreal. And we acknowledge that our respective institutions are located on the traditional lands of many Indigenous nations, including the Algonquian, the Anishinaabe, the Haudenosaunee, the Wendat and the Mississaugas of the Credit. Just as Toronto has been a gathering place for many people for thousands of years, we are grateful to be able to provide a space for people to gather together tonight. And we ask you to think about the land that you are on and how you can show solidarity with the Indigenous caretakers of that land, by talking about what traditional people are from the land that they are on. So, if anyone wants to share their traditional land with us, we would love to know where you’re all coming in from.\n07:38\tVoiceover, Emma Middleton:\tThis screening of 1970s, lesbian liberation films was organized in response to a clamorous demand to watch these films from the audience of an earlier event. We wanted to ask an intergenerational question: are we doomed to have these same fights forever?\n07:56\tMathieu Aubin:\tWhat I would love to do is to stop — me stop talking and if anyone, like Connie’s suggesting and trying to get people to that we’ve been wanting to hear from to chat then go ahead.\n08:06\tUnknown speaker:\tYeah.\n08:07\tRachel E. Beattie:\tHey, did you see that Ontario had a plan about like students going back to school today, but I couldn’t find anything in it about libraries. Like we’re not important. Nobody gives a shit about us. So, like the press release for the Ontario government said nothing about university libraries, like…\n08:29\tFelicity Tayler:\tUh, talk a little bit, just go back to the listening session that Mathieu and I led with these films about — well in April for a kind of an audience of around 30 people. So, we kind of knew more or less who was going to be there that we’re able to put on this other event that is reaching a much wider audience. So, for me, this kind of comes back to this question of gaining access to media that was seen in the first film, and that we’ll see continuing through in the, in the other films.\n08:59\tMichelle Schwartz:\tThe screening was based on an event that Matthew and Felicity hosted. A SpokenWeb event and where, where they showed clips of Labyris Rising, which is a film that we’re going to watch tonight. And I’ve never seen a sort of 1970 lesbian, a short film that I haven’t wanted to see the entirety of. So, there was a great sort of clamor in the chat of that Zoom asking to see the whole movie instead of just the short clips. And that was sort of the birth of this, of this screening tonight where we get to watch the whole movie as well as two other movies. So, we have three short films to watch and we have a few panelists who will take turns introducing each one. And we’ll have a time for discussion and questions at the end. So, you can use the chat at any time. But at the end, we’ll hold for the questions.\n09:56\tBaylee Woodley:\tI just have read an email from Connie from earlier. I would love to hear about Michelle’s experience visiting the installation, Killjoys Kastle, if you’re willing to talk about it and your thoughts on how it engages with this lesbian feminist history. And also, maybe it’s another way to facilitate these sort of intergenerational conversations.\n10:15\tMichelle Schwartz:\tI just went as an attendee and it was a huge amount of fun. You, you went into this house, there was the graveyard of lesbian organizations past, which were like all these kinds of gravestones painted with all these kinds of like lesbian organizations that had sort of broken up due to in fighting or the cause getting, well, I don’t know, you know, potentially they solved the cause. They had, I believe there was like a menstrual cup reading with, you know, like, kind of a diviner of menstrual blood. And there was, smashing truck nuts — [Sound Effect: Campfire Crackling]\n10:50\tRachel E. Beattie:\tThere was a lesbian sing along in that campfire room with all the little wood stools.\n10:55\tMichelle Schwartz:\t— Yeah. And it was, it was, it was a really wonderful experience and it sort of did kind of provide another version of, of sort of watching these films for me as, as, someone who didn’t live through the time period of sort of having a nostalgia for something that I missed, but also, you know, like feeling, not really like fully part of it and, and just having a lot of – being able to experience the history, the history in a certain way, and also feeling very strongly the gaps between the, between the generations. So, I loved Killjoys Kastle. I don’t know if anyone else was there.\n11:30\tRachel E. Beattie:\tAnd cause I went on opening night, actually it was with Michelle and a bunch of other people —\n11:34\tRachel E. Beattie:\t[Inaudible] and some other people.\n11:37\tRachel E. Beattie:\t— yeah, some other people on this call. Like Stark [Inaudible]. But so for opening night they had all of these lesbian feminists theorists, or I don’t know how everyone identified, but and so cause it’s the last room in Killjoy’s Kastle was the processing room. So, like after you’ve gone through this whole experience, of course lesbians have to process so they had like, literally you could not leave without talking to like famous feminist theorists. It was amazing.\n12:09\tFelicity Tayler:\tBut what I do remember is that there was kind of this like double narrative of like, oh that’s just like white feminism.\n12:15\tUnknown speaker:\tYeah.\n12:15\tFelicity Tayler:\tAnd then there was actually like an inside the Killjoy Kastle there was kind of this like trying to atone or come to terms with it or like, you know, critique, critique whiteness at the same time as like having this intergenerational kind of like smorgasbord experience. And so, I think though that that’s just, it’s part of what of what comes with this.\n12:44\tRachel E. Beattie:\tYeah. I remember cause they had, it might’ve been the lesbian singalong room. There was all these quotes on the wall from various lesbian feminists. And then that there was an accusation made that they were sort of appropriating without like bringing in more diverse voices into like the making of, so it was like essentially these white feminists that are using the voices of feminists of colour, and that kind of thing.\n13:11\tFelicity Tayler:\tAnd it doesn’t mean that the history that we have access to has less value. It just means that there are other histories that we can now look to as well.\n13:26\tMichelle Schwartz:\tI wanted to say how odd it was to watch that Press Gang film, and then hear people sort of restating debates that, that we hear so much now in, in like the, in the movement. You know, like that woman who was ranting about how she doesn’t know what’s politically correct and so she doesn’t know whether I can, but what she can say because now everything she says is wrong, and so she’s not going to say anything. And it’s just so frustrating to hear the same things sort of eternally return, within sort of these kinds of communities. And it was, it was just really, you know, fascinating to hear that particular, kind of iteration of political correctness sort of from, from so far, in the path. And I just, like, I always wonder whether we’re just like doomed to have the same fights forever. Is that too dark?\n14:23\tFelicity Tayler:\tNo, but I do think it’s like worthwhile kind of embracing it, or I don’t know, like learning to live with the discomfort, like, you know, like learning to live with that affect. Right. So, like the, this question of, you know, nuancing, intergenerational conversations and like tempering your fandom for, you know, something like the, the Killjoy Kastle, right. Like, cause I was just kind of like googling quickly cause like my, so I, I always kind of had this like FOMO relationship to the Killjoy Kastle, cause it was always like not in the city that I was in.\n14:55\tRachel E. Beattie:\tYeah. And I think it’s a very important point that you raise and I think that sort of come out before, is that like, all of these movements they’re never just it’s there’s never just like one thought it’s, you know, people have fights like have really big, like, you know, really serious fights about very specific points of ideology and very specific things like, where are we going? That’s – movements have always been like that, they’re always going to be like that. And so, you know, kind of like looking back that you can look at both of those things like that, there was this wonderful thing that was achieved by the movement and this like great togetherness, but then also like, you know, you argue like day and night, but then you, you know, you love the people at the end of the day, but like, “Oh my God, they made me so mad when we had the big argument” kind of thing. And I think —\n15:40\tUnknown speaker:\tYeah.\n15:40\tRachel E. Beattie:\t— that seems like a thing that sort of evergreen, like, I’ve certainly noticed that in organizing spaces now and I’m and I’ve seen, you know, as the documentaries, that you see about various different groups organizing.\n15:56\tMichelle Schwartz:\tAnd we also just wanted to thank everyone that donated towards the screenings because we were able to source additional funding for the screening rates we were able to donate all that money to The519 and to support our youth in Toronto. So, thank you so much. We raised almost $400 for those organizations for queer Black and trans youth in the city. And that’s just a really great thing that we can do for our community. So, thank you all for donating.\n16:23\tElspeth Brown:\tI mean, it’s so nice to just watch these fabulous films without leaving my house I can’t even begin to tell you. I probably never would have gone, frankly, because I’m such a home body.\n16:35\tVoiceover, Emma Middleton:\tThe first film, A Working Women’s Collective, opened a discussion of lesbian feminist film aesthetics and printing collectives. In listening to a cacophony of lesbian liberation print sounds we wondered what these sonic resonances told us about how printing collectives lived their politics through their work and loves.\n17:00\tMathieu Aubin:\tAnd so, I just want to quickly introduce Press Gang and Press Gang was a feminist collective with a strong lesbian constituency that were in a publishing house and printing press in Vancouver, British Columbia. So, I’m happy to say that some people here are from that area. So, it started in 1970 as a mixed collective, but in 1974, it became a woman only collective and it would go on to publish several books that were integral to the lesbian liberation movement, such as Stepping Out of Line and Still Sing, and print many, many, many documents, flyers and posters for lesbian liberation organizations in the city. So, the video we’re about to see is called, A Working Women’s Collective, and it was produced by the Media Mothers organization It is currently housed at VIVO Collection or VIVO Archives,  excuse me, in Vancouver. So, what’s exciting about what you’re about to see is that it does document the origins of the collective and their values as they stood in 1974.\n17:55\tMathieu Aubin:\tAnd you get to hear from the members of the press, but what you also get to see is what the site looked like. So, what I want, I encourage you to think about is, you know, what does the relationship between sound and visual do in the film? What’s the relationship between diegetic and non-diegetic sound mean what you can see in here at the same time, and if you can actually identify the source of the sound, and if you can’t do that, I encourage you to think about that with like the rest of the videos as well. And finally, really just a general question to ask yourself, which is when you’re watching this, what can you see in the documentary and what can be heard in relation to lesbian feminist culture production? So that’s really what I’ve been thinking about and collaboratively with this wonderful collective.\n18:39\tRachel E. Beattie:\tFirst off with Press Gang – I, this is such a great, I love the, like lo-fi [Sound Effect: Film Reel] kind of, it looks like it was shot on some kind of magnetic video that is rapidly deteriorating. As a person who works on analog media I really loved that. And so, when we were, when we were talking about doing this session, there was a lot of talk about the sound of the film and so I was really listening to that. And I – the thing that I’ve been sort of obsessed with for a while, which is the way that voices sound different from the past, like there’s like a different, I, don’t not like an audio person [Audio: Background Chatter from Film] I don’t know the exact word, but there’s like a different tone to those voices. And that’s so on display when, when you’re sort of, you’re looking at the beautiful printing presses and then hearing those voices in your ear. So, Mathieu, I wonder if you had any thoughts on the sort of the prominence given to the sound of the voice.\n19:35\tMathieu Aubin:\t[Sound Effect: Film Reel] What’s it’s interesting about the voices – it cuts because of the editing. Like it’s a bit choppy. It’s not just the way that they’re articulating their politics and their relationship to the press, but also the way that they sounded doing so. And also, the sound of the machines. Like they don’t sound like the printing, like the printer we have at home producing these books. Like it’s like really loud and that’s part of their daily sounds. Right. So, in thinking about that, I think like we have a cacophony of sounds in the, in the video. And so, part of what I’m interested in thinking about is not just what can we see and where the sources of the audio, but how do they inform each other? So, when somebody is talking about, you know, taking over the means of production [Sound Effect: Printing Press] and then all you see is a machine just pumping, right. You’re like, Oh, okay. Like this is literally it. And then I’m thinking, Oh, step back, let’s look at this video that they produced. And like the choppiness of that. And like, as they’re explaining something like it almost cuts out and you’re like, Oh, okay, well, we might have missed the message, but so the best way to describe it at this point in terms of that video is like a cacophony of lesbian liberation print sounds. [Instrumental Music]\n \n\n21:21\tAudio from A Working Women’s Collective:\tWhy I was a printer and why all this had happened to me because women don’t have access to the media and that women have to be printers or have to be publishers to — (crackle) (new voice)— fell into it too. You know, like I was working, designing posters and things, and I came down and I thought, Oh, there’s this press. And I knew one of the men and he was doing dark room stuff. And so, I went in and so he showed me how to do all the darkroom stuff. And so, I developed the negatives of my own, like my own artwork. And then he was starting to print it and he said, do you want to do this? And I said, sure. [Laugh] And like, I was really afraid, but I thought there’s this big press. And like, I can’t drive a car and I’ve never run a machine. And I had this mental block and I thought, now’s the time. [Instrumental Music] \n22:20\tFelicity Tayler:\tI had a kind of a follow on that is it sort of struck me like I’ve seen the film in different contexts now a couple of times, but the thing that struck me in this listening is there’s this moment where they’re talking about how it’s about the skills, like how it’s about gaining the skills and being really good at what you’re doing. And like, and, and you see them you know, working in wrenches and fixing the machines. And then they’re talking about how they’re having this conflict with somebody who’s like, who cares if you can do stuff? You just have to say things! And it’s like this big kind of like production versus content sort of false binary.\n23:14\tMaureen Fitzgerald:\tHi, hi. Yes, I was connected with Press Gang through feminist publishing because I was involved in The Women’s Press Collective, and I actually —.\n23:29\tAmy Gotlieb:\tYou’re here in Toronto?\n23:30\tMaureen Fitzgerald:\t— I am in Toronto. I’m speaking from Toronto, but there was a year that I spent in Vancouver because I was lovers with Pat Smith. And it was wonderful to see that image, those images. I knew and know Sarah. The skills debate in ’81 was very interesting. The way I worked at Press Gang, I suppose I volunteered once a week and they taught me how to do layout. I’m an academic. I was on leave from U of T for the year, because that’s where my lover was. But the, the, the raging discussion was around skills. And some people thought that everybody should do everything. Like there should be no division of labor and no acknowledgement of the skills that some of the people who had been working in the presses had and were very experienced at. As Marusya just said, I mean, it was a very sophisticated operation. And by then it was also publishing books, a lot of books. So, Press Gang publishing, I think well probably didn’t outweigh the the flyer printing and printing for other organizations, but it, it became more predominant. And when I was there, it was more predominant. And I remember this discussion around skills where some people thought, well, we should all do everything in all be able to do everything. There should be no specialization.\n25:12\tRachel Epstein:\tIt’s Rachel Epstein. And yeah, I worked at Press Gang in the early 80’s maybe just after Maureen, maybe ‘82, ‘84 or something like that. And I don’t actually remember that skills debate so much, but I started out working as the production coordinator and then I actually learned to run a press. And I remember being – that being one of the most empowering things I ever did was actually learning how to run that printing press and how to fix the printing press and all of that. And I was also lovers was Pat Smith at the same time that Maureen was lovers with Pat Smith and just [Laughs] that’s how Maureen and I met each other. So, it was, that was going on too. But also, before we, I unfortunately did not see the film. I came in late and I missed the film. I think I may have seen it a long time ago. So, I can’t really speak to that, but just not to romanticize totally what it was like there. We were also struggling with working collectively and I have some memories that were like some harsh memories of how we treated each other, how we sort of in the, in the process of trying to be fair were very unfair. So, I know lots has been written and post-feminist collectives, and that’s what we were, and it was amazing and so many ways and what we did and, and the skills that we developed, the political causes that we supported. But there was many things going on there in in that attempt to work collectively.\n26:56\tVoiceover, Emma Middleton:\t[Instrumental Music] In the second film, Labyris Rising, we hear no dialogue, only an Eros propelled musical score, set to a collage of visuals built through mimesis and citation. We see and hear how editing is a form of care. If you want to be part of the community, you have to understand the codes.\n27:19\tFelicity Tayler:\tSo, when Mathieu and I start— first looked at these two films together, what we were listening for was, you know, the sound in the films, and how that sound worked with the visual [Instrumental, Percussion]to show us how community is created through different kinds of cultural institutions that produce a common language and a set of shared practices. It’s a video made by Margaret Moores and Almerinda Travassos who are two former members of LOOT. It was filmed in the basement of the LOOT building. [Sound Effect: Printing Press] And what you don’t see off screen is a printing press where the newsletter was published.\n28:00\tFelicity Tayler:\tSo, in Labyris Rising we hear continuous soundtrack of folk rock and R&B. And I saw a, a comment go by while we were watching, where somebody was trying to guess the track. And, I got, I got to say, that’s kind of my, my experience of the film as well, trying to, trying to situate the sound while I’m watching the images. [Instrumental, Trumpet] And so the musical landscape kind of helps the flow of the non-linear narrative structure throughout the film and the collage, but as you saw between the two clips, the collage aesthetic of the video, and also the sonnet composition are borrowed from the iconic film of gay cultures, Scorpio Rising. So, there’s a lot that’s borrowed from the film, but there’s also a lot that’s kind of worked at — redefined in relationship to that film.\n28:51\tjake moore:\tWe all know the soundtrack from Scorpio Rising and that’s even many years after the fact because the – Kenneth Anger was able to draw from very known, popular culture to find the representation of this so-called outlaw. That outlaw is fully coded as what we accept as a masculine identity. And the idea that the, the sort of travel that was going to happen, this, this, the gathering that would become what was going to be a Hell’s Angels gathering, whereas in the Michigan Womyn’s Festival, you have, people riding bicycles and all of the coded things that you’re describing, but in the soundtrack, most of us are not as familiar. And well Joan Armatrading. And, until we see Janice Joplin, it really doesn’t enter into a contemporary imaginary. And, I think it’s really the outlaw status is still much stronger for the lesbian woman. It still doesn’t enter into the same kind of accepted social practice.\n29:52\tFelicity Tayler:\tSo, but another parallel between them is that both opening clips also point to fashion as a signifier of community belonging. And for the woman fixing her bicycle we can look at the embroidered patch that’s, that you see on her hip of her jeans so what you see there is the line “woman identified woman.” So, this kind of echos a pop —in the context of fixing the bicycle it echoes a kind of a popular saying that people would wear on t-shirts and protests at the time, it says, “a woman needs a man, like a fish needs a bicycle.” But it also has an organizing function. And so, historian Becki Ross had, when speaking about LOOT talks about this term as a political category. So, she says “a true feminist is a lesbian by definition in the political sense.” And this further explained by a Vancouver journalist, Judy Moreton, that “all women fully committed to the cause of freeing themselves and all other women from oppression are lesbians.”\n30:54\tMarusya Bociurkiw:\tSo, I was interested in the sort of like warning at the beginning around sort of different ideas of gender in second wave feminism. And you know, that there were no non —I mean the word non-binary didn’t exist. And transgender existed, but was identified, I think, in different ways. Certainly, there was gender bending. And we see that in the the, out— the clothing and the, the embodiment of female masculinity.\n31:32\tFelicity Tayler:\tSo, this of course is an articulation of an ideal that’s easier said than done, because there tensions. There’s always tensions in social movements, and so there’ll be tensions in this time period between gay and straight feminists, and also between feminist organizing and male-identified gay liberation organizing, for example. And this tension between — this tension within the gay liberation movement is alluded to in Moores’ appropriation of Scorpio Rising. So, when I also looked at this film, I looked at it as kind of a semantic structure. So, the different scenes are being put together as if the, the visuals themselves and the kind of soundtrack are a narrative structure that’s built through mimesis or citation. So, it’s, it’s repeating motifs that come from somewhere else. And it is not —so there’s no spoken dialogue. So, it’s not as it’s kind of a direct or explicit as the last film that we saw. You have to kind of like imagine yourself into the scene and imagine your knowledge of what you know about the scenes that are being portrayed, at the kind of community that’s being shared with us, the music that’s being played to kind of imagine yourself into it, depending on what your existing experiences are. So, this ambiguity of origin contributes to the sense that to be part of the community, you have to know it’s references or codes, which include specific genres of music as a cultural institution. And in Labyris Rising you’ll see that those genres of music kind of lead to this, like, you know, [sound of concert cheering] heady dream of the outdoor music festival.\n33:08\tjake moore:\tThe Michigan Womyn’s Festival was this iconic, though clearly specific, gathering site. And I think it’s telling that it was known as the land where people gathered and my exposure to it as a musician was as a punk rock musician that they invited there. But we were very much interlopers in the warm, fuzzy, like the, in the kind of breakdown of feminist status. And what was outlier? What, what was allowable outlying? Uh, I think you get into really interesting territory thinking about when a rebellious figure can be fully embraced by a larger dominant culture, like the masculine and biker that is still embraced today. Like we still see this in, in contemporary film and television. It gets a lot of play. It’s a very common association of, of, a powerful and often militarized understanding of how to achieve power.\n34:10\tFelicity Tayler:\tSo, you learn a lot about the world of LOOT from the movement of the camera around the scene in Labyris Rising and I’m going to read an excerpt that describes the scene from historian Becki Ross’s book. “An inventory of 1970s, lesbian feminist lifestyle is richly detailed in the 1980 film Labyris Rising. A deliberate feisty send-up of the urban gay male style captured by Kenneth Anger and Scorpio Rising. This lesbian cult classic was shot on location at 342 Jarvis Street and the Fly By Night Lounge by former LOOT members, Margaret Moores, and Almarinda Travassos. The half-hour super eight film is full of clues. The double-headed axe, the Labyris or cunt beads on a chain. The famous maxim woman identified woman embroidered on the back of blue jeans, pinky rings, interlocking women’s symbols, pink triangles, and suspenders. While reading the Washington DC based feminist journal, off our backs, the protagonist drags deeply on her marijuana joint and drifts off to remember scenes from the Michigan festival to the music of Be Be K’Roche, Heather Bishop, Joan Armatrading, and Janis Joplin. If you think about Labyris Rising, then taking the vocabulary from that film, what’s interesting is note— noting what they keep. Right? So, the, the scene that we all love with the cat and somebody named Mark, like on the bed, like there are some comments going by, like maybe people knew the name of this person in the bed.\n35:50\tMathieu Aubin:\tOh, we have a comment from Amy Gottlieb that says the person on the bed is Marcia Cannon known as Mars.\n35:59\tFelicity Tayler:\tBut you know, so in Labyris Rising you have somebody on the bed, they’re smoking a joint, they’ve got all the music festival kind of paraphernalia all around them, they’ve got a cat and that scene is constructed almost exact — and they’re reading off our backs right? So, it’s like —\n36:13\tRaegan Swanson:\tThey’re reading on our backs! And all I could think about was like, I were about to like, watch the movie about Chris and how much work that she did around censorship. And, it, that was one moment where I was just like, it all, I know it felt very tied together.\n36:35\tMathieu Aubin:\tThe sound of the music and the voices as they are connecting, which are mostly non-diegetic then become diegetic think at a certain point with the poster, if I’m not mistaken, like there’s a poster referenced, like that’s where you’re like, okay, here’s where, like there’s a whole community. They’re not just trying to like, leave the music production. It’s like, it’s, there. Here it is. Right?\n36:55\tMarusya Bociurkiw:\tI was published by Press Gang, but I was, I worked more in a feminist video collectives, Emma Productions and Women’s Media Alliance, which Nancy Nicol was part of. And I remember when I first joined Women’s Media Alliance, there were no, there were no roles. There was no camera person. There was no sound person. We just, we, we just rotated those roles, which, was part of that, that notion that there —of collaboration and of circularity. And I think that it, it created a kind of aesthetic actually, which at the time, you know, which, which results in those, those kinds of interesting audio choices or editing choices. We, I remember the video we worked on, Our Choice, about teenage mothers and we edited that entire thing by committee. It took —\n37:59\tRachel E. Beattie:\tWow.\n37:59\tMarusya Bociurkiw:\t— So, so what resulted was also long swaths of talking that weren’t edited and that kind of editing was a form of care. And it was, a way of caring for our interview subjects and working against the grain of, of television and mainstream cinema.\n38:26\tVoiceover, Emma Middleton:\tThe third film, Proud Lives, featured a significant force in Toronto’s local communities and Canadian lesbian and gay liberation at large. We heard how a singular figure could be part of a generative field of queer cultural production and galvanize a movement to shift the terms of the world, our bodies, and our relationships.\n38:52\tRaegan Swanson:\tHi everyone, so the next film we’re going to be watching is Proud Lives: Christine Bearchell, which was directed and produced by Nancy Nicol. It was a commemoration video that was shown at Chris’s memorial in 2007 after she passed. For those who aren’t aware, Chris is well Nancy describes her as a towering figure in the history of gay liberation in Canada. And I think that’s a fair assessment. She began writing for The Body Politic in 1975. And she’s kind of, when you look at the pictures of like the body politic, she’s the woman. And everybody else is just like, those are the guys. She was, one of the founders of LOOT. She worked for the Coalition for Lesbian and Gay —CLGO — the coalition for lesbian gay rights of Ontario. She was a part of GATE [Gay Alliance Toward Equality] in Toronto, but she also did organizing in Edmonton when she was a teenager. When The Body Politic was charged, Chris was right along there and so there’s this really great picture of them celebrating after they’ve won the court case. But when a lot of people think of Chris, they think of Chris yelling, “no more shit” [Audio clip: People chanting “no more shit”] as part of the bathhouse raids. And I think that’s a picture of her and sums her up in an interesting way. She’s definitely one of those people that I really wish I could have met in person, especially reading about her and seeing all of her work. If you look at the material that we have at the archives, she’s got her fingers in all the pies, you see her stuff in the [inaudible] you see this stuff Body Politic you see it everywhere. And we have a small collection of her material, of one of her folios at the archive as well. And she’s a part of our national portrait collection. And I really love the portrait that we have of her. She’s done a whole bunch of stuff that I know some of it’s going to be in the film, but you should definitely look up more about her. And if, especially if this video piques your interest.\n41:38\tFelicity Tayler:\tFor me the thing that like, I mean, there’s so many things that I love about that film. and I’m like in the work that I do, I’ve been really interested in the work that Pink Triangle, no, that Pink Type that Chris did with Pink Type as the typesetter for, so many different magazines, you know, so sort of like an arm of Body Politic, but it’s also type setting Fireweed its type setting, like all these other magazines. And so, it becomes kind of this really important sub layer to all of this different – the kinds of cultural production that were coming out of all, all the different edges of this kind of lesbian gay feminist, like press movement in Toronto. So that’s kind of like where my personal desire comes from, in relationship to this field, this film, but there’s, there’s so many other aspects of it that I, that I do kind of pull on those emotional threads. And but, but one of the things that I like the biggest, I guess the biggest takeaway, I don’t know, the thing that I, that I think about from that film in relationship to Labyris Rising and the questions about how do you see or hear like these institutions that, that lesbian and gay liberation like produce for themselves is when she’s talking about how the gay rights movement or the lesbian gay rights movement is not just committed to rights in an end of itself, but that like the, the political kind of protests and boots on the ground, trying to like change legislation is just like one way of generating like community and cultural institutions that are the actual movement, like, or like the bigger kind of like part of the movement is you have this multiple multi-layered push towards shifting the terms that your body interacts with the world and that you, in your identity interact with world and you interact with others. And, and both are important, but there is like this much larger kind of like force that’s taking place alongside this kind of challenge to the law.\n43:50\tConstance Crompton:\tNot to put anybody on the spot, but I do see in the chat that Amy Gottlieb amazing has a comment about working at Pink Type. Amy, did you want to talk about it? [Instrumental, Piano]\n44:06\tAmy Gottlieb:\tSure. I worked at Pink Type. We typeset, I mean, I sort of, I remember type setting The Body Politic type setting Fireweed. At that time, we were on Duncan Street sort of queen and university area. And Gabe Bell worked there as well with me. I remember all sorts of people in the office and I remember our wonderful, beautiful typesetting machine, which we took great care of and felt quite privileged to be using to typeset all these incredible magazines and, you know all sorts of different kinds of publications. And people came in and there were, there was a space for people to do the layout. And so, you got to hang out with people and sort of learn about, you know, what the, these different publications were all about. And, yeah, lots of discussions about the content of The Body Politic about the personnel that the, the, the personal ads in the back. And, that was another, you know, interesting, and a difficult time sometimes in terms of the kind of tension that I think, I certainly felt and I think that Gabe might have felt as well. Yeah, it was, it was a time.\n45:51\tFelicity Tayler:\tWere you ever like tempted to, to change what the type was going to say?\n45:57\tAmy Gottlieb:\tIn terms of the ads? [Laughs].\n46:00\tFelicity Tayler:\t[Laughs] Or, you know, editorial copy, like who knows.\n46:08\tAmy Gottlieb:\tI don’t think so. So, it’s like, it was, it was, I mean, I think we would have, you know, you’re working at such a fast pace when you’re type setting [Sound Effect: Printing Press] and that it’s like, it’s just, you know, how any of us trying to get it out there and so that it can be proofed and pasted up and, you know, it’s, it was, you know, there was some crazy hours as well. And so no, but we, and, you know, yeah, he didn’t organize in that, in that way. Good idea though. [Laughs].\n47:15\tMathieu Aubin:\tThank you for listening to Lesbian Liberation Across Media: A Sonic Screening. Welcome to the epilogue. My name is Mathieu Aubin and I am here with Felicity Tayler, and we wanted to take a moment to reflect upon the process of making this episode. [Instrumental Music]\n47:34\tFelicity Tayler:\tIn designing this audio collage, we have proposed a reflexive remix, an aesthetic that Eduardo Navas describes as a sonic collage that blurs the origin of the sounds that we appropriate while relying on your allegorical recognition of the many sonic codes embedded within the soundscape, their larger meaning, and how they are received by members of LGBTQ2+ plus communities. We’ve remixed the sound space of the SpokenWeb: Lesbian Liberation Across Media listening practice held in April 2020. And the watch party of the same name held later in June. We think this produces a new sonic space as a continuation of what Judith Butler calls a citation politics, and that we honor the sounds of feminist press and lesbian liberation films shown during these events. And as we consensually site and remix the sounds of people’s voices, co-producing these events.\n48:38\tMathieu Aubin:\tThis episode cites and further circulates a queer language that acknowledges rich and complex lesbian histories. It makes room for intergenerational discussion and listening. And the virtual space of the watch party attendees from different generations can together to watch lesbian liberation films, and listen to each other’s responses to them. The event highlighted the importance of earlier community building, while challenging romanticized notions of what that community meant. It also enabled members of more recent generations to reflect critically upon that time period, and to identify shared, lived experiences across generations. All this to say, the event built a virtual space that created rich intergenerational dialogue.\n49:32\tMathieu Aubin:\tSo, with that being said, I want to take this opportunity to reflect upon the whole process of making this episode with you Felicity. And you and I have been working on this project for months now, time flies by even during a pandemic. And I was thinking about this, but like, remember when you originally asked me to co-lead the listing process with you beginning of the pandemic, it’s kind of surprising that we’re now here with a podcast episode capturing all the Lesbian Liberation Across Media events. So, my question is kind of broader and it’s, it’s this what surprised you the most about the process of producing this episode, given where we started and where we are now?\n50:15\tFelicity Tayler:\tI think what surprised me the most was how easy it was. Like how smoothly it went, but I feel like it’s because we’ve been establishing kind of a set of like an, an underlying trust for so many years. And you know, the work, the work around the feminist presses and this sense that those communities produce their own, like the communities around these presses use that as the upward apparatus to produce their own kind of alternate world, is something that brought us together in the beginning. So, it’s sort of like we’re starting to, we’re starting from a space of queer affinity in order to be able to continue to speak about these things and draw a wider narrative around it. And now we’re thinking through it in relationship to sound.\n51:11\tMathieu Aubin:\tYeah. I still remember when we first met at that Concept of Vancouver conference and you were like, you, you do queer things. I’m going to come and talk to you. And that was what, 2016, I think? So, four years this month. Wow. Time flies by.\n51:31\tFelicity Tayler:\tYeah. So, I guess I can kind of, I can follow up on that with my question. And this is a question that other people have asked me while I’m working on this material and as I continue to work on this material. And so, the question that I get asked is whether or not this is about identity and if it, so, yeah. So, is this about identity and if so, what does that mean to you?\n51:58\tMathieu Aubin:\tThat’s a tough and good question. I think that for me, it’s, it’s strange because I’ve come to these materials through obviously, well, just say, I identify as a man and I’m interested in queer materials in general and the sounds of that period. So, for me, it’s not just an idea of identity, but also community building and solidarity, and thinking about what that type of solidarity work looks like. So, one of the things that was really powerful for me was being invited by you to not only participate in that listening practice with our past relationship and amount of work that we’ve done together, but also being invited for that launch party and being asked to contextualize some of those materials and to give some of my reflections. So, the word that I think that comes to my mind is privileged to be able to be in those spaces with the identity that I have, and also knowing when to perhaps limit the amount of space that I occupy when I’m invited to be in those spaces.\n53:04\tMathieu Aubin:\tSo being invited to be there means that I have to be responsible and be respectful. So, I guess going back to your point about the easiness of all of this work, me feeling not only an enormous sense of respect for you, but also feeling that this respect is mutual. And I think that is grounded in our shared queer affinities. I, that’s probably the best way to put that. It’s just at the end of the day, I think that it has something to do with community building and identity, at least at the level of producing and collaborating together, you and I. So yeah, I have —in short, yes, it has to do with identity.\n53:44\tFelicity Tayler:\t[Laughs]. Yeah, that’s what I always say. And I mean, of course it has to do with identity, even if it doesn’t pivot on it. But it is always about creating a sense of self in relationship to the, to the idea of communities and what does produce that idea of community. And in this sense, it’s has a temporal dimension, as it often does in, in queer spaces, because we’re always looking for a past that isn’t always necessarily available to us.\n54:13\tMathieu Aubin:\tYeah. Exactly.\n54:14\tFelicity Tayler:\tBut I do like the, you know, what we were talking about earlier today about this clip that we wanted to revisit, and the editing kind of really illustrates where these questions are going. I think where, you know, in an earlier edit, there was a mistake and there was your voice like overlaid on top of one of the other participants voices and so you, you kind of produce this like typical stereotype of the, you know, the mansplaining, like, not, not making, not making space. And so, the ease with which we were able to address that and to smooth it out, in the final product, I think is a really great kind of example, of, of how working together has worked.\n54:58\tMathieu Aubin:\tEven though it’s a tiny glitch in our process over logic. I was just thinking, you know, I was listening to that I was thinking, this is egregious if we let this be, because this is just bad.\n55:10\tFelicity Tayler:\tBut also funny that there was like an ambiguity as to whether it had actually happened in real life or not. When we were working in the collage space, which it didn’t, it did not happen in real life.\n55:24\tMathieu Aubin:\tThis is great. I’m super thankful that I’ve had this opportunity to collaborate with you on this project and for all the other collaborators as well.\n55:33\tFelicity Tayler:\tYeah. Well I thank you for your thoughtful ways. And with that in mind, here are some other thank yous for all the voices that you hear in this podcast. And also for the institutions that we were able to wrangle to make this series of events possible. So, we’d like to thank Stacey Copeland, Hannah McGregor, Jason Camlot, Katherine McLeod, Scott Girouard, Constance Crompton, Michelle Schwartz, Rachel E Beattie, Raegan Swanson, May Ning, jake moore, Becki Ross, Amy Gotlieb…\n56:09\tMathieu Aubin:\t…Rachel Epstein, Maureen FitzGerald, Emma Middleton, Marusya Bociurkiw, Baylee Woodley, Elspeth Brown, Stark, Humanities Data Lab at U Ottawa, SpokenWeb, Lesbian and Gay Liberation in Canada Project, University of Toronto Media Commons Archives, ArQuives, VTape, and VIVO Archives. All the proceeds from the event were donated to supporting our youth of Toronto and their Black queer youth and Trans crew and The519 trans people of colour project. \n56:47\tFelicity Tayler:\tWe couldn’t have made this podcast without you.\n57:03\tHannah McGregor:\t[Instrumental Music] SpokenWeb is a monthly podcast produced by the SpokenWeb team as part of distributing the audio collected from and created using Canadian literary archival recordings found at universities across Canada. Our producers this month are SpokenWeb team members, Mathieu Aubin of Concordia University and Felicity Tayler of the University of Ottawa with guest collaborators, Scott Girouard.\n57:26\tVoiceover, Emma Middleton:\tAnd additional voiceover by Emma Middleton.\n57:29\tHannah McGregor:\tOur podcast project manager is Stacey Copeland and a warm welcome to new podcast research assistant Judy Burr. To find out more about SpokenWeb visit spokenweb.ca and subscribed to the SpokenWeb Podcast on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you may listen. If you love us, let us know. [Theme Music] You can rate us and leave a comment on Apple podcasts or say hi on our social media @SpokenWebCanada from all of us at SpokenWeb, be kind to yourself and one another out there. We’ll see you back here next month for another episode of the SpokenWeb Podcast, stories about how literature sounds."],"score":1.0},{"id":"9279","cataloger_name":["Ella,Hooper"],"partnerInstitution":["Concordia University"],"collection_source_collection":["SpokenWeb AV"],"source_collection_label":["SpokenWeb AV"],"collection_contributing_unit":["SpokenWeb"],"source_collection_uri":[""],"collection_image_url":["https://archiveofthepresent.spokenweb.ca/_nuxt/img/header-img_1000.fd7675f.png"],"collection_source_collection_description":["SpokenWeb Audio Visual Collection"],"collection_source_collection_id":["ArchiveOfThePresent"],"persistent_url":["https://archiveofthepresent.spokenweb.ca/"],"item_title":["SpokenWeb Podcast S2E3, Sounds of Trance Formation: An Interview with Penn Kemp, 7 December 2020, Beauchesne and Kemp"],"item_title_source":["SpokenWeb Podcast web page."],"item_title_note":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/sounds-of-trance-formation-an-interview-with-penn-kemp/"],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Podcast"],"item_series_title":["The SpokenWeb Podcast"],"item_series_description":["Series of podcasts by the SpokenWeb network."],"item_subseries_title":["The SpokenWeb Podcast Season 2"],"item_series_wikidata_url":["https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q117038029"],"item_series_uri":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/spokenweb-podcast/"],"item_identifiers":["[]"],"rights":["Creative Commons Attribution (BY)"],"rights_license":["Creative Commons Attribution (BY)"],"access":["Streaming and download"],"creator_names":["Nick Beauchesne","Penn Kemp"],"creator_names_search":["Nick Beauchesne","Penn Kemp"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"name\":\"Nick Beauchesne\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Producer\"]},{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/43083879\",\"name\":\"Penn Kemp\",\"dates\":\"1944-\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Producer\"]}]"],"contributors":["[]"],"Publication_Date":[2020],"material_description":["[]"],"digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://cdn.simplecast.com/audio/28a9da1f-8cca-410c-b5d7-8165a73f9394/episodes/bbda2b6f-992a-45a6-bbee-f3074a8ccfd2/audio/919f9dbb-30d9-4851-ae29-ef6b52f23820/default_tc.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"default_tc.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"44.1 kHz\",\"duration\":\"00:54:29\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"52,299,694 bytes\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"MP3 audio\",\"title\":\"default_tc\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/sounds-of-trance-formation-an-interview-with-penn-kemp/\"}]"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"2020-12-07\",\"type\":\"Publication Date\",\"notes\":\"\",\"source\":\"\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"venue\":\"University of Alberta Humanities Centre\",\"notes\":\"\",\"address\":\"11121 Saskatchewan Drive NW, Edmonton, AB, T6G 2E5\",\"latitude\":\"53.5269794\",\"longitude\":\"-113.51915593663469\"}]"],"Address":["11121 Saskatchewan Drive NW, Edmonton, AB, T6G 2E5"],"Venue":["University of Alberta Humanities Centre"],"City":["Edmonton, Alberta"],"Note":["[]"],"Related_works":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"Print References:\\n\\nPenn Kemp’s Pandemic Poems originally published in: Belanger, Joe. “It’s time to embrace London’s poet laureate, Penn Kemp, and all artists.” London Free Press. 11 Apr. 2020. https://lfpress.com/opinion/columnists/belanger-its-time-to-embrace-londons-poet-laureate-penn-kemp-and-all-artists. Accessed 17 Nov. 2020.\\n\\nKemp, Penn. “PENN KEMP – Home.” Weebly. http://pennkemp.weebly.com/. Accessed 17 Nov. 2020.\\n\\nKemp, Penn. “Penn Kemp: Penn, poet/playwright/performer.” WordPress. https://pennkemp.wordpress.com/. Accessed 17 Nov. 2020.\\n\\nKemp, Penn, and Bill Gilliam. From the Lunar Plexus. Pendas Productions, 2001.\\n\\nKemp, Penn, and Bill Gilliam. “Night Orchestra.” Barbaric Cultural Practice, Quatrro Books, 2017.\\n\\nKemp, Penn. Trance Form. Soft Press and Pendas Productions (reprint), 2006.\\n\\nRecordings:\\n\\nKemp, Penn. “[Night Orchestra] Barbaric Cultural Practice.”  Soundcloud, https://soundcloud.com/penn-kemp/sets/barbaric-cultural-practice. Accessed 17 Nov. 2020.\\n\\nKemp, Penn. “Penn Kemp – Trance Form, Live at U of A, February 18, 1977 (1).” Soundcloud, https://soundcloud.com/penn-kemp/penn-kemp-trance-form-live-at-u-of-a-february-18-1977-1. Accessed 17 Nov. 2020.\\n\\nKemp, Penn. Trance Dance Form, Pendas Productions, 2006.\\n\\nKemp, Penn. “When the Heart Parts – Sound Opera.”  Soundcloud, https://soundcloud.com/penn-kemp/when-the-heart-parts. Accessed 17 Nov. 2020.\"}]"],"_version_":1853670549478178816,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:53.966Z","contents":["For Penn Kemp, poetry is magic made manifest. While her subjects are varied, and her interests and approaches have evolved over the years, Kemp has always understood the power of spoken word to evoke emotion, shift consciousness, and shape the world. Drawing on a syncretic blend of spiritual philosophy informed by Buddhist, Hindu, and Celtic wisdom traditions, Kemp’s work is imminent and transcendent, embodied and cerebral. The words on the page produce certain effects, while the voices in the air produce others altogether. How do these effects complement and contradict one another? How does literary sound produce bodily effects and altered states of consciousness? Where will the trance take us, as listeners?\n\nThrough conversation with poet Penn Kemp and SpokenWeb Researcher Nick Beauchesne, this episode invites us to explore these questions by tracing the threads of magical practice from Kemp’s early career to the present day. A clip from her performance of Trance Form at the University of Alberta (1977) is brought into conversation with more recent material from When the Heart Parts (2007) and Barbaric Cultural Practice (2017). The episode concludes with a live reading from Kemp’s brand-new Pandemic Poems (2020). \n\n00:03\tIntro Music:\t[Instrumental Overlapped With Feminine Voice] Can you hear me? I don’t know how much projection to do.\n \n\n00:18\tHannah McGregor:\tWhat does literature sound like? What stories will be here if we listen to the archive? Welcome to the SpokenWeb Podcast: Stories about how literature sounds. [Music Fades] My name is Hannah McGregor, and each month I’ll be bringing you different stories of Canadian literary history, and our contemporary responses to it, created by scholars, poets, students, and artists from across Canada. How often do you think of your own voice as sonic art? What happens when you speak poetry aloud? What effects can voices in the air produce? For sound poet Penn Kemp, poetry is something more than the written word — words must be lifted off the page into the air and sculpted in sound. Her voice is her poetic instrument and sound becomes a verb — the transporting and trance-forming act of “sounding”. In this episode of the SpokenWeb Podcast, Penn weaves us through her creative practice with SpokenWeb researcher Nick Beauchesne. Exploring the magical effects of literary sound to transport us, transform us and entrance us, Penn and Nick take us on a journey through Penn’s illustrious decades-long career discussing archival performances of Tranceform (1977), When the Heart Parts (2007), and Barbaric Cultural Practice (2017), plus two brand new poems from Penn Kemp shared in this episode. Penn Kemp has published 30 books of poetry and drama, and had six plays, 10 CDs, and several award-winning video poems produced. A former poet Laureate of London, Ontario, and League of Canadian Poets Spoken Word Artist of the Year, Penn has been giving creativity workshops, teaching, and performing her poetry since 1966. Here is Nick Beauchesne with honored guest Penn Kemp in episode three of The SpokenWeb Podcast: Stories of Trance Formation. [Theme Music]\n \n\n02:29\tNick Beauchesne:\tGood day, audio lovers. Welcome to a very special episode of the SpokenWeb Podcast. My name is Nick Beauchesne, PhD candidate at the University of Alberta department of English and Film studies and a research assistant on the SpokenWeb Edmonton team. Today we’ll have an interview with a very distinguished Canadian sound poet in Penn Kemp. For Penn Kemp poetry is magic made manifest. While her subjects are varied and her interests and approaches have evolved over the years, Kemp has always understood the power of spoken word to evoke emotion, shift consciousness, and shape the world. Drawing on a syncretic blend of spiritual philosophy, informed by Buddhist, Hindu, and Celtic wisdom traditions, Kemp’s work is imminent and transcendent, embodied and cerebral. The words on the page produce certain effects while the voices in the air produce others altogether. How do these effects complement and contradict one another? How does literary sound produce bodily effects and altered states of consciousness? Where will the trance take us as listeners? Thank you very much for joining us, Penn. How are you today?\n \n\n03:45\tPenn Kemp:\tIt’s a pleasure to be here. I’m well and happy to join you.\n \n\n03:49\tNick Beauchesne:\tSo, I’m broadcasting here from Kamloops, British Columbia, and here you are in London, Ontario coming together over Zoom in these very strange pandemic times.\n \n\n04:00\tPenn Kemp:\tIt’s true. It’s a lovely September day here full of long light approaching Equinox, a balance time.\n \n\n04:08\tNick Beauchesne:\tThe world has seemed so out of balance in many ways. So perhaps we can look forward to that as some sort of omen.\n \n\n04:15\tPenn Kemp:\tIt’s the seasonal transition from summer to fall. And the Celtic new year is coming up.\n \n\n04:23\tNick Beauchesne:\tSo, we’ll get into these topics as we go, because a lot of what drew me to your work was your involvement with the mystical, the magical to some extent the alchemical — although it seems you’ve moved away from that in recent years — but you still have that very strong, magical thread that works through all your work and the way that you use sound as a tool for change and for expanding consciousness. Your website lists you as a performance poet, activist and playwright. And you have a reputation as one of Canada’s foremost sound poets. What does that category of “sound poet” mean to you?\n \n\n05:00\tPenn Kemp:\tIt means that I can do anything I like in performing a piece and how it wants to lift off the page.\n \n\n05:11\tNick Beauchesne:\tSo, what do you mean by “lift off the page”?\n \n\n05:14\tPenn Kemp:\tInto sound, into performance. So, basically, I separate the written word into various categories and if the sound is predominant in the poem, in the original poem, then I lift it into a chant or various ways of expressing it beyond English language.\n \n\n05:46\tNick Beauchesne:\tSo, is it that ability to, to get beyond language that, do you find that that’s what distinguishes your sound poetry from, from other types of poetry —which all do have a component of sound built into it —but how and why do you emphasize sound? What is it about sound that so draws you?\n \n\n06:03\tPenn Kemp:\tSound is both the first and the last sense. [Low chant begins, steadily increasing in volume] Hearing, as we know in the dead, in the dying, is the last sense to disappear. And it’s the sound that we —it’s sound that we first hear in our mother’s womb. McLuhan once said something that the Catholic religion lost its sense of mystery when they moved from the Latin in resounding through the cathedral, through the natural sounds of the cathedral. And when that was replaced by a microphone, it lost the resonance. It lost being inside the cavity of the mother’s womb, where sound is transmitted through the permeable membrane of the stomach. [Low chant ends] And so, I really believe that sound is transporting. It takes you back to primeval experience to first— before —it’s the closest we get to a kind of synesthesia where before sound before, excuse me, the senses are divided into five or 5,000. I think sound is the basic basis of all that.\n \n\n07:38\tNick Beauchesne:\tThat’s such a fascinating connection there between the mother’s womb and the womb of the cathedral space. Before we get into looking at some specific pieces of your work, I did want to kind of ask about that role of place. And it seems like you naturally tied into that in terms of, you know, since sound is so important for you, what are some of the coolest places you’ve been and hearing your voice in a raw environment and the different ways that that sound kind of affects it?\n \n\n08:06\tPenn Kemp:\tYes, I was —as I was talking about the cathedral, I remember performing in the ’80s at the cathedral of St. John the Divine along with a hundred conches that were led by Charlie Morrow. And that was a very interesting way of the voice resonating with the cathedral. And I’ve also done a lot of sounding in the center of standing stones in Scotland and Exmoor. And at the temple of Asclepius in Greece, you stand at the center in the hollow of that temple and the sound reverberates. You can whisper and the sound reaches the outer limits of the amphitheater. But the most amazing place to sound was being in the third pyramids at Giza. I was sat there for a night in absolute darkness, so dark that my mind started to create visual images and oral images. [low chanting begins] And I spent the night sounding. But there’s just another story. I was also invited to lie down in the sarcophagus at the King’s chamber at Giza — first in Cheops’ pyramid. And I had a very expensive Sony recorder at the time, and I was recording myself chanting in that sarcophagus. And when I came out, the recorder had blown a gasket. All the batteries had exploded with the energy. [Sound, ends]\n \n\n09:57\tNick Beauchesne:\tOoooooh.\n \n\n10:01\tPenn Kemp:\tIt was a very expensive lesson in power.\n \n\n10:05\tNick Beauchesne:\tWhat an amazing location to be able to experiment with sound. And then it’s such a strange phenomenon to have your piece of technology just disintegrate like that. Perhaps that sound was too sacred for this world, Penn.\n \n\n10:21\tPenn Kemp:\tI think so. Well, it is very interesting to have a kind of — my way of perceiving the world is, is very Celtic, very old, ancient, and yet to work with technology in a way that acknowledges its power is, has been a very interesting journey for me.\n \n\n10:43\tNick Beauchesne:\tThis podcast will proceed with basically a conversation built around four clips that I selected. I enjoy these clips because they give the listener a broad selection of material from across your lengthy career, beginning with an excerpt from “Bone Poems” which was published in Trance Form. And that recording took place in 1977. I also have clips from When the Heart Parts, two clips from the year 2007, and then the final clip we’ll be playing is from Night Orchestra in 2017. So, it’s something quite recent. And once our conversation around these pieces of sound has been completed, we’ll conclude the podcast with a special reading live by Penn Kemp from two new poems from your collection of pandemic poems. So, looking forward to getting to that material. The first excerpt I’ll play is from “Bone Poems” which is part of Trance Form. [Ambient Music starts] This clip was recorded at the U of A, from the department of English and Film Studies on February 18th, 1977. And this was how I was first exposed to your work, being a research assistant. It was my job to do a close listening of all this raw material and to then try to identify poem titles, collect timestamps, and all that. And so, over the course of listening to maybe 50 of these tapes from the EFS collection at U of A, I heard all sorts of different clips, and I’m always listening for components featuring mysticism, the supernatural, magic as poetic themes. And I identified that immediately in your work. And it’s something we’ve kind of talked about in our kind of private conversations. So, after kind of hearing this and then doing a listening practice back in June, where you joined as our guest, we put together this podcast where I wanted to pursue that strand of sound as a form of magical practice, as well as poetic practice. I’m going to play this clip. It’s about six minutes long. It’ll kind of form the — a good backbone (poem) of the rest of the interview. So, we’ll just listen to this clip and we’ll return with some questions. [Ambient Music ends.]\n \n\n12:59\tAudio Recording,\nBone Poems, 1977:\tAhhhhhhhhh. Oracle. The last section we can do together. This —my voice is running out and I’m sure you’ve got [Cough] a cough. It’s “Bone Poems.” It’s like getting down to the — it’s the last bone we wear that covers our essential emptiness. All you have to do is say, chant: “bone poems.” For those of you with books, you can follow the “bone poem” line along on page. For those of you who don’t have books, you can say “bonepoembonepoembonepoem.” And we’ll start at that. And then I’ll read the the “Bone Poems” supposedly over top of your loud “bonepoembonepoem.” You’re the bass section. Can I hear you please? Bonepoembonepoem…. [Audience chanting] If you want to get into varieties, you can. There’s quite a few. [Cough] Bonepoembonepoem. [Water pouring] You’ve died out. You have to keep it going for the next 10 pages. [Audience laughs] All right. Take a deep breath and then go. [Inhale] Hmmmmmmmm. [Audience chanting begins]\nSkin. A breeze. Hmmmmmmm. Green. Saw. Blue.\nWords. Breathe. Shed their skin. Skin to bone.\nOne bone under. Sun shine, some sun, some,\nsome sunshine, some shine. Hmmmmmmm.\nHmmmmmmm. Sa-sa-sa-hum-sa.\n\nOne bone sunshine shed skin. One bone over,\none bone under. Sun shine. Over under, over under,\nover under. Some. Cloud. Bone be nimble. Bone be\nquick, quick, quick, quick, quick, quick, quick. Bone\nbe quick. Bone be quick. Bone be quick. Bone be\nover, under, over, under, over under. Bone be nimble,\nbone be quick. Do. These. Bones. Live? Bone be quick,\nbone be quick. Jump over. Quick dry, quick dry, quick\ndry quick, these be quick, bone be quick, bone be quick,\nquick, quick, quick, quick. Bone be nimble, bone be quick.\n\n[Audience chanting ending]. Music to my ears! [Audience: “ it’s hard work!”]\n\n16:39\tAudio Recording,\nBone Poems, 1977:\tAnybody want a glass of water? [Audience chanting returns]\nSweet marrow sweet morrow, all fleshes as grasses as\ngrasses as whistling down wind, is whistling down wind.\nBare. Root. White. Grow. Tomorrow, tomorrow. Bare. Rock.\nBone. Root. Of fleshes as grass is as grass grows over, grows\nunder. These. Those. These. Bare. Bone. Grope. White. Flesh\nis as grass is. Sweet morrow, sweet marrow. Cell in skull, skull\nin cell. Desert father’s memento mori. Bone shards endure\nwhen soft flesh withers. Slower bone retains our image. As\nby jaw or femur, they determined what we were. What we\nbecome. Our final trance formation. Slow. Bone. Soft flesh.\nTo marrow, tomorrow. Conjure our story. Become the thing\nwe divine.\n\nCome on, don’t get tired! I’ve been reading for an hour. You can’t be tired!\n\nFrame us erect. Base, bed, rock, mountain, tree. Axis\nof our bloodline, pole on which was strung and hung\nour nine-day lives. Oh spine, oh sacred virtue spreads\nher branches as our limbs. Her white, our white. Play us,\nwe are your instrument. Tibia, flute, femur, during, enduring.\n\n[string of high pitched sounds]\n\nHold the femur by its polished leather knuckle. Clang! Clang-inggggggg. Dangling. [Audience chanting ending]\n\n19:16\tNick Beauchesne:\tWow. That was quite something there. Kind of a blast from the past for you, Penn.\n \n\n19:22\tPenn Kemp:\tThat’s for sure. It’s interesting how I have continued to use certain techniques or habits of speech or habits of sounding like the rising ‘ing’. I’ve done a lot of that, of playing with the varieties of sound that can be produced.\n \n\n19:46\tNick Beauchesne:\tThat’s one of the things that really drew me to your work is there’s not a lot of singing in the EFS collection of the SpokenWeb tapes. So that was one of the, well, it was certainly the first, occasion of singing I heard in the collection, although there is another one or there’s another few of them out there. But not something that I’ve heard a lot of in our collection, anyways. So, it’s something that immediately got my attention, you know, being a vocalist and performance artist myself. I just wanted to ask about just that that pun of transform, you know, not with the Tran “N S” but with the, the “C E” of a kind of pond on forming a trance. And, you know, we can hear all sorts of, you can hear the, you know, the crowd gasping for air and, and laughing. And just also the way that the chanting is kind of known to change the brain state, you know, to like a delta or gamma brain state. So just the way that, that sound and chanting, not only like the sound itself, but also through like the breath, the breathwork, as well as a kind of tool of consciousness transformation. So, yeah, I was just wondering if you could talk a little bit about that in terms of how you use sound, both not only in your own, but also in the kind of audience participation or interaction forming that trance.\n \n\n21:06\tPenn Kemp:\tYeah. I believe that a poem must be transporting or at its best is transporting you to, not — certainly to an altered state, not a higher state, but a more spacious state of consciousness, where there are more possibilities. For example, we know that a baby [vocal drone begins] by the time it’s a year old has made every sound that it’s possible for a human being to make. But then by the age of 10, the child has — the child’s mouth has condensed, hardened. So that say the African —some click language can’t be, can’t be pronounced properly after a certain age. So, as a person fascinated by travel and languages, I was really interested in reaching beyond English, which is such a lovely mongrel language of many sounds, but into, you know, the more guttural sounds of German, for example, or how, how language is placed in the mouth. The way French has right at the top of the lips, right at the front. And that — or Russian is way back in the throat. That sort of thing really intrigued me. But it was basically listening to how my children at the —as infants developed language. And that’s where the blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. What that’s where the repetition came in of what in Buddhism or Hinduism we call “seed syllables.” And so, I was very interested as well in the power of seed syllables.\n \n\n22:56\tNick Beauchesne:\tAnd there’s something powerful in the sense of the participation about sound poetry as well, because even you said, you know, “you can feel free to follow along if, and if you have no books, you can just go, bonepoebonepoembonepoem.”\n \n\n23:09\tPenn Kemp:\tYeah. Yes.\n \n\n23:09\tNick Beauchesne:\tSo, it’s —so even people who don’t have the book or have never heard the poem before are able to participate in the village chant. So, so maybe we can call it.\n \n\n23:19\tPenn Kemp:\tSo, it becomes a participatory — all my sound poetry is participatory because then the experience is reenacted in the audience’s body as a collective. And that’s a joyous thing to get beyond the mind, the ego, into an experience that is so spacious.\n \n\n23:45\tNick Beauchesne:\tThey got into that in the “bone poem” section, but I wish a few of them were more adventurous to try some of those variations to, to hear more [trill sound].\n \n\n23:56\tPenn Kemp:\tIf I had a little more time to do a sound workshop with them.\n \n\n23:59\tNick Beauchesne:\tYes. Yes.\n \n\n23:59\tPenn Kemp:\tBut I think Doug Barbour had invited me to do that reading and he very kindly had the kids, students buy the books. So, they had these — the cover is of a bare-breasted, beautiful woman caught in a slant light in a very bright yellow cover. And here they were turning the pages. And at the end they corrected me and asked why I had changed the words in “Bone Poem” because they were following it exactly. And I —I was everything I do is ad lib and improvised and I wasn’t synchronized to what the page was saying. So, they felt it necessary to correct me.\n \n\n24:47\tNick Beauchesne:\tTo inform you that you read your own poem incorrectly.\n \n\n24:51\tPenn Kemp:\tWrong!\n \n\n24:54\tNick Beauchesne:\tSo, if the students commented on where the poem is going and how it should be delivered…Penn, where do poems come from?\n \n\n25:03\tPenn Kemp:\tWell, they have many choices, but for me, the most powerful poems come from sound. But I also write a lot from a translation or a transliteration from visual fields. So, I dream vividly. And for example, after you had sent me the possibility of the podcast, I dreamt, I wrote a poem about that dream. And for me, the dream poems that are astonishing. I’ve got a whole collection called Dream Sequins, but they’re not as powerful as poems that lead me on the way through sound. So, I like poems to lead me, to take me to places rather than translating images that already exist. But let me read you this poem and it’s dedicated to you and you can make up your own mind.\n \n\n26:11\tPenn Kemp:\t\nLiteralizing the metaphor\n\nFor Nix Nihil\n\nThe host asks me to do a Zoom podcast, live in BC. I’m to record\n\non a cloud some metres above ground. The ladder up to the cloud\n\nseems precarious, even with gold underlining and heavenly chords.\n\n \n\nI’m afraid of falling through watery vapour, afraid of heights, afraid\n\nthat my voice will be tremulous. But once embarked upon the cloud,\n\nthe local Indigenous elder teaches me her healing heartbeat chant,\n\n“la-Doe, la-Doe”. She repeats the resounding phrase as I join in.\n\n \n\nSo the recording goes well. As BC is my last stop on tour, I have\n\nrun out of books to sell. A shame, since audiences here buy more\n\nthan anywhere else. My host gladly accepts my last copy as a gift.\n\n \n\nI return to home ground, empty of baggage and replete, complete,\n\nand ready to begin again, earthed.\n\n \n\n27:27\tPenn Kemp:\tNow, if I were developing that poem as a sound poem, I would be playing with “replete, complete, and ready to begin again. Earthed.” I would be playing with “I’m afraid of falling throooooooough.” Wherever the sound takes me. I would play further.\n \n\n27:47\tNick Beauchesne:\tI can also imagine some lah-dot, lah-dot, lah, dot persisting in the background. [Sound: Echo of “lah-dot”]\n \n\n27:52\tPenn Kemp:\tYeah! Well, for sure.\n \n\n27:54\tNick Beauchesne:\tWell I don’t know what else to say, but “aww shucks!”\n \n\n28:00\tPenn Kemp:\tOh, I expect the sound poem in return.\n \n\n28:02\tNick Beauchesne:\tWell, I’ll have to return the favor. No doubt. The next audio clip that I’d like to play is from a sound opera composed in 2007, called When the Heart Parts. Written in honor of your departing father, Jim Kemp.\n \n\n28:24\tAudio Recording,\nWhen the Heart Parts:\tWhen the heart parts. Wh-wh-wh-wh-wh-wh-wha-wha-wha-why? why? why? [interspersed sounds] When. When. When. When. When. When the heart. When the heart. When the heart. Hearts, heart, heart, heart, heart, heart, parts, heart, parts, when the heart parts company, heart parts company company, our heart stops. Wh-wh-wh-wh-wh-wh- when the company, when the company, when the company parts, when the company parts. Art. Stops. Wh-wh-wh-wh-wh-when the company parts. When the company parts. When the company parts. When the company parts from the hearth. When the company parts from the hearth. Company from the hearth. The heart does not stop.\n \n\n29:29\tNick Beauchesne:\tThat was a clip from When the Heart Parts. That was the first minute of the sound opera. Quite a lot of layers, quite a lot of voices. What’s going on in that opening clip?\n \n\n29:42\tPenn Kemp:\tWell, I’m trying to recreate the experience of driving through snow with the knowledge that I was going to witness my father’s dying. And coming into the hospital, to the room, hearing all the different electronic sounds that were so pervasive, trying to keep him alive. And my voice is asking, “Why? Why? Why? Why?” You know. And so, I was trying to express the immensity of all the emotions through sound.\n \n\n30:30\tNick Beauchesne:\tSo, there’s the sound – The sound of like the male voice is doing like a “lub-dub, lub-dub, lub-dub.” So, is that like the heart? The heart sounds there?\n \n\n30:37\tPenn Kemp:\tThat’s John Magyar the producer. And then, Ann Anglin, the actor is performing with me the various machine sounds and the sounds of “why” taking the form of my voice and my mother’s voice as we’re in the room.\n \n\n30:57\tNick Beauchesne:\tAnd when you were saying, “company” —I just heard this now. And I don’t know if I, if this was intentional, but— were you attending to say Penny, like your, your name is a child?\n \n\n31:07\tPenn Kemp:\tYes. Yep.\n \n\n31:07\tNick Beauchesne:\tSo, “come, Penny.” So, younger Penny in there as well. And, just like the, not with sound poetry in general, but with you as well, the importance of homonyms, homophones, and puns. So, you go from heart, you know, the organ to a hearth, like a space in a home, to art, like the art that comes from the heart and then parting and leaving. So, you have all these related sounds and these kinds of concepts, in a stream of consciousness, kind of interwoven in there —\n \n\n31:37\tPenn Kemp:\tI’m trying to get whatever works to get below the mental process into a deeper experience of the sound of language. And that comes again from a love of different languages.\n \n\n31:54\tNick Beauchesne:\tThe next clip takes place about 17 minutes into the opera, which is about 45 minutes or so long. It’s about two-and-a-half minutes long, but it really dramatizes that magical power of sound and that instinctive supra, or maybe sub rational power of sound that it goes beyond mind and into direct connection and intuition. So, it was a very powerful moment where you almost succeed in resurrecting your father, just for a moment too, to have this final kind of moment of connection. And so, it struck me as a very powerful moment in the poem, not only in the message and the words, but also the way that you self-consciously use sound to try to connect with your father while he’s deep in his kind of sleep state. Here’s a clip of the sonic resurrection.\n \n\n32:45\tAudio Recording,\nWhen the Heart Parts:\tIn love and ceremony [Bells Ring] he crowns Mom with a Tibetan headdress. Magenta. Magnificent. Something significant has been accomplished. When Jamie and I come home from supper, Penny stays to read Jim the Tibetan Book of the Dead. He asked her to,  ages ago, if he were ever…When she gets home, we know something has happened. I never saw anyone look so worn out. She has worked so hard doing something.\nMy commitment to Dad is to read him the Tibetan Book of the Dead. The old words are meant to appease the fear and confusion of the dying.\n\nDo not let your attention wander. Keep to the clear light. Do not be distracted by other noises or pictures. They are all projections of your mind. Keep to what is happening here. Now, do not let your attention wander. Keep to the clear light. Do not be distracted. Traditionally, this reading is a guide in the process of dying. Do not be distracted. Keep to the clear light. The ear is the last sense to go. But who knows if Dad is listening? They are all projections of your mind. To conjure these peaceable realms, pure lands, at least calms and clears by own anguish. It is true. You are dying. It is true. You are dying. We are not pretending anything else. We are not pretending anything else. We are not holding anything back from you. We know you can hear. Your family is gathered around you. Know this is happening to you, now. To the light. Keep to the light. I whisper close into Dad’s left ear because I hope his right brain might be more receptive. Remembering a super learning technique to reach the deepest typological level of the mind. I call his name in three tones of voice. In between each phrase, I pause to the count of four. Jim Kemp [Tapping] Jim Kemp, Jim Kemp. And then my father flutters his eyes, startled. Squeezes my hand tight. He tries to focus, stares, and sees me.\n\n35:20\tNick Beauchesne:\tSo, a very powerful moment there. And earlier in the clip you say, “in love and ceremony, he crowns my Mom with a Tibetan headdress.” And it seems significant in a kind of a meta level, in a sense, that through the poem you in turn are “through love and ceremony” crowning your own father. So, what about this poem is ceremonial to you, or how is this poem a ceremony?\n \n\n35:44\tPenn Kemp:\tWell, dying is such a time of transition. It’s the opposite of our two great transitions, birth and death. So, for me, yes, it’s important to honor these transitions through ritual. Dad and I were both received — took initiation as Buddhists in 1974. And so, we had studied Tibetan Buddhism and The Book of the Dead. And I had offered to read him The Book of the Dead when he was dying. So, this was a prepared act. My Mom was not part of that. She was much more of a rationalist. So, the dream was such a welcoming of her into the ceremony, which at the point of his dying, she embraced. The moment that I read his name and he came to, it was just before the doctors were to pull the plug, which would mean that he would die, of course. And because he was being kept alive by these instruments. And it meant that he then lingered on [Musical tones begin] for 10 more days. I don’t know whether that was a good thing or not because they’d brought him back six times with pounding his heart and all that. So, it was very painful, but nonetheless, he was there. But when I read to him and when I said his name —.\n \n\n37:31\tAudio Recording,\nWhen the Heart Parts:\tJim Kemp.\t\n37:31\tPenn Kemp:\t— he responded by not only opening his eyes for the first time —.\n \n\n37:36\tAudio Recording,\nWhen the Heart Parts:\tJim Kemp.\t\n37:36\tPenn Kemp:\t— but lifting his hand, his index finger —.\n \n\n37:40\tAudio Recording,\nWhen the Heart Parts:\tJim Kemp.\t\n37:40\tPenn Kemp:\t— on his right hand as a gesture of —.\n \n\n37:45\tAudio Recording,\nWhen the Heart Parts:\tJim Kemp.\t\n37:45\tPenn Kemp:\t— I don’t know, admonition or instruction. I never have been able to figure that one out. But extraordinarily powerful.\n \n\n37:56\tNick Beauchesne:\tAnd from your subjective position there, it must have certainly seemed almost like a, like a spell to wake the sleeper for a final farewell.\n \n\n38:06\tPenn Kemp:\tAbsolutely.\n \n\n38:08\tNick Beauchesne:\tSo just to call attention to, again, the idea of sound as a kind of magical technique, but also as a scientific technique as well: “I whisper close into my Dad’s left ear because I hope his right brain might be more receptive, remembering a super learning technique to reach the deepest hypnagogic level of the mind I call his name —.\n \n\n38:27\tAudio Recording,\nWhen the Heart Parts:\tJim Kemp.\t\n38:27\tNick Beauchesne:\t— in three tones of voice.” So how old were you when that happened? And did you know that technique at the time? Have you used that since in your poetry?\n \n\n38:36\tPenn Kemp:\tI was 39. It was 1983. And super learning was, there was a book called Superlearning that I think the Russians had developed these —I haven’t heard much about it since, so — I think the technique was so powerful that I’ve never used it again. I didn’t dare.\n \n\n38:59\tNick Beauchesne:\tYeah. Sometimes those maybe when something like that happens that’s so powerful once is enough.\n \n\n39:08\tPenn Kemp:\tThank you, Nick, for noticing that moment, because it’s, for me, the pivotal moment of the piece. It was also produced by Theatre Passe Muraille as a play: What the Ear Hears Last. Appropriately enough. And you’re the first person that has, aside from the actors, noticed that absolutely pivotal moment of transition.\n \n\n39:38\tNick Beauchesne:\tSo, we’ll go to another night, maybe not necessarily a night of the soul, but “Night Orchestra” is the next clip. So, this is from 2017 from your Barbaric Cultural Practices. Maybe, before I play it, can you explain what this clip is doing?\n \n\n39:57\tPenn Kemp:\tYes. Again, I’m in the midst of an aural field. This time, it’s a hot summer’s night in the Toronto beaches. And I have my windows open because I don’t have air conditioning, but the flat next door has very loud air conditioning. And so, I make a sound poem out of the experience.\n \n\n40:25\tNick Beauchesne:\tAnd that experience was “Night Orchestra”.\n \n\n40:29\tAudio Recording,\nNight Orchestra:\tDeep, deep, deep, deep, deep, beep,\ndeep, deep, deep in, deep in, deep in.\nDeep in summer stillnessan electric hum of air conditioner in B flat.\nStill hum, still hum. Flat. Flat.\nMonotone entrains my body. Monotonous. [Low chant]\nproduced to cool my neighbors thrums the outside air,\nheats up our collective night. Sleepless in the beaches,\nI resist the single roar — sleepless, sleepless, sleepless —\nas Blake deplores single vision. And Newton’s sleep.The sound of the perpetual 20th century colonized our\nfuture with a dominant beep sales pitch for comfort. Con-\nvenience, reliance on the pliance. The pity is not that\nthe century has wound to a close, but that it’s whining\non and on. Mechanical multitudes self-replicate in chorus.Relentless fridge and clock. The only spell-breaker is a tape\nof Tibetan chant. [Tibetan chant] Deep harmonic overtones\nconjure a resonance, disturb the soundwaves. Somewhere\nbeyond the pervasive rattle, waves break on the shore.\nSpecies diversify. Night. Orchestra.\t\n42:56\tNick Beauchesne:\tAnother hypnotic sound collage there. The line that really jumped out to me is, “The only spell-breaker is the sound of a Tibetan chant”, which to me is almost ironic. The chanting in this track kind of constitutes part of the spell. I didn’t really comment on the past track as well, which also had a low, deep Tibetan-sounding chant. [Tibetan Chant Begins] So, it seems that the, this Tibetan chant and this influence persists through your work and probably in other poems as well, that I haven’t heard. [Tibetan Chant Ends] You mentioned you were initiated with your father. How else has this Tibetan chant kind of worked its way into your corpus?\n \n\n43:35\tPenn Kemp:\tWell, specifically in this piece, the “deep deep, deep, deep” was the actual sound or my replication of the sound of the air conditioner from the neighbors. And as a sort of dueling banjo, I set up my own CD of Tibetan chants. So, it was very specific and very actual in that I was trying to go — it’s like going onto an airplane and rising with the airplane, as it takes off. I convert the sound of the noise of the airplane into an ‘ommmmm’. It’s the same resonance. So, it converts the mechanical into the spiritual.\n \n\n44:23\tNick Beauchesne:\tSo, is that a technique you kind of frequently use in your everyday life whenever you hear obnoxious, ambient sounds? Is this an inner way in the inner monologue to overcode them with something of your own meaning to claim your head space, I guess?\n \n\n44:38\tPenn Kemp:\tThat’s right. For example, the frog, there’s a bull frog in my pond, and if he hears a certain truck, if he hears a certain sound of a large truck, he starts croaking, as in kind of setting up his territory, that this truck will not compete with. So, I think it’s very —a basic technique from the animal kingdom up.\n \n\n45:09\tNick Beauchesne:\tYeah. Laying your claim —.\n \n\n45:10\tPenn Kemp:\tYep.\n \n\n45:10\tNick Beauchesne:\tStaking your sonic territory.\n \n\n45:13\tPenn Kemp:\tYeah.\n \n\n45:17\tNick Beauchesne:\tThank you for commenting on some of these pieces that I selected. I did notice that sound as an instrument of will, and an instrument of change, an instrument of consciousness has persisted through your work for decades. So, I appreciate you joining me for this interview to comment on some of those strands and to help, you know, theorize about, you know, the bones of poetry and the transformational power of sound and how sound can form the trance and change the world. So, thank you very much. Before we end off, I understand you’ve written some new material to document your experience relating to this 2020 COVID-19 pandemic.\n \n\n46:02\tPenn Kemp:\tThat’s right.\n \n\n46:02\tNick Beauchesne:\tSo why don’t you —\n \n\n46:05\tPenn Kemp:\tI’ll read them for you.\n \n\n46:05\tNick Beauchesne:\t— why don’t you talk about that?\n \n\n46:06\tPenn Kemp:\tWell, first of all, I want to thank you Nick, for asking those very astute questions that helped me articulate the process because I usually work without conscious intent until I get to the editing phase. And you helped me articulate what I was doing at articulating the process. So, that’s really fun and useful. [Musical tone begins] These two pandemic poems were published in the Free Press or London Free Press, and the first one was contemplating what we’ll remember. It comes from the spring of this year. “What We’ll Remember.” I think the only thing I’d like to say about it is that — I was saying earlier that poems for me come from either sound or a vision, a visual inspiration, and these two poems come from the visual field. Necessarily they include sound.\n \n\n47:17\tPenn Kemp:\tWhat We’ll Remember\nHow first scylla sky shimmers\n\nagainst the tundra swan’s flight\n\nwest and north, north north west.\n\n \n\nHow many are leaving the planet and yet\n\nare with us, still and still forever.\n\n \n\nHow they linger,\n\nthe lost, the bewildered, the wild ones!\n\n \n\nThough tears come easily these days,\n\nwe too hover over the greening land\n\n \n\nas spring springs brighter than ever\n\nsince stacks are stilled and the pipe\n\nlines piping down.\n\n \n\nWhen the peace pipe is lit\n\nand sweetgrass replaces\n\nsmog— when the fog of pollution\n\nlifts and channels clear—\n\n \n\nEarth take a long breath\n\nand stretches over aeons to come\n\nand aeons past.\n\n48:29\tPenn Kemp:\tThe second poem came from a vision I had of, I call it, les revenants, those who have come before. Those spirits that seem to me to be brought back to a kind of half life from the influenza of 2000- excuse me – 1819. So this is a spell for them to return to their abode.\n \n\n49:05\tPenn Kemp:\tNo Reruns, No Returns\nfor les revenants\n\nThose who died once from influenza\n\na century ago, who now are pulled to\n\n \n\na hell realm of eternal return—are you\n\nrepeating, reliving the hex of time as if\n\n \n\ndoomed to replicate the old story you\n\nalready lived through? Once is enough.\n\n \n\nNo need to hover. You have suffered\n\nplenty. You’ve loved and lost all there\n\n \n\nis to lose. You have won. You’re one\n\nwith all that is. Retreat now to your own\n\n \n\nabode. Return home, spirits. You’re no\n\nlonger needed here. You are no longer.\n\n \n\nAlthough we honour you and thank\n\nyou and remember you each and all,\n\n \n\nall those who’ve been called back, called\n\nup from dimensions we can only guess at—\n\n \n\ncaught in the Great War and carried away\n\nor carried off in the aftermath of influenza—\n\n \n\nby this spell, we tell you to go back to\n\nyour own time, out of time. Just in time.\n\n \n\nMay you depart. We don’t know, how can\n\nwe tell? where your home is. It’s not here.\n\n \n\nKnow this virus is not yours. Know this\n\nwar is not yours. You are here in our era\n\n \n\nby error, by slippage, a rip. You’ve mis-\n\ntaken the signage, the spelling in wrong\n\n \n\nturns. Now return, by this charm, retreat.\n\nYou are dispelled, dismissed, dismantled,\n\n \n\nreleased to soar free from the trance of time.\n\nMay you travel well. May you fly free.\n\n51:50\tNick Beauchesne:\t[Finger Snaps] There’s my finger-snapping of appreciation.\n \n\n51:57\tPenn Kemp:\tWell I couldn’t hear it.\n \n\n51:58\tNick Beauchesne:\tThank you very much for sharing your new work with us here on the podcast.\n \n\n52:05\tPenn Kemp:\tYou’re the first to hear it.\n \n\n52:05\tNick Beauchesne:\tOh, I’m honored. Thank you very much, Penn, for joining us. Thanks to SpokenWeb for allowing me the opportunity to do this podcast. Thanks also to my friend and former bandmate, Adam Whitaker-Wilson for providing the tech support and the studio gear and space on my end here. Anyone seeking to learn more about Penn — she has a blog. Just google Penn Kemp at WordPress, and she also has a Weebly page, W-E-E-B-L-Y for further information as well.\n \n\n52:39\tNick Beauchesne:\tSpo-ken. Web.\t\n52:39\tPenn Kemp:\tSpoooooooo –\t\n52:39\tNick Beauchesne:\t[Ambient Noise Begins]. Thanks. You. Audience. For. Your. Time.\t\n52:39\tPenn Kemp:\tSpo-ken. Spo-ken.\t\n52:42\tNick Beauchesne:\tSpo-ken. Web. Spo-ken. Web. Web of life web.\t\n52:55\tPenn Kemp:\tWeb. Web.\t\n52:55\tNick Beauchesne:\tWeb of time.\t\n52:55\tNick Beauchesne:\tSpokennnn Webbbbb.\t\n52:55\tNick Beauchesne:\tAnd then we’ll “fade out: music.”\n \n\n53:14\tHannah McGregor:\t[Theme Music] SpokenWeb is a monthly podcast produced by the SpokenWeb team as part of distributing the audio collected from and created using Canadian literary archival recordings found at universities across Canada. Our producers this month are SpokenWeb team members, Nick Beauchesne from the University of Alberta with guest collaborator and Canadian poet Penn Kemp. Our podcast project manager and supervising producer is Stacey Copeland. Assistant producer and outreach manager is Judee Burr. A special thanks to Adam Whitaker-Wilson, Douglas Barbour, Ann Anglin, Bill Gilliam, and John Magyar for their contributions to this episode. To find out more about SpokenWeb visit spokenweb.ca and subscribe to the SpokenWeb Podcast on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you may listen. If you love us, let us know. Rate us and leave a comment on Apple podcasts or say hi on our social media as @SpokenWebCanada. From all of us at SpokenWeb, be kind to yourself and one another out there. And we’ll see you back here next month for another episode of the SpokenWeb Podcast: stories about how literature sounds.\t\n"],"score":1.0},{"id":"9287","cataloger_name":["Gloriah,Onyango"],"partnerInstitution":["Concordia University"],"collection_source_collection":["SpokenWeb AV"],"source_collection_label":["SpokenWeb AV"],"collection_contributing_unit":["SpokenWeb"],"source_collection_uri":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/spokenweb-podcast/"],"collection_image_url":["https://archiveofthepresent.spokenweb.ca/_nuxt/img/header-img_1000.fd7675f.png"],"collection_source_collection_description":["SpokenWeb Audio Visual Collection"],"collection_source_collection_id":["ArchiveOfThePresent"],"persistent_url":["https://archiveofthepresent.spokenweb.ca/"],"item_title":["SpokenWeb Podcast S1E4, The Agony and the Ecstasy of Elizabeth Smart, 6 January 2020, Bloom"],"item_title_source":["SpokenWeb Podcast web page."],"item_title_note":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/the-agony-and-the-ecstasy-of-elizabeth-smart/"],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Podcast"],"item_series_title":["The SpokenWeb Podcast"],"item_series_description":["Series of podcasts by the SpokenWeb network."],"item_subseries_title":["The SpokenWeb Podcast Season 1"],"item_series_wikidata_url":["https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q117038029"],"item_series_uri":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/spokenweb-podcast/"],"item_subseries_description":["The first season of the SpokenWeb Podcast."],"item_subseries_uri":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/spokenweb-podcast/"],"item_identifiers":["[]"],"rights":["Creative Commons Attribution, Non-Commercial, ShareAlike (BY-NC-SA)"],"rights_license":["Creative Commons Attribution, Non-Commercial, ShareAlike (BY-NC-SA)"],"access":["Streaming and download"],"creator_names":["Myra Bloom"],"creator_names_search":["Myra Bloom"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/79174225341311352865\",\"name\":\"Myra Bloom\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Producer\"]}]"],"contributors":["[]"],"Publication_Date":[2020],"material_description":["[]"],"digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://cdn.simplecast.com/audio/28a9da/28a9da1f-8cca-410c-b5d7-8165a73f9394/d97b6935-00ff-4807-9d53-f71e0758d2ff/sw-ep-4-elizabeth-smart_tc.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"sw-ep-4-elizabeth-smart_tc.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"44.1 kHz\",\"duration\":\"00:30:58\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"29,805,131 bytes\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"MP3 audio\",\"title\":\"sw-ep-4-elizabeth-smart_tc\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/the-agony-and-the-ecstasy-of-elizabeth-smart/\"},{\"file_url\":\"\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"title\":\"\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"}]"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"2020-01-06\",\"type\":\"Publication Date\",\"notes\":\"\",\"source\":\"\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/23334883\",\"venue\":\"York University Glendon Campus\",\"notes\":\"\",\"address\":\"2275 Bayview Avenue, North York, ON M4N 3M6\",\"latitude\":\"43.72824305\",\"longitude\":\"-79.37750288670469\"}]"],"Address":["2275 Bayview Avenue, North York, ON M4N 3M6"],"Venue":["York University Glendon Campus"],"Note":["[]"],"Related_works":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"Warwick Archive (2019, Nov). Elizabeth Smart – English Writers at Warwick Archive. https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/english/writingprog/archive/writers/smartelizabeth/280182.\\n\\nMUN Archive Video Collection. (pre 1994). Elizabeth Smart: Canadian Writer. http://collections.mun.ca/cdm/ref/collection/extension/id/2981.\\n\\nAll the music in this episode is by Blue Dot Sessions.\"}]"],"_version_":1853670549502296064,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:53.966Z","contents":["Over the years, Elizabeth Smart’s 1945 novel By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept has risen from obscurity to cult classic. The book, which details an ill-fated love affair between an unnamed narrator and her married lover, is celebrated for its lyricism, passionate intensity, and its basis in Elizabeth’s real-life relationship with the poet George Barker. After publishing By Grand Central Station, Smart lapsed into a thirty-year creative silence during which time she worked as an advertising copywriter and single-parented four children. In this poetic reflection, Myra Bloom weaves together archival audio with first-person narration and interviews to examine both the great passion that fueled By Grand Central Station and the obstacles that prevented Elizabeth from recreating its brilliance.\n\nFeatured in this episode are Sina Queyras, a poet and teacher currently working on an academic project about Elizabeth; Maya Gallus, a celebrated documentarian whose first film, On the Side of the Angels, was about Elizabeth; Kim Echlin, author of Elizabeth Smart: A Fugue Essay on Women and Creativity; and Rosemary Sullivan, Elizabeth’s biographer.\n\nThis episode also features archival audio of Elizabeth in conversation at Memorial University (1983) and reading at Warwick University in England (1982).\n\n00:08\tHannah McGregor:\tWhat does literature sound like? What stories will we hear if we listen to the archive? Welcome to the Spoken Web podcast. Stories about how literature sounds. My name is Hannah McGregor, and each month I’ll be bringing you different stories of Canadian literary history and our contemporary responses to it created by scholars, poets, students and artists from across Canada. One of the main goals of the Spoken Web podcast is to tell the stories behind a big research project in a different kind of way. Usually all you get to see of research is what comes out at the end, an impenetrable monograph or a series of densely cited articles. And those can leave the impression that scholarly work is birthed whole like Athena emerging from the head of Zeus. Or if you’re like most people, they’ll leave no impression at all because you’re probably not reading them. So we started this project with a question. What kind of stories will podcasting let us tell? This month’s episode is telling a different kind of story than what we’ve heard so far. The story of one particular writer and the enduring impact of her work on generations of women. Over the years, Elizabeth Smart’s 1945 novel By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept has risen from obscurity to cult classic. The book, which tells the story of an ill-fated love affair between an unnamed narrator and her married lover is based on Elizabeth’s real life relationship with the poet George Barker, but its enduring impact, lies in its lyricism and passionate intensity. After publishing By Grand Central Station smart lapsed into a 30-year creative silence during which time she worked as an advertising copywriter and single parented four children. In this poetic reflection episode producer, Myra Bloom weaves together archival audio with first person narration and interviews to examine both the great passion that fueled By Grand Central Station, and the obstacles that prevented Smart from recreating its brilliance. Here is Myra Bloom with episode four: The Agony and the Ecstasy of Elizabeth Smart.\n02:35\tAudio Recording:\tI thought, if it’s agreeable to you that I’d read a chapter book I wrote called By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept. And this is about a couple of people, in case you haven’t read it well they fall in love they’re dancing away across America as in love.\n03:18\tMyra Bloom:\tI first encountered the writer Elizabeth Smart in a time of great passion. I was 19 and reading her masterpiece By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept for an undergraduate class. Her description of a transcendent, debilitating obsession captured what I was going through at the time. The beautiful harrowing torment of first love. By Grand Central Station details a love affair that comes to an end as hyperbolically as it began. As the title implies, it ends with the narrator pregnant, bereft, and crying out to her lover, who by this point has returned to his wife. I would soon come to relate to these darker feelings too, as my own relationship combusted, albeit under less salacious circumstances. I’m pretty sure there’s a direct line between my feelings about this novel and my decision to teach literature for a living. I wanted to talk to other women who had been similarly affected by the novel. I sought out writers and filmmakers who had written or made films about Elizabeth or were planning to do so to ask them what drew them to her. I expected that their stories would sound similar to mine, that they would tell me tales of great loves, loved and lost. I was planning an anthropological study of female passion, but those weren’t the stories they told me.\n04:51\tSina Queyras:\tThere was only Vancouver Island when I was living in the rainforest and they had a cabin and I could see through the wall and it would just rain and rain and rain and rain.\n04:59\tMyra Bloom:\tThis is poet and professor Sina Queyras\n05:03\tSina Queyras:\tAnd I was sitting there reading this, somebody sent it to me, my friend Rita whos a fellow from creative writing, sent me this book and that had been, I mean the reason she sent it to me was I loved Marguerite Duras’ A Lover and they’re sister books, right? They’re totally sister books. But the surprising thing about the Smart, it was that like there’s just no Canadian voice that’s anywhere near the depth of feeling and just the intellectual precariousness like she’s so present but also vulnerable and self propelled. There’s just nothing. I mean, I guess Margaret Lawrence, but that’s not ecstatic like By Grand Central Station is just so ecstatic. So I know that going forward it was like, it’s like Sappho, it’s like Sappho wrote a novel.\n06:20\tKim Echlin:\tMy name is Kim Echlin. I’m the author of Elizabeth Smart: A Fuge Essay on Women and Creativity, and I was drawn to Elizabeth Smart first because of her great passionate love affair with George Barker. But then that quickly led me down to a much more complex story and it is the story of her as exile in England, as writer, as mother and as a single woman earning a living. Romantic love is by definition irrational. It means sexual passion, the love of beauty, the potential for destruction, the taste of immortality. It is obsessive. Sometimes it flickers briefly, deliciously. Sometimes it lasts a lifetime. Its destructiveness evident even to the lovers themselves. Yet, lovers are loath to give up romantic love. Lovers believe they are most alive and it’s embrace. With strange pleasure we watch ill-matched lovers devour each other. They believe that their love is their very life force. I think about passionate, romantic love when I consider Bluebeard’s castle or some of John Donne’s poetry or Wagner Tristan und Isolde or such novels as Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, or García Márquez Love in the Time of Cholera. I think of a different kind of love, one that still has no name. When I think of some of Samuel Beckett’s characters and of Rosalind in Shakespeare’s As You Like It. Rosalind ironically and wittily says to the object of her desire, “love is merely a madness and, I tell you, deserves as well a dark house and a whip as mad man do, and the reason why there are not so punished and cured is the lunacy is so ordinary that the wipers are in love too.” Elizabeth wrote this ordinary lunacy in By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept, but her telling is extraordinary. Just as Rosalind tells love in a fresh way from a woman’s point of view disguised as a boy, the narrator of By Grand Central Station tells love in a fresh way from the point of view of an unmarried pregnant woman, but before Elizabeth wrote it, she had to live it.\n08:39\tElizabeth Smart:\tBy Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept. I will not be placated by the mechanical emotion of existence, nor find consolation in the solicitude of waiters who notice my devastated face. Sleep tries to seduce me by promising a more reasonable tomorrow, but I will not be betrayed by such a Judas of fallacy: it betrays everyone: it leads them into death. Everyone acquiesces: everyone compromises. They say, as we grow older, we embrace resignation, but oh, they talked her into it blind and unprotesting and from their sin, the sin of accepting such a pimp to death, there’s no redemption. It’s the sin of damnation. What except morphine can weave bearable nets around the tiger shark that tears my mind to shreds, seeking escape on every impossible side. The senses deliver the unbearable into sleep. And it ceases, except that it appears gruesomely at the edges of my dreams making ghastly sigils, which wear away peace, but which I can’t understand. The pain was unbearable, but I did not want it to end, it had operatic grandeur. It lit up Grand Central Station, like a Judgment Day. It was more iron muscle than Samson in his moment of revelation, it might’ve shown me all Dante’s dream, but there was no way to endure.\n10:15\tMyra Bloom:\tAnd what did it mean for you, for Elizabeth smart to be the subject of your first film? Is that important to you?\n10:22\tMaya Gallus:\tIt was important to me. My mother was an artist and I saw her struggle as an artist and a mother, also a single parent.\n10:31\tMyra Bloom:\tDocumentary filmmaker, Maya Gallus.\n10:35\tMaya Gallus:\tSo I think that Elizabeth represented some of those elements for me as well because I was trying to figure out how to be a woman and an artist in the world. And it seemed to me that women of my mother’s generation and previously of Elizabeth’s generation really had this conflict and dilemma about being able to stake their claim in what is largely a male-dominated world. And also then the additional challenges of being a mother. So I was kind of figuring all of that out and Elizabeth’s writings really spoke to me because she really went into the nub of that in a lot of her work and her poems, you know, a poem like The Muse: His and Hers, I still find is very relevant in many ways. I mean, we still are living in a male-dominated world and people are speaking about it a little more openly now than before. And perhaps people are more willing to listen to what women have to say and recognize that actually women have something important to say about life and art and love.\n11:54\tElizabeth Smart:\tNo, I would like to read you a little poem that most amazingly I wrote last week. It just sort of popped out and lo and behold, it’s a feminist poem. I hope this won’t give any offense. Right? Anyhow, it’s called The Muse: His and Hers. His pampered Muse / Knew no veto. / Hers lived / In a female ghetto. / When his Muse cried / He replied / Loud and clear / Yes! Yes! I’m waiting here. / Her Muse screamed / But children louder. / Then which strength / Made her prouder? / Neither. Either / Pushed and shoved / With the strength of the loved / and the, unloved, / Clashed rebuked. / All was wrong. / (Can you put opposites / into the song?) / Kettles boiling! /Cobwebs coiling! / Doorbells ringing! / Needs haranguing! / Her Muse called / In her crowded ear / She heard but had / Her dirty house to clear. / Guilt drove him on. / Guilt held her down. / (She hadn’t a wife / to lean upon.) The dichotomy was killing me. She said till old age came to assuage. Now Muse, now you can have your way. No, what was it I want him to say? And used, abused and not amused. The mind’s gone blank. Is it life you have to thank? Stevie, the Emily’s, Mrs. Woolf bypass the womb and kept the self, but she said, try and see if it’s true and without cheating. My muse can do. Can women do. Can women make when the womb rests animus awake. Pale at my space starved and thin like hibernating bear too weak to begin to roar with authority. Poems in the spring so late in the autumn of their suffering. Those gaps. It’s decades of lying low earthquakes, deep frozen mind askew is it too late at 68? Oh fragile, fresh reanimate, oh flabby teetering body concentrate. Astute, true woman, any late profligacy squandered on the loving of people and other irrelevancy useful in the dark in articulacy. But drop it like poison now if you want poetry. Let the doorbell ring, let the fireman put out the fire or light it up again. Sheepish and shamefaced at 9:00 AM till the Muse commands her ritual hymn. See lucky man, get off his knee. And hear now his roar of authority. This test case woman could also be just in time for a small cacophony, a meaningful screen between folded womb and grave. A brief respite from the enclave.\n15:31\tRosemary Sullivan:\tI remember one wonderful moment when Elizabeth and I went to this reading.\n15:39\tMyra Bloom:\tThis is Rosemary Sullivan, Elizabeth Smart’s biographer.\n15:43\tRosemary Sullivan:\tAnd it was by Mavis Gallant, who of course one admires deeply and it was amusing to see how jealous Elizabeth was because, you know, she’d written a great book when she was in her late twenties, and then she didn’t write again for 30 years. She used to say, when asked her who she was, she’d say, I’m my son, Sebastian, the poet’s mother. And when we talked about this in detail, she did say, and this is quote that she felt that the Maestro of the masculine was sitting on her shoulder telling her she could never be good enough. So she had sought out George Barker because he wrote the kind of poetry she wanted to write. And then George, being a poet of his era in the tradition of not TS Eliot, but Dylan Thomas, you know, kind of knocked her down and she said that she needed to be knocked down because she came from this wonderfully arrogant position of a debutante in Ottawa put forward by her mother, hobnobbing with the prime minister’s set and so on. She said “I needed to be knocked down a little bit, but not nearly as much as George knocked me down.” And of course you ask her, well, why did you keep, what was it about George that was so seductive? And she said, “Oh God, he had such a sense of humor.” So I did meet George.\n17:18\tMyra Bloom:\tWhat was he like?\n17:18\tRosemary Sullivan:\tExactly what she said. He was with his last wife, Elspeth you know, that he had – this could not happen now – he had five wives, two of them legal, 15 children, and then they all adored him, because the creative male was given a kind of permission that can’t be given today. But here I was at Elspeth’s and she was lovely, there was a point at which she had tried to get Elizabeth to take George back, she was so fed up with him, but it didn’t work. And she was teaching, she was a Latin teacher, even though she had at one point aspired to be a poet. But again, that was part of the time, if you wanted to be creative, you were creative vicariously through a man. Right?\n18:06\tRosemary Sullivan:\tYes, you in another of your poems, you talk about, this is the trying to write one, that you had last night. You talk about it being unfeminine to write.\n18:21\tElizabeth Smart:\tYes. Yes. And somebody asked me last night, too, about why I said that love was parallel. You see, I do feel very, I’ve always been thinking about that, that you really have to be ruthless to write, and it isn’t, so it isn’t a loving thing. And of course we all want to be good perhaps, but they do conflict: if you’re good, you’re not ruthless, you always take it from somebody else. They want to come in and tell you about their troubles, you’re writing, you don’t say “No, off, I’m busy.” You say “Come in!” And listen to them.\n18:54\tElizabeth Smart:\tThis is called Trying To Write. Why am I so frightened / To say I’m me / And publicly acknowledge / My small mastery? / Waited for sixty years / Till the people take out the horses / And draw me to the theatre/ With triumphant voices? / I know this won’t happen / Until it’s too late / And the deed done (or not done) / So I prevaricate, / Egging them on, and keeping / Roads open (just in case) / Go on! Go on and do / It in my place! / Giving love to get it / (The only way to behave). / But hated and naked / Could I stand up and say / Fuck off! or, be my slave? / To be in a very unfeminine / Very unloving state / Is the desperate need / Of anyone trying to write.\n19:54\tElizabeth Smart:\tAnd so in fact, goodness and art are parallel and can never meet. That was my theory.\n20:02\tRoberta Buchanan:\tThat it is egocentric to write.\n20:04\tElizabeth Smart:\tYeah. You really have to have a large ego. I felt the mind had been rather squashed so that, I feel I had to get it back a bit.\n20:12\tRoberta Buchanan:\tAnd do you think this, this is a particularly female problem? That it is a problem when women write–,\n20:16\tElizabeth Smart:\tWell I do, because whenever people say, I do think that women are, perhaps it’s a training, I don’t know, but they do want to be more loving and kind and helpful don’t we? Maybe that’s because they’re in that position.\n20:32\tAnne Hart:\tWhen you speak about it is necessary for a writer to be ruthless, I mean, it does remind me of Virginia Woolf and her, her essay on the the angel of the house, that a woman to write successfully had to kill the angel of the house.\n20:47\tElizabeth Smart:\tWell that’s it, that’s the same thing.\n20:48\tAnne Hart:\tShe couldn’t, she could no longer be, if she was going to write, she couldn’t be responsible in this way, recognized for her family and her house, or else she would never find time to write.\n20:57\tElizabeth Smart:\tAnd then was with children and a house, I mean, you’re always, you’re fragmented, your mind, you think, “Oh dear, we’re out of them” You know, “The soap flakes are down” you know, so these are the things that are in your mind and you’ve got to remember to go and get this. While the men really, they are doing it more now, but there was never any question they wouldn’t notice if you’d run out lavatory paper or something. In fact George would just tear out a sheet of a book. Yeah. No respect for literature. Yes, his own ones! He wouldn’t care to.\n21:35\tAnne Hart:\tAnd yet, By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept. I know you’ve written so much more recently and that is all sort of new developments and further thoughts and you may be tired at times of hearing people harp back to the book you wrote many years ago,\n21:51\tElizabeth Smart:\tOh no, i’m delighted to have a little attention.\n21:53\tAnne Hart:\tYes, yes. Well, so many people particularly I think women do identify with it. It is a love story, which must’ve been very unique. Still is unique when it was published in 1945, a very moving, very explicit, very passionate description of a love affair. And I think at that time it must’ve been thought, well, this is a bizarre thing. I mean, I think it’d be men that had been writing about this sort of thing. I mean, did you get that sort of reaction?\n22:29\tElizabeth Smart:\tWell, yes. I think I mentioned last night that they said a trivial subject. This women’s feelings are a trivial subject and nobody’s sort of said how shocking to say ‘trivial subject’ they just took that, right?\n22:43\tRoberta Buchanan:\tDoes it make you angry when they said that?\n22:46\tElizabeth Smart:\tI don’t know, one just thinks that’s the way things are. I don’t really make any judgment.\n22:56\tMyra Bloom:\tDo you really feel that Elizabeth’s writer’s block was attributable to the fact that she felt overshadowed by George? You don’t necessarily attribute it to the material circumstances of having to raise four children.\n23:10\tRosemary Sullivan:\tYou know, I know people who’ve raised four children and continued to write, Judith Thompson is one. So in fact, what’s so interesting is when you look at Elizabeth’s work, she was writing Grand Central before she met George, so he was simply the embodiment of it. After that I do think that she lost her ego as a writer and it’s easy to- writing is such a fragile activity, you know, I mean, I haven’t written poems for quite a while because I think I need that vertical sledgehammer into the end of time before I can write. Everything’s going horizontally. There’s every reason not to write. And so, it became a habit, not writing, but also Elizabeth would, she had her youngest daughter Rose in a private school, so those children were off during the week and sometimes on the weekend they’d have these crazy so-called uncles taking care of them. So in fact it was, she had a professional life, but some people had managed a professional life with writing at night. But I think Elizabeth lost her nerve.\n24:34\tElizabeth Smart:\tA warning. This old woman waddles toward love, becomes human, but the Muse does not approve. This going flesh is loved and is forgiven by the generous. But how is it the demon? Hello, my dear sit down. I’ll soothe your pain. I’ve known what you’ve known, but won’t again. Though [inaudible] not gone. Merely contracted into a last ditch weapon. A deed, not dead. A mine unexploded and not safe to have near the playground of innocent life. Keep clear of this frail old, harmless person. 50 years fuel of aimed frustration could shatter the calm and scald the soul. and love fall like napalm, over the school.\n25:36\tMaya Gallus:\tOh, I think, I think Elizabeth Smart should always be read. I think she brings an enormous amount of wisdom and life experience to the later work and an enormous amount of passion and literary innovation to the early work. And, also, some of her poems are really powerful as well. Her poem, A Bonus is one that I always think of whenever I finish writing something because she captures so beautifully that feeling of being in a bubble. And as she says, feeling dirty and roughly dressed and getting through this difficult thing of finishing something, and then that beautiful feeling of completion.\n26:29\tMyra Bloom:\tA Bonus. That day I finished / A small piece / For an obscure magazine / I popped it in the box / snd such a starry elation / Came over me / That I got whistled at in the street / For the first time in a long time. / I was dirty and roughly dressed / And had circles under my eyes / And far far from flirtation / But so full of completion / Of a deed duly done / An act of consummation / That the freedom and force it engendered / Shone and spun / Out of my old raincoat. / It must’ve looked like love / Or a fabulous free holiday / To the young men sauntering / Down Berwick Street / I still think this is most mysterious / For while I was writing it / It was gritty it felt like self-abuse / Constipation, desperately unsocial. / But done done done / Everything in the world / Flowed back / Like a huge bonus.\n27:42\tMaya Gallus:\tI can’t think of another poem that captures that moment and that feeling as beautifully as that does. So I think Elizabeth is relevant now and will continue to be relevant for continuing generations.\n27:59\tMyra Bloom:\tI hope so. Okay, thank you.\n28:01\tMaya Gallus:\tYou’re welcome.\n28:08\tElizabeth Smart:\tGood morning boss. A cup of coffee and two Fried eggs. Look at the idiot boy that got the fat knife. Here’s all the world that is left. He has American better than love. He is civilization’s heir or you mob whose actions brought him into bed. He is happier than you, sweetheart. But will he do to fill in these coming thousand years, well, it’s too late now to complain, my honeydove. Yes. It’s all over. No regrets. No postmortems. You must adjust yourself to conditions as they are. That’s all. You have to learn to be adaptable. I myself prefer Boulder Dam to Chartes Cathedral. I prefer dogs to children. I before in corncobs to the genitals of the male, everything’s hotsy-totsy, dandy, everything’s OK. It’s in the bag. It can’t miss. My dear, my darling, do you hear me when you sleep?\n29:08\tHannah McGregor:\tSpoken Web is a monthly podcast produced by the Spoken Web team as part of distributing the audio collected from and created using the Canadian literary archival recordings found at universities across Canada. Our producer this month is Myra Bloom from York University and our podcast project manager is Stacy Copeland. Thanks to Sina Queyras, Maya Gallus, Kim Echlin and Rosemary Sullivan for their candid discussions presented here. This podcast also features archival audio of Elizabeth Smart in conversation at Memorial University in 1983 and reading at Warwick University in England in 1982. Special thanks to Vinita Patel, Donna Downey of MUN Archives, and the Glendon Media Lab. Myra Bloom is currently writing Evasive Maneuvers, a book all about Canadian women’s confessional writing, including Elizabeth Smart. You can keep up with Myra’s work and watch for more info on Evasive Maneuvers at myrabloom.com that’s M Y R A B L O O M .com. To find out more about Spoken Web visit spokenweb.ca and subscribe to the Spoken Web podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you may listen. If you love us, let us know. Rate us and leave a comment on Apple Podcasts or say hi on our social media @SpokenWebCanada. We’ll see you back here next month for another episode of the Spoken Web podcast. Stories about how literature sounds."],"score":1.0},{"id":"9579","cataloger_name":["Gloriah,Onyango"],"partnerInstitution":["Concordia University"],"collection_source_collection":["SpokenWeb AV"],"source_collection_label":["SpokenWeb AV"],"collection_contributing_unit":["SpokenWeb"],"source_collection_uri":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/spokenweb-podcast/"],"collection_image_url":["https://archiveofthepresent.spokenweb.ca/_nuxt/img/header-img_1000.fd7675f.png"],"collection_source_collection_description":["SpokenWeb Audio Visual Collection"],"collection_source_collection_id":["ArchiveOfThePresent"],"persistent_url":["https://archiveofthepresent.spokenweb.ca/"],"item_title":["SpokenWeb Podcast S1E5, Revisiting Feminist Noise, Silence, and Refusal, 3 February 2020, Moffatt and Levy"],"item_title_source":["SpokenWeb Podcast web page."],"item_title_note":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/revisiting-feminist-noise-silence-and-refusal/"],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Podcast"],"item_series_title":["The SpokenWeb Podcast"],"item_series_description":["Series of podcasts by the SpokenWeb network."],"item_subseries_title":["The SpokenWeb Podcast Season 1"],"item_series_wikidata_url":["https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q117038029"],"item_series_uri":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/spokenweb-podcast/"],"item_subseries_description":["The first season of the SpokenWeb Podcast."],"item_subseries_uri":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/spokenweb-podcast/"],"item_identifiers":["[]"],"rights":["Creative Commons Attribution, Non-Commercial, ShareAlike (BY-NC-SA)"],"rights_license":["Creative Commons Attribution, Non-Commercial, ShareAlike (BY-NC-SA)"],"access":["Streaming and download"],"creator_names":["Kate Moffatt","Michelle Levy"],"creator_names_search":["Kate Moffatt","Michelle Levy"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"name\":\"Kate Moffatt\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Producer\"]},{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/20010042\",\"name\":\"Michelle Levy\",\"dates\":\"1968-\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Producer\"]}]"],"contributors":["[]"],"Publication_Date":[2020],"material_description":["[]"],"digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/revisiting-feminist-noise-silence-and-refusal/\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"sw-ep-5-revisiting-feminist-noise_tc.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"44.1 kHz\",\"duration\":\"01:02:45\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"60,250,664 bytes\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"MP3 audio\",\"title\":\"sw-ep-5-revisiting-feminist-noise_tc\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/revisiting-feminist-noise-silence-and-refusal/\"}]"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"2020-02-03\",\"type\":\"Publication Date\",\"notes\":\"\",\"source\":\"\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/3725404708#map=19/49.282403/-123.108552\",\"venue\":\"Simon Fraser University\",\"notes\":\"\",\"address\":\" 515 West Hastings Street Vancouver, B.C., Canada. V6B 5K3.\",\"latitude\":\"49.2824032\",\"longitude\":\"-123.1085513\"}]"],"Address":[" 515 West Hastings Street Vancouver, B.C., Canada. V6B 5K3."],"Venue":["Simon Fraser University"],"City":["Vancouver, British Columbia"],"Note":["[]"],"Related_works":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"The program for the SpokenWeb Sound Institute 2019 can be found HERE.\\n\\nThe program for the SpokenWeb Symposium 2019: Resonant Practices in Communities of Sound can be found HERE.\\n\\nArchival audio from the SpokenWeb Sound Institute 2019 and the SpokenWeb Symposium 2019, Simon Fraser University.\"}]"],"_version_":1853670549521170432,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:53.966Z","contents":["In this episode of the SpokenWeb podcast, student contributor Kate Moffatt revisits “Feminist Noise, Silence, and Refusal” – a live panel from the 2019 SpokenWeb Symposium hosted at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia. With presentations from Lucia Lorenzi, Milena Droumeva, Brady Marks, and Blake Nemec (moderated by Hannah McGregor) the panel explores how we understand sound, noise, voice, silence, and voiceless-ness when they intersect with gender, feminism, and the expected, mandated, or performative aspects of speech. Including a new interview with Dr. Milena Droumeva that reflects on her presentation, project and sonification, Episode 5: “Revisiting ‘Feminist Noise, Silence, and Refusal’” returns to the 2019 SpokenWeb Symposium as Kate invites us to listen toward a new decade of feminist sound politics.\n\nTo find out more about our next SpokenWeb Symposium in 2020 here. If you love us, let us know! Rate us and leave a comment on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify or say hi on our social media @SpokenWebCanada.\n\n00:03\tHannah McGregor:\tWhat does literature sound like? What stories will we hear if we listen to the archive? Welcome to the Spoken Web podcast. Stories about how literature sounds. My name is Hannah McGregor, and each month I’ll be bringing you different stories of Canadian literary history and our contemporary responses to it created by scholars, poets, students and artists from across Canada. Now this month we’re bringing you something a little bit different. In this episode of the Spoken Web Podcast student contributor, Kate Moffatt is revisiting a live panel from the 2019 Spoken Web symposium called Feminist Noise, Silence and Refusal. That panel happened right here at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, British Columbia and it featured presentations from Lucia Lorenzi, Milena Droumeva, Brady Marks, and Blake Nemec and it was moderated by me.\nYou hear me introduce the panel and also laugh a little bit too loudly, a little bit too close to the microphone a couple of times. The panel was exploring how we understand sound and silence, voice and voicelessness where they intersect with gender, feminism and the expected mandated or performative aspects of speech. This episode also includes a new interview with Dr. Milena Droumeva that reflects on her presentation as well as the larger project that it touched on and the project of sonification in general. And what I’d particularly like you to listen for in this episode is the way that it expands on the way we’ve been talking about archival sound in the Spoken Web Podcast so far. The reflections on noise and silence that you hear in these presentations as well as in Kate Moffatt’s discussion challenges us to ask how certain sounds end up in the archive and what gets left out or ends up being unarchivable. A project like this one, the Spoken Web project is in some ways limited by what’s there, by what’s been recorded by what we can find by what we’ve already found. But of course there’s a lot of power and politics that goes into what ends up in the archive in the first place. We tend to archive things that are remarkable that we mark as important, but that leaves out all kinds of banal background noise. What Brady Marks refers to as the acoustic weather. And when it comes to the challenge of archiving, how would we begin to think about archiving silence?\n\nIt’s particularly interesting hearing all of these different speakers on these ideas in the form of an episode where Kate has essentially created an archive of an event that might have otherwise passed by unremarked. I’d love to hear your thoughts on how this episode grapples with the challenges of thinking about the relationship between feminism and noise. So without any further ado, here’s episode five Revisiting Feminist Noise, Silence and Refusal. Taking us back to the 2019 Spoken Web Symposium. As Kate invites us to listen toward a new decade of feminist sound politics.\n\n03:42\tKate Moffatt:\tIn May of 2019 two inaugural Spoken Web events took place in Burnaby and Vancouver, British Columbia, the Spoken Web Sound Institute 2019 and the Spoken Web Symposium 2019: Resonant Practices in Communities of Sound. This episode of the Spoken Web Podcast will be revisiting a particular panel from that symposium and talking to one of its presenters, Dr. Milena Droumeva. But first, let me introduce you to these two exciting events.\nThe Spoken Web Sound Institute 2019 was a Spoken Web members’ event that took place at the Simon Fraser University Burnaby campus over May 28th and 29th. The Institute questions how we work with sound and with literary recordings in particular, recognizing the impact that Spoken Web, as a large scale and widespread project, can have on the future of literary sound studies. How do we interact with sound in the archive? How do we curate it? How do we manage mass amounts of files in ways that make them accessible? How do we name them? How do we store them? How do we make them archivable and resilient in the face of technological advancements?\n\nHow do we share what we’re learning, the scholarship that we’re creating, with a broader audience? With individuals both inside and outside of universities? The Institute not only endeavored to begin answering these questions by sharing current research projects and scholarship, putting on workshops on podcasting, copyright, oral history and data management, but it also brought together the geographically widespread members of the project to celebrate the first year of Spoken Web. The Institute was followed by the Spoken Web Symposium 2019: Resonant Practices in Communities of Sound, which took place over May 30th and 31st at Simon Fraser University’s Vancouver campus.\n\nMany of the themes and topics taken up by the Institute were represented, questioned, illuminated and challenged by the Symposium, which was open to all scholars and creators and brought together students, teachers, authors, artists and scholars to share their work in the field of sound studies. The wide ranging presentations, which included everything from recreations of old radio broadcasts to analyses of the use of accent and audio books, took up the themes of performance, space, gender, politics and technology to name just a few. Today we will be revisiting one of the symposium panels, Feminist Noise, Silence and Refusal. Lucia Lorenzi, Milena Droumeva, Brady Marks, and Blake Nemec made up this particular panel and their presentations explored how we understand sound, voice, silence and voicelessness when they intersect with gender, gender, politics and mandated expected or performative speech. First we have Dr. Lucia Lorenzi Introduced by Dr. Hannah McGregor, Dr. Lorenzi’s presentation questions, the rising expectations of speech from survivors of sexual violence and assault in an age of social media and reality and the potential effects that mandating that speech can have on our understanding of voice and silence and noise from activists and survivors.\n\n06:47\tHannah McGregor:\tWelcome everyone to Feminist Noise, Silence and Refusal. I am Hannah McGregor. I’m an assistant professor of publishing here at SFU. Dr Lucia Lorenzi is an ambivalent scholar, but an excited thinker finishing up a postdoc and cultural studies at McMaster university.\n07:08\tLucia Lorenzi:\tMy dissertation was about silence and representations of sexualized and gendered violence in literature and the kinds of readings that I was doing felt very literary to me. I was looking for omissions or nonlinear forms of storytelling or particular types of narrative voice. But when I got into performance, namely theater, it became really impossible to avoid thinking through sound as a material experience. So for instance, when I was writing about Colleen Wagner’s play, The Monument, in the stage directions, there are silences and long silences and long, long, long silences.\nSo trying to think about reading a text and writing about a text that also exists in another world as a performance and as a sonic experience. But as I’ve done this work over the past decade or so, in addition to my work as an activist and an advocate around these issues, one of the main questions that I keep coming back to is this isn’t necessary to speak out about sexualized and gender violence? And to what extent has a particular configuration or understanding of sound, and not just voice, created, yes, feminist communities, but also pressures and expectations around the category or the identity of survivor. So perhaps more simply, what I’m trying to think through is how we challenge the binary of speech and silence that characterizes a lot of understandings and representations of violence.\n\nSo put another way, is there a third option to this formulation proposed by Arundhati Roy who in their now famous remarks at the 2004 Sydney Peace Prize stated, “We know there’s no such thing as the voiceless. There are only the deliberately silenced or the preferably unheard.” I wonder if there is such a thing ,and here I’m going to invoke Sara Ahmed’s ideas around willfulness, could there be something like the willfully silent? And what might those silences, or what I’m calling sonic refusals, look like in an era of digital mediation? The performances I’m looking at are several, but I want to talk about one in particular that stands out to me that I’m still really trying to understand from a sound studies perspective.\n\nEmma Sulkowicz is a queer nonbinary Asian American artist who’s best known for their 2014/2015 endurance performance piece entitled Mattress Performance (Carry That Weight) And they carry around this standard size dorm room mattress everywhere they went on the campus of Columbia University until either they graduated or their rapist was expelled. They graduated and you see them carrying it with friends across the stage. Their art went viral in part because this work emerged at the height of the student activist movement around campus sexual assault in the United States. Sulkowicz was featured on the cover of New York Magazine and their work was really seen as I think emblematic of the campus movement, antiviolence movement more generally. Much of their work in the intervening years has not received the same level of public attention, but it’s received a great deal of positive critical attention in the art world, and several of their pieces have worked to think through the experience with being a very public survivor of sexual assault including the kinds of discursive pressures, ways of speaking that have been placed on them. Their 2016 performance, Self Portrait (Performance with Object) takes place on two, I guess technically four, pedestals in a gallery space. So on the one pedestal Sulkowicz stands ready to engage in conversation with audience members who are free to ask them about anything.\n\nNow if they want to know about stuff that, Sulkowicz has frequently asked very invasive questions, they are directed to address Emmatron. And Emmatron is a likeness of Sulkowicz who speaks via an iPad that is loaded with preset questions and answers you can scroll through. As Matt Stromberg describes in review for Artbound quote “Answers recorded by Sulkowicz play from Emmatron’s unmoving lips. On the afternoon I visited these responses were barely audible, unintentionally highlighting the primacy of the interaction with the living breathing artist in the room.” So in the next few minutes, I want to think through how Sulkowicz selective speech and this digital mediation of sound pose both material and discursive or philosophical challenges to how sound and speech have of course been used by survivors, but they’ve also been weaponized against them. I think that their art provides a departure point thinking about the antiviolence movement as a sonic community and an archive, but to unpack how the production of ‘survivor’ as a political identity is deeply bound up in particular kinds of sonic production in public space. In his essay collection, Silence: Lectures and Writings, American avant-garde composer, John Cage stated, all caps, “I HAVE NOTHING TO SAY AND I AM SAYING IT.” So Cage, obviously his broader arguments work to destabilize the binaries around sound and silence, but I think what he says when he says, I have nothing to say, and I’m saying it, is talking about one of the most difficult things I think about silence. Because it’s so often risks being misunderstood, it often still requires a narrative apparatus that circles it. Cage speaks in order to give his reasons for not speaking, which is that he has nothing to say, and I’ve been thinking about Cage’s having nothing to say and saying it just because voice, literal voice and mouths are so important to the imagery of antiviolence movements. The importance of breaking the silence, which suggests a sort of sonic power that is powerful enough to really deliberately destabilize objects perhaps, also exist in relationships to other political movements.\nWhile broadly used across antiviolence work of all kinds, the slogan of ‘breaking the silence’ and imagery such as a person with a hand or tape over their mouth, has to become also iconic and representative of the ways in which voice, a particular kind of voice, a particular use of that voice, perhaps a particular intonation has been linked to a particular kind of identity politics. Because a survivor as opposed to a victim isn’t just someone who speaks but they break or shatter silences, which calls up this very material instantiation of sound, so shouting or chanting at rallies using a megaphone. And these forms of sonic production are deeply related to feminist practice, we amplify voices, we pass the mic.\n\nNow I’m still struggling with the ways that silence seems to be a kind of counter intuitive mechanism, because I’m aware of the deep history and the weight politics and oppression that mean that people are silenced or that they are unheard. But I’m also trying to connect this to rich traditions of silence as a means of political disruption. In describing the political strategies employed by American suffragists in the early 20th century, Mary Chapman notes that a key strategy of the suffrage movement was the use of voiceless speech. So obviously that the historical context surrounding these activists, and I’m thinking particularly about, queer, trans, racialized activists in the 21st century, could not be in some ways more different, but I think that contemporary activists are still grappling with some of the same difficulties. So to what extent can survivors participate in public spheres of discourse? Where can they use their voice? What are the political risks, including risks to physical safety? Knowing the myriad ways in which survivors continue to be silenced, how can survivors, and I’m going to quote Chapman here, quote, “creatively rework the cultural significance of their political silence, changing it from a sign of powerless citizenship to an example of creative forms of participation in the modern public sphere.”\n\nSo Sulkowicz’s piece helped me think about these creative forms and participation, and I want to make a few suggestions, however preliminary, about how I’m reading how it uses sound and silence. So the first thing that I think of is this divide in terms of, this sort of divide, this little physical divide in terms of how audience members can interact. So Emmatron I had is still voiced by Sulkowicz, but the voice is predefined and limited. And I wonder if that also then resists manipulation, it has boundaries around it, it cannot be altered. I’m thinking about the use of audio recording and the ubiquity of access to voice recording technology, and also the alleging democratization. Listening to Sulkowicz’s recorded voice isn’t a private experience, which sort of seems, you know, my experience of gallery spaces often with sound art, unless it’s an exhibition that’s sort of, you know, is curated in particular ways, is that you listened to it in headphones, you’re listening to it privately. But as audience members have observed, there’s this sort of dual listening where you’re trying to listen to the iPad and you’re also trying to listen in on what’s going on with the fact that you don’t get to have that private experience. Sulkowicz’s voice is, this is really interesting to me, described by many reviewers as pleasant and joyful and warm like as if it’s a surprise. And I think that comments on the ways in which survivors literal voice is also a point of suspicion. A comment on a YouTube video which provides a little bit of documentation of this piece, one of the commenters says “She laughs a lot. Not sure what’s so funny.”\n\nI’ve been thinking about reading this laughter alongside the laughter of other performance regarding sexual assault, namely survivors who use stand up comedy to talk about their experiences and who in that interaction is able to laugh and why, who is laughing at who. And then scrolling through the iPad and thinking about where it is that we now most frequently encounter the voices of survivors and where that archive lives. Cause I’m trying to think about the archiving of, you know, the Women’s March or other kinds of marches and then the ways that that’s hard to access, versus you can go through and you can literally pick any hashtag that you want. And it’s really easy to be able to sort of go through that archive and sort of make notes of the kinds of stories that are being told there.\n\nSo in an article from the early nineties, maybe 1994 perhaps, or ’91, I can’t remember, Linda Alcoff and Laura Gray, they sort of read Foucault talk about, you know, is survivor speech transgressive, right? So it’s almost 30 years ago and I feel like those questions are coming up, but they’re coming up differently because of the technologies and the types of public assembly and the way that public assembly is archived or not archived have changed. They say, quote, “when breaking the silence is taken up as the necessary route to recovery as or as a privileged political tactic, it becomes a coercive imperative on survivors to confess, to recount their assaults, to give details, and even to do so publicly.” This is justly deserving of the critique Foucault offers of the way in which the demand to speak involves dominating power. So freedom through speech or voice then is no longer one of a series of possibilities, I worry about the way in which it becomes mandated. And Tarana Burke echoed this recently in an interview with the Washington Post where she mentioned her frustrations with the goals of the MeToo movement. She says, “culture shift doesn’t happen in the accusation and it doesn’t happen in the disclosure, culture shift happens in the public grappling with these questions because nobody has firm, definitive, or perfect answers.” What I wonder, then, is if we’re shifting away from disclosure or ‘the speaking,’ maybe what we’re trying to articulate is a different politics or a different strategies for eliciting that seems to be what Burke is calling for. And I also think that’s what Sulkowicz’s piece asks of audience members.\n\n19:56\nKate Moffatt:\tDr. Lorenzi’s presentation recognizes the complicated history around silence, speech and activists’ sonic actions. And her suggestions that sound can exist both as a material experience and a sonic one, and that it can change or impact our understanding of the identity of survivors and the identity of those who do or do not choose to speak, is a theme that can be traced through the following two presentations of this panel, Dr. Milena Droumeva and Brady Marks’ presentation questions how social media data, such as tweetsm can exist as a soundscape. In particular, what do the hashtag MeToo movement tweets sound like when reinterpreted as sound and what effect emotional or otherwise does sonifying those tweets have on the listener?\n20:39\tHannah McGregor:\tOur next speakers are Milena Droumeva and Brady Marks. Dr. Milena Droumeva is a sound studies professor here at SFU in the school of communication. She does work in critical approaches to urban soundscapes and gender and the game sound. And Brady Ciel Marks is a computational artist who is concerned with our technological entanglement and so creates soundscapes that demystify, transgress, and reinterpret our potentially free relationship to tech and framing. What a beautiful bio. And other things, it says and other things.\n21:17\tBrady Marks:\tSo we’re going to talk a little bit about a sonification that we’ve created together, and do a demonstration. So what does is a sonficiation? Let’s start there. For me, a sonification is a reinterpretation of a dataset into sound. And the dataset that we are interested in exploring is the MeToo phenomenon as represented through tweets. Turning this into sound has a number of different ways to do that, it’s very flexible cause obviously those tweets don’t make sound in and of themselves.\n22:01\tMilena Droumeva:\tJust to refresh everyone’s memory just in case you don’t remember what #MeToo is all about or what happened because our social media memories, you know, are three seconds long.\n22:13\tBrady Marks:\tThis is the virtual phenomenon, global phenomenon, reacting to sexual intimidation and sexual violence that happened at the end of 2017 and we’ll be seeing today how it’s still happening online through sonification after the live demo.\n22:37\tMilena Droumeva:\tWe want to ask you some questions about, you know, what this type of, representation of information, I don’t want to call it data because it’s so cold, it’s not really data, but it also is, it’s accessible as data. But whether, you know, we can think of it as an archive or memorial or other things.\n23:03\tBrady Marks:\tI was very inspired by soundscapes as this idea of something that we listen to and we sort of embody or incorporate into our everyday activities. I always come back to the same example, which is like, you hear the wet tires of a car on the streets in the morning and you know Oh, I should get my umbrella. It’s like it’s background, this thing that becomes foreground because it’s relevant to you. But something that you live with and that becomes sort of acoustic, whether the you react to it.\n23:41\tMilena Droumeva:\tI love that. Wait wait, I just wanted to say about the choice of sonification because I do realize that that is new for a lot of folks and unfamiliar. I’ve been doing work in sonification for a long time. But typically when you go to, especially an audio conference or a sonification conference, sonification sounds something like woo woooo. That is what they sound like. They’re literally a kind of a pitch shifting, following a line graph. So a lot of them don’t go like a lot further than that, and we wanted to go like a lot further than that with this kind of sonification because I really got to the point where I wanted to explore what would it mean to create a sonification not only sonifying something boring in an interesting way, but sonifying something really interesting in an interesting way. And what would it mean to sonify social data? It’s tweets, you can download a dataset, but it really, it’s people’s lives and people’s truths that are being shared, it’s kind of a voice, but it’s silent. So there’s a soundscape of that silence in there and we want to give it voice in a way. Now, what voice would you ask that we give it? Well, here’s where, just to have fun, because another part of my work has to do with, that I’ve been chipping away at, has to do with the rather sexist sonic representation of women in video games. If you play any video games or if you’ve heard about video games, you probably see fighting ladies like these and you’ve heard about, you know, the conversations around well maybe they should be wearing some more clothes or, you know, they shouldn’t be fighting in a bikini, that kind of thing. Not a lot of talk really about how they sound, but it is very interesting.\n25:55\tVideo Game Audio:\tPlease stop! Please don’t! What? No! Help! This is wrong!\n26:06\tMilena Droumeva:\tSo these are actual, battle cries, these are actual clips from actual characters from actual games. So I’ve been doing that other work and I really wanted to bring it in and somehow co-opt it and subvert it and see how it can actually, because what it does is it makes one feel really uncomfortable. It’s pornographic, it’s sort of really fragile, it’s excessive, it’s hyper feminized in a negative way. But I wanted to kind of bring in that discomfort that it creates and use it to sonify the phenomenon of #MeToo and see what that would sound like.\n26:58\tBrady Marks:\tWe took these battle cries and we mapped them one to one where each tweet becomes one simple sound. And so with the soundscape paradigm we’re not trying to make music, we’re not trying to make notes, we don’t, we’re not using pitch relationships. Every tweet you’ll hear is a battle cry. Retweets then become these echoes of that same battle cry, so those are those splurging out. And they’re the same cry echoed at slightly lower volumes. So again, we wanted to do the counterpoint. We were like these tweets, we don’t want to say that every single one represents someone declaring an event of sexual abuse, which they often are. There was also a strong backlash, right? We wanted to get this counterpoint. We wanted to get the trolls voice and we failed at that point. We looked into sentiment analysis, I did try, I looked into a few different methodologies, haven’t got that part sorted yet. Another aspect of MeToo that we wanted to represent the society of the zeitgeist of a reach. The fact that all tweets are not exactly equal. There are movers and shakers, people with large followings, and we thought that would correspond to the reach. If someone retweets or tweets and they have a large following.\n28:31\tMilena Droumeva:\tLike Alyssa Milano, if you remember, there was a big spike in October because Alyssa Milano came forward with her story about Harvey Weinstein and she has, I mean anytime she tweets something she’s got millions of people, right? So that was a big event. And that will be different than, you know, me tweeting something, and I know you’re now dying to hear what this thing sounds like. So, drumroll.\n28:56\tBrady Marks:\tI’m going to just hit our live one, which is real time tweets, so they’re tweets that are happening right now, they’re delayed by 15 seconds just so I can get the timing so they don’t bunch up too much. And then our person with the historical data sets, we’ve got one day at 60 times speed and then we can maybe try the one month, which should get 1500 times a week. So this is the site. So there were four, so that’s a week’s reach. It was busier during lunch, it was very quiet last night. Silence is loud. Silence is…\n30:13\tMilena Droumeva:\tWe’ve been reflecting a lot on the silences\n30:18\tBrady Marks:\tIt’s particularly quiet, actually.\n30:32\tMilena Droumeva:\tYeah, I’ve never heard it so quiet. But it’s one of the, one of the things that we did want to create, and I, and I want to connect this with your talks, is the, to experience like the folding of this in time, and just the kind of like, we’re literally waiting for a tweet right now, of somebody sharing, possibly sharing a story, responding, commenting.\n31:11\tBrady Marks:\tThis is January 10th.\n31:20\tMilena Droumeva:\tSo this is, you know, when you compress time. This is just one day. [sonification starts in background]\n32:21\tBrady Marks:\tSo that’s one day of tweets during that intense time. And so every single sound you hear is a tweet, using those vocalizations is a tweet or retweet. Let’s slow it down. That was 150 times speed.\n32:44\tMilena Droumeva:\tJust 30 seconds and we’ll be done with this. Just to conclude, I wanted to see, this is obviously and somewhat deliberately under-theorized at the moment, because it’s, well I really wanted to prioritize this experiential engagement and see like what it sounds like, how we feel, what happens. And it’s very much a ongoing work in progress and I’m very interested in everybody’s thoughts and suggestions both in terms of practical and reactions but also like ways of theorizing that would seem intuitive or natural, synergies and so on. So thank you\n34:12\tKate Moffatt:\tMilena Droumeva and Brady Marks’ presentation indicates in an uncomfortable, discomforting, thought provoking manner, the facelessness of social media data and the fact that reinterpretations as Dr. Droumeva pointed out, tell a story. This particular re-interpretation reminds us all that each contributor to that mass amount of data for the #MeToo movement is an individual, is their experiences, or a contribution to their story because others are engaging with it. Both Dr. Lorenzi’s questions about silence and sonic refusal and Dr. Droumeva and Brady Marks’ questions about how silence, noise, and performance can affect our perception or emotional understanding is found, also, in the last presentation of this panel. Blake Nemec’s presentation questions how the voices of unprotected workers, and even the sounds pitches and intonations that these voices make rather than simply their words, differ from protected workers. Nemec questions, how sonic performances, how silence, noise, and unexpected disruption, can communicate the emotional and political circumstances of these individuals.\n35:15\tHannah McGregor:\tAll right. Our third speaker is Blake Nemec. Blake Nemec is obsessed with language justice as it intersects with sonic intimacies. He teaches ESL film and creative writing in Chicago. It’s all yours.\n35:32\tBlake Nemec:\tI feel like my heart is racing a little bit. Sorry. No, it’s interesting, you’ll see that I do similar things with noise, so. Okay. Sonic Intimacies of Unprotected Dialogues: the MolyBDenim Project as Syncopation, Noise, or Silence. This analysis, queers missive United States and informal trade worker dialogues and their syncopation noise or silence by reflecting on the MolyBDenim sound project that I created. Even as this discussion hones in on sex worker conversations and intentionally troubles the boundaries of this trade to include how other care industry workers who are criminalized, such as domestic workers, talk to each other or do not, or how their sonic interactions differ from those of protected workers. This analysis understands informal trade, unprotected, system D workers as labourers who do not have legal protections while at work. Syncopations and heats, massage workers. I’d like to start with how I experienced sonic intimacies with unprotected worker dialogues. Like this clip, beats and rhythms from phonemes and truncated dialogue easily form into song. After I began doing sex work, I found myself repeating clip phrases that I shared with my coworkers. There were regular intonations and I liked cycling the sound parts in my mouth, whether it was a little hot or juicy, didn’t matter, the content did not hold my connection to the sounds. It was the kind of rhythms, repetitions or intonations of the phrases that I liked repeating. What enliven me and what was animate. In Foucauldian in terms, a deeper relationship to the elements of the language can occur below the level of identities and differences, where the foundation provided by continuities, resemblances, repetitions and natural criss-crossings are found.\nThe MolyBDenim sound project’s creative process was also often syncopated. In 2016, after finishing a manuscript that would become my hybrid book Sharing Plastic, I reached out to sound artist friends of mine, who had also done informal trade work, to create a collaborative sound project named MolyBDenim. As the collaborators were spread across the United States, we met online to rehearse and created a lot of video conference chatter about the music we could manifest, how our collaborations could grow, or how to make our performances interactive. Then the video conference would pixelate, or drop one of us from the call. Our online rehearsals, uncontrollable and truncated, mirrored elements of the informal trade work we were using as source material. The rhythms had feedback or echo, the beats from one piece of equipment would eclipse another, truncating words allows for rapid dialog and fast talk creates energy.\n\nYugoslavian born experimental fiction writer Dubravka Ugrešić speaks about the verbal steam of the communal bath in her book Lend Me Your Character. This postmodern book of short stories portrays dialogue as heat by including everyday conversations between women as communal bath and verbal steam. Listeners don’t need to imagine steam or water particles to consider dialogue as animate. Musicology shows us how sentient beings hold emotional connections to sound waves. The idea of language as steam simply assists us in acknowledging and sound wave particles as matter. The difference between the verbal scene of protected chatter and unprotected worker conversations, however, exists in the underlying temporality of unprotected worker positions, while making observations when starting during or departing work, cognisance about safety, the time, the customer, or the work landscape can be signaled by the intonations within ‘hello,’ within the tone of ‘okay,’ within the pitches of ‘oh, I see.’ Workers who have no job security do not speak to each other like nine to five workers. In my experiences with other unprotected labor, informal work may only have predictable tools their job uses and coworkers may converse about those tools while sonically implying other information. We may be ‘uh-huh’ or ‘mhm’. We can only vocalize interests or critiques through volume, intonation, or tone because more explicitly it could cost us arrest, incarceration, or deportation. Coworker chatter in United States secure employment, however, is centered on and validated by what coworkers think of each other’s lives in a shared understanding that they will see each other again. The unprotected worker is legally and socially accepted as toxic because the voices are not consistently heard.\n\nMutable is deemed suspicious. The utterances as unprotected workers are less centered on a person’s past as I know it and a person’s future as I can predict it today. I or we may only have the sound of their voice, their accent, or the intonation as an element of who they are. I may only have their volume as a sense of their opinions. This is further reason for poetry and music to amplify such dialogues and the elements of them. These art forms can portray the energy or volition of the conversations. They can portray heat, vibration, pulses, and auditory sensations. MolyBDenim tracks start with dialogue. The songs or tracks are different every time because they’re created live, surrendering control. Utterances between temporary workers are also unpredictable. Mechanical, geographical and scheduling challenges, parallel stylistic and contextual elements in the MolyBDenim sound project.\nOur equipment compelled us to be ready to change a track mid performance because the loop pedal, if not press softly, would erase all our layered songs. This loop pedal and the unlimited amount of repetitions of dialogue sounds temporarily recording to two beats was the core of our sound art. As you heard, we would start with truncated dialogues, then loop phonemes into rhythms or melodies. We knew the looping pedal could erase all the loops during the performance, so prepared for that switch. When it happened during our performances, we had to shift, start over, going to accidental openings, re-imagine the track or recenter our sound. Unprotected workers are similarly ready for change, reframing and recentering their identities, thus their voices. Every system D worker voice has a frequency, a speed pattern of which they move through the world, and MolyB’s speed also had a great range that moved from brilliant to chesty in short amounts of time. Silence. Within MolyBDenim syncopations and delicious switches are equally paralleled by deafening silences. The loop pedal switch could be started after it cut out. First, however, was the silence. Disenfranchised workers talk to each other, they also consistently do not. Silence between workers reflects the reality of the many workers cannot communicate because of their worker residency or criminal status. Therefore, some of the poems or tracks have negative spaces or silence to reflect the losses.\n\nThe lofty idea that workers in conversation are energized is met with portrayals where worker dynamics are iced. Is in these tense worker moments, the vulnerable truths of cyclical violence, for example, can emerge. Marginalized or oppressed groups of people, in this case informal trade workers, don’t have access to the right privileges. In MolyBDenim we simply allowed the pedal cuts to be. To give silence before starting up again. Mel Chen discusses toxic animosities, environmental sensitivity and how a person articulates how vulnerable bodies navigate pollutants, able bodied people, and syntax. They ask which bodies can bear the fiction of independence and un-interuptability. Noise. I began this discussion with my personal one-on-one dialogues with other workers.\n\nA further impetus for excavating sonic intimacies or animosities of informal trade worker dialogues in MolyBDenim came from Days in April, a 2008 grassroots response to the depoliticization of United States mayday. Several meetings were organized for informal workers to gather and speak about their experiences, and these conversations between and among sex workers, domestic workers, farm workers, and hotel workers resulted in alliance building and a room full of transformative noise. This discussion troubles the idea of good worker versus bad worker. It amplifies, remixes, unprotected worker dialogues to extremes. It requests listeners to hear cacophony screams, loud sirens as sonic landscapes the informal worker navigates partly to explore ideas of toxicity. Conditions informal trade workers experience are toxic and my sound projects use metaphoric toxicities such as uttered frustrations then loop and layer such emotionally angry phrases until they evolve into noise. Sound art and poetry remain a vehicle to amplify syncopations, transport and silent volitions of vulnerable workers to validate and demand respect by the unprotected. Languages and semantic innovations are occurring amid neofascist efforts of language and sound solemnisation, both working to silence the unprotected. But sound is more than this.\n\n48:11\tKate Moffatt:\tThis panel took place almost eight months ago, but I was able to catch up with Dr. Milena Droumeva recently to talk with her about her symposium presentation. Our discussion, which revisited both the making of the project itself and the presentation of it at the panel that day with Brady Marks, evolved into a discussion about how the impact of sound projects such as hers, particularly because it is based on social media data, can be affected by the means or the frames in which we encounter them. The #MeToo movement happened more than two years ago, but by using sonification and using the battle cries of female video game characters to represent tweets, Dr. Droumeva and Brady Marks both troubled and explored the affective or emotional capabilities that interpretations of data sets can carry, even when the term data itself tends to suggest affective or emotional distance. When asked if she had done any further work with the project Dr. Droumeva answered with a simple\n49:01\tMilena Droumeva:\tNo.\n49:01\tKate Moffatt:\tBut as our conversation continued, she shared,\n49:04\tMilena Droumeva:\tI want to think through it. I don’t want to just push it out somehow in somewhere. I don’t want it to be an art installation project, I haven’t pursued that avenue. How exactly, like how to put it out there in what form and how to reach a wider audience? I would need partnership for that. I would need funding. And this is not particularly recognized as a form of publication, as you know, the whole project of Spoken Web and podcasting as academic publishing is something that Hannah McGregor is working on, but it’s pretty new.\n49:41\tKate Moffatt:\tAnd as it turns out, the technology currently available does not really support projects like the #MeToo project that Dr. Droumeva and Brady Marks presented at the symposium.\n49:49\tMilena Droumeva:\tSo part of the idea was to, I hate to bore you with this technical details, but the program that we use, which is Max MSP, does not have, does not integrate with any browsers. And browsers typically do not do a great job of embedding audio and of embedding audio software of any kind. So we simply don’t have a way of doing that, like technologically, so it’s not, it wasn’t, that part wasn’t even a matter of funding. It’s like we don’t, we can’t. The very technological framework of web browsers does not invite these kinds of audio forms, these kinds of interactive audio forms. So that’s something to consider about technology that it doesn’t really allow this kind of sonic exploration\n50:40\tKatie Moffatt:\tThat web browsers and applications are so well suited to written work, but not to live or exploratory audio work, is particularly interesting to me, especially given the different impacts that can be had via different forms of interacting with something like the #MeToo movement. Dr. Droumeva mentioned during her presentation that our social media memories can be about three seconds long. So I asked her if she thought that projects like this one could help create a more lasting impact for movements such as #MeToo.\n51:06\tMilena Droumeva:\tMy answer is no, I don’t think it can contribute to anything more lasting. I think that’s just the nature of social media it’s just growing, scrolling, scrolling, scrolling, clicking, clicking, moving onto the next thing. And this could be another thing in somebody’s feed. Now what I think it can do is I think it can create a different sort of affective relationship, like a different emotional connection to the data because it’s a really different form than the one that we’re used to seeing.\n51:39\tKate Moffatt:\tDr. Droumeva’s response was surprising to me as I’ve been thinking about the project and the presentation since I first heard the recording of it. The female battle cries are discomforting to listen to on their own, and the combination of those battle cries with #MeToo tweets was very intriguing and very powerful. And I told Dr. Droumeva so.\n51:58\tMilena Droumeva:\tI’m honestly surprised to hear that it’s kind of lasting in your mind. So maybe I was wrong and this can be something a little bit more longer-lasting. I hope I’m wrong, I just, yeah, you’re catching me on a day when I feel very bleak about social media culture an, the kinds of engagement and disengagement that it produces and the kind of numbing to impact, the numbing effect that it has on anything emotional. So I think one of the reasons why I haven’t, I mean, in addition to things like funding, one of the reasons why I haven’t moved forward with it is because it’s not very clear to me how to intercept that. Like how to interrupt that social media situation and how to most effectively put it out there. So that’s honestly, again, still not clear to me in full honesty.\n52:59\tKate Moffatt:\tI asked Dr. Droumeva if hearing the tweets, if listening to the #MeToo movement has the potential to change our perception of it.\n53:07\tMilena Droumeva:\tYeah, I mean that’s the idea. Does it, is it more impactful? I don’t know. That was the idea, I mean, I’ve been doing sonification work for a really long time and only more recently I’ve been thinking about it as a, in terms of its emotional impact. Let me tell you about the very first time that I felt emotionally impacted by a sonification. It was a sonification that I heard many years ago at a conference and it was, it was pretty simple, kind of abstract tones, not melodic tones more like almost stochastic kind of rhythmic tones. But it was a sonification of brain EKGs and this was a researcher who was working to sonify brainwaves and particularly working with epilepsy patients. So he played like the sound of a healthy brain and then he played the sound of somebody having like going into a seizure. And it was really like minimalist and abstract, but it was all of a sudden I had goosebumps because it was like hearing somebody going into an epileptic seizure. And it was very simple but very, like the lack of it, the lack of other things, the lack of pictures, the lack of texts, the lack of anything else, just kind of sitting alone with the sound, even though we were in an audience, was really, really emotionally impactful.\nAnd so years later when I started thinking about the emotional impact of sound or the possibility of emotional impact of sound, a lot of people have written, a lot of sound scholars write about the, you know, sound being a special modality and having a special relationship to our interior world and creating a special kind of intimacy, so I don’t know though, there’s a lot of factors, right? There’s, there’s that and, but there’s also the fact that you heard it as part of a conference podcast as opposed to came across it in your Facebook feed. Would it have been different if you came across this in your social media feed as opposed to in a conference? And people had a big reaction in the conference, but again they were there as captive audience, they were there for a certain, with a certain intentionality, you know? And a certain open mind. So I’m really fascinated by this idea of what can create impact, especially about things as important as the NeToo movement and any other subsequent movements that are unfolding on social media. But really they’re not about the virality of social media, they’re about real people having experienced harassment and assault and making that public and joining their stories together into a big weave of, you know, evidence.\n\n56:19\tKate Moffatt:\tI asked Dr. Droumeva to speak further about her use of the female battlecries to each tweet, each experience as that’s something that I’ve been trying to theorize since first hearing her presentation,\n56:29\tMilena Droumeva:\tIf I’m understanding correctly, and I, that’s what it makes me think of is that it kind of individuates each tweet and makes you remember that each tweet is an individual who is kinda crying out into the void in whatever way. Because when we think about the #MeToo movement, we even call it a movement, and as soon as you call it a movement, it’s like this faceless mass of, you know, it’s a event, you know, in the world. It’s not individual people with individual stories. Now this is also not really fair to say that each tweet is an individual with an individual story. That was true in the very beginning of MeToo. But so much of the subsequent activity, at least on social media, is actually a lot of retweets and a lot of meta communication, it’s a lot of meta conversations right now, it’s a lot of people saying something about the MeToo movement, not necessarily sharing a story, but it’s still part of the conversation. And I mean any sort of data visualization is a story. And I think what, I wasn’t thinking about this, but now that I heard you describe it in that way, I think what sound helps to do is kind of disentangle individuals and pull them apart from the, you know, the big mass of representation of data.\n57:59\tKate Moffatt:\tThat was an element of the sheer overwhelm that one feels when they hear the highest period of activity for the #MeToo tweets. Instead of hearing a singular movement, we hear more voices than we can perceive at once. It’s an incredibly powerful experience and it gives context to Brady Marks’ comment that at first the sonification sounded too pretty, which I mentioned to Dr. Droumeva.\n58:20\tMilena Droumeva:\tHuh, yeah, I do remember that. I mean Brady is a sound artist and I’m more of a social scientist really, so it was really interesting working together because we had slight, I mean we had different conceptions of aesthetics through our conversations. I think she, she started feeling like a different aesthetic, like an anti-aesthetic that was important. You know, we wanted a certain kind of assault on the ear, but not to such a degree that it was in comprehensible and mutually conflicting. And I think we’re different, we were definitely pushing the envelope a little bit in terms of sound density because we had, obviously every battle cry, every like battle cry file was triggered by the instance of the hashtag. But then we have echoes on it, which were the number of retweets. And then we had a kind of swelling and receding background drone which represented the reach, the reach of each tweet judged by the number of followers that that particular person has. And that’s, you know, really the maximum that I think I wanted to cram into, in terms of information, and it still wouldn’t be perceivable on the first listen, right? On the first listen you just kind of get hit with this emotional reaction and you get it on a very holistic sort of way. Like, wow, that’s a lot of MeToo tweets, like you get that there’s a lot.\n59:57\tKate Moffatt:\tHearing the #MeToo tweets is a very different experience than seeing it represented in visualizations of other kinds such as line or bar graphs, which amalgamate data in very particular ways. It was an important element of the project for Dr. Droumeva that the data she used be interpreted not as numbers, as data and its traditional connotations, but as individuals.\n1:00:17\tMilena Droumeva:\tEvery visualization, every transformation of data from numbers to something else is a form of storytelling. Even when we don’t want to believe so, and oftentimes visualizations don’t say, you know, they say this is data. They don’t say this is a story about data, but what it is, it’s a story about data because it always is missing certain elements and it’s highlighting other elements. And with more new media forms and more unconventional forms of data representation such as sound, it’s more, you can’t really get away with saying this is data. You’re kind of more on the spot to acknowledge that this is a story about data. But I really, I don’t want it to shy away from that at all. The idea was not at all to create some sort of dry scientific representation, right? The whole point was like, yes, this is a story about data, like all the stories about data that are out there. And, you know, let’s make this a really interesting story. A really impactful one.\n1:01:29\tHannah McGregor:\tSpoken Web is a monthly podcast produced by the Spoken Web team as part of distributing the audio collected from and created using Canadian literary archival recordings found at universities across Canada. Our producers this month are Kate Moffatt and Michelle Levy of Simon Fraser University. And our podcast project manager is Stacey Copeland. Thanks to Milena Droumeva, Lucia Lorenzi, Brady Marks, and Blake Nemec for their candid discussions presented here. This episode features archival audio from the Spoken Web Sound Institute 2019 and the Spoken Web Symposium 2019 at Simon Fraser University. Special thanks. Go out to Michelle Levy and the entire SFU Spoken Web team. To find out more about Spoken Web and our next symposium in 2020 visit spokenweb.ca and subscribe to the Spoken Web Podcast on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you may listen. If you love us, let us know. Rate us and leave a comment on Apple Podcasts or say hi on our social media @spokenwebcanada. We’ll see you back here next month for another episode of the Spoken Web Podcast. Stories about how literature sounds.\n\n"],"score":1.0},{"id":"9582","cataloger_name":["Gloriah,Onyango"],"partnerInstitution":["Concordia University"],"collection_source_collection":["SpokenWeb AV"],"source_collection_label":["SpokenWeb AV"],"collection_contributing_unit":["SpokenWeb"],"source_collection_uri":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/spokenweb-podcast/"],"collection_image_url":["https://archiveofthepresent.spokenweb.ca/_nuxt/img/header-img_1000.fd7675f.png"],"collection_source_collection_description":["SpokenWeb Audio Visual Collection"],"collection_source_collection_id":["ArchiveOfThePresent"],"persistent_url":["https://archiveofthepresent.spokenweb.ca/"],"item_title":["SpokenWeb Podcast S1E6, SoundBox Signals presents “Is That Me?”, 2 March 2020, Sallam and Shearer"],"item_title_source":["SpokenWeb Podcast web page."],"item_title_note":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/soundbox-signals-presents-is-that-me/"],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Podcast"],"item_series_title":["The SpokenWeb Podcast"],"item_series_description":["Series of podcasts by the SpokenWeb network."],"item_subseries_title":["The SpokenWeb Podcast Season 1"],"item_series_wikidata_url":["https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q117038029"],"item_series_uri":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/spokenweb-podcast/"],"item_subseries_description":["The first season of the SpokenWeb Podcast."],"item_subseries_uri":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/spokenweb-podcast/"],"item_identifiers":["[]"],"rights":["Creative Commons Attribution, Non-Commercial, ShareAlike (BY-NC-SA)"],"rights_license":["Creative Commons Attribution, Non-Commercial, ShareAlike (BY-NC-SA)"],"access":["Streaming and download"],"creator_names":["Nour Sallam","Karis Shearer"],"creator_names_search":["Nour Sallam","Karis Shearer"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"name\":\"Nour Sallam\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Producer\"]},{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/61365463\",\"name\":\"Karis Shearer\",\"dates\":\"1980-\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Producer\"]}]"],"contributors":["[]"],"Publication_Date":[2020],"material_description":["[]"],"digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://cdn.simplecast.com/audio/28a9da/28a9da1f-8cca-410c-b5d7-8165a73f9394/3ccdbdb9-0f96-49d2-b089-cea33234e046/sw-ep-6-is-that-me_tc.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"sw-ep-6-is-that-me_tc.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"44.1 kHz\",\"duration\":\"00:25:07\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"24,186,088 bytes\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"MP3 audio\",\"title\":\"sw-ep-6-is-that-me_tc\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/soundbox-signals-presents-is-that-me/\"}]"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"2020-03-02\",\"type\":\"Publication Date\",\"notes\":\"\",\"source\":\"\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/123757617\",\"venue\":\"University of British Colombia Okanagan AMP Lab\",\"notes\":\"\",\"address\":\"3333 University Way, Kelowna, BC V1V 1V7\",\"latitude\":\"49.937244975827596\",\"longitude\":\"-119.3903559234036\"}]"],"Address":["3333 University Way, Kelowna, BC V1V 1V7"],"Venue":["University of British Colombia Okanagan AMP Lab"],"Note":["[]"],"Related_works":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"bill bissett’s Breth (Talonbooks):\\n\\nhttps://talonbooks.com/books/breth\\n\\nbill bissett on PennSound:\\n\\nhttps://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/bissett.php\\n\\nCut and Run Podcast by Brady Marks:\\n\\nhttp://furiousgreencloud.com/wordpress/blog/author/furiousgreencloud/\\n\\nSarah Tolmie’s The Art of Dying (MQUP):\\n\\nhttps://www.mqup.ca/art-of-dying–the-products-9780773552715.php\\n\\nIan Ferrier at the Inspired Word Cafe:\\n\\nhttp://www.inspiredwordcafe.com/\"},{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"\"}]"],"_version_":1853670549524316160,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:53.966Z","contents":["This month on the SpokenWeb Podcast, we are excited to share with you a new podcast in the SpokenWeb family – SoundBox Signals – inviting us to listen in close to UBCO’s SoundBox Collection. In this episode, Spokenweb’s Karis Shearer, curator Mathieu Aubin and guests Lauren St. Clair and Nour Sallam invite us into a “close listening” of a previously unpublished poem from Canadian poet bill bissett. You can find the full-length recording of the bill bissett clip and more episodes from SoundBox Signals at soundbox.ok.ubc.ca.\n\nSoundBox Signals is a podcast that brings literary archival recordings to life through a combination of curated close listening and conversation. Hosted and co-produced by Karis Shearer, each episode features a conversation with a curator and two special guests. Together they’ll listen, talk, and consider how a selected recording signifies in the contemporary moment and ask what listening allows us to know about cultural history.\n\nSoundBox Signals Artwork by Myron Campbell.\n\n00:06\tTheme Music:\t[Instrumental Overlapped With Feminine Voice] Can you hear me? I don’t know how much projection to do.\n \n\n00:06\tHannah McGregor:\tWhat does literature sound like? What stories will we hear if we listen to the archive? Welcome to the SpokenWeb Podcast: stories about how literature sounds. My name is Hannah McGregor and each month I’ll bring you different stories of Canadian literary history and our contemporary responses to it created by scholars, poets, students, and artists from across Canada. When we listen to recorded poetry, taking the time to attend closely to the recording, to tune into the rhythm, the cadence, the sense of space and place, new connections and intimacies emerge. This month on the SpokenWeb Podcast, we’re excited to share with you the new SoundBox Signals Podcast, inviting us to listen in close to UBC Okanagan’s SoundBox collection. Produced by the SpokenWeb team at UBC Okanagan’s AMP Lab, SoundBox Signals brings literary archival recordings to life through a combination of curated close reading and conversation. Hosted and co-produced by Karis Shearer, each episode is a conversation featuring a curator and two special guests. Together they listen, talk, and consider what a selected recording signifies in the contemporary moment and ask what listening allows us to know about cultural history. In this episode, SpokenWeb’s Karis Shearer, curator Mathieu Aubin, and guests invite us into a close listening of bill bissett’s previously unpublished poem from around 1966. Here is Karis Shearer with “Is That Me?” episode one of SoundBox Signals. [Theme Music]\n \n\n02:30\tAudio Recording:\t[Click] [Melodic Instrumentals Overlapping Voices] I see you. [Inaudible] What is the [inaudible] Where is this voice? Coming! [inaudible] How curious you are to me…[Click]\n \n\n02:45\tKaris Shearer:\tI’m Karis Shearer and I’m joined today at UBC Okanagan [UBCO] by guest curator Mathieu Aubin, who recently finished his PhD with a dissertation entitled “Here and Queer in Vancouver,” which touches on the work of bill bissett. Also joined by Lauren St. Clair, who is a Computer Science major, Data Science minor and is the president of the Quantitative Science Course Union here at UBCO. Also joined by our podcast producer extraordinaire Nour Sallam, who is pursuing her honours English degree here at UBCO. Welcome everybody.\n \n\n03:20\tVarious Voices:\t[Overlapping] Hello. Hi. Hi.\n \n\n03:20\tKaris Shearer:\tWe are here today to listen to a clip by bill bissett. So we’re going to rewind to 1966 and listen to that recording, which is part of our SoundBox collection here at UBCO.\n \n\n03:48\tAudio Recording:\t[Click] [Audio, bill bissett recording] This. Well. Palpitation jelly gold. Were saying [inaudible] tomato. You got that should be enough. Look like needles and what just fires. Enter greenly splotch us belly holes and ice and stitches and wrestle them water in hay wires. Is that blood on my pillow? Is that me splurged there becoming a puddle in their sitting room? Is that me on the windowsill in worm slice. Oooze. How did she do it at feet radiators. And [inaudible] unslow on my, you know. Keep wishing we were in his 40 cent bed. This is the second we left Istanbul, which is Mediterranean. [Click]\n \n\n05:00\tKaris Shearer:\tSo what you just heard is a clip from a longer recording made on magnetic tape. It’s on reel-to-reel, probably made by Warren Tallman. It was part of his collection and is by poet bill bissett. Mathieu, do you want to give us a little bit more context of this recording?\n \n\n05:19\tMathieu Aubin:\tYeah, of course. So in this recording, what we have is — if it is in fact from 1966 as the material, the tape, indicates — bill bissett is likely around 26 or 27 years old. It is one of the earliest recordings that we have of bill bissett reading his work and what he’s reading in the, in the recording as a whole beyond this clip is some poems that have been published later on in some format in we sleep inside each othr all, which was published by Ganglia Press in Toronto in 1966. And one of the exciting things about this clip in particular is that this poem was never published. As bill bissett indicates, lines of this poem were published in other poems such as “Veronica,” which have been, or which were previously published, now published in his new [inaudible] books called breth. But otherwise, this is an unpublished poem and what we have access to is a really raw bill bissett and a very youthful bill bissett, which you can tell by his voice. And what’s really exciting about this as well is we don’t really know where it took place necessarily. Based on bill, it possibly was recorded with Warren Tallman, but also perhaps with Doug Geissman who he recorded with a lot. And we don’t have access to any sense of audience, which is a little odd for people who are often used to going to his readings and hearing the audience banter back with him. There’s mostly silence between the poems, which gives it a different feeling.\n \n\n06:46\tKaris Shearer:\tYeah, yeah, it sure does. It’s, it was an exciting recording to discover in the sense that I think the performance is quite different from bill’s typical performances today.\n \n\n07:00\tMathieu Aubin:\tMhm.\n07:00\tKaris Shearer:\tLauren, you were one of the early listeners to this recording, you helped digitize it. And it’s a strange and fascinating style of reading to encounter, isn’t it?\n \n\n07:11\tLauren St. Clair:\tYeah.\n07:11\tKaris Shearer:\tCan you talk a little bit about, like, your impressions of it, what it reminds you of in terms of style?\n \n\n07:17\tLauren St. Clair:\tYeah, like it sounds almost robotic and it definitely is not based in sounding robotic because it’s from the ’60s. But, to me, when I first listened to it, it almost sounded like a literal voice translation of like sticking the poem into a machine and having it be played out. Like when he speaks, it sounds almost spliced together and not like he’s speaking in the actual moment. Like it’s kind of like a collage–\n \n\n07:49\tKaris Shearer:\tMhm!\n07:49\tLauren St. Clair:\t–of words in a way. Like if you took a bunch of words from a magazine and kind of just stuck them together and read it out, that’s kind of the impression it gave me when I first heard it.\n07:58\tKaris Shearer:\tYeah, it has a kind of very chopped version of it. Nour, you were thinking about some of how the way in which the style is connected to the content of the poem and that kind of fragmentation that we’re hearing both stylistically, but then also within kind of the body of the poem. Do you want to talk a little bit about how that fragmentation’s playing out here?\n \n\n08:20\tNour Sallam:\tYeah, it’s a lot like what Lauren was saying. It’s very spliced and it does give off the feeling that it’s a little bit like a collage, which I find really interesting because the fragmentation kind of gives you that feeling of isolation that he is experiencing from the body. Like when he says, “Is that me splurged there becoming a puddle? Is it me on the windowsill? Is that my body?”, you really get that sense of fragmentation and isolation, especially in the way he reads it and the way he sounds out the words and pauses between them.\n \n\n09:02\tMathieu Aubin:\tMhm.\n09:02\tKaris Shearer:\tThere’s kind of an alienation almost from the body, isn’t there?\n \n\n09:06\tNour Sallam:\tYeah.\n09:06\tMathieu Aubin:\tMhm.\n09:06\tNour Sallam:\tYeah, an alienation from the body. I picked up on it specifically through the way he sounds out and pauses between all the words or pieces them together in a way that if you, if he was just saying them and if he was just speaking in a non-performative way, maybe you wouldn’t have picked up on that.\n \n\n09:28\tKaris Shearer:\tYeah, ’cause we’re getting like, we’re getting a lot of like the blood, “Is that blood on my pillow?” Right? That’s part of him. But he’s also seeing it, right? So there’s, you know,–\n \n\n09:36\tNour Sallam:\tYeah.\n09:36\tKaris Shearer:\t–there’s the speaker looking at pieces of himself. He’s a puddle. He’s, you know, there’s blood on the pillow.\n09:44\tNour Sallam:\tYeah.\n09:44\tKaris Shearer:\tSo that contributing–\n \n\n09:45\tNour Sallam:\tAnd the form of questioning, too. He, it’s, it almost gives you the sense that he’s unsure. Is it me? Is it someone else? Like what, what am I looking at?\n \n\n09:56\tKaris Shearer:\tThat’s a great observation. That’s, that kind of like uncertainty around–\n \n\n10:00\tNour Sallam:\tYeah.\n10:00\tKaris Shearer:\t–what he’s perceiving.\n \n\n10:01\tNour Sallam:\tYes, exactly.\n10:03\tKaris Shearer:\tSounds wonderful. Matt, I’m going to come over to you and ask you a little bit about this, you know, continuing on this question of style–\n \n\n10:10\tMathieu Aubin:\tMhm.\n10:10\tKaris Shearer:\t–of reading. Can you talk a little bit about how this style that we’re hearing here–\n \n\n10:14\tMathieu Aubin:\tMhm.\n10:14\tKaris Shearer:\t–that Nour and Lauren just talked about in terms of its fragmentation, the kind of almost computerized voice, which is so curious, you know, 1966. It’s not modeled after anything that we would necessarily, that we’re familiar with now.\n \n\n10:33\tMathieu Aubin:\tMhm.\n10:33\tKaris Shearer:\tHow does the style that we’re hearing here differ from bissett’s contemporary performance style?\n \n\n10:40\tMathieu Aubin:\tYeah. There’s so many great threads that you’ve been bringing up so far. I mean, the sense of the technology perhaps or technological voice in some sense and bill is, bill bissett’s very much interested in that idea of like, well he’s using the typewriter to write most of his poems and like that idea of like what is a tape recorder, perhaps, to bring to it too, what does it mean to become maybe like a robot in that sense? But the question of collage too is essential to his art practice. He’s often thinking about intersplicing different lines of poems in his oral performance of the poetry. And even on the page he’s really thinking about putting things together and collaging them literally, so I really liked that observation, that in sense of like what you’re hearing, which also carries over to the page.\n \n\n11:22\tMathieu Aubin:\tWhat we have here in this recording is a really young bill bissett. And what surprised me when I first heard this last spring was that youthfulness. And having been to many of his readings in past few years, what surprised me was some of the elements that were perhaps different or maybe missing that I was expecting. And perhaps it’s because of it being maybe an early recording or the fact that it’s in a private context, but there’s something to be said about the private versus the public. When he’s reading in the public context, there’s an audience very much knowing his work and are able to respond to him and he’s very humourous in his performance. You still hear that a bit in this recording. However, the humour depends on obviously an audience responding to it and that’s not as present in this recording.\n \n\n12:09\tMathieu Aubin:\tThe other thing, too, that I’m surprised is there is no instrument that’s being played in this and he’s known for having maracas on stage very often, and chanting with it. And there’s no “hummina hummina”, you know, the ways of bringing different lines together. And what doesn’t surprise me though is when I found out that this is a poem that was of course never published, but has lines that have been published in other poems, is this improvisational aspect of it. And part of his performance today is still that idea of improvising and working with things. And I was rewatching some of his performances on YouTube the other day and I thought it was really interesting that he’d often start with philosophical questions, those kinds of questions that Nour is bringing up are in this poem, but of course are being asked differently. So I think there are a lot of similarities, but there’s of course a development around that idea of the public audience listening that isn’t in here.\n \n\n13:00\tKaris Shearer:\tYeah, I like that. So you’re seeing a kind of, or hearing a through line from this early work through to his performance now–\n \n\n13:08\tMathieu Aubin:\tMhm.\n \n\n13:08\tKaris Shearer:\t–but also seeing some of the differences, particularly around the live audience, right?\n \n\n13:11\tMathieu Aubin:\tYes.\n \n\n13:11\tKaris Shearer:\tThe improvisation, the responding to the audience. We hear that a lot in his contemporary work.\n \n\n13:16\tMathieu Aubin:\tMhm.\n \n\n13:18\tKaris Shearer:\tI’m gonna come back to Nour and I want to ask you about, again, the question of listening. We’re hearing a lot of onomatopoeia and like real sound play here around words. We hear words like, “Oooze”–\n \n\n13:31\tNour Sallam:\tMhm.\n \n\n13:31\tKaris Shearer:\t–that are really, that really play out in a way that point to or signify the concept that they represent. Can you point to a couple other moments where we’re hearing that sound play?\n \n\n13:44\tNour Sallam:\tYeah. Specifically in the beginning of the recording that we heard, there’s a theme of liquids–\n \n\n13:52\tKaris Shearer:\tMhm!\n13:52\tNour Sallam:\t–going on and you can hear that a lot in the specific words like “oooze” and like “palpitation jelly” that he splices or stresses and so on. And “splurged” and words like that where he is really emphasizing that the idea of liquids, but also like the theme of fluidity, which is really interesting to me because of the fragmentation of the poem.\n \n\n14:20\tKaris Shearer:\tYeah. It’s kind of a tension between like the chopping up of words, right? “Palpitation.”\n \n\n14:24\tNour Sallam:\tYeah!\n14:24\tKaris Shearer:\tWhich is about poking, right?\n \n\n14:25\tNour Sallam:\tYeah. And the “oooze”-ing.\n \n\n14:27\tKaris Shearer:\tYeah, the elongation of those sounds to signify liquid or fluidity.\n \n\n14:33\tNour Sallam:\tYeah. It truly is, it’s a very masterful reading, I think, of what he’s, he’s trying to portray.\n \n\n14:40\tKaris Shearer:\tYeah. Yeah, that’s nice. Matt, do you wanna say, I mean we’re hearing there’s so many, there’s so much sound play–\n \n\n14:47\tMathieu Aubin:\tMhm.\n14:47\tKaris Shearer:\t–in this particular performance, particular poem. Can you comment a little bit about what we’re not hearing in this particular recording?\n \n\n14:56\tMathieu Aubin:\tYeah, so again, I think the, of course we have those sounds and like the vocalization and the polyvocality and then we were talking about hearing the playing with that. But again, to return to my earlier point about what I don’t hear in the recording, is one, an audience, which surprises me because I know that based on what he shared with me, bill is not reading alone in this room. What would the person be responding to? Were they responding at all? Are they maybe having a cigarette, let’s say, or what were they doing? Were they just casually listening? If not, if there is no audience or no response from the audience because they’re likely is an audience, what does it mean for him to just be reading it this way? And it is a work in process or progress or whatever you want to call it. But he’s reciting this and I am thinking back to this close listening that we did last summer at Congress and Jason Camlot, talked about the idea of, it sounds like almost like a recitation of the poem. And knowing a bit more context about the poem, it sounds about right in that it is just him working through the poem that never ended up being published.\n \n\n16:05\tMathieu Aubin:\tBut the other part that I’m surprised that I don’t hear is, you know, the musicality and almost like a sense of, a lack of banter, which is so essential to his practice today. There’s just banter and he’ll stop and say something hilarious in the middle of the poem and then go on to read the poem. Here what you have is someone who is just reading the poem and of course emphasizing certain words like “splurge!”, but he’s also like very much going through the poem. And something that we might not hear, too, is what is the context? Are we in a living room? We kind of hear the hum in the background of the digital, not the digital, the analog technology and in the recording, but we have zero idea of where this takes place. We’re assuming that this is in Vancouver if it is in fact with Warren Tallman, but we don’t hear that. And then the other thing, too, is often when you see him on stage, he’s opening up a water bottle or all those other kinds of sounds. But this is such a crisp recording that makes you think, “Okay, what, is he just sitting here at a table reading his poem?” And in other parts of the recording, though, you hear him turn a page and that poem is from we sleep inside of each othr all and what’s interesting is the poem has even been changed.\n \n\n17:23\tMathieu Aubin:\tSo looking at the archival material, my partner Emma Middleton was thinking about like, “Okay, well, is that exactly how it sounds in the recording?” And it’s not. So what are the pages? How is he, how is he going through this? So we know at least that we can hear the page, so he has that, but we have very limited context about that.\n \n\n17:41\tKaris Shearer:\tYeah. So in the body of recordings that we have of bill bissett or that are available online for listening, PennSound, for example–\n \n\n17:48\tMathieu Aubin:\tMhm.\n17:48\tKaris Shearer:\t–this becomes quite an unusual–\n \n\n17:49\tMathieu Aubin:\tYes.\n17:50\tKaris Shearer:\t–example because of that kind of studio quality, if you will. Quite uncharacteristic of bill bissett. So it strikes me that one of the research questions that a person could pursue would be to map the arc of the recordings. And so maybe to kind of point out where we start to see some of the contemporary style that we have. Lauren, I’m going to go over to you and I want to ask you this kind of question around the difference between the studio recording and the live recording. You are a real music fan, I know. And so my question for you is, like, what is for you the difference between the studio recording and listening to, I mean, not necessarily experiencing the live show but hearing the live recording–\n \n\n18:32\tLauren St. Clair:\tYeah.\n18:32\tKaris Shearer:\t–of something. Do you have a preference and what are you listening for in those contexts and what makes those different for you?\n \n\n18:39\tLauren St. Clair:\tYeah, I guess it really depends on what you’re listening for and more of like the technical way you might be listening for the studio recording, for like how the sound is balanced or whatnot between the live version. But if you’re listening to it for more of, like, the piece itself, you might be listening to the live because it feels more intimate. You might be hearing like banter that you wouldn’t be hearing otherwise.\n \n\n19:05\tMathieu Aubin:\tMhm.\n19:05\tLauren St. Clair:\tYou hear those intimate moments shared between the musician or the performer having with the audience that you wouldn’t have captured otherwise or is only shared in that specific recorded moment.\n \n\n19:17\tKaris Shearer:\tExactly, yeah. They’re event-based, aren’t they?\n \n\n19:19\tLauren St. Clair:\tYeah!\n19:19\tKaris Shearer:\tSo you have that, you know, unique interaction–\n \n\n19:22\tLauren St. Clair:\tYeah.\n19:22\tKaris Shearer:\t–of that particular concert or that particular event.\n \n\n19:26\tLauren St. Clair:\tYeah.\n19:26\tKaris Shearer:\tWhich we don’t have here in this recording because of that lack of play with the audience or even as, you know, someone who recorded a lot of material, Warren Tallman doesn’t on this recording introduce it or tell us, you know, exactly what date it’s recorded or where, which was fairly typical that he, he often did do that. So even in our collection, it becomes an unusual example. [Begin Music: Calming Instrumental]\n \n\n19:53\tKaris Shearer:\tI’m gonna fast forward now to contemporary, we’re gonna take us out of 1966 to the contemporary moment. [End Music: Calming Instrumental] I wanna ask you about any shout-outs that you have to poetry sound events that are happening, any digital archives you want to mention that are maybe inspired by or related to this archive. I’m going to start with Matt.\n \n\n20:18\tMathieu Aubin:\tYeah, so as I mentioned, the book breth recently published by Talon Books is a collection from basically the whole of bill bissett, including works that have never been published. So if you pick up that book, what will be great to see, too, is parts of this clip that we just listened to, some lines will be found in different poems in that book. And he’s also been celebrating his 80th birthday and tons of events in the whole greater Toronto area, including St. Catharines, Ontario, and that are just really, I guess, commemorating his career and the amount of publications that he has done. So it’s really exciting. So really make sure to check out that book.\n \n\n20:56\tMathieu Aubin:\tAnd one thing I want to mention, too, is that idea of PennSound and another recording just 13 years later, is making sure that like there are other places that you can also access this and compare that if you’re really interested in doing that.\n \n\n21:07\tKaris Shearer:\tYeah. Thanks so much. Lauren, I’m gonna go over to you, a kind of event or thing you want to mention.\n \n\n21:14\tLauren St. Clair:\tCool. Yeah, I wanna give a shout-out to the podcast Cut & Run, which is run by Brady Marks, who is a computational sound artist based in Vancouver. And she also has the handle furiousgreencloud if you’re interested in following her on social media or checking out her website where you can go check out her computational art that’s usually based in sound. It’s very cool. And the Cut & Run podcast is a focus on music and specifically like experimental music usually.\n \n\n21:45\tKaris Shearer:\tCool.\n21:45\tMathieu Aubin:\tMhm.\n21:45\tKaris Shearer:\tThat is very cool. Nour, I’m gonna go over to you, wanna give a shout-out?\n \n\n21:51\tNour Sallam:\tYeah. I’d like to give a shout-out to the Canadian poet in the contemporary setting, her name’s Sarah Tolmie. I recently came across her poetry because I picked up a copy of the Griffin 2019 Poetry Prize and she was one of the shortlisted winners. And her poetry is really, is really beautiful to the contemporary settings specifically in like contemporary issues. And yeah, she’s super cool.\n \n\n22:18\tKaris Shearer:\tAwesome. Sarah Tolmie.\n \n\n22:20\tNour Sallam:\tYeah.\n22:20\tKaris Shearer:\tGreat.\n22:20\tNour Sallam:\tHer book is The Art of Dying.\n \n\n22:21\tKaris Shearer:\tThe Art of Dying.\n \n\n22:23\tNour Sallam:\tYeah.\n22:23\tKaris Shearer:\tFantastic. Thank you–\n \n\n22:24\tMathieu Aubin:\tSounds optimistic.\n \n\n22:24\tKaris Shearer:\t–so much. And I’m gonna give a shout-out to close. Ian Ferrier of SpokenWeb and much other fame is going to be here in Kelowna on January 23rd. He’s reading with Samuel Archibald at 7:00 PM at Cool Arts studio on Cawston as part of the Inspired Word Cafe series. So that should be a lot of fun and we’re looking forward to welcoming Ian to Kelowna.\n \n\n22:52\tKaris Shearer:\tI want to thank all of you for being here today and giving some really great insights into this particular recording, doing your curated close-listening and listening and talking. That’s what this is all about. I also want to thank bill bissett for giving us permission to use this particular clip and host it on our website and to the estate of Warren Tallman for their permission as well. [Begin Music: Calming Instrumental]\n \n\n23:23\tKaris Shearer:\tThat was episode one of SoundBox Signals. You were listening to a recording by bill bissett from our archive called the SoundBox Collection, which is housed in the UBCO AMP Lab. You can find full-length versions of our recordings online at soundbox.ok.ubc.ca. I’m your host Karis Shearer and I’ll see you next time.\n \n\n23:54\tHannah McGregor:\tSpokenWeb is a monthly podcast produced by the SpokenWeb team as part of distributing the audio collected from and created using Canadian literary archival recordings found at universities across Canada. Our producers this month are Karis Shearer and Nour Sallam, members of the SpokenWeb team at UBC Okanagan’s AMP Lab. [End Music: Calming Instrumental] Keep up to date with their current projects and events at amplab, that’s A M P  L A B, .ok.ubc.ca and subscribe to the SoundBox Signals Podcast for more close listening with the AMP Lab team. A special thank you to Mathieu Aubin, Nour Sallam, and Lauren St. Clair for their candid discussion and contributions to this episode. [Theme Music] To find out more about SpokenWeb, visit spokenweb.ca and subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you may listen. If you love us, let us know. Rate us and leave a comment on Apple Podcasts or say hi on our social media @SpokenWebCanada. We’ll see you back here next month for another episode of the SpokenWeb Podcast: stories about how literature sounds.\n\n"],"score":1.0},{"id":"9584","cataloger_name":["Gloriah,Onyango"],"partnerInstitution":["Concordia University"],"collection_source_collection":["SpokenWeb AV"],"source_collection_label":["SpokenWeb AV"],"collection_contributing_unit":["SpokenWeb"],"source_collection_uri":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/spokenweb-podcast/"],"collection_image_url":["https://archiveofthepresent.spokenweb.ca/_nuxt/img/header-img_1000.fd7675f.png"],"collection_source_collection_description":["SpokenWeb Audio Visual Collection"],"collection_source_collection_id":["ArchiveOfThePresent"],"persistent_url":["https://archiveofthepresent.spokenweb.ca/"],"item_title":["SpokenWeb Podcast S1E7, The Voice Is Intact: Finding Gwendolyn MacEwen in the Archive, 6 April 2020, Mcgregor"],"item_title_source":["SpokenWeb Podcast web page."],"item_title_note":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/the-voice-is-intact-finding-gwendolyn-macewen-in-the-archive/"],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Podcast"],"item_series_title":["The SpokenWeb Podcast"],"item_series_description":["Series of podcasts by the SpokenWeb network."],"item_subseries_title":["The SpokenWeb Podcast Season 1"],"item_series_wikidata_url":["https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q117038029"],"item_series_uri":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/spokenweb-podcast/"],"item_subseries_description":["The first season of the SpokenWeb Podcast."],"item_subseries_uri":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/spokenweb-podcast/"],"item_identifiers":["[]"],"rights":["Creative Commons Attribution, Non-Commercial, ShareAlike (BY-NC-SA)"],"rights_license":["Creative Commons Attribution, Non-Commercial, ShareAlike (BY-NC-SA)"],"access":["Streaming and download"],"creator_names":["Hannah Mcgregor"],"creator_names_search":["Hannah Mcgregor"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/20153713810358661443\",\"name\":\"Hannah Mcgregor\",\"dates\":\"1984-\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Producer\"]}]"],"contributors":["[]"],"Publication_Date":[2020],"material_description":["[]"],"digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://cdn.simplecast.com/audio/28a9da/28a9da1f-8cca-410c-b5d7-8165a73f9394/901581e1-fcf7-454a-80ff-e03417153c28/spokenweb-episode-7-macewen-w-call_tc.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"spokenweb-episode-7-macewen-w-call_tc.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"44.1 kHz\",\"duration\":\"00:35:53\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"34,524,308 bytes\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"MP3 audio\",\"title\":\"spokenweb-episode-7-macewen-w-call_tc\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/the-voice-is-intact-finding-gwendolyn-macewen-in-the-archive/\"}]"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"2020-04-06\",\"type\":\"Publication Date\",\"notes\":\"\",\"source\":\"\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.openstreetmap.org/search?query=Simon+Fraser+University+Vancouver&zoom=15&minlon=-119.42087173461915&minlat=49.934207031480234&maxlon=-119.37726974487306&maxlat=49.950170586872346#map=19/49.282403/-123.108551\",\"venue\":\"Simon Fraser University\",\"notes\":\"\",\"address\":\"515 W Hastings St, Vancouver, BC, V6B 5K3\",\"latitude\":\"49.282403\",\"longitude\":\"-123.108550\"}]"],"Address":["515 W Hastings St, Vancouver, BC, V6B 5K3"],"Venue":["Simon Fraser University"],"City":["Vancouver, British Columbia"],"Note":["[]"],"Related_works":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"bennett, andrea. Excerpt from “The People’s Poetry.” The essay appears in the book\\nLike a Boy But Not A Boy: Navigating Life, Mental Health, and Parenthood outside the Gender Binary\\nto be published by Arsenal Pulp Press, fall 2019.\\n\\nCamlot, Jason and Katherine McLeod. “SGW Poetry Remix” MP3 file, 12 Dec 2018.\\n\\nMacEwen (a performance).” Resurfacing: Women Writing across Canada in the 1970s. Mount Allison University & Université de Moncton, 26-28 April 2018.\\n\\n— “Performing the Archive: A Remix.” Performed with Jason Camlot. Blue Metropolis International Literary Festival, Montreal, 5 May 2019.\\n\\nMacEwen, Gwendolyn. “Dark Pines Under Water.”\\nhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DaHTMxvxNGc\\n \\n\\n—  Reading with Phyllis Webb at Sir George Williams University, Nov 18 1966.\\nhttps://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/gwendolyn-macewen-at-sgwu-1966/\\n \\n\\n— “Past and Future Ghosts.” Afterworlds. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1987.\\n\\nMcLeod, Katherine. “(Un)Covering the Mirror: Performative Reflections in Linda Griffiths’s Alien Creature: A Visitation from Gwendolyn MacEwen and Wendy Lill’s The Occupation of Heather Rose.” Theatre and Autobiography: Writing and Performing Lives in Theory and Practice. Eds. Sherrill Grace and Jerry Wasserman (Talon, 2006). 89-104.\\n\\n— “An Archival Remix” Performance by Katherine McLeod and Emily Murphy. Toronto: Modernist Studies Association, 18 Oct 2019.\\n\\n— “Making Shadows with Recorded Sound: Dance as Criticism, in response to Gwendolyn\"}]"],"_version_":1853670549528510464,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:53.966Z","contents":["Poet Gwendolyn MacEwen, perhaps best known for winning the 1969 Governor General’s Award for her collection\nThe Shadow Maker\nand the 1987 GG, posthumously, for\nAfterworlds\n, is perhaps one of the most significant Canadian poets whose work is entirely out of print. MacEwen was only 46 when she died, and her tragic life combined with the mysticism of her poetic voice has made her a figure of enduring fascination for other poets and scholars, even as her work’s deviation from popular narratives of Canadian literature has often led to her being dropped from our literary histories. In this episode, SpokenWeb podcast host Hannah McGregor reflects on why MacEwen’s voice continues to haunt so many of us, alongside authors Jen Sookfong Lee and andrea bennett, and SpokenWeb researcher Katherine McLeod. \n\n00:00\tStacey Copeland:\tOh hi, SpokenWeb Podcast project manager Stacey Copeland here. How are you? [Begin Music: Instrumental Piano] I wanted to take a moment to let you know we are looking for contributors from across the SpokenWeb network to pitch and produce episodes with us for the 2020 season. All SpokenWeb team and network affiliates can submit episodes, no podcasting or audio experience necessary. Do you have a great archival find or current project you’d like to showcase? Ever wanted to interview a fellow colleague or Canadian poet? Our team is here to support you every step of the way from episode idea to editing to final production. So send us your pitch and get in touch at spokenwebpodcast@gmail.com. That’s spokenwebpodcast@gmail.com. I’d love to hear from you. And now back to our regularly scheduled programming. [End Music: Instrumental Piano]\n01:02\tTheme Music:\t[Instrumental Overlapped With Feminine Voice] Can you hear me? I don’t know how much projection to do.\n01:13\tHannah McGregor:\tWhat does literature sound like? What stories will we hear if we listen to the archive? Welcome to the SpokenWeb Podcast: stories about how literature sounds. My name is Hannah McGregor and each month I’ll be bringing you different stories of Canadian literary history and our contemporary responses to it created by scholars, poets, students, and artists from across Canada. You might know poet Gwendolyn MacEwen as the winner of the 1969 Governor General’s Award for her collection The Shadow-Maker or the 1987 Governor General, posthumously, for Afterworlds. She’s also maybe one of the most significant Canadian poets whose work is entirely out of print. MacEwen was only 46 when she died and her tragic life combined with the mysticism of her poetic voice has made her a figure of enduring fascination for other poets and scholars. At the same time, her works’ deviation from popular narratives of Canadian literature has often led to her being dropped from our literary histories. In this episode, I’m inviting you to join me as well as authors Jen Sookfong Lee and andrea bennett and SpokenWeb researcher Katherine McLeod as we reflect on why MacEwen’s voice continues to haunt us. Here is, again, me, Hannah McGregor, with “The Voice Is Intact.” [Theme Music]\n02:47\tHannah McGregor:\tHave you ever heard her read?\n02:48\tJen Sookfong Lee:\tNo, I’ve never heard her voice.\n02:49\tHannah McGregor:\tOh my God, do you want to?\n02:49\tJen Sookfong Lee:\tYeah!\n02:50\tAudio Recording:\t[Audio, Gwendolyn MacEwen recording, overlapping with Hannah McGregor and Jen Sookfong Lee’s commentary] A fugitive from all those truths, which are too true, the great clawing ones and the fire-breathers,–\n03:00\tJen Sookfong Lee:\t[Gasps]\n03:00\tAudio Recording:\t–the ones that rake the flesh–\n03:01\tJen Sookfong Lee:\tSo much nicer with her voice!\n03:01\tAudio Recording:\t–like Pyramus,  and those that crush the bones to chalk and those that bear their red teeth in the nights.\n03:09\tJen Sookfong Lee:\tSo melodious, her voice.\n03:10\tAudio Recording:\tMy mind emulates,–\n03:12\tJen Sookfong Lee:\tI’ve never used the word melodious.\n03:14\tAudio Recording:\t–dragon, fish, and snake and shoots fire to melt the Arctic night–\n03:18\tJen Sookfong Lee:\tSo ASMR, though.\n03:20\tAudio Recording:\t–or chews off the edges of continents or wraps itself around the ribs of the world,–\n03:23\tJen Sookfong Lee:\tI knew it, I knew it, she had to have a voice like that. She couldn’t write these poems without that voice.\n03:26\tAudio Recording:\t–squeezes…\n03:27\tKatherine McLeod:\tSomething that will come up often when presenting about MacEwen, and certainly in conference sorts of settings, where people really wanna hear her voice. And if you talk about MacEwen and don’t play her voice, then people are really aware, like, “Wait, we want to hear her voice.” But then to also think about the layers of mediation and copyright and all the things that also are distancing us from her voice and being aware of that, too.\n03:54\tHannah McGregor:\tThe voices you’re hearing belong to academic Katherine McLeod–\n03:58\tKatherine McLeod:\tI am Katherine McLeod and I’m an affiliate researcher with SpokenWeb at Concordia University.\n04:04\tHannah McGregor:\t–and author Jen Sookfong Lee.\n04:06\tJen Sookfong Lee:\tI have been trolling Margaret Atwood since 1997, big props to me.\n04:11\tHannah McGregor:\tYou might recognize Katherine from earlier episodes of the SpokenWeb Podcast. She’s a Montreal-based scholar of Canadian literature with a focus on sound, performance, and archives and the co-editor of the new book CanLit Across Media: Unarchiving the Literary Event. She’s also the curator of SpokenWeb’s Audio of the Week series. Jen Sookfong Lee is a Vancouver-based writer, radio broadcaster, and podcaster. She’s the author of The Conjoined, the co-editor of Whatever Gets You Through: Twelve Survivors on Life after Sexual Assault and the co-host of the podcast Can’t Lit.\n04:44\tAudio Recording:\t[Audio, continuation of Gwendolyn MacEwen recording, overlapping with Hannah McGregor’s commentary] …once the monster’s jaws unfolded fire–\n04:48\tHannah McGregor:\tAnd that third voice you’re hearing is Gwendolyn MacEwen reading on November 18th, 1966 as part of the Sir George Williams poetry series held between 1965 and 1974 at what was then the Sir George Williams University and is now Concordia University. The audio recordings of this reading series are at the heart of the SpokenWeb partnership and form a rich and exciting digital archive that has already inspired significant scholarship on the history of the poetry reading. But I’m not interested in this reading series. I’m interested in MacEwen.\n05:22\tJen Sookfong Lee:\tThe first time I discovered Gwendolyn MacEwen, it was probably reading “Dark Pines Under Water” in an anthology. And I think it was, it was a green, it was Oxford University Press, edited by Margaret Atwood, of course. Because back then everything was edited by Margaret Atwood. Yeah, and it was “Dark Pines Under Water” and I think it was only one poem that was anthologized in there. And I read it, I must’ve been 17 or 18–\n05:46\tAudio Recording:\t[Audio, Gwendolyn MacEwan reading the first lines of “Dark Pines Under Water”] This land like a mirror turns you inward / And you become a forest in a furtive lake.\n05:52\tJen Sookfong Lee:\tAnd that poem, which people say is about Canada, right? Like I think you and I were just discussing this before we turned these mikes on, but the… They say it’s about Canada, but I read it as being this like fear of the internal and sort of the fear of the Gothic-ness that lives inside us that we only see in reflection. Upon reflection, in reflection.\n06:10\tAudio Recording:\t[Audio, continuation of Gwendolyn MacEwan reading “Dark Pines Under Water”] The dark pines of your mind reach downward, / You dream in the green of your time, / Your memory is a row of sinking pines.\n06:20\tJen Sookfong Lee:\tAnd there was enough in that poem for me to want to read more of her work.\n06:26\tAudio Recording:\t[Audio, continuation of Gwendolyn MacEwan reading “Dark Pines Under Water”] Explorer, you tell yourself, this is not what you came for / Although it is good here, and green.\n06:33\tKatherine McLeod:\tActually when you mentioned your master’s, that was the first time I learned of MacEwen, was during my master’s degree out at UBC, out west in Vancouver. And I was in a course with Sherrill Grace and it was a CanLit graduate course and we were thinking about autobiography. And we read the play by Linda Griffiths Alien Creature: A Visitation by [sic: should read “from“] Gwendolyn MacEwen. And in the play, Linda Griffiths uses MacEwen’s words to conjure the presence of MacEwen as this magical poet and really to think about kind of really the reflection of the self through a poet’s words and a poet’s presence. And so I actually ended up writing about that play and that was my first academic publication, was about Linda Griffiths’s play about Gwendolyn MacEwen, sort of the presence of the voice in the play and as a remediation of MacEwen in that way. But it was, it was back in my master’s, too. So it’s sort of this long… MacEwen has always been.\n07:36\tJen Sookfong Lee:\tYou know, and I took these books off my bookshelf. There’s, you know, pictures of her on it and she had these huge, like, sad eyes, big, sad… You know, like that movie Big Eyes, it’s like that kind of thing. And I realized that like every poem I’ve ever read of hers, her eyes are there. Like they’re there somewhere. There’s a lot of looking, a lot of vision, a lot of dark vision, you know?\n07:56\tKatherine McLeod:\tIt really was the voice of her poetry, the sound of her poetry, the way she’s able to conjure up a presence through the words themselves. And I think a lot of her poetry actually has to do with, it has to do with haunting. There’s this sort of this continuation that’s really evoked in her poetry and a real, a strengthened voice that you can hear from the words on the page, I would argue. Even though it’s fascinating then to think that what often captures people is hearing MacEwen herself read the poems and then whenever someone’s able to listen to MacEwen, reading her poetry–\n08:30\tAudio Recording:\t[Audio, continuation of the first Gwendolyn MacEwen recording] …but mark now how harmless are the claws…\n08:32\tKatherine McLeod:\t–is something that just captures one’s attention and she’s able to create a real strong sense of voice in her poetry and then, when it’s read out loud, it’s even more powerful.\n08:42\tMusic:\t[Instrumental Guitar And Drums]\n08:42\tHannah McGregor:\tI can’t remember the first time I heard Gwendolyn MacEwen’s voice, but I remember that I first heard her work read out loud by a friend. And I know that I was excited enough about her 1982 poetry collection, The T.E. Lawrence Poems, that I initially planned on writing about it in my dissertation before the practicalities of putting together a research project led me elsewhere. Actually, despite the fact that MacEwen was one of the authors who led me to the study of Canadian literature, I’ve never written about her formally. This podcast episode is the closest I’ve come. MacEwen was born in Toronto in 1941 and rose to fame quickly and young. She published her first collection of poetry in 1961 and won the Governor General’s Award for her fourth, The Shadow-Maker, in 1969 when she was not yet 30 years old. She died young, too, at 46, and the combination of her fascination with mysticism and the almost mythically tragic shape of her own life have turned her into a somewhat mythic figure in her own right.\n09:46\tJen Sookfong Lee:\tNo, she was deeply social and she was as famous as poets get, really, in Canada, ever. Like, she was a bit of a rock star, like she started doing things like having like a signature black eyeliner situation and like signature clothing, like loose silky things. I mean, come on, man, I wish I had like a signature look,\n10:05\tHannah McGregor:\tBut this iconic status was no accident. MacEwen came into her own as a poet in a historical moment when it was possible to be both a poet and a celebrity. And her poetic persona was very much tied to the culture of poetry readings in the 1960s, perhaps most notably at the Bohemian Embassy, an alternative club in Toronto where she would meet poets like Jay MacPherson, Margaret Avison, Phyllis Webb, Al Purdy, Leonard Cohen, Irving Layton, and Milton Acorn.\n10:32\tKatherine McLeod:\tWell, I’ll start again. Like thinking about MacEwen also allows you to think about spaces for performances of poetry. Thinking about, say, the Bohemian Embassy in Toronto, you know, it’s talked about how MacEwen would show up to the Bohemian Embassy and there would be the sounds of like the coffee maker in the background and all these poets maybe reading with these like loud, bombastic voices or however, however poetry, you know, the poet’s voice was thought of. And then this woman’s coming up to the microphone and she’s often talked about as appearing very quiet and suddenly just absolutely captivating the audience. And I was so drawn to the fact that somebody very sort of unassuming could have such an impact and just call everyone’s attention. And it also, then it allows you to think about what it meant to be performing as a poet, a particularly very young female poet, at the time that MacEwen started doing her readings and being up there with a young Margaret Atwood and all the rest of the 1960s poets. Just how, how she held her own on that stage, too.\n11:32\tHannah McGregor:\tIn fact, it’s impossible for me to think about the historical context that shaped MacEwen’s work without thinking about that poetry scene of the 1960s and how central it was to the invention of that thing we now think of as CanLit. And when I think of MacEwen and the poet she would become, the poet who would write The T.E. Lawrence Poems and Afterworlds, collections that have haunted me as long as I can remember, I keep coming back to those years in the early ’60s to what happened to her then. And I’m not the only one.\n12:03\tMusic:\t[Instrumental Piano]\n12:06\tKatherine McLeod:\tI also think about the way that she was so determined to be a poet and there’s something about that, again, thinking of, you know, what models did she have to look to, to be a female poet in Canada at the time? Really she had to sort of forge her path of what that looked like and what that sounded like and trying to sort of find her place and her voice, the space for her voice, in that world. She was in the circles with so many of the very loudest male poets at the time and still managed, you know, she managed to be known for the strength of her voice, but it sounded incredibly difficult, too. And I was very interested in how she managed that and what she had to fight against in order for her voice to be heard. You know, who was this person Gwendolyn MacEwen? What kind of work could she have produced if she was in a more sustainable environment for her writing? You know, can we learn something from that now or are we still struggling against the very same things?\n13:04\tJen Sookfong Lee:\tI often wonder sometimes when… ‘Cause she wrote a lot of her work after this was done, like most, the the bulk of her work after that marriage was over. And like there’s a part of me that sometimes thinks those things that she’s trying to access is maybe that marriage. Like I wonder sometimes, right? ‘Cause like when you get married or you’re in a relationship when you’re really young. Like, I got married really young, I got married, I met my ex-husband at 21, I was married at 24. By no means was that like an imbalanced marriage, I would never say that. But it defines you, I think. Like in your twenties, you’re exploring things, you don’t know who you are, your identity is so malleable. So what did Milton Acorn, what did he try to shape her into and what did she end up taking on and what did she end up rejecting would be my question. And I don’t think any of us will ever know this answer. But then looking at her poetry, I sometimes wonder if that darkness is there and that, and the way she would sort of like, as we were saying, she was not ever writing in the voices of men who were like loud, big, you know, masculine men. Always the opposite. And to me that’s kind of a gentle pushback against that Milton Acorn angry bear.\n14:07\tHannah McGregor:\tAs I was working on this episode, I reached out online for someone who could help me better understand MacEwen’s relationship with the poet Milton Acorn and how it might’ve shaped her work. My answer came serendipitously in the form of an essay by writer andrea bennett from their new book Like a Boy but Not a Boy: Navigating Life, Mental Health, and Parenthood Outside the Gender Binary, which is available for pre-order now from Arsenal Pulp Press. With their permission, here’s an excerpt from the essay\n14:36\tMusic:\t[Instrumental Low String Instruments]\n14:43\tHannah McGregor:\tIn the early 1960s, a part-bar, part-coffee shop, part-venue space opened on St. Nicholas Street, a few blocks up from Yonge and Wellesley in Toronto. Soon after it opened, poet Milton Acorn, then in his late thirties, began to hold court there. The Embassy held poetry readings on Thursday nights, when Acorn would read, generally overstaying his welcome on the stage. Afterwards, Acorn would find himself surrounded by younger poets, many of them students from the University of Toronto. Margaret Atwood, then a student at the University of Toronto, read at the Embassy; a little later, a teenage Gwendolyn MacEwen found the spot, the community—Acorn.\n15:23\tHannah McGregor:\tAcorn was bombastic, drank a lot, often had a fat cigar sticking out from the side of his mouth. MacEwen was slight and half his age but had a compelling voice of her own. Unlike many of her contemporaries, she wasn’t at university. She was self-taught, had had a tumultuous—occasionally violent, marked by alcoholism and mental illness—home life. Many of the books that chronicle Acorn and MacEwen’s relationship come close to saying that Acorn was something of a father figure for the younger poets gathered at the Embassy—dispensing poetic advice, maybe acting more like a big brother. Acorn started off as MacEwen’s “poetic mentor,” but their relationship soon morphed and they began to date. Eventually, they married. This was something Acorn wanted and MacEwen initially did not; he’d proposed in December 1960 when she was nineteen and he was thirty-seven, and she’d said no, writing, “Milt, my love is not the same as yours… I feel no need to find myself physically, sensually, emotionally in another person… I’m still getting acquainted with life, with myself.” However, she agreed to his proposal a little later; he was in Prince Edward Island for the winter, and she was missing him while he was away.\n16:39\tHannah McGregor:\tAcorn and MacEwen’s friends speculated about why they had gotten together at all. Chris Gudgeon’s biography of Milton Acorn, Out of this World, says people referred to them as Beauty and the Beast. It was easy to see why Acorn was drawn to MacEwen—she was young, beautiful, talented, and insecure. MacEwen, Gudgeon writes, quote, “fed Milt’s lopsided vision of himself as a heroic poet-knight, battling the dragons of injustice, and leaving the fair maidens swooning.” End quote. (Another Acorn biographer, Richard Lemm, is more explicit, quote: “He had a constant companion who would listen to his political discourses. A sexually experienced man, he could teach and savour his less experienced lover.”) End quote. Although it was less clear what had drawn MacEwen, one friend from the Embassy pointed out that when they met, in contrast to later on, Acorn seemed confident, strong, clean-shaven, eccentric but put-together. Acorn and MacEwen had friends who guessed that part of the reason she’d been attracted to him was career-related—she was “ambitious” and saw him as “established,” a way to further her writing and publishing goals; Al Purdy thought, quote, “Gwen was with Milton because Milton was ‘getting attention.’” End quote.\n17:53\tHannah McGregor:\tRosemary Sullivan, MacEwen’s biographer, writes that it’s important to be careful about the way we think about MacEwen and Acorn’s relationship in retrospect. There was a power imbalance, and the relationship seemed doomed from the start, and Acorn was persistent, but there’s no evidence that he was abusive, either physically or emotionally. At least, not until the relationship crumbled. MacEwen took a solo trip to Israel a few months after her wedding; when she returned, the distance and solitude had given her a new perspective on Toronto, and her relationship. As Sullivan puts it in Shadow Maker, quote, “Almost as soon as she had married, Gwendolyn recognized that she had made a terrible mistake.” End quote. MacEwen wanted a marriage of equals, and Acorn wanted a wife. Acorn was “deeply conservative” at heart, homophobic, anti-abortion (he wrote at least one terrible poem about it), and he wanted to see “supper on the table every night.”\n18:50\tHannah McGregor:\tMacEwen and Acorn had an open marriage; he’d taken advantage of this when she was away, and she began a side relationship with a painter when she returned from Israel. Acorn gave her an ultimatum—him or the painter—and, not even a year into their marriage, she chose to leave. It was a choice that Acorn could not brook. He fell apart. He drank; he showed up on friends’ doorsteps in the middle of the night, distraught and drunk; he wrote MacEwen angry, bitter letters. Quote, (“One letter from that time begins with ‘You Dirty Bitch’ and ends up asking ‘WHERE IN THE WORLD DID YOU LEARN TO BE SUCH A LOUSE?’” End quote. Writes Gudgeon; another, quoted in Shadow Maker, sent after MacEwen told Acorn of her intentions to divorce him, quote, “accus[es] her of being ‘the Great North American Castrator.’”) End quote. MacEwen wrote back, at least at the beginning, explaining herself, trying to make him understand. Reading their biographies, the snippets of his letters that make it through, it appears as though Acorn’s life had fallen apart, and he’d set the blame squarely on the shoulders of his much younger ex, who simply wanted space, freedom, and an amicable divorce. When Acorn refused to give her a divorce—in the era before no-fault divorces—MacEwen was forced to travel across the country, to Vancouver, to gather evidence of his marital infidelity in order to petition the courts. Purdy, who’d been Acorn’s best man at the wedding, reluctantly acted as a witness to Acorn’s adultery so that MacEwen could finally break free of the marriage.\n20:21\tHannah McGregor:\tIn 1969, years later, MacEwen and Acorn were both announced finalists, alongside George Bowering, for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Poetry or Drama. Acorn was still a mess—outstaying his welcome at friends’ houses, drinking, not bathing, suicidal, hospitalized for depression, still half hoping MacEwen might come back and blaming her for everything that was wrong in his life. When MacEwen found out her book The Shadow-Maker was shortlisted alongside Acorn’s I’ve Tasted My Blood, Nick Mount writes in his book Arrival: The Story of CanLit, quote, “She was afraid enough of him to write to the judges that if there was any change of her having to share the award with Acorn, she would rather withdraw her book from consideration.” End quote. But she and Bowering won, and Acorn didn’t.\n21:10\tHannah McGregor:\tCanLit did not graciously accept MacEwen and Bowering’s wins. Instead, poets Irving Layton and Eli Mandel co-authored an open letter protesting Acorn’s loss. The letter was in part a call for money, to be raised and, quote, “presented to Milton Acorn as the Canadian Poets Award.” End quote. Another public plea for Acorn, this time an editorial by poets Seymour Mayne and Ken Hertz in a now-defunct Montreal literary magazine, reads, quote, “Either because of literary politics or a gross ignorance of Canadian poetry on the part of the Canada Council jury, Milton Acorn has been denied the Governor General’s Award that he truly has earned.” End quote. Acorn’s supporters generally focused their ire at Bowering. One of the three jurors who’d chosen MacEwen’s and Bowering’s books over Acorn’s was Warren Tallman, an American who’d been hired to teach English at the University of British Columbia; the thinking went that Bowering’s style, which was influenced by US poets, was emblematic of a type of cultural imperialism that needed to be studiously avoided if CanLit was to be its own proper national cultural project.\n22:17\tHannah McGregor:\tFive days after MacEwen and Bowering were fêted at their awards ceremony in Ottawa, a broad swathe of CanLit, including Layton, Purdy, and Atwood, showed up at Grossman’s Tavern, on Spadina Avenue in Toronto, to witness Acorn receive a cheque for $1,000 and a medallion naming him the People’s Poet. When I think of this night—Acorn got so drunk he lost the medallion twice; his friends let him read for forty minutes; he was roundly celebrated—I immediately picture MacEwen and wonder how she felt, if she was at home in her small apartment that night, if there was anyone with her. And I wonder if anyone at Grossman’s thought about MacEwen. Did they wonder, celebrating Acorn, if they were enacting a deeper injustice by attempting to address a perceived one?\n23:06\tMusic:\t[Instrumental Low String Instruments And Whistling]\n23:12\tHannah McGregor:\tIf MacEwen wasn’t quite part of that new CanLit scene represented at the People’s Poetry party at Grossman’s Tavern, maybe it was because she also wasn’t part of the project of building a thing that looked recognizably like CanLit,\n23:25\tJen Sookfong Lee:\tBut that white male sort of masculine sort of like, yeah, like the, it’s the Milton Acorn narrative. She just didn’t care. She just was like, “I don’t care. You guys go fight it out in your huts with your potatoes and axes. I’m going to go, I gotta to go to Egypt, get some bomb black eyeliner, see you later.”\n23:43\tHannah McGregor:\tAnd perhaps it’s something about her poetic rejection of accepted nationalist narratives, those “potatoes and axes” that Jen alludes to, that make her appeal to those who are a little skeptical about essentialist stories about what it means to be a Canadian or for literature to be Canadian.\n23:59\tJen Sookfong Lee:\tI think there’s a lot of pressure for authenticity and I think it’s a marketing thing in many ways. I think that in my experiences writing for both big publishers and small presses, that the big publishers understand that a certain amount of authenticity sells, it doesn’t even really matter if you’re writing fiction. Like if you’re somebody, like, who looks like me and you’re writing a family story about a Chinese Canadian family, then the authenticity is easy to sell. It’s easy to sell. It’s like, “Well, Jen’s real grandfather was also a barber” or whatever. You know? It’s very much a merging of self, brand, and book.\n24:32\tHannah McGregor:\tAnd her lack of investment in those narratives can help to pry open the spaces to think about alternative ways of organizing our literary history.\n24:40\tJen Sookfong Lee:\tIn the history of Canada, for me anyway, like, I’m not a historian by any stretch. The only history of Canada that I’m familiar with, like, in any deep way is the history of Chinese Canadians. And for most of that time that there were white settlers on this, on this land, there were also Chinese Canadian, usually indentured, labourers. And I don’t think the garrison mentality, how many times can I say that on this recording?\n25:04\tHannah McGregor:\tOh, garrison mentality, for those who don’t know, is a term that was coined by literary critic Northrop Frye and kind of popularized by Margaret Atwood’s literary critical writing, which essentially argues that one of the major themes in Canadian literature is anxiety about the dangers and emptiness and threats of the Canadian landscape.\n25:25\tJen Sookfong Lee:\tI don’t, it doesn’t suit their experiences of let’s just say being chased off a gold claim, doing laundry for the railway workers, being a railway worker, being abandoned by the railway and not having passage home, scouring the woods for the remains of your friends so you can send them back home for a proper burial. Where’s garrison mentality in that? It’s not the land that has destroyed them, it’s the white people. So like there’s an alternative there and I think that any sort of marginalized group who has, you know, been alongside the white settlers all this time could very well choose their own anthology that would support that narrative. And wouldn’t that be interesting?\n26:06\tHannah McGregor:\tThis isn’t to say there’s nothing CanLit-esque about MacEwen’s poetry career. In fact, MacEwen had a strong, if often largely functional, tie to the CBC. As Katherine McLeod explains, it began with a prize.\n26:18\tMusic:\t[Instrumental Low Strings]\n26:23\tKatherine McLeod:\tGwendolyn MacEwen won the CBC Poetry Prize in 1965 and at that point she was very young, very young poet. And through winning the prize, she got the attention of Robert Weaver who was then the producer and editor of the program Anthology, which was a CBC literary program that, you know, ran from the mid ’50s up until 1985, so very long standing literary program. And Robert Weaver became a really strong supporter of Gwendolyn’s work. So he had her on to read on Anthology shortly after winning the CBC Prize. And she then read on Anthology numerous times, but also started to write radio plays. So the one that she’s most well-known for is the play Terror and Erebus that is all about the Franklin expedition and the Northwest Passage. And she also, she wrote two more but, which aren’t as well-known, but that, the play Terror and Erebus, was broadcast in the mid ’60s and re-broadcast. And both by writing the plays and also reading for CBC, she was able to make a bit of money, which the reading on CBC and writing for CBC ended up being a way that she was able to support herself. Again, continuing that sense of wanting to really be a poet and be self-sustaining in that way.\n27:51\tKatherine McLeod:\tSo one of the programs that I uncovered that I thought was one of the most fascinating when I was listening to MacEwen’s readings on CBC in the ’60s was a program that she produced and created for Anthology that was broadcast in 1969 and it was called Gwendolyn MacEwen Introduces, and I’ve been thinking a lot about how this program, Gwendolyn MacEwen Introduces from 1969, is an opportunity for her to talk about other poets and other works that she’s interested in. So it was this moment of listening in the archives and expecting that, okay, maybe this is going to be another reading by MacEwen, which are fantastic and captivating, but in this case she was talking about other poets. It was actually a four-part series and that’s where, the last episode of that four-part series, I was most surprised by because that’s where she started to talk about flamenco.\n28:46\tMusic:\t[Instrumental Flamenco: Guitar And Clapping]\n28:53\tKatherine McLeod:\tAnd that is where I nearly fell out of my seat because I was so thrilled and amazed that here I was in the CBC archives, listening to MacEwen, who I was fascinated by and working on, and at the same time I have been cultivating my own dance practice and flamenco throughout my academic work for the past 15 years. And here I was listening to MacEwen talk about flamenco and in this past year with Dr. Emily Murphy, who’s an assistant professor at UBC Okanagan, we’ve started a research creation project that lets me perform some of these recordings back from this 1969 piece and bring in the flamenco side, too.\n29:42\tKatherine McLeod:\tSo Gwendolyn MacEwen’s interest in flamenco, there’s all kinds of connections between MacEwen and music and especially the sort of the Toronto world music in the ’60s and artists that were passing through, this continues into the ’70s and is a whole other story of MacEwen and her partner in the ’70s opening the Trojan Horse cafe and connections to musicians passing through and performing there. But back to the ’60s, I’m trying to figure out where she would have heard it or how she would have first been drawn to flamenco, but it makes a lot of sense because there’s something undescribable about the sound of her voice and this feeling almost like the duende of flamenco, which is a word that refers to this undescribable sense that when you’re just really moved by something. And MacEwen’s program, part four of Gwendolyn MacEwen Introduces, is all focused on the duende. And she’s interested in thinking about the duende as it’s theorized in Spanish poetry and then in flamenco as this undescribable feeling of the depths of your soul and true feeling and emotion. She’s interested in how we can understand that in poetry. And she’s thinking about poetry outside of Canada, but then she starts to sort of reflect a little bit more on Canadian poetry and she asks the question, where is the duende in Canadian poetry? Which I just find fascinating because where she turns, I think, goes back to her trying to figure out where her voice sits in Canadian poetry because the person she turns to as an example is Irving Layton. And it’s so, when we’re thinking about what kind of models or what is she thinking about when she’s thinking about Canadian poetry that is moving, on the one hand, yes, I see why she talks about Layton’s poetry, but I found it fascinating that she didn’t give her own poetry as the example because I would argue that her poetry has the duende. Her poetry is the poetry that moves you and the poetry that has that undescribable feeling. So in listening to the piece, it was really interesting to hear her theorize all of this, but also not see herself in that. And then I, that’s when I started to think, okay, as a critic, how can I argue that MacEwen has the duende? And one of the ways that I feel like is most successful in arguing this is, in fact, to dance her poetry.\n32:11\tAudio Recording:\t[Audio, Gwendolyn MacEwen Reading, Overlapped With Soft Flamenco] I should have predicted the death of this city. I could have predicted it if only there had been no such pretty flowers. No such squares filled with horses and their golden riders.\n32:26\tHannah McGregor:\tKatherine’s work on Canadian poetry and flamenco and Jen’s imaginative alternative anthologies that reject the garrison mentality’s settler-colonial meta-narratives of Canadian writing both point in different ways to how MacEwen’s poetics can lead us away from perceived notions of what Canadian poetry is or can be. And as I think about ways that those of us who care for her work can keep MacEwen’s contributions alive, I come back to her voice, so powerful that it feels fully present as I listen to it.\n32:59\tJen Sookfong Lee:\tThis, this one really affected me when I was like 19: “I don’t trust you for a single second, but / My bones turned gold in your hands’ warm holding / in the dark or in the bright heart of the morning. / And suddenly the days are longer than anything, / Longer than Tolstoy, longer than Proust, longer / Than anything. / But the days are also diving into nights, and / I told you our end lay in our beginning / So we drink to our end, always remembering / that at the bottom of the goblets of Pompeii / Was the skull; we crawl / Out of the night utterly broken, bruises / All over our souls, / But this pain returns me to the world. / Even in the end your perfidy serves me, so / The cry we made when we came, love, / Will sound the same and is the same / As the cry we will make when we go.” She knew she was gonna die young, I think. I think I’ll love her forever. And I think she never, she never disappoints. Every time you go back you’re still like, “Wow.” There’s always something else there because whatever is happening in our world or the things that we’re most consumed with, there will always be an element of that in her poem. So it’s the kind of poems that she wrote.\n33:58\tKatherine McLeod:\tThey were everything and everywhere. Playing a recording of her reading, it sounds so live and sounds so present. She’s still in motion. She’s still, she’s still alive. She’s not in the archive. She’s not in a box. She’s, she’s still here in very present. Thinking of the lines from “Past and Future Ghosts”: “Look out, you who inhabit those rooms of my future. I’m coming after you. I’m starting to haunt you. I’m starting right now.”\n34:25\tAudio Recording:\t[Audio, Gwendolyn MacEwen Speaking] So listen, I had a great idea that if our voices gave out, we were just going to open up the record and bring a recorder up on stage and place the needle in the proper groove and then just let the record speak for itself. However, I guess the voice is intact.\n34:43\tMusic:\t[Intense Echoing Instrumental]\n34:53\tHannah McGregor:\tSpokenWeb is a monthly podcast produced by the SpokenWeb team as part of distributing the audio collected from and created using Canadian literary archival recordings found at universities across Canada. I was the producer this month. Thanks so much to Stacey Copeland, SpokenWeb Podcast project manager and producer extraordinaire, for all her help. A special thank you to Jen Sookfong Lee, Katherine McLeod, and andrea bennett for their generous contributions to this episode. [Theme Music] To find out more about SpokenWeb visit spokenweb.ca and subscribe to the SpokenWeb Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you may listen. If you love us, let us know. Rate us and leave a comment on Apple Podcasts or say hi on our social media @SpokenWebCanada. We’ll see you back here next month for another episode of the SpokenWeb Podcast: stories about how literature sounds.\n\n"],"score":1.0},{"id":"9609","cataloger_name":["Gloriah,Onyango"],"partnerInstitution":["Concordia University"],"collection_source_collection":["SpokenWeb AV"],"source_collection_label":["SpokenWeb AV"],"collection_contributing_unit":["SpokenWeb"],"source_collection_uri":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/spokenweb-podcast/"],"collection_image_url":["https://archiveofthepresent.spokenweb.ca/_nuxt/img/header-img_1000.fd7675f.png"],"collection_source_collection_description":["SpokenWeb Audio Visual Collection"],"collection_source_collection_id":["ArchiveOfThePresent"],"persistent_url":["https://archiveofthepresent.spokenweb.ca/"],"item_title":["SpokenWeb Podcast S1E10, SoundBox Signals presents “Is Robin Here?\", 6 July 2020, Shearer and Sallam  "],"item_title_source":["SpokenWeb Podcast web page."],"item_title_note":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/soundbox-signals-presents-is-robin-here/"],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Podcast"],"item_series_title":["The SpokenWeb Podcast"],"item_series_description":["Series of podcasts by the SpokenWeb network."],"item_subseries_title":["The SpokenWeb Podcast Season 1"],"item_series_wikidata_url":["https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q117038029"],"item_series_uri":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/spokenweb-podcast/"],"item_subseries_description":["The first season of the SpokenWeb Podcast."],"item_subseries_uri":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/spokenweb-podcast/"],"item_identifiers":["[]"],"rights":["Creative Commons Attribution, Non-Commercial, ShareAlike (BY-NC-SA)"],"rights_license":["Creative Commons Attribution, Non-Commercial, ShareAlike (BY-NC-SA)"],"access":["Streaming and download"],"creator_names":["Karis Shearer","Nour Sallam"],"creator_names_search":["Karis Shearer","Nour Sallam"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/61365463\",\"name\":\"Karis Shearer\",\"dates\":\"1980-\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Producer\"]},{\"url\":\"\",\"name\":\"Nour Sallam\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[]}]"],"contributors":["[]"],"Publication_Date":[2020],"material_description":["[]"],"digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://cdn.simplecast.com/audio/28a9da/28a9da1f-8cca-410c-b5d7-8165a73f9394/3c9851a8-a26b-4ce2-a34d-55fd66f7201c/sw-ep-10-is-robin-here_tc.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"sw-ep-10-is-robin-here_tc.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"44.1 kHz\",\"duration\":\"00:40:58\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"39,404,818 bytes\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"MP3 audio\",\"title\":\"sw-ep-10-is-robin-here_tc\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"http://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/soundbox-signals-presents-is-robin-here/\"}]"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"2020-07-06\",\"type\":\"Publication Date\",\"notes\":\"\",\"source\":\"\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/123757617\",\"venue\":\"University of British Colombia Okanagan AMP Lab\",\"notes\":\"\",\"address\":\"3333 University Way, Kelowna, BC, V1V 1V7\",\"latitude\":\"49.94219\",\"longitude\":\"-119.39907\"}]"],"Address":["3333 University Way, Kelowna, BC, V1V 1V7"],"Venue":["University of British Colombia Okanagan AMP Lab"],"Note":["[]"],"Related_works":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"The SoundBox Collection: https://soundbox.ok.ubc.ca/\\n\\nAmy Thiessen’s Honours Project / Digitial Exhibition on Sharon Thesen’s “The Fire”: sharonthesenthefire.omeka.net\\n\\nThe Real Vancouver Writers’ Series: https://realvancouver.org/\\n\\nEpisode 7 of the SpokenWeb Podcast featuring Hannah McGregor: https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/the-voice-is-intact-finding-gwendolyn-macewen-in-the-archive/\\n\\nSecret Feminist Agenda podcast: https://secretfeministagenda.com/category/podcast/   \\n\\nChristine Mitchell’s “Can You Hear Me?”:  https://amodern.net/article/can-you-hear-me/ \"}]"],"_version_":1853670549691039744,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:54.290Z","contents":["This month on the SpokenWeb Podcast, we are excited to share with you a special episode from our sister podcast Soundbox Signals. Spokenweb’s Karis Shearer is joined by curator Amy Thiessen and special guests Hannah McGregor and Emily Murphy to question what we can uncover about the dynamics of a space through listening. Together they invite us into a ‘close listening’ of Warren Tallman’s introduction to the “Charles Olson Memorial Reading” recorded at St. Anselm’s Church (Vancouver) March 14, 1970. Recorded on the occasion of a memorial reading for American poet Charles Olson. This episode touches on mourning, levity, spontaneity, religiosity, relationality, poetry, and pedagogy. Listen to find out if “Robin” is here.\n\nProduced by the SpokenWeb team at UBC Okanagan AMP Lab, SoundBox Signals brings literary archival recordings to life through a combination of ‘curated close listening’ and conversation. Hosted and co-produced by Karis Shearer, each episode is a conversation featuring a curator and special guests. Together they listen, talk, and consider how a selected recording signifies in the contemporary moment and ask what *listening* allows us to know about cultural history. https://soundbox.ok.ubc.ca/\n\n00:18\tTheme Music:\t[Instrumental Overlapped With Feminine Voice] Can you hear me? I don’t know how much projection to do.\n \n\n00:26\tHannah McGregor:\tWhat does literature sound like? What stories will we hear if we listen to the archive? Welcome to the SpokenWeb Podcast: stories about how literature sounds. My name is Hannah McGregor and each month I’ll bring you different stories of Canadian literary history and our contemporary responses to it created by scholars, poets, students, and artists from across Canada. This month on the SpokenWeb Podcast, we are excited to share with you a special episode from our sister podcast SoundBox Signals. We’ll hear some new voices to the podcast, as well as some that might sound a little bit more familiar, like mine. Produced by the SpokenWeb team at UBC Okanagan AMP Lab, SoundBox Signals brings literary archival recordings to life through a combination of curated close-listening and conversation. Hosted and co-produced by Karis Shearer, each episode is a conversation featuring a curator and special guests. Together, they listen, talk, and consider how a selected recording signifies in the contemporary moment and ask what listening allows us to know about cultural history. In this episode, SpokenWeb’s Karis Shearer is joined by curator Amy Thiessen and special guests Hannah McGregor—that’s me—and Emily Murphy. Together, we discuss Warren Tallman’s introduction to the “‘Charles Olson Memorial Reading” recorded at St. Anselm’s Church in Vancouver on March 14th, 1970 on the occasion of a memorial reading for American poet Charles Olson. This episode touches on mourning, levity, spontaneity, religiosity, relationality, poetry, and pedagogy. Here is Karis Shearer and SoundBox Signals asking: “Is Robin Here?” [Theme Music]\n \n\n02:36\tAudio Recording:\t[Click] [Begin Music: Gentle Ambient Instrumentals] [Various Recorded Voices] I see you face to face. What is the voice? Certainty of others for life, love, sight, hearing of others. Where is this voice…coming from? I see you also face to face.\n \n\n02:45\tKaris Shearer:\tI’m Karis Shearer and I’m joined today in the studio at UBC Okanagan by guest curator Amy Thiessen, who is the SpokenWeb RA and our very own project manager and she’s also completing a honour’s thesis on the work of Sharon Thesen. I’m also joined by Emily Murphy, who is a professor of digital humanities and assistant director of the AMP Lab. And today we have from Vancouver Hannah McGregor, who’s assistant professor in publishing at Simon Fraser University and host of the Secret Feminist Agenda. Welcome everybody, thanks for joining us.\n \n\n03:22\tHannah McGregor:\tThank you, I’m delighted to be here.\n \n\n03:23\tEmily Murphy:\tOh, I too am delighted.\n \n\n03:26\tHannah McGregor:\tAmy, are you also delighted?\n \n\n03:28\tAmy Thiessen:\tSuper.\n \n\n03:31\tKaris Shearer:\tFantastic. We’re here to talk about a really special recording, a weird recording. So we’re gonna rewind to March 14th, 1970 and have a listen to Warren Tallman introducing an event that is called the Charles Olson Memorial. So here we go.\n \n\n03:51\tAudio Recording:\t[Click] [Audio, Warren Tallman] Some people who were planning this, that we would have all the poets lined up in front on a sheet of paper so that it could be read off one, two, three, four, five. It didn’t work out. So all you poets are in the audience. And so it’s going to have to be when it gets around to that point at which you would like to read for this reading, it is, it’s going to have to be kind of Quaker, you know, or what I assume is Quaker that you stand up on your feet and walk forward in some calm or pause that has taken place. And…yes? [Someone Asks A Question] Yeah. You can’t hear? [Person Speaks More, Inaudible] Oh, I– yeah. I’m supposed to make an announcement about how long to read. It’s always impressed me as rather ridiculous to tell a poet how long to read, but I will tell all of you poets this, that if there’s a rhythm that’s going, which makes for three or four or five minutes, if you break it by reading for 40 minutes, everybody in the audience will hate you. [Laughs] So I would say three or four or five minutes, although you understand that’s not an instruction to impede on the freedom of any poet to read. [Crashing Sound] [Laughter] I– I am, I am, I’m being deliberately rather facetious and frivolous, so that we can have that to work on, to move into an actually more serious occasion. And since we do not have any listing of the poets, you must choose your own occasion as it occurs to you. But first, I would like to have Robin. Is Robin here? Okay. Well, Robin Blaser is going to start this with a reading. It is going to be interrupted with a tape and there’ll be an interruption after the tape of about three or two minutes or so. And then the poets will read whatever has occurred to them to read on the occasion of this memorial for Charles Olson. [Click]\n \n\n06:43\tKaris Shearer:\tAmy, you chose this recording. Can you tell us a little bit about what we know about it?\n \n\n06:48\tAmy Thiessen:\tYeah. So this recording, as Karis said earlier, was recorded on March 14th, 1970. We know that they are gathered at St. Anslem’s church on the UBC Vancouver campus and that it was recorded on reel-to-reel.\n \n\n07:04\tKaris Shearer:\tYeah. And it’s about, it’s an excerpt, it’s the very beginning of a whole recording. It’s about an hour long. It also features a number of different poets. Robin Blaser, obviously, is mentioned. Judith Copithorne, Peter Quartermain, Lionel Kearns, Richard Sommer from Montreal, Maxine Gadd, and quite a few other poets. It’s a weird introduction to a poetry reading. Hannah, I’m going to turn that over to you. You’ve been to a lot of record–, poetry readings. What, what’s weird about this?\n \n\n07:38\tHannah McGregor:\tI mean, so one of the, one of the major jobs when I think about what hosts at poetry readings are trying to do, one of the major things that they are doing, is sort of set tone and norms for what’s about to proceed. And a lot of that, a lot of the work at literary readings has to do with establishing how long people are allowed to read for. Because in my experience, without that, people will read for a wild amount of time. And even with the norms, people will read for a wild amount of time. And so what really… The first listen through to this, what really struck me was that invitation to a Quaker-like sort of self-electing process in which poets will get up, “you poets” will just get up, and read when they feel moved to do so and are sort of given this like, you know, read for four to five minutes or whatever feels right. Probably not 40. Which is… There’s a lot of lateral movement in that four to 40 minutes.\n \n\n08:37\tKaris Shearer:\tYeah, you bet. It’s, I mean, there’s a sort of sense of spontaneity, but Emily, it’s kind of, it’s, it is controlled, right? I mean, he is setting up some boundaries. What are the boundaries that you’re hearing in this?\n08:48\tEmily Murphy:\tSuper controlled. I mean, I think that one of the major boundaries is this idea that social pressure will help keep boundaries around the poets, which many of us know probably wouldn’t work. But one of the things that I did find really interesting about this is that buried in this desire for spontaneity is kind of like a series of conventions about what’s going to count as it. Like, even down to instructions for movement, right? Like some kind of Quaker ceremony where you, like you stand up in a moment of silence and walk towards the front of the room. There’s already like a really embodied physical dimension being made explicit in his instructions, which indicates to me then that there are actually like quite clear boundaries for what counts as spontaneity and probably what counts as improvisation of a sort in this room that, I mean, we often think of improvisation as a thing that just kind of springs from you internally. But there are, there’s plenty of research that is calling for a kind of richer understanding of what the conventions of improvisation are or kind of conventions that signal this sort of authentic, spontaneous contribution.\n \n\n09:59\tHannah McGregor:\tI was just thinking even in that “be totally spontaneous, but four to five minutes” suggests that this really interesting tension between the desire to establish an environment of spontaneity and sort of free responsiveness to what’s happening alongside the need to state and establish norms. And that tension is really interesting and also leads me to wonder, you know, historically, at what point do we start establishing norms of five-minute readings of 10-minute readings? Like, when you hear about readings that last 45 minutes, how and when and why are we starting to arrive at a sense of what is supposed to be, apparently, kind of innate or kind of intuitive or kind of felt the sense of how long is an appropriate length to read?\n \n\n10:53\tEmily Murphy:\tMy– I mean, my hunch is that that history is probably a religious one, right? That we probably start seeing shorter readings while, when more people are literate, essentially. I mean, my own, any of my knowledge, which is limited, about how people would read in public is about kind of belletristic traditions, right? Where you would read letters because you weren’t reading to a literate population and you would read verses and sermons that were timed to like the bells that would go off in a public square. And so that’s like, that’s a really religious background to public readings. And here we have an extensively secular event that’s held in a church and that—can I give a spoiler about the first reading?\n \n\n11:42\tKaris Shearer:\tYeah, you sure can.\n \n\n11:42\tEmily Murphy:\tThe first reading is from Revelations. So it’s like shot through with these religious contexts.\n \n\n11:50\tKaris Shearer:\tIn addition to the invocation of the Quaker-ness, right? There’s actually—\n \n\n11:53\tEmily Murphy:\tYeah.\n \n\n11:53\tKaris Shearer:\t–quite a lot of religiosity evoked in this. One of the questions we ask on the podcast is like, what does listening allow us to know about cultural history? And I’m going to turn this over to Amy to ask you what kind of information do we hear in this podcast, do we gather through listening in terms of like space or numbers of people? I mean, we have a list of poets, but what kind of sense do we get of the setting here?\n \n\n12:21\tAmy Thiessen:\tYeah. Quite a few times, and even just this short bit of the recording, we can hear the audience like laughing or talking, or there’s that point at the beginning when Warren’s not sure what the, I think woman at the back is saying, and there’s a moment that doesn’t turn out to be the technical difficulty that “Oh, you can’t hear?” But that’s something that… You can tell that technology is present in that room and it’s, we can hear it through the tape and we can tell that Warren is miked and that there’s sort of that… He’s in front of people and there’s a crowd there. And yeah.\n \n\n12:57\tKaris Shearer:\tYeah, I mean, there’s also one more point, at least one more point, in the tape too where we get a sense of like how many people are… Like Warren’s perception of how many people are in the audience. What is, it’s actually one of your favourite parts if I remember. What is that moment?\n \n\n13:14\tAmy Thiessen:\tYeah, we get the moment when Warren, isn’t sure if Robin is there. You can sort of sense that he’s looking around and maybe doesn’t see him right away. Yeah, is unsure. It’s not like there’s a crowd of 15 people and you can see him, right?\n \n\n13:28\tKaris Shearer:\tYeah. Yeah, “Is Robin here?” And he’s looking in the crowd. Somebody has also suggested that this recording that it’s possible that the lights are turned down and he’s not able to actually see into the audience. And I’m not sure. You know, obviously there’s limits to what we can know through listening.\n \n\n13:47\tHannah McGregor:\tThere is that feeling though, right? Like, including the way that he addresses the audience as “you poets.” And sort of doesn’t like, “Oh, sorry, you can’t–” Like he, you know, he doesn’t call people by name. And if you’re sort of thinking, like you’re familiar with the people who are here, then you would say somebody’s name when they are talking to you. So there’s certainly the sense that he can’t necessarily see them. And that question of is it because there’s a huge crowd or is it because it’s dark or is it because I’ve never been in this space? Like, what is this venue like? Is it full of weird pillars that hide people? I don’t know.\n \n\n14:21\tKaris Shearer:\tYeah. And I guess one, I mean, certainly one of the research questions are the things that we’ll do when we’re pursuing research on this type is actually go to St. Anselm’s Church and have a sense, have a look at its architecture. I want to pick up on something that you’ve kind of moved us towards, which is that relationship between Warren Tallman and the audience. He’s an English professor. He’s not himself a poet. But he certainly had a good relationship with poets and was, through the facilitation of events like this, through his teaching of poetry. What do we hear in terms of his relationship with the audience? And I’m gonna go to you Hannah first and then I’m gonna go over to Emily.\n \n\n15:00\tHannah McGregor:\tWell, like, I keep mentioning it, Karis, because you pointed it out to me and now I really hear it whenever I listen, is his addressing the audience as “you poets.”\n \n\n15:09\tKaris Shearer:\tYeah, I can’t get over that.\n \n\n15:09\tHannah McGregor:\tWhich is very funny. It has this kind of… This familiarity and also this sort of joking disdain. Like, “You know what you poets are like, just gives a vibe of the sort of… When you are familiar enough with a group to make fun of them. Which suggests a sort of an intimacy of environment, right? That you don’t make fun of an audience unless they are your friends. Which sets up this sort of warmth. Like you don’t get the feeling that this is a random public reading. The audience are the speakers, it’s a community gathering, and you can feel that in the way that he is addressing an audience that is at once the sort of participants and the listeners for the event.\n \n\n15:53\tKaris Shearer:\tYeah. Emily, what about you? What do you hear in terms of that relationship between Tallman and the audience and maybe that kind of question of authority?\n \n\n16:02\tEmily Murphy:\tOh, question of authority. I mean, I don’t want to be the person who keeps bringing it back to religion, but I guess—\n \n\n16:10\tKaris Shearer:\tGo for it.\n \n\n16:10\tEmily Murphy:\t–that’s my role. I just, like, I always hear this tape in terms of like the situation of mourning. And it always sounds to me like a wake. And as a bit of background to that, I’m born in Ireland and my entire family is Irish. We are not the kind of Irish people who have wakes. That’s actually like quite specific. But it’s still this sort of community gathering among friends where you’ll tell jokes and sing songs and maybe read from Revelations. But there is a sort of bondedness and a kind of joy in the mourning. And so I think like, I mean, what’s an authority figure in Irish culture if not a priest, right? And he is sort of like in a way, like literally speaking to a flock, right?\n \n\n17:01\tKaris Shearer:\tMhm.\n \n\n17:01\tEmily Murphy:\tAnd that’s also interesting in terms of the relationship of the professor to students, professor to poets who he is actively engaged in making the, like the canonical poetic community of his age. Yeah.\n \n\n17:23\tHannah McGregor:\tYeah. We were talking a little bit about that professorial feel, right? Like, it does not surprise me to hear that this person is a professor because I hear in the way that he is addressing the audience, the gathering, something that sounds a lot to me like how I talk to my students, that sort of facetious and sort of like self-undermining, like making fun of yourself a little bit, which sets a very particular tone of like, “Okay, I’m in charge here, but like, not that in charge. So, you know, here’s some structure, but also I really want you to feel free to take over and for this to be your space to do with as you want. But you also…” Like Emily was saying, you know, total freedom, total improvisation is sort of impossible without structure. So you need somebody taking that role and saying like, “I am going to be the guiding hand here,” but how do I guide people into a feeling of openness and spontaneity and participation and sort of some level of safety, ’cause what you’re asking people to do, step forward and just begin to read, does require some level of comfort. So, you know, how you establish that tone. I hear in that humour some of that work happening.\n \n\n18:35\tKaris Shearer:\tYeah, definitely. Amy, what, like, what are you hear in terms of like picking up on what Hannah was saying about shared authority and sort of self-deprecating humour? He’s getting prompts from the audience and I guess maybe that’s what I’m asking about. Like those moments where the audience is prompting him around certain things that he’s meant to say up at the front.\n \n\n18:56\tAmy Thiessen:\tYeah, there’s the moment in the tape when you can’t hear the person speaking, but he’s like, “Oh, I’ve been, I’m supposed to tell you that you can only read for this amount of time.” And there’s other points of interaction, I guess. And one thing that I sort of notice is that it seems to me that he’s not necessarily taking cues from the audience as to like his tone or like his approach to what he’s saying. Like he’s being sort of like goofy and funny in the first bit, but in a way that I would imagine someone else, they say something funny, the audience laughs, “Oh, I’m going to say something else funny now.” But I think he’s just genuinely being… It sounds like he’s just genuinely being himself and speaking sorta without that intent to get a laugh.\n \n\n19:45\tKaris Shearer:\tYeah. I mean, and you’ve listened to a lot of recordings with Warren, you know, where Warren Tallman is, he’s giving a lecture to a class or I think you’ve got a really good feel for him as a person and this is very much very Warren Tallman-esque, if you will. I think a little bit more about mourning, right? He changes register partway through this tape from being what he calls deliberately facetious and he’s being a little self-reflexive about that. And the register changes from being funny to serious. Emily, I wanna come over to you and ask you about a little bit more about mourning. What kind of space is being created for mourning here and what is the role of humour, seriousness, the kind of gravity?\n \n\n20:32\tEmily Murphy:\tYeah. Yeah, I think that’s a great question. One of the things that I love about this tape is I feel like there’s this kind of subvocal like landscape of the emotion in the room in a way. Like probably the most explicit way that you can hear it is something that Hannah has pointed out to me, which is the sort of the murmur that goes through the crowd when Warren Tallman says, “We’re not going to have five people! Instead, you’ll just do whatever!”\n \n\n21:03\tHannah McGregor:\tHe counts them, like, “Oh, he’s going to have you numbered up at the front, like one, two, three, four, five.” It’s like, thanks, Warren, I forgot how numbers work.\n \n\n21:15\tKaris Shearer:\tWell, and then as you pointed out, like everyone starts going like, excuse me, what?\n \n\n21:19\tHannah McGregor:\tYeah, yeah. You hear it. Like, it kind of sounds like this is the first they’re hearing of it. Right?\n \n\n21:23\tKaris Shearer:\tOh, for sure.\n \n\n21:23\tHannah McGregor:\tThat they also were led to believe that they would have an order and that they are now finding out that no, in fact, Quaker-style, you will be self-electing.\n \n\n21:34\tKaris Shearer:\tAnd it’s kind of like this weird, this rejection of like the pedagogical, right? Like that one, two, three, four, five, right? Like he’s counting, he’s physically counting them, but that’s, that’s not what’s gonna happen, right? So he performs the thing that’s not going to happen in this really kind of, you know, it becomes almost, it is almost humourous, right? It’s like very… There’s a kind of physicality to it, of an establishing of space on the stage. And it is like making the, you know, creating for us the thing that will not happen, which is like overly pedagogical, overly constructed. And it is the thing to be rejected in favour of this more spontaneous… Yeah, spontaneous form that is more appropriate for mourning? To when we make a connection, Emily, between–?\n \n\n22:20\tEmily Murphy:\tYeah. I mean, he makes this rhetorical move, right, where he says, like, “I’m being deliberately facetious and frivolous” on what is actually like quite a, that you say, solemn occasion, maybe? And so there’s sort of like, there’s more than one switch, right? Like there’s the like… Or maybe not more than one switch, but the switch does, has two roles, right? That we have the like humour as the lead-in, as a setup for a solemn occasion that will entail reading verses from the Bible. But humour as also a kind of, a kind of marking of occasion, right.? And a kind of framing of the mourning and of the solemnness. And I still, like, I feel like so much of the, like the evidence that I gather from this tape is just like a feeling in the room, like a kind of warmth that’s, it’s difficult to point to like any one thing that you might be able to hear from the audience, but it feels like maybe the, like maybe the echoes in the room are like are letting you know that people might be like kind of chatting to their neighbour while he’s making jokes at the front of the room or that they’re like laughing and chuckling to themselves, right? So there is a kind of like a… It’s not like, it’s not quite joy, but it is sort of fellow feeling and warmth. Which indicates to me that like there is a really nice acknowledgement of the social role of mourning, right. And the social embeddedness of that kind of loss.\n \n\n23:57\tKaris Shearer:\tYeah. ‘Cause I mean, they’ve gathered on the occasion of the death of a major American poet.\n \n\n24:02\tEmily Murphy:\tYeah.\n \n\n24:02\tKaris Shearer:\tAnd the way that they’re gonna celebrate that or mark that occasion is through the act of reading. And I think, you know, again, like make–, you know, making space for different types of… Like, that mourning is individual and therefore the space needed to read or mark that occasion is also individual, whether it’s short, three to four minutes or, well, not, not 40 minutes.\n \n\n24:30\tEmily Murphy:\tWell, like it’s so individual, but it’s so communal as well, right? Because I mean, if mourning is so individual, stay in your own house and read for 40 minutes to yourself. Right? But instead there’s this nice tension between not infringing on the freedom of any poet to read. Um, and don’t read for 40 minutes, everyone will think you’re a jerk.\n \n\n24:51\tHannah McGregor:\tAnd the expectation, right? So feeling the pause in which—\n \n\n24:55\tEmily Murphy:\tYep.\n \n\n24:55\tHannah McGregor:\t–you stand up and read means attentive listening, right? That you’re not just sitting there like checked out, waiting for your turn. You have to be listening and engaging. So it is this sort of interesting tension between the individual and the communal, which we can think of as being a characteristic of religious experience and a characteristics—\n \n\n25:16\tKaris Shearer:\tYeah, absolutely.\n \n\n25:16\tHannah McGregor:\t–of collective mourning.\n \n\n25:18\tKaris Shearer:\tYeah. Yeah. I mean, the guiding principle of this whole event seems to be attentiveness to the audience, right? And attentiveness to each other. You know, you know when you’re going to, when it’s your turn to read, when there’s a kind of a space and you arise and it’s very… He describes it in a very physical way, right? You arise, you get up on your own on your feet. Right? As though there would be any other, I mean, I suppose there would be maybe other ways of getting up, but in this case, it is you get up on your feet and you walk toward… There’s a real physicality of the description. I’m gonna bring it over to Amy again and I want to ask you about technology and how technology features in this tape. What moments do you hear technology making itself present? Yeah.\n \n\n26:06\tAmy Thiessen:\tYeah, so there’s this moment when Warren’s saying that there’s gonna be a tape and then there’s gonna be a reading and then there’s gonna be another interruption. And it’s very like sort of vague what that’s going to be. And by saying that it’s going to be an interruption it’s not really interrupting. And what we know also is that from our perspective there, the tape doesn’t actually surface at all on our version on the reel, which is interesting.\n \n\n26:41\tKaris Shearer:\tYeah, absolutely. I mean, this is in some ways very characteristic of Tallman in general. He, you know, we have the tape, the event that’s being recorded, but then there’s also the indication that there’s going to be a recording within the recording or they, the playback of a recording within the recording. And then we also hear, we also hear the mic, right? Where someone isn’t able to hear from the audience. Technology makes itself present, yeah, I think throughout the tape.\n \n\n27:11\tEmily Murphy:\tWell, I wonder… So you’re right that we can, like, we sort of, we get an indication of the presence of the mic, but I feel like that is Tallman interpreting the reaction of the audience that way, not necessarily the audience actually experiencing those aspects of the technology or like he… Instead of “I’ve just thrown you a curve ball” it’s “Oh, you must not be able to hear what I’m saying.”\n \n\n27:35\tKaris Shearer:\tYeah, yeah.\n \n\n27:37\tEmily Murphy:\tYeah.\n \n\n27:37\tKaris Shearer:\tAbsolutely.\n \n\n27:38\tEmily Murphy:\tBut I think, I mean, this is something that happens with newer technologies all the time, is that once the newer technology is present, it gets to have the role of being technological. And then all of the other technologies that people are engaging with all the time are perceived as naturalized and non-technological. So even though he’s… Like, they’re reading from books in a room that has like probably quite specific acoustics in a language that is already an extension of human capacity, but it’s the tape that dominates the sort of technological landscape, whether or not it is in fact present. It’s the idea of taping us, in a way.\n \n\n28:18\tKaris Shearer:\tYeah, taping us.\n \n\n28:19\tEmily Murphy:\tYeah, taping usTM.\n \n\n28:22\tHannah McGregor:\tGood thing you TM’ed that—\n \n\n28:23\tEmily Murphy:\tI’m writing that down.\n \n\n28:23\tHannah McGregor:\t–’cause that was gonna be the title of my new book.\n \n\n28:24\tEmily Murphy:\tTaping us… I mean, I’ll take royalties.\n \n\n28:29\tKaris Shearer:\tAnd in fact that distrust of the microphone, that distrust of technology is actually something so common across recordings that Christine Mitchell, I think when she was a postdoc at Concordia, created a whole compilation—I think it’s about two minutes long—and it’s all the excerpts of that exact moment of distrust of the microphone. Can you, and it’s called “Can You Hear Me? And it’s a compilation of all, you know, readers across the Sir George Williams Reading Series saying things like, “Is this thing on? Can you hear me at the back? Can you hear me?” And so Warren, again, that particular distrust of the technology in the room, it’s both, you know, the microphone is both facilitating his connection with the audience, but it’s also the thing to be distrusted.\n \n\n29:17\tEmily Murphy:\tYeah, you’re so right about that distrust, but I wonder then if we can put that in conversation with how we’ve been talking about authority. Because at the same time that it is expected to fail, right, expected to be the reason that people can’t hear him, it’s also like being… It’s a recording for posterity and I think you and I have talked in other ways about how Tallman is doing all of this recording at the same time as like law enforcement is using tapes—\n \n\n29:44\tKaris Shearer:\tYeah.\n \n\n29:44\tEmily Murphy:\t–as like the new technology of catching criminals, right? They’re becoming this sort of incontrovertible version of evidence quite quickly.\n \n\n29:57\tKaris Shearer:\tSurveillance.\n \n\n29:57\tEmily Murphy:\tYeah. And so, yeah, I don’t think that I have a “so what” about that relationship, then, between mistrust and authority. And I don’t think it’s as radical as I’m making it sound. Like it’s…\n \n\n30:08\tHannah McGregor:\tI mean, I think that there is something there about the way that technology’s become, are turned into via social processes are turned into forms of witness, forms of evidence, forms of authority that you get a really clear sense of the work that is being done around generating understandings of new technologies when you get these archival moments in which people, events for example, distrust. So like, it is helpful in terms of thinking about the very deliberate work that’s being done around transforming audio recording into evidence when you hear the context in which it is not.\n \n\n30:52\tKaris Shearer:\tYeah, that’s nice. I’m going to go around with the group and just ask you, finally, what is your favourite part of this recording? And maybe it’s something we’ve already talked about, but favourite moment or favourite aspect of this? Emily, I’m going to start with you.\n \n\n31:10\tEmily Murphy:\tYeah, it’s the murmurs in the room that you can kind of like, you can hear the walls almost, like the echoes off the walls. I love that.\n \n\n31:17\tKaris Shearer:\tHannah?\n \n\n31:18\tHannah McGregor:\tIt’s gotta be like, it’s probably a tie for me between when he counts out loud and when he tells people to get up on their feet. Like it is these moments in which there is… I like the way you refer to it as being like overtly almost over-the-top pedagogical, like, “Get up, on your feet, and step forward.” Like, yeah, okay, I get it. Warren, we know how to get up.\n \n\n31:41\tKaris Shearer:\tAmy, what about you?\n \n\n31:43\tAmy Thiessen:\tYeah and I have said this already, but my favourite part is when Warren says, “Is Robin here?” And it’s just, just unsure.\n \n\n31:50\tKaris Shearer:\tYeah. And it’s, I mean, it’s also, you know, kind of quite a moment of anxiety, if that’s like… You’re, you know, you’re counting on Robin to open the more serious part of the occasion, like, it’d be really great if he were there. And you can hear this, you know, you can almost hear him scanning, right? Like where he’s, he’s looking around.\n \n\n32:10\tAmy Thiessen:\tYeah. At least if Robin didn’t show up, you’d still have the text of his reading.\n \n\n32:16\tKaris Shearer:\tBut that is true. That is… He reads from Revelations. John… I forget which is it.\n \n\n32:23\tAmy Thiessen:\tAnd I also like wonder if Robin knows he’s about to be called on first and like importantly out by name first and then nobody else is called by their name to come up and read.\n \n\n32:34\tKaris Shearer:\tThat’s right.\n \n\n32:35\tAmy Thiessen:\tYeah.\n \n\n32:36\tKaris Shearer:\tYeah.\n \n\n32:36\tHannah McGregor:\tKaris, what’s your favourite part?\n \n\n32:39\tKaris Shearer:\tOh. [Exasperated Sigh] I love it when they turn it back on me. It’s the “you poets.” It just really… I was like, I realized at that moment, like I could imagine doing all the things, you know, that he does in terms of facilitation, but the moment where he says “you poets,” I was like trying to imagine myself doing that in a room of like my poet colleagues who I totally enjoy. I can’t imagine just being like, “All you poets!” and like what their reaction would be to that. It’s so, it’s so weird, but also I think really speaks to that relationship, like a very particular relationship that he has with them and probably nobody else does. And he’s emphatically not a poet, right? In that, in hailing them as “you poets” it’s also marking him as “not poet,” but he gets to do that because he has this special relationship and I think because of the work he’s done, because of the work he’s done over the past decade and more in really cultivating a literary community. Yeah.\n \n\n33:47\tEmily Murphy:\tI mean, we talked briefly about the sort of modernist landscape in this recording, especially because we have sort of like super traditional, like, readings from the Bible and then immediately the thing that follows that on the tape, which is not in the explicit recording, is like experimental sound poetry and how for a lot of the 20th century, like that mix of like deep investment in western canon and formal experimentation is actually a hallmark of poetic communities. And I think the other hallmark of the poetic, of poetic communities is the increasing role of the critic.\n \n\n34:24\tKaris Shearer:\tYeah.\n \n\n34:24\tEmily Murphy:\tRight? And then that’s bringing us back to authority in a way as well. Like it is not being the producer or the artist that is the most authoritative position, but in being like a kind of critic or curator or even in other, like other artistic fields, like, people like Diaghilev who was like a ballet producer of a kind, but was not himself a dancer and not even a choreographer. Well, sometimes he was. Yeah. Anyway. That’s just, that’s up for debate. But.\n \n\n34:54\tKaris Shearer:\tYeah, I think, I mean, this recording in a lot of ways and Tallman’s presence across the recordings, invites us to look back at literary communities and think about the roles of folks who weren’t themselves writers, but the role that they played in establishing those communities and the labour that they performed to facilitate events, et cetera. Often gendered, often gendered.\n \n\n35:19\tEmily Murphy:\tOh, very gendered.\n \n\n35:22\tKaris Shearer:\tYep. Yep. This is around the time that we normally do a shout-out to an event, a book, a reading, something that you’d like to recognize. And so I’m going to start with Amy and ask you what would you like to shout-out?\n \n\n35:38\tAmy Thiessen:\tAm I allowed to shout-out myself?\n \n\n35:38\tKaris Shearer:\tYeah, you can! Go for it.\n \n\n35:38\tAmy Thiessen:\tBy the time this podcast comes out, you listeners could go view my honour’s project online if you’re interested in Canadian poetry or environmental writing or forest fires. We’ll put a link in the show notes to my digital exhibition.\n \n\n35:59\tKaris Shearer:\tAnd as your supervisor, I’m going to say it’s a very excellent project. Super cool. Hannah, what about you? Shout-out.\n \n\n36:08\tHannah McGregor:\tI’m gonna shout-out my favourite reading series in Vancouver, which is called the Real Vancouver Writers’ Series, which was started during the Vancouver Olympics in response to the sort of Olympic-committee-sanctioned cultural programming. It was a series of readings that were meant to sort of… It was the literary community in Vancouver saying like, “No, actually, here’s what Vancouver literary community looks like.” It’s now been running for a decade, I believe, and it’s remarkable. I think it happens quarterly. And it’s a really remarkable reading series, both for the level of thoughtful curation that goes into the kinds of stuff that you get to see there, but also for the hosts Sean Cranberry and Dina Del Bucchia just do this amazing job of creating this environment where, like, there is more catcalling at this reading series than I have ever experienced at another literary event. And it has so much to do with the tone they create through hosting. And I was really thinking about the sort of work they do around the series when I was listening. So shout-out to the Real Vancouver Writers’ Series.\n \n\n37:13\tKaris Shearer:\tAwesome. Thank you. Emily, what about you? Shout-out?\n \n\n37:17\tEmily Murphy:\tMy shout-out is a bit of a cheat as well because I want a shout-out for Amy.\n \n\n37:23\tKaris Shearer:\tAmy is well-deserving of many shout-outs.\n \n\n37:26\tEmily Murphy:\tDefinitely, definitely. Amy is presenting on her honour’s thesis in the Tech Talk series at the AMP Lab here at UBCO campus on the 26th of March at 12:30 PM.\n \n\n37:38\tKaris Shearer:\tI don’t usually do a shout-out, but I’ll, I will do one. And actually I’m going to do one that we had from last time, but it’s coming up really soon. It’s the Sharon Thesen, Inaugural Sharon Thesen Lecture by John Lent and it’s coming up on Thursday, March 19th, which is also gonna be passed by the time this comes out! I’m like just dropping it left and right here.\n \n\n38:03\tHannah McGregor:\tLove these weird audio archives.\n \n\n38:03\tKaris Shearer:\tYeah. It’s like, “Wait a minute, time…passing…okay.” Well, I’m gonna wrap this up. Thank you so much, Hannah McGregor here from Vancouver. Hannah, do you want to say what you’re here for giving a workshop?\n \n\n38:19\tHannah McGregor:\tYeah. Well, I mean, that’s definitely gonna be in the past by the time people listen to this.\n \n\n38:21\tKaris Shearer:\tIt is definitely gonna be in the past. But—\n \n\n38:24\tHannah McGregor:\tYeah.\n \n\n38:24\tKaris Shearer:\t–I feel like it deserves a…\n \n\n38:26\tHannah McGregor:\tYeah. Yeah, shout-out to podcasting, that’s what I’m giving a workshop about. You know what, in general, shout-out to maybe the other podcast that I host, which is the SpokenWeb Podcast.\n \n\n38:37\tKaris Shearer:\tYeah!\n \n\n38:37\tHannah McGregor:\tWhich this has been an episode of, SoundBox Signals has been an episode of, but more other things. I am actually the April episode of the SpokenWeb Podcast is me. [Begin Music: Ambient Instrumental] Is me? So listen to that.\n \n\n38:50\tKaris Shearer:\tSee, ’cause we haven’t had one from you yet.\n \n\n38:51\tHannah McGregor:\tNo, you haven’t, so you’re gonna—\n \n\n38:53\tKaris Shearer:\tOh.\n \n\n38:53\tHannah McGregor:\t–get to hear what I do, which is…just complain about male poets.\n \n\n39:04\tKaris Shearer:\tMy name is Karis Shearer and I was joined in the studio [End Music: Ambient Instrumental] by Hannah McGregor, Amy Thiessen, and Emily Murphy. We recorded the episode back in early March when we were still able to get together in person. And I’m recording the outro right now in my new studio at home, which is a blanket fort. I can assure you that we will continue to bring you new episodes of SoundBox Signals over the summer. I want to thank the estate of Warren Tallman [Begin Music: Ambient Instrumental] for allowing us to use the recording, which you can find online on our website soundboxsignals.ok.ubc.ca. Please stay safe. [End Music: Ambient Instrumental].\n \n\n39:36\tMusic:\t[Drum And Electronic Beat Instrumentals]\n \n\n39:52\tHannah McGregor:\tSpokenWeb is a monthly podcast produced by the SpokenWeb team as part of distributing the audio collected from and created using Canadian literary archival recordings found at universities across Canada. Our producers this month are Karis Shearer and Nour Sallam, members of the SpokenWeb UBC Okanagan AMP Lab. [End Music: Drum And Electronic Beat Instrumentals] Keep up to date with their current projects and events at amplab.ok.ubc.ca and subscribe to the SoundBox Signals Podcast for more close listening with the AMP Lab team. A special thank you to Emily Murphy for her contributions to this episode. [Theme Music] To find out more about SpokenWeb, visit spokenweb.ca and subscribe to the SpokenWeb Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you may listen. If you love us, let us know. Rate us and leave a comment on Apple Podcasts or say hi on our social media @SpokenWebCanada. We’ll see you back here next month for another episode of the SpokenWeb Podcast: stories about how literature sounds.\n"],"score":1.0},{"id":"9610","cataloger_name":["Gloriah,Onyango"],"partnerInstitution":["Concordia University"],"collection_source_collection":["SpokenWeb AV"],"source_collection_label":["SpokenWeb AV"],"collection_contributing_unit":["SpokenWeb"],"source_collection_uri":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/spokenweb-podcast/"],"collection_image_url":["https://archiveofthepresent.spokenweb.ca/_nuxt/img/header-img_1000.fd7675f.png"],"collection_source_collection_description":["SpokenWeb Audio Visual Collection"],"collection_source_collection_id":["ArchiveOfThePresent"],"persistent_url":["https://archiveofthepresent.spokenweb.ca/"],"item_title":["SpokenWeb Podcast S1E11, Ideas have feelings, too. Voice, Feeling and Rhetoric in podcasting, 3 August 2020, Barker, Telaro, Barillaro and Camlot"],"item_title_source":["SpokenWeb Podcast web page."],"item_title_note":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/ideas-have-feelings-too-voice-feeling-and-rhetoric-in-podcasting/"],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Podcast"],"item_series_title":["The SpokenWeb Podcast"],"item_series_description":["Series of podcasts by the SpokenWeb network."],"item_subseries_title":["The SpokenWeb Podcast Season 1"],"item_series_wikidata_url":["https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q117038029"],"item_series_uri":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/spokenweb-podcast/"],"item_subseries_description":["The first season of the SpokenWeb Podcast."],"item_subseries_uri":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/spokenweb-podcast/"],"item_identifiers":["[]"],"rights":["Creative Commons Attribution, Non-Commercial, ShareAlike (BY-NC-SA)"],"rights_license":["Creative Commons Attribution, Non-Commercial, ShareAlike (BY-NC-SA)"],"access":["Streaming and download"],"creator_names":["Sadie Barker","Emma Telaro","Ali Barillaro","Jason Camlot"],"creator_names_search":["Sadie Barker","Emma Telaro","Ali Barillaro","Jason Camlot"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"name\":\"Sadie Barker\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Producer\"]},{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/418173666199007392824\",\"name\":\"Emma Telaro\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Producer\"]},{\"url\":\"\",\"name\":\"Ali Barillaro\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Producer\"]},{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/90740324\",\"name\":\"Jason Camlot\",\"dates\":\"1967-\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Producer\"]}]"],"contributors":["[]"],"Publication_Date":[2020],"material_description":["[]"],"digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://cdn.simplecast.com/audio/28a9da/28a9da1f-8cca-410c-b5d7-8165a73f9394/255946fd-ceff-4b6b-a91c-4df32581bc15/sw-episode-11_tc.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"sw-episode-11_tc.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"44.1 kHz\",\"duration\":\"01:08:48\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"66,125,366 bytes\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"MP3 audio\",\"title\":\"sw-episode-11_tc\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/ideas-have-feelings-too-voice-feeling-and-rhetoric-in-podcasting/\"}]"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"2020-08-03\",\"type\":\"Publication Date\",\"notes\":\"\",\"source\":\"\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/22080572#map=16/45.49381/-73.58233\",\"venue\":\"Concordia University McConnell Building\",\"notes\":\"\",\"address\":\"1400 Boulevard de Maisonneuve Ouest, Montreal, QC, H3G 1M8\",\"latitude\":\"45.4968036\",\"longitude\":\" -73.57792785757887\"}]"],"Address":["1400 Boulevard de Maisonneuve Ouest, Montreal, QC, H3G 1M8"],"Venue":["Concordia University McConnell Building"],"City":["Montreal, Quebec"],"Note":["[]"],"Related_works":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"Bender, John and David E. Wellbery, “Rhetoricality: On the Modernist Return of Rhetoric.” The Ends of Rhetoric: History, Theory, Practice. Ed. Bender and Wellbery. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1990.\\n\\nCopeland, Stacey.  “A Feminist Materialisation of Amplified Voice: Queering Identity and Affect in The Heart.” Podcasting: New Oral Cultures and Digital Media.  Ed. Dario Llinares, Neil Fox, Richard Berry.  Palgrave MacMillan, 2018.  209-225.\\n\\nLlinares, Dario. “Podcasting as Liminal Praxis: Aural Mediation, Sound Writing and Identity.” Podcasting: New Oral Cultures and Digital Media.  Ed. Dario Llinares, Neil Fox, Richard Berry.  Palgrave MacMillan, 2018.  123-145.\\n\\nRapp, Christof, “Aristotle’s Rhetoric”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2010 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = .\\n\\nSterne, Jonathan.  “The Theology of Sound: A Critique of Orality,” CanadianJournal of Communication 36.2 (2011): 207-225.\\n\\nOng, Walter J.: Orality and Literacy–The Technologizing of the Word (1982). Routledge, New York, 1988.\"}]"],"_version_":1853670549693136896,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:54.290Z","contents":["How do concepts make us feel? What is the function of affect in the communication of ideas?\n\nIn this episode, three SpokenWeb graduate students – Ali Barillaro, Sadie Barker and Emma Telaro – revisit their experience of making a short-form podcast as an exercise that was assigned to them by SpokenWeb researcher Jason Camlot in his Literature and Sound Studies seminar. The episode explains some of the guiding themes that emerged through discussions that Ali, Sadie, Emma and Jason had about podcasting as a mode of critical practice, namely the functions of voice, ambience and the overarching media rhetoric of the podcast as a form. Comprised of recorded zoom conversations, short audio essays, and featuring three distinct mini-podcasts within a podcast, this episode, the last from Year 1 of the SpokenWeb podcast series, closes the season with a meta-podcast about the practice of podcasting itself.\n\n00:00:18\tTheme Music:\t[Instrumental Overlapped with high pitched voice] Can you hear me? I don’t know how much projection to do, eh?\n00:00:18\tHannah McGregor:\tWhat does literature sound like? What stories will we hear if we listen to the archive? Welcome to the SpokenWeb Podcast: stories about how literature sounds. My name is Hannah McGregor, and each month I’ll be bringing you different stories of Canadian literary history and our contemporary responses to it created by scholars, poets, students, and artists from across Canada. Relaxing ideas, anxious ideas, loving ideas, and even heated ideas. Feelings aren’t just for people; ideas have feelings, too. Or, at least, that’s what our episode contributors this month aim to explore. If ideas do have feelings, how are they communicated? And in turn, how do different ideas, concepts, make us feel? In this episode of the SpokenWeb Podcast, graduate students Ali Barillaro, Sadie Barker, and Emma Telaro revisit their experience of making a short-form podcast as an exercise assigned to them by Jason Camlot in his Literature and Sound Studies seminar at Concordia University. The episode explains some of the guiding themes that emerged through discussions that Ali, Sadie, Emma, and Jason had about podcasting as a mode of critical practice, exploring the connections between voice, feeling, and rhetoric. Comprised of recorded Zoom conversations, short audio essays, and featuring three distinct mini podcasts within a podcast, this episode, the last from year one of the SpokenWeb Podcast series, closes the season with a meta-podcast about the practice of podcasting itself. Without further ado, here’s the SpokenWeb Podcast season finale: “Ideas have feelings, too. Voice, Feeling, and Rhetoric in podcasting.” [Theme Music]\n00:02:23\tAll Speakers:\t[Overlapping multiple voices] We made a podcast!\n00:02:24\tEmma Telaro:\tUsing our podcast voices and other sounds.\n00:02:28\tAll Speakers:\t[Overlapping] And other sounds!\n00:02:28\tAll Speakers:\t[Overlapping] Who are we?\n00:02:29\tJason Camlot:\tBegin Music: Light Guitar] Who are we? I’m Jason Camlot, Professor in the department of English and Concordia University research chair in Literature and Sound Studies at, well, Concordia University.\n00:02:41\tEmma Telaro:\tI’m Emma Telaro, a Master’s student in the department of English at Concordia University and a research assistant for SpokenWeb.\n00:02:48\tSadie Barker:\tI’m Sadie Barker, a PhD student.\n00:02:50\tAli Barillaro:\tAnd I’m Ali Barillaro, an almost graduated grad student.\n00:02:54\tJason Camlot:\tMaking a collaborative podcast is fun–\n00:02:57\tEmma Telaro:\t–but also challenging.\n00:02:58\tJason Camlot:\tThe logistics of who does what and how to bring everything together is one challenge.\n00:03:03\tAli Barillaro:\tBut perhaps the greatest challenge has to do with–\n00:03:05\tAll Speakers:\t–defining the voice that shapes the podcast. [Music Changes: Instrumental Guitar and Stand-Up Bass]\n00:03:09\tEmma Telaro:\tIn an audio essay, there is usually a clear narrational perspective.\n00:03:13\tJason Camlot:\tAll the sounds presented are filtered and organized through a single voice, which represents a sonically particular perspective on all that is discussed and heard.\n00:03:23\tAli Barillaro:\tIn our case, we have aimed as much as possible to allow multiple narrational perspectives to be heard and to shape this podcast episode.\n00:03:34\tJason Camlot:\tSo this podcast, the final episode from year one of the SpokenWeb Podcast series, is kind of a meta-podcast about making podcasts. [End Music: Instrumental Guitar and Stand-Up Bass] In the winter semester of 2020, I taught a graduate seminar on the topic of Literature and Sound Studies. I’d taught courses on sound and poetry before, but this seminar, more than the ones I taught in the past, was committed to bringing interdisciplinary concepts and approaches from sound studies together with literary texts and sound recordings.\n00:04:04\tAudio Recording:\t[Robotic Voice] We are [ ]. [Begin Music: Ambient Hum]\n00:04:04\tJason Camlot:\tAs my department’s annual required theory seminar for PhDs—although it consisted of both PhD students and MA students—it was heavy with critical theories and cultural studies about sound and listening. So we read and discussed together selections from R. Murray Schafer, Friedrich Kittler, and Lisa Gitelman. Jonathan Sterne and Mara Mills.   Patrick Feaster and Jacob Smith. John Durham Peters and Brandon LaBelle. Douglas Kahn and Dylan Robinson, among many others.\n00:04:38\tJason Camlot:\t[End Music: Ambient Hum] We read a few literary works that framed sound, listening, and voice in interesting ways, like Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion, Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape. And we considered poets whose work moved between print and sound productions, including the talk poems of David Antin, the erasure poems and time-stretching sound collages of Jordan Abel, and the poetry scripts and [Audio, Overlapping, Oana Avasilichioaei performing “Operator”] audio-visual live performances of Oana Avasilichioaei.\n00:05:05\tAudio Recording:\t[Oana Avasilichioaei performing “Operator”] The subject is occurence. The subject is the eye that brutesSim      the sky…\n00:05:15\tJason Camlot:\tIn the context of a literature course that aims to think about sound, it’s difficult to do so without having one eye on the print world. It’s difficult to think about sound outside of the generic categories we use to think about printed texts. Podcasting about literary sound is kind of an interestingly messy place to be. Already, asking literature students to engage with sound rather than print works to trouble their relationship to their primary source text. Asking them to think through and present their ideas in a sound-based medium was a further exercise in estrangement. They would be required to learn a whole new media rhetoric, one that involved sound editing, speaking, and recording their ideas in a voice that seemed right to the purpose, possibly the use of music or ambient sounds to reinforce or frame the ideas and arguments they were making, not to mention arranging, balancing, EQing, mixing, and exporting the final product. The results were awesome in so many ways, students made podcasts about [Sound Effect: Siren] noise.\n00:06:18\tSima Meghadadi :\tAh, the hustle and bustle of the city.\n00:06:21\tJason Camlot:\tAnd silence.\n00:06:22\tMarlene Oefinger :\tSilence, then, is not really absent of sound, but the beginning of listening. And when there is nothing to hear, you start to hear things.\n00:06:33\tJason Camlot:\tAnd why most audio books aren’t satisfying.\n00:06:37\tBrian Vass :\tI generally dislike audiobooks. I wouldn’t listen to a recorded book if I could just read the book instead.\n00:06:43\tJason Camlot:\tAnd why Samuel Beckett’s radio plays are awesome.\n00:06:47\tRyan Tellier :\tNow to be somewhat self-reflexive, Beckett’s story is partially about the very need to find a voice.\n00:06:53\tJason Camlot:\tAnd how Sylvia Plath’s confessional poetry is as extra as a Lana Del Rey\n00:06:59\tPriscilla Jolly :\tIn this podcast, I’ll speak about the rhetorical strategy of exaggeration in relation to the confessional mode using the work of Sylvia Plath and Lana Del Rey.\n00:07:09\tJason Camlot:\tAnd how the running voice in your head talking to itself is kind of like a never-ending hip hop track.\n00:07:14\tKian Vaziri-Tehrani :\t[Begin Music: Instrumental Hip Hop] Some words just make me feel uncomfortable, like soot. Ugh. That fire debris thing or whatever? You can’t see, but I just shivered saying that. They should really make some kind of visual podcast, like a vodcast, you know? [End Music: Instrumental Hip Hop]\n00:07:31\tJason Camlot:\t[Overlapping, the voices and sounds from the beginning of SpokenWeb Episode 8] At the same time that everyone was working on their own podcasts, I was also at work on one with my colleague Katherine McLeod that eventually got released as episode eight of this podcast series, the episode entitled “How are we listening, now? Signal, Noise, Silence.” And I’d already worked on my very first podcast in the fall, episode two called “Sound Recordings Are Weird.” It hadn’t occurred to me how difficult choosing and performing a voice in a podcast would be until I tried making [Audio, Throat Clearing] a podcast myself.\n00:08:01\tAudio Recording:\t[Jason Camlot] Alfred Tennyson, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Lord Alfred Tennyson.\n00:08:06\tJason Camlot:\tThe complexity of voice as a performative and expressive factor in the context of a podcast is about authority, expertise, positionality… All of which Ali, Sadie, Emma, and I discuss later in this podcast. But it’s also about something else, something that for me at least is coming to define what a podcast does to ideas, concepts, and arguments. It has to do with affect and feeling, the proximity of the speaker to her ideas. The proximity of the listener to the speaker sharing an idea. The affective exchange that is inseparable from the conceptual exchange when a podcaster talks about something. Stacey Copeland explains this idea powerfully in a recent article when she observes that–\n00:08:52\tStacey Copeland:\tThere is an inherent intimacy in voice-driven sound work. That seems to be [Begin Distortion] soaking in affect. [End Distortion] The listener puts on her headphones, presses play, and becomes immersed in an affective discourse of human experience through listening and connecting.\n00:09:13\tJason Camlot:\t[Begin Music: Distorted Instrumentals] So one way in which ideas have feelings is through their expression and effective communication in voice. Another way that we came to realize how ideas have feelings, during the process of making our podcasts, is through the broader sonic affordances of the medium, [End Music: Distorted Instrumentals] especially the way we come to obsess with the use of music and ambient sounds in presenting stories and ideas. Podcasting uses sound to help us experience how a concept feels. So that covers voice and feeling as we’ll be discussing those topics in this podcast. When we say the rhetoric of podcasting, we’re thinking of everything that Aristotle included in his definition of the concept of rhetoric as a means of persuasion, which encompassed a) the character of the speaker, [Begin Music: Distorted Instrumentals] b) the emotional state of the listener, and c) the argument, logos, itself.\n00:10:06\tJason Camlot:\tThe first two elements of rhetoric as a method are pretty well covered by our categories of voice and feeling. I would define the last element—that of argument, or logos—as including the first two, plus the overarching structure, genre, that we choose to use in arranging and shaping our podcast. And also the degree to which this form of communication engages in explicit kinds of reflection upon its own rhetorical affordances and strategies. We may come to feel ideas as tenets of authentic truth, but this is so because the modes of rhetorical persuasion we use have become normalized to a point that we just don’t notice them or think about them anymore. An ideology of rhetoric sets in and a sense of the “end of rhetoric,” as John Bender and David Wellbery had dubbed it, is felt. Sometimes rhetorical protocols can come to seem so useful, normal, so right to community that uses it, that the rhetoric of it seems to disappear altogether.\n00:11:10\tJason Camlot:\tIt’s through the migration of rhetorical protocols across communities that we can find rhetoric work, interestingly, at cross purposes with its original community. Like when biblical discourse or legal discourse is repurposed by communities of poets, novelists, cartoonists, comedians, it is due to this perpetual migration of rhetorical forms, media, and effects across communities that I think podcasting represents such a powerful tool for scholarly communication and humanities pedagogy at the present time. Podcasting, in practice, is a great way to make us see and feel the rhetorical and media assumptions we use to produce and share knowledge in our scholarly disciplines. A new kind of awareness of the rhetoric of thought has been another outcome of the experience of engaging in podcasting as a form of critical expression. [End Music: Distorted Instrumentals] And this is an experience that we all seem to share. So, with these keywords—voice, feeling, rhetoric—briefly explained, and with the basic plan mapped out, first here is Ali Barillaro presenting her podcast on the meaning of applause in poetry readings.\n00:12:29\tAli Barillaro:\t[Theme Music] When I started working with SpokenWeb, I didn’t really know what I wanted to research. So Jason told me to start by listening through the Sir George Williams Poetry Series and to take notes on anything that caught my attention. That ended up being the sounds of applause and the frequently conflicted comments different poets made about the presence of applause in poetry readings. So I spent my first year as an RA trying to come up with better ways of talking about applause because just measuring duration and amplitude didn’t seem good enough to me. If I wanted to find the “why,” if that’s really possible, I needed to look at the wider context. I had already produced a five-minute talk, a one-hour workshop, and a 12-page paper on this topic. On the page, I had to describe the sounds of applause and use screenshots of waveforms and spectrograms. And none of that really does the sound justice. With the podcast, it was a lot easier to weave narration or argument and the source material in and out of one another, which I think makes for a more immersive listening experience.\n00:13:38\tAudio Recording:\t[Applause] [Begin Music: Electronic Instrumental] [Muriel Rukeyser] Thank you. It sounds peculiar when it’s said that way.\n00:13:53\tAli Barillaro:\tApplause, a sign of approval, an act of support, a cultural indicator worth listening to. In John Bulwer’s manual of rhetorical gestures Chirologia, he explains that “to clap the raised hands one against another is an expression proper to them who applaud, congratulate, rejoice, assent, approve, and are well-pleased used by all nations. This public token has been of old and is so usual in the assembly of a multitude when they cannot contain their joy in silence.” Bulwer’s contemplation of applause, however, quickly takes on a judging tone with concerns about decorum and the appropriateness of the gesture in particular artistic contexts. Addressing the inherent duality of applause, Steven Connor posits that “Clapping one hand on another dramatizes the fact that you are subject and an object simultaneously, a doer and a done to.” Applause, it seems, belongs to both the individual and the crowd. It can be deliberate or uncontained, disregarded or powerful.\n00:14:59\tAli Barillaro:\tIn the context of the archival sounds of reported poetry readings collected by SpokenWeb, we can hear not only poetic voice or textual content. We hear the sounds of interactivity and deception. We hear traces of the relationships between speaker and audience that ground the poetry reading as public, as event. Despite their potential significance, sonic manifestations of audience response, including laughter and verbal address, are not consistently present or consistently treated by poets, series organizers, recordists, and archivists. In 1966, acclaimed Montreal poet Louis Dudek was invited to introduce Henry Beissel and Mike Gnarowski’s reading as part of the poetry series at Sir George Williams University. Dudek attempts to set the tone and establish the appropriate reading series etiquette, as he reflects on his effective response to Beissel’s performance, stating,\n00:15:53\tAudio Recording:\t[Louis Dudek] Strongly, I was impressed and moved by that reading of Henry Beissel.\n00:15:57\tAli Barillaro:\tFrom a position as both audience member and poet, he explains:\n00:16:01\tAudio Recording:\t[Louis Dudek] Really several times after the poems, I wanted to applaud, only we don’t do that.\n00:16:06\tAli Barillaro:\tHmm. If applause isn’t universally accepted as a fundamental part of the poetry reading, why are there so many instances of applause heard throughout the Sir George Williams collection? Despite concerns of impropriety, applause can function as a demonstration of etiquette or a measurement and influencer of public feeling, as Sarah Balkin claims. Tanya Clement and Stephen McLaughlin frame applause is both enabling an audience’s ability to engage in dialogue with a poem itself and effect its mode of meaning-making, or as a signifier of structures marking the transitions between different elements of a reading. Most examples of applause can be labeled either procedural, referring to moments thought to be appropriate or expected in a reading series, or as purely spontaneous phenomenon. Those spontaneous applause appears to be more appreciative in nature; procedural applause is not exclusively formal or inherently removed from appreciation for the poet, the work, or the performance. Another key feature of applause is the concept of consensus, which implies a communal response from the majority or all of the audience to a given performance.\n00:17:11\tAudio Recording:\t[Applause]\n00:17:16\tAli Barillaro:\tA noticeable lack of consensus is often perceived as…uncomfortable. [End Music: Electronic Instrumental]\n00:17:24\tAudio Recording:\t[One person claps] [Unknown Person says, uncomfortably,] Oh! Thank you…\n00:17:25\tAli Barillaro:\t[Begin Music: Electronic Instrumental] Caused by what Tia DeNora describes as individuals or small groups of people lacking the skill and practical knowledge necessary for appropriate emotional responses in a given performative context. Moments in the Sir George Williams recordings can be used as case studies to examine consensus, procedural, and spontaneous applause and to begin to unpack what specific sounds of audience response might signify when listened to within the greater context of an entire reading and the series as a whole. Let’s listen to the response to Irving Layton’s “Confederation Ode” read at Sir George Williams University in 1967 as an example.\n00:18:09\tAudio Recording:\t[Thunderous Applause]\n00:18:09\tAli Barillaro:\tLayton was certainly no stranger to praise. His final poem of the night, “Family Portrait,” receives the longest and loudest unedited record of applause found in the poetry series collection, a 40-second auditory event so intense we could call it a wall of noise.\n00:18:28\tAudio Recording:\t[Very Thunderous Applause]\n00:18:28\tAli Barillaro:\tLayton’s opening remarks draw attention to the makeup of the sizable crowd gathered to hear him.\n00:18:33\tAudio Recording:\t[Irving Layton] I’m really glad to see so many of my friends and former students in the audience.\n00:18:40\tAli Barillaro:\tA statement elaborated upon in a post-grad article that details the overcrowding of the venue that hosted the university’s then-poet-in-residence. Consensus, then, is not an issue for Layton. What is worth questioning is the spontaneity of the reaction to a poem like “Confederation Ode” that was new at the time of the reading, especially considering Layton classics, like “Misunderstanding” and “The Birth of Tragedy,” are met with no audible response. Beyond finding out who is in the audience, the location and timing of the reading is also crucial to the discussion. With Expo 67 scheduled to begin just over a month after this Montreal performance and with the poem’s bold sexual imagery and overt political satire, Layton correctly assumes he need not explain his intent further than a simple preface–\n00:19:27\tAudio Recording:\t[Irving Layton] My contribution to the centennial year, “Confederation Ode.”\n00:19:31\tAli Barillaro:\t–for the audience to receive his message and respond accordingly. The question still remains open, though. Why did this audience react so strongly to this Layton poem in that moment. The ephemerality of the event and lack of corresponding oral history work makes it hard to firmly pin down an answer, but further inroads can be made with the use of growing audio archives that could potentially allow scholars to trace a poet’s reading history, cross-referencing multiple performances of a given piece and documenting the range of responses from audiences over time and across space. For the “Confederation Ode” applause, further research into Layton’s biography and public sentiment about Expo 67 and the Canadian government more broadly may also elucidate some of the meaningful resonances the performance affected in Layton’s listeners. Thank you.\n00:20:25\tAudio Recording:\t[Applause] [End Music: Electronic Instrumental]\n00:20:34\tAli Barillaro:\tWhen Jason, Emma, Sadie, and I got together for a series of Zoom meetings to replay and talk about our podcasts a few months after making them, hearing the episodes quickly conjured up…a few feelings.\n00:20:48\tAudio Recording:\t[Ali Barillaro] I said something to Emma and Sadie about how I realized I kind of sound like some weird robot presenter lady in my podcast. And I… It’s so cringy to listen to ’cause that’s not how I talk normally at all.\n00:21:03\tAudio Recording:\t[Jason Camlot] It’s always embarrassing to hear your own voice back, right? You know, to some extent, especially when you’re like, “I’m trying to do my podcast voice.” Right? You know.\n00:21:11\tAudio Recording:\t[Ali Barillaro] I think it’s… I’m trying to sound like a…informational guide. I think there was only one like one or two very brief, brief moments in my mini-podcast that I was trying to break away from that. I remember in one of your comments that one of the parts that you were like, “Yes! That! That’s what you should be going for more” was just me going, “Hmm” at something. You were like, “Yeah! Like that’s, that’s something we would want to hear.”\n00:21:36\tAudio Recording:\t[Jason Camlot] Yeah, it’s ’cause that “Hmm” was so Ali. Right? [inaudible]\n00:21:40\tAli Barillaro:\tOverall, I think the end result was relatively well-produced and that I managed to convey a general sense of the work I’ve done on applause within such a limited timeframe. But the thing that we all kept coming back to was my voice. What exactly was going on there?\n00:21:59\tAudio Recording:\t[Jason Camlot] What does that mean, first of all, to be doing a podcast voice? What is it?\n00:22:03\tAudio Recording:\t[Ali Barillaro] It’s funny ’cause I remember when I was in CEGEP, I had an assignment where my friends and I made a video about composting and I decided to narrate it and it sounded exactly like that. So it’s been like a thing for like a long time. And I don’t know why, like why that’s my go to voice. I don’t know. It’s weird. It’s very weird.\n00:22:25\tAudio Recording:\t[Jason Camlot] Could you do that voice right now? Like on command?\n00:22:28\tAudio Recording:\t[Ali Barillaro] Let me pull up something that I could like read. ‘Cause I can’t do it just like speaking spontaneously. Because that’s not how I talk! Okay. Let’s see. “The contents field serves to describe the audible content, speech, and other sounds of the audio asset.”\n00:22:44\tSadie Barker:\tIt seems so kind of genre-dependent, like your podcast, content-wise was quite academic and it was funny ’cause like listening to it, I actually didn’t notice a difference in voice at all, but then just now when you performed your voice, I really noticed it. So there’s something about like the setting of… The content setting that… Where you kind of assume a certain voice and… Yeah, ’cause it really, it really stood out in this very more casual settings.\n00:23:12\tEmma Telaro:\tI think it’s hard not to do it.\n00:23:13\tAli Barillaro:\tMhm.\n00:23:13\tEmma Telaro:\tI mean, as soon as you have a device in front of you, like tense up and that’s, I think, more often than not what happens.\n00:23:23\tAli Barillaro:\tI guess it’s like, it also feels like a safer way of doing it. Like it feels less vulnerable to have that kind of voice and not just have people listening to what you actually sound like.\n00:23:35\tJason Camlot:\tSo you’re, you’re performing the voice of sort of pure information, would you say?\n00:23:41\tAli Barillaro:\tI want it to be straightforward. I want it to be clear. Yeah, I want people to understand what I’m trying to say to them and I, for some reason, in my head, that’s what that sounds like.\n00:23:52\tJason Camlot:\tWould you say that you’re trying to make your voice almost disappear in the communication of the information so that it’s like, it’s there, but hopefully won’t be noticed?\n00:24:01\tAli Barillaro:\tYeah, I think that’s, that’s what I’m trying to do ’cause for some reason, I guess like my own natural voice doesn’t seem like the best, the best possible option for doing that. And I… It’s, it’s often when it’s something that’s scripted and it’s not like, it’s not theater or something like that. It’s something that is like argumentative or analytical or theoretical. That’s what that voice sounds like in my head. So I’m trying to perform that rather than something that’s more conversational or more natural or more performative in a different way.\n00:24:38\tAli Barillaro:\tEveryone had a lot to say about their own decisions regarding the performance of the role of podcast host or narrator. And I’ll be back later in the episode to lead you through some of our major realizations about voice.\n00:25:04\tJason Camlot:\t[Theme Music] Emma Telaro.\n00:25:04\tEmma Telaro:\tThe podcast I created for Jason’s class I named “Conditionally Audible Heat,” though future iterations should have a punchier name. Broadly speaking, my podcast examines the sonification of heat in the archival recording of the 1974 Margaret Atwood reading from the Sir George Williams University’s reading series. The curiosity I felt for this particular tape begins in listening. On the occasion of this performance, the reading is upstaged by an unbearable and unlikely October heat. The introducers, Atwood, stumble over the heat, the crowd shuffles restlessly, and this frenzy infectious makes its way through the audio recording. I found this occurrence mesmerizing and in a fit of note-taking attempted to mark all the moments when heat, though constant, materialized and usurped the reading. And yet there wasn’t a specific quality or sound associated with this heat, but a convergence, rather. So I wondered what in the first place was I listening to? [Sound Effect: Fire Crackling] What does heat sound like? How does it manifest in audio recording and what sensations does it provoke? I listened and listened again. So, I inched towards my driving question: how do we hear heat? I felt that to answer this question, what does heat sound like, to attempt a podcast on the sonification of heat, I had to begin with the event itself. Heat announces itself from the very beginning of the reading.\n00:26:30\tAudio Recording:\t[Henry Beissel] Can you ask the security people to turn on the cooling system, turn on the cooling system. The hall is going to be too hot.\n00:26:34\tEmma Telaro:\tAnd I wanted to give a sense of the temporality of the event, the time elapsed and distorted by heat as it presses languorously and anxiously onto the reading. I had to find a way to do this, to describe, engage with, and represent 35 minutes of audio in a six-minute podcast. The podcast really took off with the introductory audio collage. Once I decided that my primary task was to sound heat, I clipped elements from the beginning of the recording to create the collage and timed it to fit a sultry musical track I found online. It felt very much like I was assembling quotations. I treated the clips, whether of speech or exterior sound, as fragments and pieced them together. To get the sounds to hit at the right time was a minute task and the more I edged towards the effects I wanted, the more finicky I got. That first sound, the one moment you’ll hear, took ages to place on the right beat and significantly, I selected it because it’s the first voice you hear in the archival recording. I felt strongly about keeping it, that short phrase captures the mood of the reading, the disorder, the tension, and the sound and feel of the room. You’ll notice how the speaker, Henry Beissel, signals the overflow, the body’s mass in the room. And you’ll hear the humour, too, which recurs in the event as necessary relief.\n00:27:56\tAudio Recording:\t[Begin Music: Sultry Instrumental] [Henry Beissel] One moment. [Music Changes: Bass Joins Sultry Instrumentals] [Henry Beissel] We did try to get a larger hall, but it was impossible to accommodate the overflow we have set up loudspeakers in the little gallery here, how it [inaudible] in the other one, too? [Unknown Person] Outside. [Henry Beissel] Outside there’s loud speakers. So please don’t all crowd into the room. Can you ask the security people to turn on the cooling system, turn on the cooling system? The hall is going to be too hot. [Music Changes: Xylophone Joins] [Margaret Atwood] I don’t see any reason why this thing should resemble a steam bath. [People Chattering] [Margaret Atwood] If everybody on the chairs would, would shift over this way, and sit on sort of as if it were a bench, then some more people could sit on the edges there. [People Chattering] [Margaret Atwood] It’s fucking hot.\n00:29:06\tEmma Telaro:\tMontreal, October 18, 1974. [End Music: Sultry Instrumental] It’s hot, really hot, an unlikely hot autumn evening. Margaret Atwood is set to perform at the Poetry Series, a reading series organized by the Sir George Williams University’s English department, now Concordia University. The room is jammed. She begins to read.\n00:29:28\tAudio Recording:\t[Margaret Atwood] Is not one– Oh boy, is it ever hot in here, I can’t stand it, yeah, hmm?\n00:29:35\tEmma Telaro:\tAtwood’s performance is of peculiar interest for two reasons. First, she’s one of the few women invited to read at the series. Second, the reading is overwhelmed by this autumn heat wave. In the recording of this performance, we hear Atwood repeatedly referenced this oppressive heat, and we hear the audience members, too, shuffling and speaking excitedly as they crowd into the room. We hear this especially in the first few minutes of the recording and in the Q and A that follows her performance. The reading itself is cut short to accommodate the unusual weather, which is ironic, perhaps, given our first point.\n00:30:11\tAudio Recording:\t[Margaret Atwood] I think I better read just three more poems…before we all die.\n00:30:19\tEmma Telaro:\t[Begin Music: Relaxed Instrumental] In an article written for The Guardian called “Boiling point: why literature loves a long hot summer.” Aida Edemariam writes, “Novelists have used heat waves to create tension, erotic charge, and moments of possibility. It is a time when all the rules change.” Of course, we’re not speaking of a fictional heatwave, but of a real, historical and material manifestation of heat. And yet we might pursue literary analysis and say that the sweaty, hot room acts as a framing device for the poetry reading, or if we want to borrow a term from sound studies, we might include heat in a study of the reading soundscape. But how in the first place does heat sound forth? How do we hear heat? What is the significance of an audible heat? For the most part, we’re listening to the effects of heat. Heat acts on bodies, bodies contribute to heat, voice and movement manifest discomfort or pleasure, or…pleasure in discomfort.\n00:31:16\tEmma Telaro:\tThe audible manifestations of heat, Atwood’s humorous quips, her nervous laugh, the frenzied audience response highlight the sociality of performance. Heat dramatizes the encounter between audience and performer and despite the very real constraint material circumstances of the reading, heat provides a release from constraints. We sense the overflow in the room, which contributes to the sense of possibility that emerges out of close contact with Atwood and her poems. Later, she jokes about being called a “witch” by some critics, which adds fuel to her feminism and speaks to the disarming power of her poetics. In this heat, with Atwood, we anticipate something. Boundaries might be crossed.\n00:32:01\tAudio Recording:\t[Margaret Atwood] How are you doing? Is it hot and steamy? Has anybody died yet?\n00:32:08\tEmma Telaro:\tHeat helps us imagine what it might’ve felt like to be there. And it is remarkable that we can retrieve the sensation, if only   through recording. Heat is a conjuring trick; it signals presence even in absence. We hear the spatial, temporal, and material circumstances of Atwood’s reading, we hear the body, and of course, we hear the poems. And it all feels quite sweaty.\n00:32:35\tEmma Telaro:\tWe’ve talked about the sociality of performance sounded through heat, but there’s also the various meanings that shift in reading. Heat alters the poems themselves. Where and how you listen matters to how you receive meaning in the poem. Imagine a late summer evening, or if you prefer, a blazing mid-August sun entering deep, deep into the pore of your skin. Can you taste the sweat, smell the humidity? Or is it a dry heat, red and sandy? Are you close to, far from other bodies? How does the clothes feel on your skin? What sounds are there around you?\n00:33:16\tAudio Recording:\t[Margaret Atwood] “Late August.” This is the plum season, the nights / blue and distended, the moon / hazed, this is the season of peaches / with their lush lobed bulbs / that glow in the dusk, apples / that drop and rot / sweetly, their brown skins veined as glands / No more the shrill voices / that cried Need Need / from the cold pond, bladed and urgent as new grass / Now it is the crickets / that say Ripe Ripe / slurred in the darkness, while the plums / dripping on the lawn outside / our window, burst / with a sound like thick syrup / muffled and slow / The air is still / warm, flesh moves over / flesh, there is no / hurry. [End Music: Relaxed Instrumental]\n00:34:13\tEmma Telaro:\t“Late August” felt like the most fitting and only close, a return to the poem that felt nostalgic and dreamlike. Throughout the podcast, I focused mostly on extra-poetic speech, but the quality of her voice and reading shifts tellingly to [Changes voice to mimic the cadence of Atwood’s voice in the reading] the anxious phonetic pace indicating unbearable heat, slows, when she reads. “Late August” is this langour, this culmination, this release. The beautiful yet dark aura of the plums, ripe. The seductive quality of late August heat that focuses heat as an affective and aesthetic experience. It’s a heat which makes its way through autumn cracks, [Sound Effect: Autumn Bugs] the kind of heat that sometimes surprises us here in Montreal. It’s the heat of the poetry reading, from the bodies in the room, giving grain to the voice, to the poem. I wanted to end here, in “Late August,” to return to the poem, to listening, to feeling. If I speak “Late August,” I think of the swarming of bees by the Lachine Canal, but also the humidity that hangs on, that persists despite the signs of fall. There are sounds to these feelings, to describing these images. It’s perhaps a matter of listening more closely, of finding the right vocabulary for them.\n00:35:36\tJason Camlot:\t[Theme Music] Sadie Barker.\n00:35:36\tSadie Barker:\tFor the last four years, I’ve tree planted in northern BC. I would do this between my schooling, where especially more recently, I’ve been thinking and learning about sound studies. And these interests came together last summer when I brought a recorder with me to camp with the intention of recording the day-to-day world of tree planting. So when I wasn’t planting trees, I was walking around camp, interviewing people,–\n00:36:02\tAudio Recording:\t[Sadie Barker] Okay, Michelle, we’re recording.\n00:36:05\tSadie Barker:\t–collecting the sounds of camp life, [People Chatting] and just amassing various audio. So I was pretty excited when, in Jason’s class, I had the opportunity to assemble it. Because I already had several hours of tape, I was in many ways advantaged going into this assignment, but I was still apprehensive. I never made a podcast before. While I’d written lots of essays and could appreciate music and sound, I’d never attempted to tell any kind of audio story. As someone that studies multimedia and aesthetics, podcasting made me realize that while I research and write on these topics, I hadn’t really ever diversified or experimented with my own modes of expression. I hadn’t ever really tried to facilitate an aesthetic experience itself beyond formal academic writing. So this assignment made me reflect on [Beeping Alarm] the tendencies, comforts, and familiarities of my own academic modes.\n00:37:17\tAudio Recording:\t[Beeping Ends] [Crackly Static]\n00:37:17\tSadie Barker:\tIt’s 5:45 AM, cold, and the clothes you pull onto your shivering body in the pitch black of your tent are damp, coated in dew and sweat from the day before. Outside, the sun has not yet risen, but the gravel pit bears its first signs of life nonetheless. The hum of the generator [Mechanical Clacking] and the few early risers sitting on the breakfast trailer steps, brushing their teeth, smoking cigarettes, chewin’ the fat.\n00:37:49\tAudio Recording:\t[Truck Backing Up] [Unknown Person Sings] Tree planters are giving the trees a newly [inaudible] life. [Laughter]\n00:37:55\tSadie Barker:\tThis is the stretch of calm before the day. In 15 minutes, the breakfast trailer doors will open and people will shuffle through, heaping scrambled eggs and oatmeal onto silver trays to eat in the tent, both anticipating the day to come and cherishing these moments of idleness. At 7:00 AM, everyone will board their trucks and leave for the cutblock  to spend the next 10 hours planting trees. [Wheels On Gravel I could try and describe these 10 hours and the world of possibility they hold, but Charlotte Gill’s book Eating Dirt does it much better.\n00:38:30\tAudio Recording:\t[Begin Music: Country Guitar] [Charlotte Gill] Planting trees isn’t hard. As any veteran will tell you, it isn’t the act of sowing itself, but the ambient complications. It comes with snow pellets or clouds of biting insects so thick and furious it’s possible to end a day with your eyelids swollen shut and blood trickling from your ears. They’re swaying fields of venomous plants like devil’s club and stinging nettle. The work has the bodily effect of a car crash in extreme slow motion. Besides that, the task itself is thankless and boring, which is to say, it’s plain and silent. What could compel a person to make a career of such a thing? I’ve always wanted to find out. [End Music: Country Guitar]\n00:39:16\tAudio Recording:\t[ ] I’m Behnke, I’m from Terrace, British Columbia, and I– My name is Belle –am a second year tree planter– and I’m from Vancouver– My name is Liam Hannah– and I’m a first-year planter– Oh, my name is Alanna– I’m from Toronto– I’ve been planting for seven years– And I’ve been planting for four years– Hey, I’m from Thailand– –for two years– My name is Clara. I am from Thornbury, Ontario– Hi, my name is Sebastian– –planting for a couple of weeks now –I’m from Northern BC– –so this’ll be my first, first year– –and I’ve been planting for, this is my second full season planting.\n00:39:52\tSadie Barker:\tThere are many different kinds of planters. People come from all sorts of places and plant for all kinds of reasons. But most planters will tell you that the happiest part of any season is May, before any of the real work has started.\n00:40:07\tAudio Recording:\t[Liam] So they say there’s three parts to the planting season–\n00:40:10\tSadie Barker:\tThis is Liam.\n00:40:10\tAudio Recording:\t[Liam] –and they map onto each month. There’s May, the honeymoon month where everybody’s having a good time and they’re enjoying themselves. They just got here. [People Chatting] They’re partying a lot every night… [People Chatting] [Begin Music: Ukelele].\n00:40:28\tAudio Recording:\t[Kim] You spend so much time with these people, so–\n00:40:30\tSadie Barker:\tThis is Kim.\n00:40:31\tAudio Recording:\t[Kim] –yeah, It feels… Leaving and coming back, it feels like camp as a little kid, like seeing all these people that you’ve connected with.\n00:40:41\tAudio Recording:\t[Belle] I think there’s like a creative energy.\n00:40:44\tSadie Barker:\tThis is Belle.\n00:40:45\tAudio Recording:\t[Belle] Music and art, I feel like that is sort of always happening in the background of camp.\n00:40:51\tAudio Recording:\t[Liam] People are just pretty cheerful. [Music And People Chatting] ‘Cause everybody’s quite happy, ready to get to know each other and [Michelle says “Wonderwall”] joke around and…\n00:41:04\tAudio Recording:\t[Markus] When you’re around the fire and everyone’s laughing and someone’s playing guitar… And then, again, you just sit back and you just go, “Wow, this…. This is good.” [Michelle] Katie, It’s not, Katie’s all request hour. [People Laughing And Chatting].\n00:41:27\tAudio Recording:\t[Liam] And then–\n00:41:28\tSadie Barker:\tAnd then–\n00:41:29\tAudio Recording:\t[Liam] –June hits.\n00:41:30\tSadie Barker:\t–it’s the June blues.\n00:41:32\tAudio Recording:\t[Liam] And people are getting exhausted and they go downhill.\n00:41:36\tSadie Barker:\tThis is when reality starts to set in, but when the bodily effect of a car crash in slow motion that Charlotte Gill was referencing, starts to occur.\n00:41:46\tAudio Recording:\t[Michelle] It’s, it’s really hard to justify like the toll it’s taken on my body because I felt so–\n00:41:50\tSadie Barker:\tThis is Michelle.\n00:41:51\tAudio Recording:\t[Michelle] –physically able before coming.\n00:41:54\tAudio Recording:\t[Markus] I have a huge gash in like the webbing between my thumb and my index finger.\n00:42:00\tAudio Recording:\t[Overlapping Unknown Voices] My feet are regularly cramping– The [inaudible] hurts– Common tendonitis– And it’s like a charley horse in my foot– Drought– I don’t know what I’ve done to my back– Foot pain– Some ribs popped out– So two days ago I woke up and I barely could see out of– Basically my knee started swelling up– –my right eye– –and I took my first day off ever. –it was bitten from a black fly– And so I hobble around and struggle to get in and out of the truck and struggle to get in and out of bed…\n00:42:21\tSadie Barker:\tAnd what do you think? Is it worth it?\n00:42:28\tAudio Recording:\t[Michelle Laughs] I don’t know. [Laughs] I don’t know.\n00:42:33\tSadie Barker:\tThis also when the days start to feel long– [Sound Effect: Rain Falling]\n00:42:37\tAudio Recording:\t[Zoe] The time doesn’t fly enough.\n00:42:40\tSadie Barker:\t–really long.\n00:42:43\tAudio Recording:\t[Markus] Well, the worst thing that I find tree planting is…definitely the loneliness\n00:42:50\tAudio Recording:\t[Zoe] There doesn’t seem like… No birds are singing or nothing. Everything is just grey and…\n00:42:56\tAudio Recording:\t[Kim] If you have one bad thought on the block, then it can just stick with you all day long.\n00:43:01\tAudio Recording:\t[Liam] And it’s always been the hardest job I’ve ever done and probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done.\n00:43:07\tAudio Recording:\t[Zoe] But like today–\n00:43:10\tAudio Recording:\t[Liam] And then–\n00:43:10\tAudio Recording:\t[Zoe] –at some point I sat on the log–\n00:43:13\tAudio Recording:\t[Liam] –July hits–\n00:43:14\tAudio Recording:\t[Zoe] –and I just started laughing–\n00:43:15\tAudio Recording:\t[Liam]–and it’s the home-coming stretch.\n00:43:16\tAudio Recording:\t[Zoe] –and I was laughing by myself for like a big two minutes and then I just stood up again and…planted!\n00:43:27\tMusic:\t[Begin Music: “Coffee” by Sylvan Esso]\n00:43:27\tSadie Barker:\tAnd what do you think, will you be coming back again?\n00:43:32\tAudio Recording:\t[Alanna] Yeah, see, that’s a hilarious question.\n00:43:35\tAudio Recording:\t[Kim] People always say it’s the last season, then they come back.\n00:43:37\tAudio Recording:\t[Alanna] Obviously I’m saying never again after this season.\n00:43:42\tAudio Recording:\t[Michelle] That’s the struggle now where it’s like, “Yeah, I’ll come back. No I won’t. Yeah, I will. No, I won’t.” Back and forth, back and forth. I think–\n00:43:50\tAudio Recording:\t[Liam] I think this is my last year. I think this is my last year, but I said that last year. So. Who know? Everybody always says that.\n00:44:02\tAudio Recording:\t[Alanna] I said that—I think it was my third year—that I would never come back and now I’m at four years later so…I guess it does something right. [End Music: “Coffee” by Sylvan Esso. Rain Sound Effect Fades Out]\n00:44:19\tSadie Barker:\tIt’s funny hearing your own voice and podcast, maybe, especially, when it’s your first. I remember at the time of making this not really having a plan, maybe because this combination of sound and text was a new medium for me, not having a deliberate sense of process. But maybe because of that, having a sense of freedom. I knew I wanted to capture the everyday-ness of planting and I was excited by the possibility that I didn’t need to directly argue for the everyday or pose it as a structured thesis necessarily, but that I could present it experientially to the listener. I remember gravitating to certain sounds almost impulsively and assembling them in ways that just felt intuitive. It’s interesting now to hear the sounds that came through and the ways in which they did the sound [Mechanical Clanking] of the generator for me is interchangeable with the sound [Beeping Alarm] of the alarm clock. Both mean early morning.\n00:45:17\tSadie Barker:\tThey mean that the cook is likely starting to make breakfast and you should probably be mobilizing out of your tent. These parallels, I think, was the underlying rationale for putting those sounds in almost overlapped proximity. The sounds of the beer can and the fire and the instruments and banter. Those sounds for me capture the social world [People Chatting] of planting and the sound of the rain [Water Splashing] on the tent in the morning, which is always the first thing you hear and notice because it cues exactly the kind of planting day it will be seem to perfectly sound the ways in which planting is almost always at the mercy of the environment. So, I wanted to forefront those visceral relations between planters and their everyday surroundings and I think podcasting allowed me to do that in ways that were more in accord and representative of planting as itself: an immersive and sensory and experiential medium. [Theme Music]\n00:46:31\tAli Barillaro:\tAs Sadie, Emma, and I talked about our podcasts together with Jason, we found ourselves coming back to three key themes, including what we’re calling feeling or ambiance and rhetoric. But we probably had the most to say about voice, about vocal performance, intent, effects and affect.\n00:46:52\tAli Barillaro:\t[Audio Recording] Listening to your, to your natural voice recorded is also kind of scary.\n00:46:57\tJason Camlot:\tAli Barillaro.\n00:46:57\tAli Barillaro:\tHaving that option to sound like somebody else, I guess in a way, is, is like a safety blanket, sort of.\n00:47:06\tJason Camlot:\tThat’s a really interesting point. I think it’s a great point. And it’s… I find it really… I mean, I’m not surprised, but I find it interesting that clarity and authority means voice evacuated of emotional characteristics or traits, right? You know. Which is also protective ’cause it shows that you’re not vulnerable to emotion, right? So in this version of podcast voice we’re to evacuate our voices of emotion, to communicate authority, clarity, and to somehow twist our personalities into some kind of robotic version of ourselves, you know, maybe avatars against, you know, that more authoritative robotic version of self-performance, but actually is about putting yourself out there and being casual and being yourself.\n00:47:54\tAli Barillaro:\tA lot of that comes from also feeling like sort of inadequately prepared to be that authoritative speaker as a student and for an assignment for a class. The audience was all of us, technically, like the other students, but it’s also Jason. So it’s a little hard to step back from that, even though you’re aware that you can and we were encouraged to do so in the podcast form, it’s very hard to stop doing that.\n00:48:23\tJason Camlot:\tEmma, did you feel you were also engaging in a kind of a different version of yourself, a more transparent or, or somehow, you know, objective version of yourself in your vocal performance in your podcast? Or were you doing a different kind of voice?\n00:48:40\tEmma Telaro:\tI think on some level I was–\n00:48:42\tJason Camlot:\tEmma Telaro.\n00:48:43\tEmma Telaro:\t–just because this was a podcast that was assigned to us within an academic setting. So, and I was talking about heat in my podcast and I, I realized how that can become quickly humourous. I think like you, Ali, I kind of feel like, “Oh, that was a little bit of a missed opportunity. I could’ve made a bunch of like really silly jokes about heat.” But also I was sometimes actively trying to avoid that because I was afraid that that wouldn’t make it not serious. I often do think about that idea of the authoritative voice and how, as a student, it’s difficult to ever feel like you have one. And also like as a woman, having like a high-pitched voice is not necessarily normally seen as authoritative. So it’s something I often think about on the daily, especially at school, because I also find that my voice at the university is not the voice I have when I’m at home with my parents or when I’m at a bar with my friends, it fluctuates so much. And it’s something I pay a lot of attention to. And I think for this podcast, I wanted to find like a medium, like how can I be myself, but also sound like better than I am? Which is maybe like a silly, insecure thought, but it’s a thought that I’m sure everyone has, as soon as they’re being recorded.\n00:49:56\tAli Barillaro:\tI think a lot of us are kind of self-conscious about sounding, not, not too shrill, not too loud, and like not too high-pitched. I think my voice is actually quite deep. Like even now, I’m realizing listening to myself that when I’m talking and I know I’m being recorded, I do often try to, to keep it to the lower registers with my voice.\n00:50:20\tEmma Telaro:\tI used to sing. So it brought me back to being like in a recording studio and it brought me back to that moment, like right before record like that, that sort of… The acknowledgement you have in your head of like, “Okay, well now I’m putting on this performative voice.” And that voice felt a little bit similar to my singing voice because I was trying to like, I think extend the words and circle around the letters in a way that I don’t when I’m speaking casually. So it’s also a fake casual voice, I think.\n00:50:51\tJason Camlot:\tYeah. A performed casual voice, which is a big part of the podcasting voice that we often hear. When’s it acceptable to have emotion like in… For a narrator to have emotion or host to have emotion in a podcast? Because I definitely don’t either in my narrations, at least the ones I’ve done so far, it’s been pretty, it’s been pretty much based on like my grade eight radio assignment, you know? I don’t think I’ve progressed very much in thinking about how I’m supposed to sort of project or what a narrator’s really supposed to be. I think I’m trying to be clear. So I totally get what Ali was saying earlier about wanting to enunciate well at the same time to sound casual or conversational so, so that the text I’m reading doesn’t sound like it’s being read. There’s this kind of attempt to, to strike a really impossible or unnatural thing, balance, between reading texts, so sounding like an actual text that’s being read, but being a voice that’s doing that text in a manner that sounds conversational. I think it’s, there’s a lot of that kind of communicating a sense of reception through how one speaks back to what someone said without always saying, “Yes, I understand. Yes, I like what you’re saying.” It’s coming across through these vocal modes of expression instead, in timbre and in, in register in the voice itself. Earlier in this conversation like Ali, when you’re laughing, you know, about yourself and everything like that, that’s all there. And it’s like, “Oh, that sounds like a podcast voice to me, like much more than the formal narrator’s voice that we all seem to sort of slot ourselves into.” Sadie Barker.\n00:52:34\tSadie Barker:\tThat’s true. The podcasters, like I’m thinking of even someone like Ira Glass, kind of walks this line between being kind of well-spoken, but also can kind of respond naturally and with emotion on the spot and how it’s a really fine balance.\n00:52:52\tJason Camlot:\tIf you were to perform a different podcasting voice to sort of give us an example of what your voice might sound like if you were to redo your podcast, having reflected a little bit on the voice that you did use, what would that sound like?\n00:53:06\tSadie Barker:\t“Wake up everyone, it’s 5:45–” no. I think maybe I would just try to adopt the shifts in energy more… Like I think the, the podcast starts with kind of a lower energy, but it does kind of rise. I would reflect maybe more on my own experiences, my own personal reflections, take less of a back position and come to the fore more.\n00:53:32\tJason Camlot:\tWhat about you, Emma? Would your, your voice change, do you think?\n00:53:35\tEmma Telaro:\tThinking about it now, it was a very literary voice I think I was trying to mimic and I think I was also trying to match it with Atwood’s knowing that I would be putting the clips together. Whereas like, if I were talking about pizza, which I’m also super passionate about, it would be a very different voice. And I’m also thinking like Sadie, I wouldn’t want you to lose that like rising, quiet quality, because it’s as much part of the story as is the other speakers or the content. It is like a question of matching tone or timbre to, to content in the same way that we do when we’re writing. It shifts. But there is always something there that, that speaks of the author, right? Whatever that is. I don’t know. I don’t know if that answers the question. I guess it wouldn’t change, it would, it would maybe change. I don’t know, depends what I’d be focusing on this time.\n00:54:24\tAli Barillaro:\tIf I had to respond to this question, I’d say it might sound something like this:\n00:54:31\tAli Barillaro:\t[Audio, Begin Music: Relaxed Instrumental] Sir George’s then-poet-in-residence Irving Layton was no stranger to praise. His final poem of the night received the longest and loudest unedited record of applause found in the entire poetry series collection, [End Music: Relaxed Instrumental] a 40-second auditory event so intense I call it a wall of noise. [Thunderous Applause, Previous Music Returns] In his opening remarks, Layton proudly draws attention to the sizable crowd in front of him. [End Music: Relaxed Instrumental]\n00:54:59\tAudio Recording:\t[Irving Layton] I’m really glad to see so many of my…\n00:55:03\tJason Camlot:\tEmma Telaro\n00:55:03\tEmma Telaro:\tIt seemed that the medium, we were dabbling in, podcasting ,demanded that we concentrate feeling, that it was part of the argument, content, and narrative voice of our podcasting selves. The relational, immersive, and affective experience of sound and of podcasting guided or thematic discussion on feeling. Jason asked us to recall moments from our podcasts that were soaking in affect and to reflect on the achievements and challenges of these. We all thought of Sadie’s very successful rendering of the ambiance of camp and in particular of her campfire clip.\n00:55:36\tSadie Barker:\t[Audio, Overlapping With People Chatting] I sampled the sounds of people jamming and then I sampled sounds of people conversing. I think it was really an attempt to describe the sort of social atmosphere of planting that really… It seemed much more informative to use these small sounds, as opposed to saying, “You know, usually there’s 12 people standing around a fire and there’ll be some people playing instruments.” And I don’t know, it just made me kind of reflect on how the smallest sound can be so telling and so much more telling than kind of a lengthy description. I chose this scene because I thought it really captured the ambiance of camp.\n00:56:16\tEmma Telaro:\tSadie aptly negotiates images through sounds so that we feel like we’re there sitting around the campfire. If Sadie sought to sample atmosphere of camp, I focused on the ambiance of a room. My podcast, in a sense, was about feeling the feeling of heat at the poetry reading event.\n00:56:31\tAudio Recording:\t[Audio, Margaret Atwood] How are you doing? Is it hot and steamy?\n00:56:35\tEmma Telaro:\tThe goal was to transmit a listening experience that centred heat, in listening closely to the room, and from there eased into a discussion of the reading event that preserved its heated texture. The heat felt all-consuming, shares much with Sadie’s rain, calling forth sensations, [Sound Effect: Stormy Rain] images, and memories that are otherwise inaccessible. I’ve never been planting in Northern BC, but I can hear the rain on my tent regardless, just like I had not been present nor alive during the Atwood reading and yet I feel I know that heat from that October night. While Sadie and I focused on the field of our particular subject matter, the sound of camp and of heat, of tree planting and of the poetry reading, Ali asks, what does podcasting itself sound like? Ali, quite brilliantly questions the mood evoked by the genre and sets the tone for the experience of listening to an informational form of communication. What remains consistent across our podcasts and in our discussion of feeling is this focus on our affective relationship to sound. The affordances of the medium seem vast in this regard, how to translate, feeling, affect, how to tell. What rhetorical methods might be used.\n00:57:40\tJason Camlot:\tSadie Barker.\n00:57:41\tSadie Barker:\tOur approach with this podcast was to structure it around thematic discussions, voice, and ambience, too. But now we land at structure itself. How do we bring all of these components together to make one coherent, but also hopefully compelling narrative? Just like the structuring of this very podcast determined through brainstorming, zooming, and certainly some trial and error, our approaches to structure were varied.\n00:58:10\tAudio Recording:\t[Sadie Barker] It was the same feeling of having to fill up a blank page and like, where do you start? Where do you end?\n00:58:15\tAudio Recording:\t[Ali Barillaro] I wanted to start with a statement.\n00:58:16\tAudio Recording:\t[Sadie Barker] I knew I wanted to have the emotional arcs be the primary structure.\n00:58:21\tAudio Recording:\t[Emma Telaro] Like the whole thing to me felt like a collage.\n00:58:23\tAudio Recording:\t[Ali Barillaro] I found it very difficult, found it very hard. I just had a lot to say.\n00:58:27\tSadie Barker:\tBut before we get into any of that, Jason usefully summarizes what exactly we’re talking about when we say “structure” and “rhetoric.”\n00:58:36\tJason Camlot:\tSo when I’m, when I talk about rhetoric, I’m thinking of the handling of different registers so that you create a kind of persistently interesting series of sounds that keeps the listener engaged from start to finish combined with the kind of understanding of a beginning, middle, and end.\n00:58:54\tSadie Barker:\tAnd, as leader of the discussions, he offers some useful soundbites towards structuring this very segment.\n00:59:02\tJason Camlot:\tBut maybe we can each reflect a little bit on the challenges of the overall structure and arrangement of our podcasts.\n00:59:11\tSadie Barker:\tIn doing this reflecting, I started to realize that these categories [Begin Music: Intense Instrumental] of voice, ambiance, and now rhetoric and structure, ones that we’d been discussing somewhat separately, were connected, entirely connected. Feeling and ambiance suddenly seemed integral to how my podcast was constructed. [End Music: Intense Instrumental]\n00:59:29\tAudio Recording:\t[Sadie Barker] In my case, I knew I wanted to have the emotional arcs of the season be the primary structure, but that that was structurally quite ambiguous. And so I had Liam, who is my partner and a planter, describe those emotional arcs in the language that everyone recognizes as the honeymoon and the burnout and the homestretch, just to provide a bit of structure [Begin Music: Intense Instrumental] to the listener that keys the transition, right?\n00:59:56\tSadie Barker:\tBut I also realized that voice and its spectrum of intonation and register was key to the structural shifts themselves.\n01:00:05\tAudio Recording:\t[Sadie Barker] I did really rely on the voices of planters to capture the different emotional registers of those moments. There was an interview with this girl, Zoe, and she was describing a really miserable day on the block. [End Music: Intense Instrumental] And then she kind of goes, “But then I just pick myself up and I start planting” and being really drawn to that “but” because it just captured both in what she was saying, but the intonation, like the shift in register, that really mobilized the next chapter. So it was interesting to think about the content of what people were saying, but then also just how the sound and the way she said that one word cued that we were in a different emotional space.\n01:00:43\tJason Camlot:\tCool. That’s amazing how just a single intonational shift can actually signal, “Okay, new part.” And it shows how much feeling is a determining factor in the segmentation or shaping of argument in podcasting.\n01:00:56\tSadie Barker:\t[Begin Music: Intense Instrumental] And just like with structuring an essay where everyone seems to take a different approach to argument, some brainstorm, others start with the thesis, and others just begin with no particular sense of how, my approach in many ways seem to differ from Ali’s, which was to–\n01:01:13\tAudio Recording:\t[Ali Barillaro]–to start with a statement rather than “applause and the sounds of the audience are important and here’s why.”\n01:01:19\tSadie Barker:\tWhich would then orient listeners to her particular stance on the topic at hand.\n01:01:24\tAudio Recording:\t[Ali Barillaro] Because most research with recordings of poetry readings are focused on the poets for obvious reasons. So I wanted to start out sort of stating that.\n01:01:32\tSadie Barker:\tAnd while Ali didn’t particularly focus on vocal inflections or registers–\n01:01:39\tAudio Recording:\t[Ali Barillaro] I don’t think I was successful in thinking about that. I wasn’t thinking like, “Okay, well, my voice should signal these shifts in the narrative arc.”\n01:01:48\tSadie Barker:\t–she had a strong sense of how the structure of her podcast was mobilized by the complexities of an idea.\n01:01:55\tAudio Recording:\t[Ali Barillaro] The middle section is more about the work that I’ve been doing to figure out how to talk about applause in a way that isn’t just, “Oh, it lasts this many seconds and it’s loud or it’s quiet,” but to come up with terms that are more specific to the qualitative essence of different moments of applause.\n01:02:13\tSadie Barker:\tBut Ali also reflected on how her structure was mobilized through the possibilities of an idea.\n01:02:20\tAudio Recording:\t[Ali Barillaro] And then the ending is sort of where I still am in a way, which is that there’s a lot more [Begin Music: Intense Instrumental] that can be done to develop that further. And there’s a lot of exciting possibilities for tracing performances across even just different days or different years or decades and different locations and, and charting sort of the responses from different audiences in different contexts to the same poet and the same work.\n01:02:46\tSadie Barker:\tSo if my approach was to structure emotively and Ali’s was to structure more theoretically, Emma’s further diversified our set of approaches. Emma ended up taking—at least initially—a structured approach to structure.\n01:03:02\tAudio Recording:\t[Emma Telaro] I resorted to what I know how to do, which is how to write a paper. So I thought about it. I thought to myself, “Okay, what’s going to be my introduction, what’s the body, and then what’s the conclusion?”\n01:03:11\tSadie Barker:\tBut also found in the process that essay and podcast structure have some fundamental differences.\n01:03:18\tAudio Recording:\t[Emma Telaro] Except that it was almost more scary ’cause it was just like, how do I, first of all, put sounds onto this platform and then also make them make sense?\n01:03:25\tSadie Barker:\tAnd that these differences call for different approaches.\n01:03:29\tAudio Recording:\t[Emma Telaro] So I had various clips that I liked. I wrote a script. Then in the end I had all these sound bites or clips that I just needed to assemble into a collage. Like the whole thing to me felt like a collage.\n01:03:38\tSadie Barker:\tAnd that these approaches rely on feeling in different ways.\n01:03:42\tAudio Recording:\t[Emma Telaro] But when you do that there’s not necessarily like a linear structure that you have right away. So it’s also just trusting that the process will reveal itself. I didn’t know how to conclude this in a way that would be engaging and not too formal and not too academics. And that’s when I decided to include the poem “Late August,” which just felt like it needed to be there somewhere. And to end it with that, I think was to go back to like, just to come back to the reading.\n01:04:06\tAudio Recording:\t[Jason Camlot] I love that move at the end of your podcast. And it relates to what we’ve been talking about this whole time because it’s a return to a verbal rendering of a mood. So it’s a way, it’s a return to the poem on the page or language, the actual words themselves, communicating what you’ve been communicating through, through the rhetoric of podcasting with using, you know, sound and mixing and all those other things up to that point. So it’s sort of like a return to text, to print, you know, to the power of poetry and words themselves to do what you’ve been doing up to that point with sound.\n01:04:53\tJason Camlot:\tSo that about sums up the conversations we had based on the amazing podcasts that Ali, Emma, and Sadie made. As you heard, our focus was on the mood that’s created through ambient sounds, the overall rhetoric of the podcast, and how voice carries affective expression of concepts. [End Music: Intense Instrumental] By way of closing, we tried a little experiment. Basically the idea was to choose some classic critical terms like things from M. H. Abrams’s Glossary of Literary Terms, and to read them with feeling, with the feeling that we associate with a critical term in question. So here it goes, our kind of beat poetry performance of the glossary of critical and literary terms where ideas have feelings. [Begin Music: Fast Beat And Jazzy Instrumental]\n01:05:48\tAudio Recording:\t[Multiple Voices] Literature. Literature. Literature. Literature. Literature. Literature. Literature.\n01:05:59\tAudio Recording:\t[Multiple Voices] Focalization. Focalization. Focalization! Focalization. Focalization? Foooocalization. Focalization. Focalization. Focalization.\n01:06:09\tAudio Recording:\t[Multiple Voices] Interpolation! You know, like, “Hey, hey interpolation!” Interpolation! [Laughs] There has to be a finger in there, you know, like, interpolation! Yoo-hoo, interpolation. Interpolation!! Oh, that’s terrifying! [Laughs] Hey! How do you..? Interpolation! Interpolation!\n01:06:45\tAudio Recording:\tHi, my name is Id. Iddddddd!! Id. [Exaggerated Inaudible Words] [End Music: Fast Beat And Jazzy Instrumentals] [Begin Music: Distorted Electronic Beat]\n01:07:30\tHannah McGregor:\tSpokenWeb is a monthly podcast produced by the SpokenWeb team as part of distributing the audio collected from and created using Canadian literary archival recordings found at universities across Canada. Our producers this month are Ali Barillaro, Sadie Barker, Emma Telaro, and Jason Camelot. A special thanks to everyone who contributed to the SpokenWeb Podcast over the last season. You know who you are. And hey, if you are part of the SpokenWeb network and want to get involved, let us know. Season two is just around the corner, so stay tuned this fall for brand new episodes from all your favourite scholars, poets, students, and artists from across Canada. We’ll also be back with brand new Audio of the Month minisodes with Katherine McLeod from deep in the archives. To find out more about SpokenWeb, [Theme Music] visit spokenweb.ca and subscribe to the SpokenWeb Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you may listen. If you love us, let us know. Rate us and leave a comment on Apple Podcasts or say hi on our social media @SpokenWebCanada. We’ll see you back here in the fall for another episode of the SpokenWeb Podcast: stories about how literature sounds.\n\n"],"score":1.0},{"id":"9653","cataloger_name":["Ella,Hooper"],"partnerInstitution":["Concordia University"],"collection_source_collection":["SpokenWeb AV"],"source_collection_label":["SpokenWeb AV"],"collection_contributing_unit":["SpokenWeb"],"source_collection_uri":[""],"collection_image_url":["https://archiveofthepresent.spokenweb.ca/_nuxt/img/header-img_1000.fd7675f.png"],"collection_source_collection_description":["SpokenWeb Audio Visual Collection"],"collection_source_collection_id":["ArchiveOfThePresent"],"persistent_url":["https://archiveofthepresent.spokenweb.ca/"],"item_title":["SpokenWeb Podcast ShortCuts 2.1, Introducing ShortCuts, 19 October 2020, McLeod"],"item_title_source":["SpokenWeb Podcast web page."],"item_title_note":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/introducing-shortcuts/"],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Podcast"],"item_series_title":["The SpokenWeb Podcast"],"item_series_description":["Series of podcasts by the SpokenWeb network."],"item_subseries_title":["The SpokenWeb Podcast ShortCuts"],"item_series_wikidata_url":["https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q117038029"],"item_series_uri":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/spokenweb-podcast/"],"item_identifiers":["[]"],"rights":["Creative Commons Attribution (BY)"],"rights_license":["Creative Commons Attribution (BY)"],"access":["Streaming and download"],"creator_names":["Katherine McLeod"],"creator_names_search":["Katherine McLeod"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/44156495389117561605\",\"name\":\"Katherine McLeod\",\"dates\":\"1981-\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Producer\"]}]"],"contributors":["[]"],"Publication_Date":[2020],"material_description":["[]"],"digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://cdn.simplecast.com/audio/28a9da1f-8cca-410c-b5d7-8165a73f9394/episodes/164da98e-4bd6-41fa-8a64-d4bd8f238820/audio/5b19bf3a-ad35-4448-9807-a46a7ca621f7/default_tc.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"shortcuts-s2e1.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"44.1 kHz\",\"duration\":\"00:06:01\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"5,847,293 bytes\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"MP3 audio\",\"title\":\"shortcuts-s2e1\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/introducing-shortcuts/\"}]"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"2020-10-19\",\"type\":\"Publication Date\",\"notes\":\"\",\"source\":\"\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"venue\":\"Concordia University McConnell Building\",\"notes\":\"\",\"address\":\"1400 Boulevard de Maisonneuve O, Montreal, QC, H3G 1M8\",\"latitude\":\"45.4968036\",\"longitude\":\"-73.57792785757887\"}]"],"Address":["1400 Boulevard de Maisonneuve O, Montreal, QC, H3G 1M8"],"Venue":["Concordia University McConnell Building"],"City":["Montreal, Quebec"],"Note":["[]"],"Related_works":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"– Maxine Gadd with Richard Sommer, reading at the SGW Poetry Series, 18 Feb 1972, featured in ShortCuts 1.2\\n\\n– Daryl Hine, reading at the SGW Poetry Series, 1 Dec 1967,  featured in ShortCuts 1.1\\n\\n– bill bissett, reading on CKVU-TV Vancouver, September 1978, featured in ShortCuts 1.6\\n\\n– Kaie Kellough, reading at The Words and Music Show, 20 Nov 2016, featured in ShortCuts 1.3\\n\\n– Daphne Marlatt, reading at the SGW Poetry Series, featured in ShortCuts 1.5\\n\\n– Gwendolyn MacEwen, reading at the SGW Poetry Series, 18 Nov 1966, featured in ShortCuts 1.7\"}]"],"_version_":1853670549763391489,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:54.290Z","contents":["Welcome to ShortCuts. To kick off the new miniseries season, Katherine invites us into an audio remix of short clips from deep in the archive to consider: what does it mean and what is possible (technologically, phenomenologically, ethically, poetically) to cut and splice digitally? What kinds of new stories and audio-criticism can be produced through these short archival clips? \n\n\n00:00\n \n\nMusic:\t[Piano Overlaid With Distorted Beat]\n00:10\tHannah McGregor:\tWelcome to the SpokenWeb ShortCuts. Each month on alternate fortnights (that’s every second week following the monthly SpokenWeb Podcast episode) join me, Hannah McGregor and our minisode host and curator, Katherine McLeod for SpokenWeb’s ShortCuts mini-series.\n00:28\tHannah McGregor:\tWe’ll share with you specially curated audio clips from deep in the SpokenWeb archives to ask: what does it mean to cut and splice digitally? What kinds of new stories and audio criticism can be produced through these short archival clips? A fresh take on our past minisode series, ShortCuts is an extension [Sound Effect: Wind Chime] of the ShortCuts blog posts on SPOKENWEBLOG. The series brings Katherine’s favorite audio clips each month to the SpokenWeb Podcast feed. So, if you love what you hear, make sure to head over to spokenweb.ca for more [End Music: Instrumental Electronic] Without further ado, here’s Katherine McLeod with episode one of SpokenWeb ShortCuts, mini stories about how literature sounds.\n01:11\tTheme Music:\t[Instrumental Overlapped With Feminine Vocals]\n01:12\tKatherine McLeod:\tWelcome to ShortCuts. These minisodes take you on a deep dive into the sounds of the SpokenWeb archives. And this season we’re going to be exploring even more audio collections across SpokenWeb’s network. So we’re headed into audio archives and we’re taking a shortcut. We’re getting there quicker through a ‘short cut’. A cut. [Sound Effect: Scissors] Or a clipped piece of audio. Usually around two to three minutes in length. Sometimes it’ll be a poem or sometimes the social noises around a reading that tell you about what it was like to be there.\n01:59\tAudio Recording, Maxine Gadd with Richard Sommer:\tUm, well, okay. Do you want to — oh, do you want to try it? Try improvising to, um, to, to, to, to a trip that’s here. I’ll let you read it. You seriously want to do that? Yeah, it’s just going to be some sounds.\n02:09\tKatherine McLeod:\tThat was poet Maxine Gadd speaking with Richard Sommer about an improvisation with poem and flute that they then performed.\n02:17\tAudio Recording, Maxine Gadd with Richard Sommer:\tYeah. Are we on? Sorry. Go ahead.\n02:19\tKatherine McLeod:\tIt was a clip featured in Minisode 1.2 from our first season.\n02:24\tAudio Recording, Maxine Gadd with Richard Sommer:\tWhat? The flute. I think it’s over there. Rich is going to make some, some noise with my flute. I’ll make some noise at the beginning of microphone. Okay. Which one you want?\n02:32\tKatherine McLeod:\tShortCuts brings you sounds out of the archives and into your ears. And what will you do with those sounds next? What you do with sound is one way of making scholarly criticism about sound. What do I mean by that? Well, let’s hear what ‘short cuts’ from last season sounded like. And let’s hear them spliced together. Spliced together. In this remix of highlights from last season, you’ll hear a sonic version of an introduction to ShortCuts.\n03:07\tAudio Recording, Daryl Hine:\tWell I also —this year or was it last —returned to my place of origin, British Columbia.\n03:20\tAudio Recording, bill bissett:\tThe wonderfulness of the Mounties, our secret police. They open our mail. Petulantly, they burned down barns they can’t bug. They listen to our political leaders phone conversations. What could be less inspiring to over hear? [Crowd Laughs]. They had me down on the floor till I turned purple. Then my friends pulled them off me. They think breastfeeding is disgusting.\n03:44\tAudio Recording, Kaie Kellogg:\t[Overlapping Audio Begins] [inaudible] All of the, all of the seeped down century from slavery. Appearances to the contrary that had appeared in a far flung summer of empire. The idea of the slum above it, that born yesterday or at 12 pack of empties. That born yesterday was finished or a bubble in that seat. [inaudible] archived by teenage brain wave of autobiography. A wave of conservatism has crashed. Oldsmobile cutlass supreme.\n04:42\tAudio Recording, Daphne Marlatt:\tOn the corner, there half indecisive tarnish of atrophied atheists, one, a house sign, a place to enter. Where I make tea, your lips on the future caught. So, you could read me.\n04:59\tAudio Recording, Gwendolyn MacEwen:\tThis is a poem, which oddly enough, came out in a Mexican magazine in Spanish not too long ago looking completely unrecognizable, to me. It’s called “I should have predicted.”\n05:18\tKatherine McLeod:\t[Begin Music: Instrumental Electronic] That remix was a series of short clips from our first season of these minisodes. Who are you listening to? Try to guess! Or head to spokenweb.ca to find out. Share which sound caught your attention by tweeting with the hashtag #spokenwebpod. I’m Katherine McLeod. And these minisodes are produced by myself, hosted by Hannah McGregor and mixed and mastered by Stacey Copeland. And a big shout out to Manami Izawa who designed the beautiful logo on the minisodes new web space. Tune in next month for another deep dive into the sounds of the SpokenWeb archives. [End Music: Instrumental Electronic]"],"score":1.0},{"id":"9654","cataloger_name":["Ella,Hooper"],"partnerInstitution":["Concordia University"],"collection_source_collection":["SpokenWeb AV"],"source_collection_label":["SpokenWeb AV"],"collection_contributing_unit":["SpokenWeb"],"source_collection_uri":[""],"collection_image_url":["https://archiveofthepresent.spokenweb.ca/_nuxt/img/header-img_1000.fd7675f.png"],"collection_source_collection_description":["SpokenWeb Audio Visual Collection"],"collection_source_collection_id":["ArchiveOfThePresent"],"persistent_url":["https://archiveofthepresent.spokenweb.ca/"],"item_title":["SpokenWeb Podcast ShortCuts 2.2, The Poem Among Us, 16 November 2020, McLeod"],"item_title_source":["SpokenWeb Podcast web page."],"item_title_note":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/the-poem-among-us/"],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Podcast"],"item_series_title":["The SpokenWeb Podcast"],"item_series_description":["Series of podcasts by the SpokenWeb network."],"item_subseries_title":["The SpokenWeb Podcast ShortCuts"],"item_series_wikidata_url":["https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q117038029"],"item_series_uri":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/spokenweb-podcast/"],"item_identifiers":["[]"],"rights":["Creative Commons Attribution (BY)"],"rights_license":["Creative Commons Attribution (BY)"],"access":["Streaming and download"],"creator_names":["Katherine McLeod"],"creator_names_search":["Katherine McLeod"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/44156495389117561605\",\"name\":\"Katherine McLeod\",\"dates\":\"1981-\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Producer\"]}]"],"contributors":["[]"],"Publication_Date":[2020],"material_description":["[]"],"digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://cdn.simplecast.com/audio/28a9da1f-8cca-410c-b5d7-8165a73f9394/episodes/7a7388b9-3da3-43e8-9875-942a1b0b9b15/audio/2344e96b-cb76-4795-a9cb-3ef9f26d7aa9/default_tc.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"s2ep2-the-poem-among-us.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"44.1 kHz\",\"duration\":\"00:09:27\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"9,144,155 bytes\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"MP3 audio\",\"title\":\"s2ep2-the-poem-among-us\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/the-poem-among-us/\"}]"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"2020-11-16\",\"type\":\"Publication Date\",\"notes\":\"\",\"source\":\"\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"venue\":\"Concordia University McConnell Building\",\"notes\":\"\",\"address\":\"1400 Boulevard de Maisonneuve O, Montreal, QC, H3G 1M8\",\"latitude\":\"45.4968036\",\"longitude\":\"-73.57792785757887\"}]"],"Address":["1400 Boulevard de Maisonneuve O, Montreal, QC, H3G 1M8"],"Venue":["Concordia University McConnell Building"],"City":["Montreal, Quebec"],"Note":["[]"],"Related_works":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"Malcolm, Jane. “The Poem Among Us, Between Us, There: Muriel Rukeyser’s Meta-Poetics and the Communal Soundscape.” Amodern 4: The Poetry Series (March 2015), http://amodern.net/article/poem-among-us/\"}]"],"_version_":1853670549764440064,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:54.290Z","contents":["This month’s ShortCut is an archival recording which transports us into the feeling of being at a live poetry reading. A feeling we are craving (right now in November 2020) as the covid-19 pandemic and social distancing continue. What is it that we are really missing about the live listening experience? The poetry? The poet? The anticipation of the event? The hum of the room?\n\nThe audio for this ShortCuts minisode is cut from the introductory remarks made by Muriel Rukeyser at her reading in Montreal on January 24, 1969: https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/muriel-rukeyser-at-sgwu-1969\n\n00:00      Music:\t[Piano Overlaid With Distorted Beat]\n00:10\tHannah McGregor:\tWelcome to the SpokenWeb ShortCuts. Each month on alternate fortnights (that’s every second week following the monthly SpokenWeb Podcast episode) join me, Hannah McGregor and our minisode host and curator, Katherine McLeod for SpokenWeb’s ShortCuts mini-series.\n00:25\tHannah McGregor:\tWe’ll share with you specially curated audio clips from deep in the SpokenWeb archives to ask: what does it mean to cut and splice digitally? What kinds of new stories and audio criticism can be produced through these short archival clips? An extension of the ShortCuts blog posts [Sound Effect: Wind Chime] on SpokenWeb blog, this series brings Katherine’s favorite audio clips each month to the SpokenWeb Podcast feed. So if you love what you hear, make sure to head over to spokenweb.ca for more. [End Music: Instrumental Electronic] Without further ado, here is Katherine McLeod with SpokenWeb ShortCuts: mini stories about how literature sounds.\n \n\n01:12\tTheme Music:\t[Instrumental Overlapped With Feminine Vocals]\n \n\n01:19\tKatherine McLeod:\tWelcome to ShortCuts: short stories about how literature sounds. Our shortcut this month is an archival recording that manages to transport us into the feeling of being at a live poetry reading.\n \n\n01:34\tAudio Recording, Muriel Rukeyser Reading [Unknown Speaker] :\n \n\nI now introduce Muriel Rukeyser [Applause].\n \n\n01:44\tKatherine McLeod:\tThis is a feeling that many of us are craving right now in November 2020 as the pandemic and social distancing continue. To be in a crowded room listening to poetry. [ Audio Recording of Muriel Rukeyser Begins] But what is it that we are really missing about that experience? The poetry? The poet? The anticipation of the event? The shared experience of attending? The hum of the room? The unknown? Poet Muriel Rukeyser puts it beautifully and inquisitively when she says that we go to poetry readings —\n \n\n02:22\tAudio Recording, Muriel Rukeyser:\tAll right. It’s partly out of curiosity and looking at the person and I go to see what is that breathing behind? What is that heartbeat? The breathing goes against the heartbeat on these rhythms is set up and the involuntary muscles and you see the person do it. But beyond that, something is shared —\n \n\n02:44\tKatherine McLeod:\tAs you can hear, she is creating this thought there as she is speaking.\n \n\n02:48\tAudio Recording, Muriel Rukeyser:\t— something is arrived at. Come to something with almost unmediated. That is the poem among us, between us, there. We are reaching each other.\n \n\n03:06\tKatherine McLeod:\tWhat makes these words even more contingent upon their situated utterance is that she’s saying all of this at the very start of a reading, one that she gave in Montreal on January 24th, 1969. Imagine attending a poetry reading and the poet starts by delivering a long and seemingly improvised reflection upon why we go to poetry readings at all.\n \n\n03:29\tAudio Recording, Muriel Rukeyser:\tAs you get a very, very rainy evening, why do people come and listen to poems where you’ve got some marvelous summer night? Why do people come and listen to poems?\n \n\n03:39\tKatherine McLeod:\tAnd then she asks us to think about what we are listening to at a reading. Rukeyser suggests that we are listening to the poem there in that moment. And Rukeyser makes this argument in a manner in which we cannot ignore it’s unfolding in time in that moment. “Something is what we call shared. Something is arrived at.” There. How do we get there? Rukeyser takes us there with a question: how many of you —\n \n\n04:11\tAudio Recording, Muriel Rukeyser:\tHow many of you here has ever written a poem? What’d you put up your hands, please. Thank you. I’m always nervous before I asked the question. I asked the question now in all rooms, no matter how few or many people there are, and if they’re universities I generally look around to see whether the basketball team is there. But there’s always the moment of silence and looking around first. And then generally quite slowly, almost all the hands go up. Maybe four or five, do not put up the hands. And if I wait around afterwards and with any luck and favourable wins, the four or five people come up to me and will say something like, “I was 15. It was a love poem. It stank.” [Audience Laughter].\n05:12\tAudio Recording, Muriel Rukeyser:\tBut the thing is, it’s a human activity. We all do it. We lie about it, you know, and they lie about it to us. And the fact is we all write poems. It is something we do. We come to this part of experience as you get a very, very rainy evening. Why do people come and listen to poems? Well, you got some marvelous summer night. Why do people come and listen to poems? All right. It’s partly out of curiosity and looking at the person. And I go to see what is that breathing behind? What is that heartbeat? The breathing goes against the heartbeat and these rhythms is set up and the involuntary muscles and you see the person do it. But beyond that, something is what we call shared. Something is arrived at. We come to something with almost unmediated. That is the poem among us, between us, there, we reaching each other. You giving me whatever silence you are giving me. And it comes to me with great strength, your silence.\n \n\n06:36\tKatherine McLeod:\tWe are reaching each other. You are giving me whatever silence you are giving me. And it comes to me with great strength, your silence. With these words, Rukeyser helps us understand what we’re missing in virtual readings. How can the audience give silence to the reader? Muting oneself is hardly the same.\n \n\n07:04\tAudio Recording, Muriel Rukeyser:\tSo there’s mediation. It is not a description. It is not only the music and it —although certainly the reinforcement of sound. The sound climbing up and finally reaching a place. The last word. The sound that begins with the first breathing. The breath of the title. Keats doing “Ode to a Nightingale”. We hardly ever say “ode”. Nobody says “nightingale”. But Keats having said that, never has to say it again. It’s a bird. If you find it in these things, but from the beginning, from the first moment, that is the first breath. The thing that is made of. Suggestion, breath, what my life has been, whatever that is, what’s your lives have been. Is a very short one closed song.\n \n\n08:08\tKatherine McLeod:\tWhen creating spaces for poetry to be shared now, how can we safely create a space for the poem to be a suggestion, breath, what my life has been, whatever that, what your lives have been? And well Rukeyser’s words are particularly relevant for our current times, her opening statement also helps us understand what we are listening to whenever we’re listening to an archival recording. One that is far removed from the event itself. Following Rukeyser’s line of thought, in archival listening, we listen to a relationality unfolding creating space for the poem to be among us, between us, there.\n \n\n08:58\tKatherine McLeod:\t[Begin Music: Instrumental Electronic] I’m Katherine MacLeod and these minisodes are produced by myself, hosted by Hannah McGregor and mixed and mastered by Stacey Copeland. Tune in next month for another deep dive into the sounds of the SpokenWeb archives. [End Music: Instrumental Electronic]"],"score":1.0},{"id":"9655","cataloger_name":["Ella,Hooper"],"partnerInstitution":["Concordia University"],"collection_source_collection":["SpokenWeb AV"],"source_collection_label":["SpokenWeb AV"],"collection_contributing_unit":["SpokenWeb"],"source_collection_uri":[""],"collection_image_url":["https://archiveofthepresent.spokenweb.ca/_nuxt/img/header-img_1000.fd7675f.png"],"collection_source_collection_description":["SpokenWeb Audio Visual Collection"],"collection_source_collection_id":["ArchiveOfThePresent"],"persistent_url":["https://archiveofthepresent.spokenweb.ca/"],"item_title":["SpokenWeb Podcast ShortCuts 2.3, Audible Time, 21 December 2020, McLeod"],"item_title_source":["SpokenWeb Podcast web page."],"item_title_note":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/audible-time/"],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Podcast"],"item_series_title":["The SpokenWeb Podcast"],"item_series_description":["Series of podcasts by the SpokenWeb network."],"item_subseries_title":["The SpokenWeb Podcast ShortCuts"],"item_series_wikidata_url":["https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q117038029"],"item_series_uri":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/spokenweb-podcast/"],"item_identifiers":["[]"],"rights":["Creative Commons Attribution (BY)"],"rights_license":["Creative Commons Attribution (BY)"],"access":["Streaming and download"],"creator_names":["Katherine McLeod"],"creator_names_search":["Katherine McLeod"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/44156495389117561605\",\"name\":\"Katherine McLeod\",\"dates\":\"1981-\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Producer\"]}]"],"contributors":["[]"],"Publication_Date":[2020],"material_description":["[]"],"digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://cdn.simplecast.com/audio/28a9da1f-8cca-410c-b5d7-8165a73f9394/episodes/896a5664-84c6-47d0-8fb6-b8d0b6d6726a/audio/4a72e0c1-e6fc-4fd5-acb5-c4919e45f777/default_tc.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"minisode-s2e3-time.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"44.1 kHz\",\"duration\":\"00:09:11\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"8,818,239 bytes\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"MP3 audio\",\"title\":\"minisode-s2e3-time\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/audible-time/\"}]"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"2020-12-21\",\"type\":\"Publication Date\",\"notes\":\"\",\"source\":\"\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"venue\":\"Concordia University McConnell Building\",\"notes\":\"\",\"address\":\"1400 Boulevard de Maisonneuve O, Montreal, QC, H3G 1M8\",\"latitude\":\"45.4968036\",\"longitude\":\"-73.57792785757887\"}]"],"Address":["1400 Boulevard de Maisonneuve O, Montreal, QC, H3G 1M8"],"Venue":["Concordia University McConnell Building"],"City":["Montreal, Quebec"],"Note":["[]"],"Related_works":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"Berrigan, Ted. [Recording] Sir George Williams Poetry Series, Montreal, 4 Dec 1970, https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/ted-berrigan-at-sgwu-1970/\\n\\nHine, Daryl. [Recording] Sir George Williams Poetry Series, Montreal, 1 Dec 1967, https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/daryl-hine-at-sgwu-1967/\\n\\nHindmarch, Gladys. [Recording] Sir George Williams Poetry Series, Montreal, 21 Nov 1969, https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/gladys-hindmarch-at-sgwu-1969/\\n\\nSimic, Charles. [Recording] Sir George Williams Poetry Series, Montreal, 19 Nov 1971, \\n\\nhttps://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/charles-simic-at-sgwu-1971/#2\\n\\nWright, James. [Recording] Sir George Williams Poetry Series, Montreal, 13 December 1968, https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/james-wright-at-sgwu-1968/\"}]"],"_version_":1853670549765488640,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:54.290Z","contents":["In trying to listen for time, this ShortCuts minisode listens for the New Year in SpokenWeb’s audio collections. What hopes do audiences have for the new year? And how do archival recordings help us understand our affective relation to time in our present moment?\n\nThe audio for this ShortCuts minisode is cut from recordings of the Sir George Williams Poetry Series, all available to listen to here: https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/ and listed individually below. \n\nShortCuts minisodes are developed from ShortCuts blog posts on SPOKENWEBLOG and the post that inspired this one is here.\n\n\n00:00      Music:\t[Piano Overlaid With Distorted Beat]\n00:10\tHannah McGregor:\tWelcome to the SpokenWeb ShortCuts. Each month on alternate fortnights (that’s every second week following the monthly SpokenWeb Podcast episode) join me, Hannah McGregor and our minisode host and curator, Katherine McLeod for SpokenWeb’s ShortCuts mini-series.\n00:28\tHannah McGregor:\tWe’ll share with you specially curated audio clips from deep in the SpokenWeb archives to ask: what does it mean to cut and splice digitally? What kinds of new stories and audio criticism can be produced through these short archival clips? An extension of the ShortCuts blog posts [Sound Effect: Wind Chime] on SPOKENWEBLOG, this series brings Katherine’s favourite audio clips each month to the SpokenWeb Podcast feed. So, if you love what you hear, make sure to head over to spokenweb.ca for more. Without further ado, here is Katherine McLeod with SpokenWeb ShortCuts, mini stories about how literature sounds.\n01:12\tSpokenWeb Podcast Theme Music:\t[Instrumental Overlapped With Feminine Vocals]\n \n\n01:18\tKatherine McLeod:\tHow can you hear time? When listening to a recording? Can you be listening for time? In a set of recordings of a reading series, such as the Sir George Williams Poetry Series, there’s an audible marking of time whenever a host of a December reading mentions that the next reading will take place in January. The new year. What hopes did the audience have for the new year? How do these archival recordings help us understand hope in our present moment?\n \n\n01:53\tAudio Recording, Daryl Hine, Sir George Williams Poetry Series, Montreal, 1 December 1967:\tI negotiate the steps of paradise leaping to measures that I cannot hear. Thank you. [Applause]. [Announcer] I want to thank Mr. Hine and also announce that the next reading is on January 26 by the American poet, John Logan.\n \n\n02:33\tKatherine McLeod:\tThat was a clip of the end of Daryl Hine, reading “The Trout” in December, 1967. What was the audience thinking? And what did they imagine for January, 1968? What did Hine imagine? What if these were the last words of poetry that he read out loud in front of an audience in 1967? The words suddenly feel weightier when thinking of them in that way, a feeling that I would argue we can hear in another reading that ends up being the last one of 1968 in the Sir George Williams Series. It’s a reading by James Wright on December 13th, 1968.\n \n\n03:14\tAudio Recording, James Wright, Sir George Williams Poetry Series, Montreal, 13 December 1968:\tSuddenly I realize that if I stepped out of my body, I would break into blossom. Thank you. [Applause] [Announcer]I just like to express all our thanks to James Wright for sharing his poetry and his curses and blessings with us tonight and to remind you that the next reading in the series is by Muriel Rukeyser on Friday, January 24th. Goodnight.\n03:57\tKatherine McLeod:\tWhat did the audience hear when they heard —\n \n\n04:01\tAudio Recording, James Wright, Sir George Williams Poetry Series, Montreal, 13 December 1968:\n \n\nSuddenly I realized that if I stepped out of my body, I would break into blossom.\n04:08\tKatherine McLeod:\t—? What hopes did they have for 1969 as they listened? 1969. The last reading of that year in the Sir George William Series was introduced by George Bowering and the anticipation of the new year comes up right at the start.\n \n\n04:23\tAudio Recording, George Bowering (introducing Gladys Hindmarch):\tAnother Vancouver night in the series. This will be, this is a final reading of the fall series and will be picked up again in January. And as you know, from the propaganda sheets, or presenting what I consider to be the center of the Vancouver writing scene. Gladys Hindmarch has been in that scene for 10 years and was associated with all those, with those people who’ve got all kinds of names over the last few years such as the West Coast movement and the Tish movement and the New Wave Canada and that sort of business…\n \n\n05:08\tKatherine McLeod:\tBy the way, Bowering and Hindmarch read together virtually on December 16th, 2020. I mentioned that to mark time here in this minisode. Back to the archive:1970. Let’s see how this year ends in poetry, or at least in the Sir George Williams Poetry Series. The reading by Ted Berrigan on December 4th, 1970 is cut off so we don’t know if it ended with an announcement about the next reading. But it did end with Berrigan reading this poem. These are the last words heard in this last reading of 1970. It is the end of a poem called “People Who Died.”\n \n\n05:50\tAudio Recording, Ted Berrigan, Sir George Williams Poetry Series, Montreal, 4 December 1970:\tKilled by smoke poisoning while playing the flute at the Yonkers Children’s Hospital during a fire set by a 16 old arsonist/ 1965. Frank. Frank O’Hara hit by a car on Fire Island/1966, Woody Guthrie, dead of Huntington’s Chorea/ In 1968. Neil. Neil Cassidy died of exposure sleeping all night in the rain by the railroad tracks of Mexico/ 1969.Franny Winston, just a girl totaled her car on the Detroit Ann Arbor freeway returning from the dentist / September, 1969. Jack. Jack Kerouac died of drink and angry sicknesses in 1969/ My friends whose deaths have slowed my heart stay with me now. [Applause].\n \n\n06:55\tKatherine McLeod:\tWe are listening to what it felt like to hear those words in 1970, and to feel those deaths as recent. We are hearing time and what it felt like to feel in that time. In the Berrigan poem, that feeling is one of loss, a feeling that so often counters a feeling of anticipation. We hear that anticipation in my last example, the end of a reading by Charles Simic in 1971.\n \n\n07:26\tAudio Recording, Charles Simic, Sir George Williams Poetry Series, Montreal, 19 November 1971:\tThe greatest mistake. The words I allow it to be written when I should have shouted her name. Thank you. [Applause]. [Announcer] The next reading will be on January 14th – Dorothy Livesay will read at that time.\n \n\n07:52\tKatherine McLeod:\tIf I were in the audience in 1971, I would be looking forward to that reading by Dorothy Livesay in 1972. Listening for time in the archives reveals moments such as these. Ones in which hope is audible. That listening is something we can learn from as we anticipate a new year. We don’t know what is ahead. And, even as I speak these words now – recording them under my blanket fort at home – I hope they will be heard. [Music Begins: Piano Overlaid With Distorted Beat] Though, in what context I do not know right now, I play the role of the host in these archival recordings by marking time here and now, and by imagining a future time. In the role of the archival listener, I also know how it feels to hear a future time imagined as hopeful. It’s a powerful feeling to look forward to something, to share that feeling, and to listen back, hearing people looking forward to something. Thanks for listening and here’s to more listening together in 2021."],"score":1.0},{"id":"9587","cataloger_name":["Gloriah,Onyango"],"partnerInstitution":["Concordia University"],"collection_source_collection":["SpokenWeb AV"],"source_collection_label":["SpokenWeb AV"],"collection_contributing_unit":["SpokenWeb"],"source_collection_uri":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/spokenweb-podcast/"],"collection_image_url":["https://archiveofthepresent.spokenweb.ca/_nuxt/img/header-img_1000.fd7675f.png"],"collection_source_collection_description":["SpokenWeb Audio Visual Collection"],"collection_source_collection_id":["ArchiveOfThePresent"],"persistent_url":["https://archiveofthepresent.spokenweb.ca/"],"item_title":["SpokenWeb Podcast S1E8, How are we listening, now? 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A Voice and Nothing More. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006.\\n\\nLabelle, Brandon.  “Auditory Relations.”  In Background Noise: Perspectives on Sound Art.  New York: Continuum, ix-xvi.\\n\\nPeters, John Durham.  Speaking Into the Air: A History of the Idea of Communication. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999\\n\\nPetriglieri, Gianpiero.  Twitter Post. April 3, 2020, 7:43 PM. https://twitter.com/gpetriglieri/status/1246221849018720256\\n\\nRowling, J.K. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.  London, UK: Bloomsbury, 2014.\\n\\nSchafer, R. Murray.  The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of the World.  Rochester, VT: Destiny Books, 1994.\\n\\n“Sounds from the global Covid-19 lockdown.” Cities and Memory. https://citiesandmemory.com/covid19-sounds/\\n\\nPoetry Recordings\\n\\nAntin, David.  “The Principle of Fit, II” (Part I). 26.:32. June 1980. Recording at the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington D.C. PennSound. https://media.sas.upenn.edu/pennsound/authors/Antin/Antin-David_The-Principle-of-Fit-II-Side-A_DC_06-80.mp3\\n\\nCox, Alexei Perry. Poems from Finding Places to Make Places. 42:39. The Words & Music Show, March 22, 2020.\\n\\nColeman, Nisha. “The Church of Harvey Christ.” 40:53. The Words & Music Show, March, 22 2020.\\n\\nPlath, Sylvia. “Daddy.” Originally released on The Poet Speaks, Record 5, Argo, 1965. YouTube audio. 3:56. Posted December 29, 2006. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hHjctqSBwM\\n\"}]"],"_version_":1853670549767585792,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:54.290Z","contents":["Since mid-March 2020 most people across the world have been adhering to protocols of social distancing and self-isolation due to the global COVID-19 pandemic. We are living a historical period of major global and local disruption to work, social life, home life, and major new parameters around what we can do, who we can see, what we can hear, and how we listen. In this episode, co-producers Jason Camlot and Katherine McLeod explore how our contexts and practices of listening to voice, signals, noise, and silence have changed during the first weeks of the public health emergency of COVID-19.\n\nJason asks his literature and sound studies class at Concordia (via Zoom teleconferencing) how their listening practices have changed, and it just so happens to be the same day they are also discussing the importance of in-person performance before a live audience in the talk poetry of David Antin. Meanwhile, Katherine is noticing that many live poetry readings are now moving online. How are we listening to the world around us, and to each other, now? How are we listening to poetry readings now? And what does our choice of what we are listening to tell us about how we are feeling? As Katherine and Jason explore these questions together – in recorded, remote conversations – they notice that our shared experience of social isolation seems to have us craving the comforting sounds of noise around the signal.\n\n00:00:06\tTheme Music:\t[Instrumental Overlapped With Feminine Voice] Can you hear me? I don’t know how much projection to do.\n00:00:18\tHannah McGregor:\tWhat does literature sound like? What stories will we hear if we listen to the archive? Welcome to the SpokenWeb Podcast: stories about how literature sounds. My name is Hannah McGregor and each month I’ll be bringing you different stories of Canadian literary history and our contemporary responses to it created by scholars, poets, students, and artists from across Canada. From quieted city streets once filled with the hum of commuter traffic to seven o’clock cheers for essential workers to compressed audio on your latest Zoom call, the soundscape around us is changing. Since mid-March 2020 most people across the world have been adhering to protocols of social distancing and self-isolation due to the global COVID-19 pandemic. We are living a historical period of major global and local disruption to work, social life, home life, and major new parameters around what we can do, who we can see, what we can hear, and how we listen. This month on the SpokenWeb Podcast, we invite you to listen in close to the changing soundscape that connects us all.\n00:01:37\tHannah McGregor:\tWe join episode co-producers Jason Camlot and Katherine McLeod as they explore how our context and practices of listening to voice, signals, noise, and silence have changed during the first weeks of the public health emergency of COVID-19. With work meetings, in-person poetry performances, dinner parties, and more moving online, our shared experience of social isolation seems to have us craving the comforting sounds of noise around the signal. It has us asking: how are we listening to the world around us and to each other, now? How are we listening to poetry readings, now? And what does our choice of what we are listening to tell us about how we are feeling? To explore these questions together, here are Katherine and Jason with episode eight of the SpokenWeb Podcast: “How are we listening, now? Signal, Noise, Silence.” [Theme Music]\n00:02:39\tOana Avasilichioaei:\tCan you hear me?\n00:02:40\tKlara du Plessis:\tYes.\n00:02:41\tOana Avasilichioaei:\tAlright.\n00:02:43\tAudio Recording:\t[Sound Effect: Zoom Teleconferencing Chimes] [Audio, a robotic voice.] To normal. To normal. To normal. Public health. [Sound Effect: Wind Chimes] [Begin Music: Instrumental Piano] [Past Recordings Played One After Another]\n00:02:45\tJason Camlot:\tUh…\n00:02:49\tOana Avasilichioaei:\tHello.\nKlara du Plessis:\t\n00:02:49\tJason Camlot:\tShould be able to hear you…Oh. I think I have it on.\n00:02:54\tAudio Recording of Justin Trudeau:\t\n00:02:56\tOana Avasilichioaei:\tSo K     lara says she can hear me.\n00:02:58\tJason Camlot:\tYeah, I can hear you.\n00:02:59\tOana Avasilichioaei:\tOkay, good.\n00:03:00\tAudio Recording of Justin Trudeau:\t     Stay home. Keep at least two metres from each other.\n00:03:04\tAlexei Perry Cox:\t[Baby cooing in the background] My lover believed there had to be a point at which reality, perfect incongruence  , would get through to humankind.\n00:03:12\tIsabella Wang:\tOh my gosh, you read one of my favourite poems.\n00:03:14\tKatherine McLeod:\tYeah, I’m just going to pause ’cause my internet just said something about, I think we got a little off sync — [End Music: Instrumental Piano]\n00:03:19\tJason Camlot:\t[Begin Music: Slightly Distorted Synthetic Drum and Piano Instrumental] Yeah, you just froze, you just froze there … [Overlapping Voices]\n00:03:19\tAudio Recording of Justin Trudeau:\tFrom each other. From each other. Stay home from each other.\n00:03:26\tKlara du Plessis:\tBut what I’ve been noticing is that I don’t wanna be listening to things and I’ve been feeling mostly overwhelmed.\n00:03:26\tDeanna Radford:\tThere we go. Can you hear me?\n00:03:45\tNaomi Charron:\t[Glasses Clinking] I love tarte tatin. I love tarte tatin.\n00:03:45\tHeather Pepper:\tWe’re gonna do it tomorrow. No, tonight!\n00:03:45\tVarious Voices:\t[Overlapping, Distorted and Breaking Up] Is it almost bedtime? Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Where’d they go? There was a certain fit. [End Music: Slightly Distorted Synthetic Drum and Piano Instrumental] [Sound Effect: Wind Chimes] [Begin Music: Instrumental Piano]\nA kind of adjusted togetherness.\nVarious Voices:\tJason     s frozen. Side by side. Side side side. …For me,      hearing voice      has really been more important, in this moment. [End Music: Instrumental Piano]\n00:04:14\tJason Camlot:\tThursday, March the 12th: that was the last time that I had an in-person conversation in close proximity with someone other than my wife or two teenage children or one of our two little dogs. That was my last 40-plus weight training class. It was sparsely attended, but still there were eight of us there plus our instructor, Lisa Marie. We elbow-pumped instead of high-fiving when the workout was done. We already knew we had to be careful. The next day, the Quebec government adopted an order of council declaring a health emergency throughout the province due to the COVID-19 pandemic and, like millions of people across the globe, we’ve been in a substantial lockdown, at home, ever since. Major global and local disruption to work, social life, home life, and major new parameters around what we can do, who we can see, what we hear. Among the many disruptions, much of my and everyone else’s daily communication has moved online. Our 40-plus weight training instructor, Lisa Marie, adapted quickly, started a YouTube channel, and has been posting daily workouts every day.\n00:05:22\tAudio Recording:\t[Audio, from Lisa Marie’s workout video] Hello again. So this is going to be day one of the home workout.\n00:05:26\tJason Camlot:\tConcordia University where I work mobilized pretty quickly with efforts to support all faculty members so that we can complete the teaching of our courses online using Moodle chat rooms and Zoom teleconferencing software. It was during the week of March 16th, the first week that the university shut down as I was preparing to move my literature and sound studies graduate seminar online with a class on the poet David Antin, that I began to talk through FaceTime and Zoom with my colleague Katherine McLeod–\n00:05:57\tKatherine McLeod:\tHi, it’s Katherine here.\n00:05:58\tJason Camlot:\t–on what we were experiencing and what it meant for how we are listening now.\n00:06:09\tMusic:\t[Dreamy Instrumental]\n00:06:10\tKatherine McLeod:\tMy own thinking about questions of how we are listening now came from noticing that some of the poetry reading events that had been scheduled for the spring were starting to move online in different ways. Since 2016, I’ve been publishing a weekly listing of mostly Montreal literary events and readings called Where Poets Read. The last event listed in Where Poets Read that took place in person was on March 9th. It was Épiques Voices, a bilingual poetry reading, an event that I actually co-hosted myself with Catherine Cormier-Larose and little did we know that it would be the last one for a while. After that, readings that had been planned as book launches, at local bookstores like Drawn & Quarterly, VERSeFest in Ottawa, the Montreal Review of Books spring launch, and an Atwater library poetry reading were all cancelled. Meanwhile, reading series organizers were quickly thinking of ways to move readings online. Individual writers started posting themselves reading in YouTube videos or on Instagram Live posts, but within the first days of everything changing, rob mcLennan in Ottawa, Isabella Wang in Vancouver, and Ian Ferrier in Montreal were experimenting with moving entire reading series events online. Instead of the usual posts on Where Poets Read, I started posting links to live streams of readings and I started to wonder how are we listening to poetry readings now, now that we can’t go out to listen to them in person, together?\n00:07:56\tJason Camlot:\tRight, so we’re both thinking about how we’re listening now under the present circumstances of social distancing and self-isolation, and thinking about our new experiences and practices of listening, especially within a range of literary contexts, including reading literature silently at home, teaching and discussing literature in the classroom, and performing literature on a stage at a poetry reading. So let’s turn to our first real conversation about these questions that we held on Zoom on March 26th, 2020, a little more than a week after the government-mandated lockdown and soon after I taught my first virtual class on the work of talk poet David Antin.\n00:08:40\tJason Camlot:\t[Sound Effect: Zoom Teleconferencing Chimes] Hello?\n00:08:42\tKatherine McLeod:\tHello, can you hear me?\n00:08:44\tJason Camlot:\tYeah, hi Katherine.\n00:08:46\tKatherine McLeod:\tHi.\n00:08:47\tJason Camlot:\tWait, let me turn my video on. Where are you, in your kitchen?\n00:08:54\tKatherine McLeod:\tNo, actually I’m in my office room.\n00:09:02\tJason Camlot:\tHow’re you doing?\n00:09:04\tKatherine McLeod:\tI’m good, given the situation. But yeah, today felt definitely more like a challenge to get started. Yeah, just… It took more energy to get going.\n00:09:23\tJason Camlot:\tYeah, me too. I had a terrible sleep last night, I kept waking up like almost every hour. So…\n00:09:27\tKatherine McLeod:\tI just made coffee now and I sent myself a text last night to give myself instructions for the morning and they said, “Make coffee, dance, be.” I’ve done the first two and now I am in a state of being.\n00:09:43\tJason Camlot:\tYeah, you seem like you’re being–\n00:09:44\tKatherine McLeod:\tYeah!\n00:09:44\tJason Camlot:\t–so that’s good. You could check all three off. I like the idea of not only self-isolating, but self-texting.\n00:09:52\tKatherine McLeod:\tYeah!\n00:09:52\tJason Camlot:\tSort of like, wow, we’re in some crazy individual loops here, you know?\n00:09:58\tKatherine McLeod:\tYeah, I only send them as reminders to myself, but who knows, maybe by the end of this I’ll be having a full conversation with me over text.\n00:10:05\tJason Camlot:\tOh, man…\n00:10:10\tMusic:\t[Instrumental Piano]\n00:10:10\tJason Camlot:\tYou can really hear the low-level anxiety and fatigue in our voices.\n00:10:13\tKatherine McLeod:\tYeah. So many Zoom conversations seem to have to begin this way now, with these kinds of emotional check-ins. And these are so important because we’re all feeling overwhelmed. But that’s also hard stuff to dive into at the start of a conversation. And I know I find myself saying that “I’m good. Oh, given the situation,” like I do in that recording. And then, when you listen between the lines, you can hear that the real answer to that question is more complicated than ever.\n00:10:45\tJason Camlot:\tIt’s one example of how we’re listening to each other a bit differently these days. Listening maybe with slightly more sensitivity to the other person’s mood. Listening to hear just how anxious or depressed someone is before you embark on an actual conversation about something else.\n00:11:01\tKatherine McLeod:\tWe did have a real conversation, though, after this affective, close-listening warm-up. I asked you how your class went.\n00:11:10\tJason Camlot:\tWe had to go back to teach online this week, so I held my seminar again and it went really well. I was surprised, like, and it was really great to see everyone. Everyone joined, everyone participated, and I think everyone was actually quite grateful because we’ve been reading all semester different theories of sort of how sound is mediated, different sort of audile techniques, you know, ways of listening, listening to voice, listening to other sounds. You know, the idea of soundscapes and the idea of voice and concepts of presence and things like that. I felt it was going to be unavoidable that we talk about what our listening situations are right now. And so since they were kind of equipped with a whole bunch of readings on that, on thinking about listening and sound, I did sort of tell them before class, I sent them all an email saying that the top of the class would be spent… Each of them would sort of give us a little bit of an account of how they’re listening now, sort of what their listening situation is and how their interactions with sounds may have changed as a result of them having to self-isolate.\n00:12:14\tJason Camlot:\tIt seems like we are re-negotiating our relationship to signals, noise, and silence. [Begin Music: Slightly Distorted Techno Instrumental] These different categories of sound are all related to each other. One can’t really mean much without the other. Noise is defined in relation to the signal, the thing we’re actually trying to hear. We speak of the signal-to-noise ratio. With a weak reception or a low signal-to-noise ratio, the signal will be lost in surrounding interference or noise, so that we can hardly hear the message or not hear it at all. With a strong reception, a high signal-to-noise ratio, [Sound Effect: Pulsing Tone] the signal will come through clearly and we hardly hear or notice the noise at all. [Sound Effect: Wind Chimes] [End Music: Slightly Distorted Techno Instrumental]\n00:13:05\tJason Camlot:\tListen to this extended cross-fade of two clips, one of brown noise and another of a sharp emergency signal. It dramatizes the movement from a low to high–\n00:13:17\tAudio Recording:\t[Robotic Voice] –signal-to-noise ratio.\n00:13:18\tAudio Recording:\t[Audio, begins with “brown noise”, a soft static-y sound, and fades into the pulsing tone played earlier, the “emergency signal”]\n00:13:34\tJason Camlot:\tAs human listeners, we’re usually pretty good at hearing the signal at the expense of the noise. [Begin Music: Slightly Distorted Techno Instrumental] Murray Schafer says in his book The Soundscape that “noises are the sounds we have learned to ignore.” He was thinking about noise within environmental soundscapes, which he thought about as a composer would in terms of acoustic design. One thing that has come to our ears’ attention as a result of living the circumstances of a global pandemic and experiencing locally by staying at home, sticking to our neighborhoods and our own living spaces is the absence of the noises we were so good at ignoring under normal, noisy circumstances. [End Music: Slightly Distorted Techno Instrumental] The absence of the noises around us effects our mood, our sense of our place in the world, and leads us to compensate with different forms of listening. So we can speak of noise and silence in our sound environments and their effects on how we feel.\n00:14:35\tAli Barillaro:\tI live next to a bar, so normally there’s a lot of noise outside of my apartment on a regular basis even if it’s not like the weekend\n00:14:43\tJason Camlot:\tMaster’s student Ali Barillaro.\n00:14:45\tAli Barillaro:\tSo not hearing people drunkenly shouting at 3:00 AM has been kind of strange. I don’t necessarily mind it not being there because I’m definitely sleeping a lot easier, but it’s definitely weird because that’s kind of been a constant and I’ve lived here for almost two years now. So that’s weird and different.\n00:15:06\tJason Camlot:\tThe absence of either noise or signal becomes present to us in the form of noticeable silence. Biochemist and doctoral candidate in English Marlene Oeffinger.\n00:15:16\tMarlene Oeffinger:\tIt’s almost like I feel with all the news and everything that we’re listening to there’s this constant barrage of noise. And then we were sitting on Saturday evening on the couch in our living room next to the window and usually Saturday evening is… You hear people walking outside talking, you hear cars, you hear planes. And so we were sitting and reading and not listening to the news and I suddenly had to stop because I realized how silent it was. It was dead silent and that’s just something I kind of associate not with the city and definitely not with the area here on a Saturday night. And it was just really completely silent. There was no noise from any neighbour, nothing. And it was almost distracting, the silence. ‘Cause I couldn’t stop listening to the silence. And yeah, I couldn’t even focus on what I was reading anymore because it was so unusual, I felt. It was just such a novel sound for the surrounding. Yeah, and that’s why I guess I just kept listening to it and it kept distracting me really from what I was doing.\n00:16:20\tJason Camlot:\tThe soundscapes outside have changed, but our relationship to the soundscapes within our domestic spaces have also changed. They become more complicated. We’re sensing how strange it can feel when spaces that one depends on for certain kinds of noise don’t sound the same, get quieter, or go silent altogether. But we’re also becoming more aware of our need for spaces that allow us periods of silence. My students told me how they had to work hard to find those spaces and how they’re now having to schedule slots of time for silent work. Thinking, writing, at home. PhD student Lindsay Presswell.\n00:17:01\tLindsay Presswell:\tSo my personal situation in my house is that my partner is a musician [Begin Music: Instrumental Guitar] and so normally he’s kind of here and he has a studio set up just over in the corner. And normally I’m like, I need to be out of the house. Like I have to be in the library or like in an atmosphere which very much feels like I’m working. But we actually have had to carefully negotiate the use of this space. We just started a Google Calendar this morning where I’m like inputting my lectures and like when I need to be sort of reading in silence ’cause I’m a very needy reader, I guess. We’ve discovered, like, putting in these soundproof headphones that he has, so I couldn’t hear the music as he’s working on things on the computer. But what that does is it… He like breathes loudly? [End Music: Instrumental Guitar] [Sound Effect: Heavy Breathing] Like, when those are in his ears, which I’ve never heard him breathe in my entire life. But that’s like a fun new thing.\n00:18:02\tKatherine McLeod:\tBreathing is definitely one of those sounds we don’t usually notice. But Lindsay’s situation spells out just how sensitive we’re becoming to sounds that are usually invisible to our ears.\n00:18:14\tMusic:\t[Instrumental Guitar]\n00:18:14\tJason Camlot:\tMany of my students are engaged in similar kinds of sound-space negotiations, as I am at home with my family. But we also seem to need to fill ourselves with particular kinds of sounds to compensate for the lack of sounds and noise that define our states of normalcy. My sense is people are maybe talking to each other more than they had been even if they’re doing so at a distance. My students were telling me that they’re getting off of social media and picking up the phone in ways that they normally wouldn’t do.\n00:18:42\tPriscilla Joly:\tYeah, I think people want to talk more at this time, particularly my parents. They call, like, very frequently now.\n00:18:50\tJason Camlot:\tThat was Priscilla Joly, a PhD student in English.\n00:18:53\tLindsay Presswell:\tAnd then just in terms of, like, the sort of broader situation, I noticed that my tolerance for noise that also feels fast or jarring has slowed, too. I’m like needing direct, verbal communication more than sending texts. Rather than like reading the news and doing my emails on the commute, I’m like finding time listening to traditional media or calling people as well, which normally I don’t do because I associate speaking like it’s a slow way of communicating. I deactivated my Twitter account very quickly last week because [Begin Music: Soft Ambient Instrumental] I was just like, this is not the kind of… These aren’t the sounds… This isn’t the news that I want to be listening to.\n00:19:42\tJason Camlot:\tPhD student Lindsay Presswell. John Durham Peters and his description of the uncanniness that surrounded early telephonic communication—talking into telephones—noted the existential anxiety that came from relying on the voice to do it all. That is, to do all the work of communicating one’s thoughts, feelings, and presence to another person. He talks about the disquiet of a medium defined by strange voices entering the home, the disappearance of one’s words into an empty black hole in the absence of the listener’s face. And he suggests that the telephone contributed to the modern derangement of dialogue by splitting conversation into two halves that meet only in the cyberspace of the wires. And that’s when telecommunications media relied on wires from start to finish. I cancelled my landline five years ago and threw myself at the mercy of wireless communication. Course, there’s still fiber optic cables at work, but wireless communication, the forms of interpersonal exchange we’re now forced to have instead of most and sometimes any form of interpersonal exchange, represent a further kind of derangement. The condensed and proximate signal [Sound Effect: Dial Tone] that came through the carbon microphone of the old-timey telephone in my teenage experience, at least, came to feel intimate in its own powerfully reduced way. The banal, unexpected kinds of disruptions we experience when we try to Skype, Zoom, and FaceTime [Sound Effect: Voices Breaking Up In Call] are too annoying and thinning to live up to Durham Peter’s sort of romantic idea of telephonic derangement. Grandiose concepts of sympathy, relationality, intimate connection are reduced to the irritatingly tinny sounding idea of connectivity. [End Music: Soft Ambient Instrumental]\n00:21:38\tAudio Recording:\t[Audio, Katherine McLeod’s voice breaking up during a call, sounding tinny and distorted]\n00:21:44\tKatherine McLeod:\tWhy was that happening to my voice there?\n00:21:46\tJason Camlot:\tI was wondering about that myself and so I started googling for answers. [Sound Effect: Electronic Interference] Part of it has to do with the way digital information is sent. We’re not getting interference with a continuous signal along the wire here. Our voices are transduced and converted into frequency data and then sent via a wifi signal as data packets, like assemblages of bits of data that add up to the sound of your voice. [Begin Music: Instrumental Piano Overlaid With Electronic Interference] The computer waits for packets that represent a good signal-to-noise ratio of your voice. If something interferes with the analog signal that’s sending the data, then the computer, let’s say it’s listening for the right formula of your voice, will have trouble understanding, let’s say hearing the packets of data, will reject them as noise, and then wait for them to be sent again. When this keeps happening, you either get partial delivery of the packets, which sounds weird or complete drop-outs. Sort of like if a Star Trek teleportation goes horribly wrong because all the disassembled molecules of the person didn’t come back together again or like when Ron Weasley gets seriously splinched in that bad apparating accident in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Ron left part of his upper arm behind; we leave packets of our voice signal behind. Still, even if old-style landline telephones sometimes sounded better than cell phones and Zoom, these newer media in the present context of social isolation are making us feel what’s at stake in a scenario that suggests the loss of real old-time hanging out in person. My students were clear in expressing the frustration they felt from bad connections. [End Music: Instrumental Piano Overlaid With Electronic Interference]\n00:23:24\tAli Barillaro:\tMy internet connection’s not the best–\n00:23:28\tJason Camlot:\tAli Barillaro.\n00:23:28\tAli Barillaro:\t–so listening to people through quite a bit of distortion has been a weird thing to kind of manage and just sort of… I’ve had to kind of let it happen and not let it get frustrating. Dealing with the weird kind of distortions and sometimes when the sound cuts off completely it’ll take a couple of seconds and then restart, but almost as if someone’s pressed fast forward. So trying to keep track of everything is kind of interesting.\n00:23:58\tJason Camlot:\tAnd in talking to my students, I let myself get carried away and waxed philosophical about the existential implications of a weak wifi signal.\n00:24:06\tJason Camlot:\t[Audio, from a video call with his class] Your point about the frustration of communicating with people, especially through wifi-based telecommunication system, which is what we’re doing so much and what the university is having us do right now, I think is super important as well. It’s frustrating when you feel like you can’t have the confidence in the voice continuing. That’s a huge difference between in-person communication. You’re not worried about them breaking up in front of you and it makes you just incredibly aware of the fact that when we’re communicating we’re dealing with signal transduction, which is more than just annoying, actually. It’s kind of existentially traumatic and troubling. It’s like that we don’t know that we can count on the continuity of the person and the communication that we’re engaging in.\n00:24:49\tJason Camlot:\tStill, we are relying on Zoom and Zoom-like platforms as best we can for the social encounters that we crave. Here, I’d say we’re feeling the absence of a different kind of noise that we’re also very good at ignoring and not hearing under normal conditions, but the absence of which we notice in a strong way in these dangerous times. We are noticing the absence of social sounds and that absence becomes a distracting kind of silence. MA student in English Kian Vaziri-Tehrani.\n00:25:20\tKian Vaziri-Tehrani:\tThere’s kind of been sort of an avoidance of silence, if that makes sense. I live in a pretty, like, quiet neighborhood. It’s  Côte-Saint Luc. But yeah, it’s generally like a really, really quiet neighbourhood and I go out my balcony a lot and it’s pitch quiet. So I guess like I just kind of… The TV’s always on or I’m always listening to something and I feel like if it’s too quiet then I’m… Something’s wrong or something’s off about it. Like I’ve just been filling my senses up, I guess.\n00:25:49\tJason Camlot:\t[Sound Effect: Various Voices Echoing and Overlaid] I’m thinking in particular of the experience of sounds reverberating within a space that makes us feel we are present in a real, material, and social environment alongside others. Something along the lines of what Brandon LaBelle was talking about when he says that “the sonorous world always presses in, adding extra ingredients by which we locate ourselves.” We are increasingly interested in those interstitial noises that suggest life and movement and social activity. PhD student Sadie Barker.\n00:26:22\tSadie Barker:\tI find I’m much more aware of my neighbours’ sounds in the apartment building and I think interested in them and like inclined to speculate into them or like imagine into them just because… Yeah, I find when I hear like the doorbell ringing, I’m like, “Are people having people over? Are they socializing?” You know, you’re just kind of, yeah, more intrigued.\n00:26:44\tJason Camlot:\tWe might become intensive, causal listeners like Sadie, trying to decipher the causes, the things, actions, activities that go with the sounds we’re suddenly noticing. Or we might just be craving those little otherwise meaningless sounds because they suggest a real person in an actual space.\n00:27:02\tKatherine McLeod:\tIt’s like the difference between listening to an archival documentary recording of a poetry reading–\n00:27:06\tAudio Recording:\t[Audio, muffled recording of people laughing and chatting]\n00:27:11\tKatherine McLeod:\t–you can hear all kinds of vibrations in the room other than those of the poet’s voice. Clinking, shuffling, breathing, laughter, applause. Compared to a studio recording, like something Caedmon Records would have made in the 1950s–\n00:27:26\tAudio Recording:\t[Audio, Sylvia Plath reciting her poem “Daddy”] The black telephone’s off at the root, / The voices just can’t worm through.\n00:27:31\tKatherine McLeod:\t–where the strong signal of the poet’s voice seems to exist in a sort of vacuum outside of any recognizable sonic space in the universe.\n00:27:42\tJason Camlot:\t[Sound Effect: Various Childrens’ Voices Echoing and Overlaid] In this present moment of social distancing, I think we’re craving the noise around the signal rather than the signal itself. We’re being bombarded with all kinds of messages, [Begin Music: Sparkly Instrumental] but really we want the comforting sounds of an actual person in a real environment. Philosopher Mladen Dolar might say we’re craving voice itself rather than the messages that voice carries. [End Music: Sparkly Instrumental]\n00:28:04\tJason Camlot:\tPhD student Klara du Plessis.\n00:28:08\tKlara du Plessis:\tI have definitely been phoning a lot more like every day I have two or three telephone conversations with friends who I’m close with, but would usually just text with or something. So there’s definitely this move towards trying to communicate more or to de-distance ourselves, I guess.\n00:28:25\tJason Camlot:\tVoice is that medium made up of accent, intonation, and timbre that carries the message but disappears in the process. Usually we don’t notice it because we’re so focused on the message. In this instance, voice is the noise and the meaning is the signal. It’s like what Dolar says about voice and a heavy accent. A heavy accent suddenly makes us aware of the material support of the voice, which we tend, immediately, to discard. Well, now we seem to be craving the accent. I’m speaking metaphorically here using Dolar’s account of voice as an ever-disappearing, yet undeniably present entity to help describe what we feel when we try to be together on Zoom or Skype or something like that, and sort of are together, but at the same time really aren’t together.\n00:29:19\tKatherine McLeod:\tThe sounds around the signal, the sounds that add the vibrancy to the social, the sense of a real unique person speaking are what we’re listening for, but even when we hear these sounds, we’re kind of aware that they’re evoking a scenario of actual presence that isn’t happening right now.\n00:29:37\tJason Camlot:\tBecause I’ve been on Twitter a lot more than usual, I read a tweet—this was early April—posted by Gianpiero Petriglieri that suggested we’re so exhausted after video calls because we’re experiencing “the plausible deniability of each other’s absence. Our minds are tricked into the idea of actually being together. While our bodies know that we’re not” actually together. He’s suggesting it’s the dissonance of being relentlessly in the presence of each other’s absence that makes us so tired.\n00:30:08\tKatherine McLeod:\tThis may be especially true during graduate seminars and poetry readings and probably even more so in relaxed meetings like the video conference parties and cocktail hours that have been happening more often.\n00:30:22\tAudio Recording:\t[Audio, same various voices      speaking from earlier] [Glasses Clinking] I love tarte tatin. I love tarte tatin. We’re gonna do it tomorrow. No, tonight! Okay. Is it almost bedtime? Yeah. Duh. Oh, Mickey’s outside, shit! Hang on. I gotta go get the dog. You hear him barking? Jason, you lost, your whole family went away. Where’d they go? Jason’s frozen. No, no he doesn’t move! I know, I know! He does it on purpose! I know! You told me your trick! Yeah, you knew I was faking it. You just couldn’t help it!   Welcome back. [Door Shutting]\n00:31:04\tJason Camlot:\tThat clip we just heard was from the middle of the video conference cocktail hour—or two—I held with some friends just after I taught my first online seminar that I’ve been talking about.\n00:31:14\tKatherine McLeod:\tHearing the clinks of glasses at the beginning, the laughter, the spontaneous references to things happening within the individual spaces of the teleconference participants along with the things happening across those spaces, through the screen, really did evoke the sound of an intimate social gathering for me. At times it sounded like you were all there together. Other times, not so much. It was actually really hard for me to tell who was where.\n00:31:41\tJason Camlot:\tIt was a lot of fun. But hearing each other and seeing each other and ourselves through the flat screens of our laptops made me want to crawl through and be there. Wherever “there” is.\n00:31:55\tKatherine McLeod:\tThat reminds me of the title of the poem in David Antin’s book Talking At The Boundaries, the one called “what am i doing here?” The one where he asks himself, stepping into a space to create a poem by talking rather than reading the poems from a book, what am I doing here in this ambiance? What’s going to happen? Am I doing poetry here? How are we here together? Am I making art here? Just what exactly am I doing here? But that kind of question, the way he asks it in that poem, maybe it can’t be asked in the same way of the here, now.\n00:32:36\tJason Camlot:\tFollowing that opening conversation with the students in my class, which lasted about 40 minutes and functioned as part sonic listening analysis and part group therapy session, and just before the Zoom cocktail gathering I had with my friends, which was also like a therapy listening session, I did, eventually, segway into a two-hour class about the talk poetry of David Antin.\n00:32:57\tJason Camlot:\t[Audio, from a video call with his class] But let’s start at the beginning, I guess, and let’s start with Antin and ask how do we begin to actually define what an Antin talk poem is and how do we define it as an entity? So let’s begin by thinking about what it is, what’s the artifact, what’s the thing that we’re organizing a conversation around? What could you glean from what you’ve read and listened to as to sort of what the production process of a talk poem is? And maybe that’s one way into beginning to define it. And we can think of it generically, we can think of it other ways, but sort of if we think of what is a talk poem, you know, how does he make them?\n00:33:34\tJason Camlot:\tDavid Antin seemed like a deeply relevant artist to be thinking about just now because his poetry originates in live, in-person talking before an audience. He called himself a talk poet. He would come to a venue with some idea of what he was gonna talk about, perhaps a title or a theme, and a few stories in mind. But then he would just stand there and create a poem before a live audience. By talking.\n00:34:01\tAudio Recording:\t[Audio, David Antin saying his talk poem “The Principle of Fit, II”] I came here with an intention to do a piece relating to something I’d been thinking about and because I don’t come unprepared to do pieces. On the other hand, I don’t come prepared the way one      comes to a lesson. I haven’t studied the material very carefully, but I had in mind to consider what I was calling the principle of fit, the way in which there is a certain fit, a kind of adjusted togetherness, the calmness, in certain social, socially structured events as between patients and their doctors or between patients and their diseases. It’s a very close social relation and one that takes a certain education.\n00:34:53\tKatherine McLeod:\tIf you listen really closely, you can hear the tape noises on that recording of Antin doing a talk poem. [Static From The Recording]\n00:34:59\tJason Camlot:\tHe would go into a room with an audience, press record on his tape recorder, and start talking. Not reading, not reciting a written text. Just thinking a poem into existence by talking it out loud in front of other people. That’s the first iteration of the talk poem: actual ephemeral talk in a room filled with real people. He would also record his talks on a tape recorder, hence the tape hiss you noticed in that audible trace of the event. He’d take that tape recorder home, transcribe the talk that was on it, and then shape that typed transcript into a unique-looking printed work without punctuation, with special spacing, designed to make the reader have to reinvoice the original talk back to life by finding the speech and intonation patterns that are not obvious to find in the printed treatment of the original, ephemeral live event.\n00:35:51\tJason Camlot:\t[Audio, from a video call with his class] So, if we continue to ask this question, what is a talk poem, okay, and we’ve just rehearsed in a brief way what the production process of a talk poem is, where is the talk poem? I guess that’s my second question, right? Is it in that event, right? Is it in the tape recorder, on the cassette that recorded it? Is it in the initial transcription of it? Is it in the book Talking At The Boundaries after that event happens? Where is the talk poem? Or is it in, or is it that combination of things? Yeah, Brian, you want to..?\n00:36:22\tBrian Vass:\tI guess thinking about this question also just sort of dovetails to the question that I asked on group chat.\n00:36:28\tJason Camlot:\tMaster’s student Brian Vass.\n00:36:31\tBrian Vass:\tIt seems to me that if the talk poem as a piece of art or as a event, if it hinges to some degree on the reciprocity between Antin as a performer and a speaker and the specific context that he’s in, as he seems to sort of describe that it does, like he says he’s got something in mind, but even the spontaneity and some degree of the improvisation is influenced or inflected by the context, specifically the people in the room, to the extent that that’s true. It seems like the real site of the talk poem is the occasion and everything else, the recording and the transcription are sort of derivations of that, but somehow aren’t fully it because you’re part of it if you’re there. Do you know what I mean? Like the audience is also a part of it. If it’s true, what he’s saying about vibing off of the group.\n00:37:21\tJason Camlot:\tI like that, vibing off of the group. So it’s talking, but as you say, it’s sort of talking with an audience present that seems to be important because of this reciprocity as you put it. But it’s more about him vibing off of them than about actual conversation. It’s not talking for conversation. It’s talking for the sense that he’s not talking in a vacuum. There’s a kind of priority that’s given to that original ephemeral event due to this scenario of talking in person before an actual listening audience.\n00:37:58\tJason Camlot:\tThe discussion we had of Antin seemed so appropriate and relevant to us at this moment, I think, because his art was premised on, depended on the act of talking in the presence of other people. If we think about the new scientific evidence coming in that suggests even asymptomatic people can possibly spread the coronavirus, it makes talking to someone in person a truly perilous scenario. We’re not allowed to talk before large groups of people right now. It’s literally against the law. Literary performance, poetry readings, literary gatherings are not possible in that way. But it sort of got us thinking, you know, some of the students were sort of asked what would David Antin do during COVID-19 crisis? Because he’s not, he wouldn’t be allowed to actually stand in a room before an assembled audience, right? And that was, you know, in many of their opinions and in my opinion, too, crucial to the actual creation of a talk poem. That talk poem requires the presence of others within one space, right, in order to actually to be made in the first place. So like, you know, imagining David Antin on Zoom or Skype doing a talk poem, it’s not quite the same thing.\n00:39:07\tMusic:\t[Gentle Instrumental]\n00:39:08\tKatherine McLeod:\tSo we can’t do talk poems. We can’t read poems before an actual audience. We can’t talk to strangers or speak moistly. Without talking to people in person how can we share art? How can we share literature? How can we share our work under the present conditions? How can we reach listeners? Today, not only are we listening differently in general, but we’re sharing and listening to literature differently. Think about when you listen to literature in your day-to-day life and has that changed? Just as before, you might listen to an audio book or to a podcast and you might listen to that more than before, but the method of listening probably remains the same. What has changed is that you can’t listen to a live reading or at least not in the same space as the reader and other listeners. Literary events have been cancelled or as we prefer to think of it postponed. But we can still listen to writers reading their works and even participate in a live online reading as an event.\n00:40:15\tIan Ferrier:\t[Audio, from a past Zoom call] Good evening and welcome to a fine winter evening of literature and some poems and some music. We’re very lucky to have two visitors from the great state of Toronto tonight. So all of this should be really fun. And to lead off the show tonight, I asked this person how she would like to be introduced      and she wanted to be introduced by me telling you that she lives beside a lake.\n00:40:46\tKatherine McLeod:\t[Begin Music: Gentle Instrumental] That was a recording of Ian Ferrier performing his usual role as live host and curator of The Words & Music Show, a monthly cabaret of poetry, music, dance, and spoken word performances that’s been happening in Montreal for the past 20 years. At the end of March, the show went online with performers sending in pre-recorded audio to be played in the live event broadcast via Zoom. [End Music: Gentle Instrumental] Some of the artists, like storyteller Nisha Coleman, integrated into their performances the circumstances and impact of COVID-19 upon artists who depend upon live events. Nisha’s story was about the time she spent hanging out in a community art collective called The Church of Harvey Christ. And this is how she chose to end her story this time.\n00:41:36\tNisha Coleman:\t[Audio, from a past recording] Now, I’ve told this story a lot of times. It’s one I’ve told at parties and campfires and on stage. And every time I tell it, it’s sort of, I sort of tell it in a different way and it has a different meaning, it has a different sort of takeaway. But I think in this particular telling for me what stands out about this story is the strength of community, right? And, and what The Church of Harvey Christ meant to artists and what it provided for them at that time and how important that community is now. I mean, especially now. Because being an artist, you know, it’s precarious, of course. It’s precarious in the best of times and now we’re entering a new time where it’s sort of precarious for everybody. So, I think it’s more important than ever to have this community, whether it be in person together singing hymns and drinking out of the same beer bottle, or, you know, maintaining this connection over the internet. Because we need each other, we need to lift each other up. We need to help each other out. We need to promote each other’s work. I think that’s gonna be really important in the next however long. Who knows, right?\n00:42:54\tKatherine McLeod:\tOther performances really emphasized the dissolution of boundaries between the public and private spaces that come with a video conference, reading from home. That was the case with poet Alexei Perry Cox.\n00:43:08\tIan Ferrier:\t[Audio, from a past Zoom call] …extreme conditions of trying to do it at the same time as she entertained her 18-month-old child on her bed and it’s by the poet Alexei Perry Cox. So I’m going to bring that up now and we can take a listen.\n00:43:21\tAudio Recording:\t[Audio, Alexei Perry Cox reciting with the sounds of her baby cooing in the background] My lover believed there had to be a point at which reality, perfect incongruence, would get through to humankind.\n00:43:30\tKatherine McLeod:\tNow, I have to admit that for this particular recording, my screen didn’t display the video, so even though others watched the reading, I was just listening. As a listener, I felt that Alexei’s poem conveyed such presence through its recording. Yes, I was listening to the poem, too, but I was also listening and deeply moved by the sounds of her daughter’s presence in the room with her and the interaction between them.\n00:44:01\tAudio Recording:\t[Audio, Alexei Perry Cox reciting with the sounds of her baby cooing in the background] A book with a room for the world would be no book. It would lack the most beautiful pages, the ones left, in which even the smallest pebble is reflected. But present is the time of writing, both obsessed with and cut off from an out-of-time bringing of life.\n00:44:25\tKatherine McLeod:\tEven more than the words of the poem, I was listening to the sounds around the poem, the sounds of the social and of life. When you’re at a live reading, you’re there to listen to the poetry or prose, but so often the experience of the reading is the atmosphere, the ambiance, as Antin put it, and the conversations around the poems. And that’s much harder to describe, harder to document, and harder to replicate in a digital environment.\n00:44:55\tIsabella Wang:\tIn any other circumstance, when we are, there is this live community happening in the backdrop. I would be more hesitant to just go online and hear the works of a poet reading on the internet because there is that community out there. And I’m like, “Why would I want to like, you know, see this somewhat flat screen of you when I can interact with you in person and engage?”\n00:45:24\tKatherine McLeod:\tThat was Isabella Wang, who had the idea to go online with the reading series she helps organize in Vancouver, BC: Dead Poets Reading Series.\n00:45:33\tIsabella Wang:\tThe Dead Poets Reading Series is a bi-monthly series at the Vancouver Public Library. We invite like four or five local poets to come and share the work of a dead poet. And so this happened around the time where everything around Vancouver—I mean everything, like not just in Vancouver, but everything—was getting cancelled. And so of course our reading series was also canceled, too, and we had four readers who no longer could come and share their work. I actually… It’s funny you mentioned rob because I actually got the idea from him. And so when I started hearing that “Oh no, we might not actually be able to put on this reading series at the Vancouver Public Library,” I was like, “Hey, rob is doing this thing. How can we maybe try to, you know, move this online?” And initially we were just planning to feature the four readers who couldn’t read anymore. But then it was kind of intuitive and it made sense. I was like, now that we featured Kathy Mak and Natalie Lim, who were supposed to be on the series, let’s start reaching out to more folks and it just started there.\n00:46:47\tKatherine McLeod:\tThe Dead Poets Reading Series is a bit of a ghostly series to begin with. [Begin Music: Low Pulsing Instrumental] So how did it work transferring this series into an online environment?\n00:46:58\tIsabella Wang:\tThe reading series has definitely transformed a lot. Some poets were saying how, you know, it’s hard for them to film themselves reading at home just because there isn’t that reciprocal audience thing going on anymore and it’s kind of like numbing. But at the same time, what the digital-like realm is so good at bringing out is a different sense of community where like before we were so limited to audiences just in Vancouver. And so that limited a lot of not only who our readers were, but also what kind of dead poets were being shared and spread. And so for the first time I think we were able to bring in a lot of      our friends from different places that normally we would only get to see on social media anyway. And it was when the series started that I realized, “Oh my gosh, I’ve known you and you and you like for so long. And this is actually the first time I’ve seen you, you know, move and be alive. And this is the first time I’ve ever heard you read.”\n00:48:05\tJason Camlot:\tI asked Isabella about her experience of listening to readings online versus in person.[End Music: Low Pulsing Instrumental]\n00:48:10\tIsabella Wang:\tWhat’s really changed is the interactive environment, that lively, bustling atmosphere that is somewhat changed now with, you know, this going online. ‘Cause I think part of the literary experience is that interaction, that engagement with poets like before and after they read. You know, ’cause it’s nice to hear Fred Wah read, but it’s also nice to just talk to him and make jokes with him, like, you know, by his side in the audience. And that’s not really there anymore. And that’s what’s been transformed mostly into the, into social media now. And so there’s still that, I think, you know, the liking and sharing and commenting. But it’s more invisible, it’s something that is more of an… Like you see it after they post something but it’s not that immediate anymore.\n00:49:09\tJason Camlot:\tThat’s really interesting. Yeah, I love the idea of response happening in a different temporal sort of timeframe than the actual event, is really interesting. And also in a different media format, so that instead of leaning over to someone and whispering or nudging them with your elbow and exchanging a kind of feeling about what you just heard, it’s being experienced later in a tweet or something like that.\n00:49:33\tIsabella Wang:\tAnd I think it’s also like the function is kind of different because, you know, when you’ve always had that community that you go to like day in and day out, you know, you love seeing the people you see, but kind of take it for granted. It’s like, “Oh yeah, next week I’ll see them again.” And, you know, there will always be literary events. And I think, I think this period just shows us how      important that community and those like events really are to us. And so part of that, social media like that, commenting and interaction is part of just supporting each other and making sure that we’re still going and there is still a sense of community somewhere.\n00:50:22\tKatherine McLeod:\tIn a poetry reading, you are listening to the poetry, but you’re also listening to community. So the challenge then becomes how to create and make audible that community online. I was so interested in how Isabella’s idea for taking Dead Poets online came from an invitation to read in an online series that went online on that very same weekend of March 14th–15th, 2020. That reading series is hosted on the online journal Periodicities and the poet behind it is Ottawa-based poet, reviewer, and publisher rob  . Jason and I spoke with rob in a video conference call and we asked him about what prompted him to start this online reading series.\n00:51:08\trob mclennan:\tThere are kind of a few factors in play. I’m one of the organizing reading series, founding reading series, of VERSefest, our annual poetry festival. This year would have been tenth, so… We realized, like, we were ten days out of our opening night and we realized like, yeah, this is not going to happen. We have to shut this down.\n00:51:31\tKatherine McLeod:\tWith the cancellation of Ottawa’s VERSfest, rob felt the absence of readings that would have happened. He was also starting up the online journal Periodicities and had the web space ready to curate a reading series. He reached out to poets and was met with an enthusiastic response of poets sending him videos of themselves reading poems. We asked him about his sense of how listeners are responding to all of this new content. Are they listening? But first one of Jason’s students, poet reading series curator and PhD candidate Klara du Plessis, was asking the same questions when some of these reading events started going online. She mentioned it in Jason’s class, so we thought we’d include her perspective before hearing from r     ob on this question.\n00:52:19\tKlara du Plessis:\tWell, yeah, I guess I wanted to talk a little bit about all these virtual poetry reading series, like multiple different people have started. So they kind of invite poets to read between like five and 15 minutes or so to record themselves reading either their own poetry or poetry by someone who’s already passed away and then these videos are posted online. And so I kind of got into a bit of a Twitter thing where I kind of questioned whether people were actually listening to these recordings or whether it was like something for poets to just be busy, so they’re doing something. And my poll discovered that half of the people said that they were super comforted by listening to these virtual poetry readings and felt a sense of connection and community as a result. And half of the other people said that it was like too overwhelming for them at this time to deal with, you know, listening to strange, like sometimes not very well produced audio recordings. I should also mention that I think I offended a few people with my question so I kind of regretted it after the fact.\n00:53:23\trob mclennan:\tI know early on I saw some social media posts of people saying like, “I appreciate that these things happen, but I just can’t deal with it right now.” You know, one or two other people saying like, “I don’t even know why this is happening.” Which is fine, I don’t expect every human on the planet to say, “This is awesome, I’m in.” That is not the point of any endeavor. But for those who might want it or require it, it is there. And for those who don’t want it, there are other things.\n00:53:52\tJason Camlot:\tI asked rob as he was watching these videos come in, if he noticed a blurring of the boundaries between the public and the private,\n00:53:59\trob mclennan:\tI have noticed that; it becomes slightly more intimate, right? Like as opposed to being public. I like watching people do stuff from inside their houses [Sound Effect: Clattering And Moving] or apartments or their, yeah, like you say, bedroom or from their living room table or their makeshift home office because not everyone has a home office. I find that more interesting than someone sending me a more produced video. I’m open to that. I’ve posted some of those. But I just find them just less interesting than something made just for this, with the limitations of that. So like the artifice is gone and one would hope that maybe that intimacy, like we require it now if we’re not able to get it in other ways. So it’s actually maybe helpful as someone… Whether watching or being the one making the video that is actually making this distance less difficult.\n00:54:55\tKatherine McLeod:\tYeah. No, I think that’s such a good point. And it’s, and also realizing that we’re kind of maybe even enjoying those readings a little bit more ’cause we’re not just hearing the person, we’re hearing sort of the space around them and they’re interacting with–\n00:55:07\trob mclennan:\tYeah!\n00:55:07\tKatherine McLeod:\tYeah.\n00:55:07\trob mclennan:\tYeah, they’re not, they’re not at the same microphone, the same backdrop. It’s actually a little more interesting just watching the limitations of the space. Like, “Oh okay, someone has a smaller space than another person.” And just watching their personal effects behind them and none of those spaces really surprised me. Like, okay, yeah, this person is a little more formal than another person and this person feels a little bit more domestic, say. Yeah, I like it. And yeah, it does feel like a little bit more of a connection, but then maybe we’re just making that, we’re seeking that connection, so we’re finding that connection. That’s fine, too.\n00:55:42\tKatherine McLeod:\tSince the first set of videos [Begin Music: Gentle Instrumental] were uploaded to r     ob’s YouTube on March 15th, there are now over 70 videos and the collection seems to be growing each day. The videos are becoming an ecology of recordings in that they’re networked sounds and representative of the poetry community that they’re growing from. Listening to literature now and specifically poetry in a digital environment becomes a kind of ecological listening. We’re listening to interconnectedness and relationality and we’re also listening to an evolving digital soundscape. Just as the soundscapes around us are changing, public places that would be bustling are empty and the sound of a plane overhead [Sound Effect: Plane Flying By] suddenly stands out when otherwise it would fade into the background noise. Yes, our Murray Schafer was right. Noises are the sounds that we have learned to ignore. Meanwhile, projects like Cities and Memory are documenting the changing soundscapes. #StayHomeSounds invites you to listen to the sounds from the global coronavirus lockdown. And as we walk through our own neighbourhoods, we may notice streets sounding quieter and the chirping of birds sounding louder. Our sensory experiences of our inner and outer worlds have changed. As we listen inwards to ourselves, we still find ways to connect that try to replicate the social. Outside of our homes, there have been invitations—multiple times now—to the entire city of Montreal to join in balcony singalongs to Leonard Cohen’s “So Long, Marianne.” [End Music: Gentle Instrumental]\n00:57:22\tMusic:\t[Alvaro Echánove singing along to a livestream of Martha Wainwright singing “So Long, Marianne” by Leonard Cohen]\n00:57:28\tKatherine McLeod:\tAs the summer arrives, balconies will become even noisier as neighbours converse. We have conversations with neighbours we may never have spoken to before and simultaneously we’re even more connected globally. Our phones and computer screens become the new stages. [Begin Music: Gentle Instrumental] Live-streamed readings are happening like Poetry in the Time of Quarantine here in Montreal and Sound On InstaReadings Series that’s happening in Vancouver or really over Instagram. And large scale initiatives like Canada Performs have launched for musicians and other performing artists including now, thanks to Margaret Atwood, writers whose shows or book tours have been cancelled in the spring or summer. Unlike the streaming that so often is done without compensation to the artist, artists selected for Canada Performs will be paid $1,000 for their at-home performance to be broadcast on the National Arts Centre’s Facebook page. And yes, they do perform from their own home for us, the collective we, to tune in from our homes and listen together.\n00:58:36\tKatherine McLeod:\tBut as collective acts of singing and of listening draw us to our balconies and our computer screens, we can also find ourselves not feeling like joining in. With all of the possibilities for tuning into live streams, we can feel overwhelmed amid searching for something meaningful to listen to. [End Music: Gentle Instrumental] Back in the first week when everything was changing, I remembered feeling relieved that people like Isabella and r     ob were creating online readings, but I also remember feeling that I didn’t have the concentration to sit down and listen. And I remember thinking that when I feel more focused, or really when I feel a bit better, then I look forward to listening. When you don’t feel like listening that says something about how you’re feeling. When you ask someone how they are listening and if that’s changed, you’re really asking them how they’re doing.\n00:59:33\tJason Camlot:\tHey, let’s try that out. Hey Katherine, how are you listening?\n00:59:37\tKatherine McLeod:\tI’m listening…fine, thanks. How are you listening, Jason?\n00:59:42\tJason Camlot:\tI’m listening pretty well. Thanks for asking. But let me ask you this. How are you really listening, Katherine?\n00:59:50\tKatherine McLeod:\tWell, Jason, how am I really listening? [Sighs] As much as we try to replicate the social, what we manage to produce within these digital environments is a version of the social that is both entirely real and entirely unreachable. We hear in it both closeness and distance and that is affecting. As much as we might try to listen to something that brings back the feeling of the social and the togetherness of before, we are beginning to face the reality of this change and what this change feels like and sounds like. We are listening differently now. Here. Here. Here.\n01:00:34\tMusic:\t[Slightly Distorted Synthetic Drum and Piano Instrumental]\n01:01:00\tNatalie Lim:\tHello from my kitchen! Thank you to Isabella and the whole Dead Poets Reading team for putting together this virtual reading. I’m really excited to be a part of it even though I’m bummed that we can’t see people in person this weekend, but we’re gonna hang out for like ten minutes, I’m gonna read some poetry, I got some water, it’s gonna be a good time.\n01:01:29\tHannah McGregor:\tSpokenWeb is a monthly podcast produced by the SpokenWeb team as part of distributing the audio collected from and created using Canadian literary archival recordings found at universities across Canada. Our producers this month are SpokenWeb team members Jason Camlot and Katherine McLeod of Concordia University and our podcast project manager is Stacey Copeland. A special thank you to Oana Avasilichioaei, Ali Barillaro, Sadie Barker, Arjun Basu, Naomi Charron, Alexei Perry Cox, Nisha Coleman, Klara du Plessis, Ian Ferrier     , Priscilla Joly, rob mclennan, Heather Pepper, Lindsay Presswell, Deanna Radford, Kian Vaziri-Tehrani, Brian Vass, and Isabella Wang for their contributions to this episode. To find out more about SpokenWeb visit spokenweb.ca and subscribe to the SpokenWeb Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you may listen. If you love us, let us know. Rate us and leave a comment on Apple Podcasts or say hi on our social media @SpokenWebCanada. From all of us at SpokenWeb, be kind to yourself and one another out there. We’ll see you back here next month for another episode of the SpokenWeb Podcast: stories about how literature sounds.\n\n"],"score":1.0},{"id":"9588","cataloger_name":["Gloriah,Onyango"],"partnerInstitution":["Concordia University"],"collection_source_collection":["SpokenWeb AV"],"source_collection_label":["SpokenWeb AV"],"collection_contributing_unit":["SpokenWeb"],"source_collection_uri":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/spokenweb-podcast/"],"collection_image_url":["https://archiveofthepresent.spokenweb.ca/_nuxt/img/header-img_1000.fd7675f.png"],"collection_source_collection_description":["SpokenWeb Audio Visual Collection"],"collection_source_collection_id":["ArchiveOfThePresent"],"persistent_url":["https://archiveofthepresent.spokenweb.ca/"],"item_title":["SpokenWeb Podcast S1E9, Producing Queer Media, 1 June 2020, Mcgregor"],"item_title_source":["SpokenWeb Podcast web page."],"item_title_note":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/producing-queer-media/"],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Podcast"],"item_series_title":["The SpokenWeb Podcast"],"item_series_description":["Series of podcasts by the SpokenWeb network."],"item_subseries_title":["The SpokenWeb Podcast Season 1"],"item_series_wikidata_url":["https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q117038029"],"item_series_uri":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/spokenweb-podcast/"],"item_subseries_description":["The first season of the SpokenWeb Podcast."],"item_subseries_uri":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/spokenweb-podcast/"],"item_identifiers":["[]"],"rights":["Creative Commons Attribution, Non-Commercial, ShareAlike (BY-NC-SA)"],"rights_license":["Creative Commons Attribution, Non-Commercial, ShareAlike (BY-NC-SA)"],"access":["Streaming and download"],"creator_names":["Hannah Mcgregor"],"creator_names_search":["Hannah Mcgregor"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/20153713810358661443\",\"name\":\"Hannah Mcgregor\",\"dates\":\"1984-\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Producer\"]}]"],"contributors":["[]"],"Publication_Date":[2020],"material_description":["[]"],"digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://cdn.simplecast.com/audio/28a9da/28a9da1f-8cca-410c-b5d7-8165a73f9394/f5b242ab-5995-4284-8650-19a92cd3d654/sw-ep9-producing-queer-media_tc.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"sw-ep9-producing-queer-media_tc.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"44.1 kHz\",\"duration\":\"00:42:38\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"41,006,437 bytes\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"MP3 audio\",\"title\":\"sw-ep9-producing-queer-media_tc\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/producing-queer-media/\"}]"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"2020-06-01\",\"type\":\"Publication Date\",\"notes\":\"\",\"source\":\"\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=18/49.282403/-123.108550\",\"venue\":\"Simon Fraser University\",\"notes\":\"\",\"address\":\"515 West Hastings Street, Vancouver, BC, V6B 5K3\",\"latitude\":\"49.2824032\",\"longitude\":\"-123.108550\"}]"],"Address":["515 West Hastings Street, Vancouver, BC, V6B 5K3"],"Venue":["Simon Fraser University"],"City":["Vancouver, British Columbia"],"Note":["[]"],"Related_works":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"Constellations Audio. https://www.constellationsaudio.com/ \\n\\nGlass, Ira. “Freedom Fries.” This American Life 23 January 2015. https://www.thisamericanlife.org/545/if-you-dont-have-anything-nice-to-say-say-it-in-all-caps/act-two \\n\\n“The Lesbian Show.” Archives of Lesbian Oral Testimony. https://alotarchives.org/collection/lesbian-show . **Stacey also wished to issue the correction that The Lesbian Show episode discussed not baseball but track and field.\\n\\nMermaid Palace. https://mermaidpalace.org/ \\n\\nNoor, Poppy. “What is ‘sexy baby voice’? We spoke to a sociologist to find out more.” The Guardian 26 Feb 2020. https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2020/feb/26/what-is-sexy-baby-voice-sociologist \\n\\nThe Queer Public Podcast. https://www.queerpublic.org/ \\n\\nEpisode banner image courtesy of the City of Vancouver Archives / BC Lesbian and Gay Archives. Item : 2018-020.4643 – International Women’s Day [The Lesbian Show ‘Dykes on Mykes’ banner]. https://searcharchives.vancouver.ca/international-womens-day-the-lesbian-show-dykes-on-mykes-banner\"}]"],"_version_":1853670549772828672,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:54.290Z","contents":["If you’ve been listening to this podcast for a while, there’s a name you might be familiar with — it’s mentioned every episode — that has so far been almost entirely off-mic. We’re talking about Stacey Copeland, SpokenWeb’s podcast project manager and supervising producer. Stacey helps to make this podcast possible, collaborating with SpokenWeb contributors from across the network to help conceptualize, produce, edit, publish, and promote each episode. But she’s also a scholar of sound in her own right, working on a PhD at Simon Fraser University. This month, SpokenWeb host Hannah McGregor sits down with Stacey to talk about what queer media sounds like, the feminist history of radio and podcast production, and how archival audio can help to build intergenerational intimacies.\n\nThis episode was a special cross-over between the SpokenWeb Podcast and\nSecret Feminist Agenda.\n\n00:00\tTheme Music:\t[Instrumental Overlapped With Feminine Voice] Can you hear me? I don’t know how much projection to do.\n \n\n00:18\tHannah McGregor:\tWhat does literature sound like? What stories will we hear if we listen to the archive? Welcome to the SpokenWeb Podcast: stories about how literature sounds. My name is Hannah McGregor and each month I’ll be bringing you different stories of Canadian literary history and our contemporary responses to it created by scholars, poets, students, and artists from across Canada. If you’ve been listening to this podcast for a while, there’s a name you might be familiar with—I mention it every episode—that has so far been almost entirely off-mic. I’m talking about Stacey Copeland, our podcast project manager and supervising producer. Stacey is a media producer and Joseph-Armand Bombardier PhD candidate at Simon Fraser University’s School of Communication in Vancouver. During her Master’s work in Communication and Culture, she co-founded FemRadio, a Toronto-based feminist community radio collective. And of course she helps us make this podcast every month. This month on the SpokenWeb Podcast, I sat down with Stacey—well, we Zoomed—to talk about what queer media sounds, the feminist history of radio and podcast production, and how archival audio can help to build intergenerational intimacies. Here’s me and Stacey with episode 9 of the SpokenWeb Podcast: “Producing Queer Media.” [Theme Music]\n \n\n01:55\tHannah McGregor:\tWhy don’t we start at the beginning with how you ended up being a person who researches radio and podcasts and sound?\n \n\n02:06\tStacey Copeland:\tOh, gosh. Well, I was born. No, I’m kidding.\n \n\n02:09\tHannah McGregor:\t[Laughs]\n \n\n02:10\tStacey Copeland:\tI mean, the way that I kind of look back on the start of everything was just the amount of media consumption I did as a teenager was a big start of it.\n \n\n02:21\tHannah McGregor:\tMhm.\n \n\n02:22\tStacey Copeland:\tSo I was actually a YouTuber for awhile when I was a teenager, [Laughs] which got me into doing covers, like posting covers of me playing guitar online. And then eventually joining a couple of LGBTQ queer teen collaboration groups. So we’d have like, you know, I was Wednesday, and my friend Daniel was on Tuesdays, and we’d have like Micah on Fridays, and those kind of classic YouTube community forums. So–\n \n\n02:57\tHannah McGregor:\tSo as you say classic–\n \n\n02:58\tStacey Copeland:\tClassic. [Laughs]\n \n\n02:58\tHannah McGregor:\tI am, I am too, too old to know any of these things.\n \n\n03:01\tStacey Copeland:\t[Laughs]\n \n\n03:02\tHannah McGregor:\t“Oh, is that how it works? Great.”\n \n\n03:04\tStacey Copeland:\tSo yeah, back when YouTube was more community-based and less lots of very high production videos, there was a lot of these like collab channels that people were part of and so that’s what really got me into being more creative with sound and with video. And then I actually wanted to go to university to make music videos, originally. I was way more a visual person than I was a sound person.\n \n\n03:29\tHannah McGregor:\tOkay.\n \n\n03:30\tStacey Copeland:\tAnd so I applied to the RTA School of Media, which is a four-year undergraduate program at Ryerson University in Toronto. And it kind of gives you a great background… Used to be called Radio and Television Arts now is Media Production because who would wanna only learn about radio and television these days.\n \n\n03:49\tHannah and Stacey:\t[Laughs]\n \n\n03:51\tHannah McGregor:\tThis is old-timey media for hipsters.\n \n\n03:53\tStacey Copeland:\tYeah! [Laughs]\n \n\n03:53\tHannah McGregor:\tThat’s what they teach you.\n \n\n03:55\tStacey Copeland:\tSo I joined that program and in the first year you actually take audio production courses as your first courses, rather than video. And so that kind of gave me a taste for radio production in particular, and I definitely caught the bug. And so from that point, I started taking all of the audio production courses, got an internship at Indie88, which is a radio station in Toronto in my fourth year, and started doing contract production with them for a couple of years ’cause they’re great. And then… It also brought in like my music interests and my–\n \n\n04:32\tHannah McGregor:\tYeah.\n \n\n04:33\tStacey Copeland:\t–hipster identity at the time.\n \n\n04:35\tHannah McGregor:\t[Laughs] Do you have, do you have a sense of why it is the audio production ended up appealing to you so much when you had been so focused on the visual to start?\n \n\n04:45\tStacey Copeland:\tI think at that point it was just because it brought in my interest in music in ways that I found more intimate and more relatable and I got to work much more closely with bands and with artists than you get to as part of a much larger video production team. You really get to be one-on-one and close up in person with the people that you’re working with in a different way. And it’s kind of like this family when you’re working in a group of people on a, on an audio production, a very tight knit family. And so from that, I ended up working as a lab assistant and production staff at Ryerson for, for awhile, for about a year after my undergrad and that gave me the teaching bug. And so I applied for grad school ’cause I said, “Well, how can I do this forever?”\n \n\n05:33\tHannah and Stacey:\t[Laughs]\n \n\n05:34\tHannah McGregor:\tThat is how so many of us get here.\n \n\n05:36\tStacey Copeland:\tYeah! So that’s what really brought me into doing my Master’s at Ryerson York in ComCult–\n \n\n05:42\tHannah McGregor:\tMhm.\n \n\n05:43\tStacey Copeland:\t–which brought in the teaching–\n \n\n05:45\tHannah McGregor:\tWhat’s ComCult?\n \n\n05:46\tStacey Copeland:\tComCult, right. Communication and culture.\n \n\n05:49\tHannah McGregor:\tOkay. [Laughs]\n \n\n05:50\tStacey Copeland:\tThat program was great. It really introduced me more to theory and awoke my inner feminist a lot more–\n \n\n05:57\tHannah McGregor:\tMhm.\n \n\n05:58\tStacey Copeland:\t–in thinking about my audio production and my approach to it. And so that’s why I ended up deep diving into feminist theory and sound and how they relate and how we can think about it. And–\n \n\n06:10\tHannah McGregor:\tYeah.\n \n\n06:11\tStacey Copeland:\t–what does… What is the experience that women are having with their voices in audio production? So that’s what I ended up doing for my MA and then of course, PhD work now is just the next–\n \n\n06:21\tHannah McGregor:\tYeah.\n \n\n06:21\tStacey Copeland:\t–chapter.\n \n\n06:22\tHannah McGregor:\t[Laughs] Ahaha…literally and figuratively.\n \n\n06:24\tStacey Copeland:\tYeah.\n \n\n06:25\tHannah McGregor:\tI… It’s so interesting to me the ways that people stumble across feminist theory for the first time, including those of us who, who might have sort of, looking back, been like, “Ah, I was a latent feminist that whole time, but didn’t have the language to articulate myself as such” or didn’t have any particular sense of what feminism meant beyond, like, “I am a woman and think I should be allowed to do things.”\n \n\n06:47\tStacey Copeland:\t[Laughs]\n \n\n06:48\tHannah McGregor:\tWhich is, you know, a legitimate standpoint for feminism. My first encounter with feminist theory came through a theology course–\n \n\n06:56\tStacey Copeland:\tInteresting.\n \n\n06:57\tHannah McGregor:\t–I took at the University of Edinburgh and I read Judith Butler for the first time, like, against the Gospel of Mark. So it was just this real, like, like it was this weird way that I sort of entered into this theory, but then it’s like, it gets ahold of you and you’re like… I don’t know. I remember after reading Gender Trouble for the first time that it was the first theory book that I had been desperate to tell everybody about.\n \n\n07:21\tStacey Copeland:\tMhm.\n \n\n07:22\tHannah McGregor:\tLike, that it broken open my brain so entirely that I just wanted to grab everybody and be like, “Did you hear?! Gender’s a performance!”\n \n\n07:29\tStacey Copeland:\t[Laughs]\n \n\n07:30\tHannah McGregor:\t“I had no idea! But I’m so excited by that!” So, let’s talk a little bit more about gender and voice.\n \n\n07:36\tStacey Copeland:\tYeah.\n \n\n07:37\tHannah McGregor:\tLike what, what does… I mean, I know, but I’m going to go ahead and ask–\n \n\n07:40\tStacey Copeland:\t[Laughs]\n \n\n07:40\tHannah McGregor:\t–the naive question: what did the gender and voice have to do with each other?\n \n\n07:44\tStacey Copeland:\tOh, gosh. So… [Nervous Laugh]\n \n\n07:46\tHannah McGregor:\t[Laughs]\n \n\n07:48\tStacey Copeland:\tIt’s a casual question.\n \n\n07:50\tHannah McGregor:\tAren’t we all just people? Maybe?\n \n\n07:52\tStacey Copeland:\t[Laughs]\n \n\n07:53\tHannah McGregor:\tAt the end of the day?\n \n\n07:53\tStacey Copeland:\tSo I mean, Judith Butler is a great, a great place to start. That was definitely one of my foundational texts, too. And one that got me real riled up… Because Butler doesn’t talk a ton about the voice or–\n \n\n08:06\tHannah McGregor:\tMm.\n \n\n08:07\tStacey Copeland:\t–about sound as part of our construction of gender. Which is fair, that was not very in fashion at the time, you might say.\n \n\n08:15\tHannah McGregor:\tYeah.\n \n\n08:15\tStacey Copeland:\tI know my supervisor Milena Droumeva says this often that we’ve really hit this sonic turn–\n \n\n08:20\tHannah McGregor:\tMhm.\n \n\n08:21\tStacey Copeland:\t–in the academy and in humanities–\n \n\n08:23\tHannah McGregor:\tMmm.\n \n\n08:23\tStacey Copeland:\t–and social sciences. And what that means is we’re really getting awoken to this idea of how our voices carry so much of our identity and our experience. And it’s often… If people aren’t seeing us in person for the first time, it’s the first thing they notice about us. And if they’re meeting us in person for the first time, it’s the second thing they notice about us. So it’s something that really changes people’s perceptions. And when you start to think about what your voice says about you, it also kind of opens up these questions of the different voices that we have in different contexts as well, and how gendered–\n \n\n09:08\tHannah McGregor:\tMm.\n \n\n09:08\tStacey Copeland:\t–that can often be. So part of my MA work was looking at particularly women’s experiences with their own voices in radio, in Toronto, and how they felt about it. Did they think it was high-pitched? Did they think it was low-pitched? Did they feel like they had a radio voice? What is a radio voice anyways? And what I found was for the most part, women working in the radio industry do have lower or what would be considered almost androgynous registers and pitches in their voices.\n \n\n09:43\tHannah McGregor:\tMhm.\n \n\n09:44\tStacey Copeland:\tAnd they may not necessarily present their voice that way in person, but they do when they’re on the microphone. And I mean, even as scholars or as speakers, we often do that, too. We have a different vocal presentation that often–\n \n\n09:57\tHannah McGregor:\t100 percent.\n \n\n09:58\tStacey Copeland:\t–skews lower, which also translates to skewing as more masculine presenting, at least in Western culture.\n \n\n10:05\tHannah McGregor:\tYep.\n \n\n10:06\tStacey Copeland:\tSo even just there–\n \n\n10:07\tHannah McGregor:\tYep.\n \n\n10:07\tStacey Copeland:\t–we can think about some of the gendered aspects of voice.\n \n\n10:10\tHannah McGregor:\tOne of the many terrible jobs that I had as an undergraduate was working for a Rogers call centre.\n \n\n10:17\tStacey Copeland:\tMm!\n \n\n10:18\tHannah McGregor:\tAnd I was maybe six months into that job before I noticed that when I was on calls with men, I pitched my voice a full half octave higher. [Pitches Voice Higher] Like, it just went right up here, like, “Hi, my name is Hannah and I’m calling from Rogers Wireless.”\n \n\n10:32\tStacey Copeland:\tYep.\n \n\n10:33\tHannah McGregor:\tAnd I just like… I, it was, it was deeply unconscious and my voice has pitched lower, I think both naturally and through training as I’ve aged.\n \n\n10:42\tStacey Copeland:\tMhm.\n \n\n10:43\tHannah McGregor:\tThat’s fairly common. In singing, we learn this, that our voices don’t sort of fully settle into their lifelong register until our thirties. And I started off singing much… Like I was a soprano when I was a kid and I sing bass now. But I will never forget a feminist mentor of mine telling me that I would have less difficulty in the classroom than other women my age because I had a naturally lower voice.\n \n\n11:06\tStacey Copeland:\tMhm.\n \n\n11:06\tHannah McGregor:\tAnd that it’s like both as simple and as complicated as that, that when your voice is lower, it registers as more masculine, which is synonymous with more authoritative. And so it will be easier to make people listen to you and take you seriously because your voice is lower.\n \n\n11:19\tStacey Copeland:\tYeah! And this is a common experience. Like–\n \n\n11:22\tHannah McGregor:\tYep.\n \n\n11:22\tStacey Copeland:\t–when you have these conversations with women, it’s often something that they have experienced in one way or another or have talked to another friend about having this experience.\n \n\n11:32\tHannah McGregor:\tMhm.\n \n\n11:32\tStacey Copeland:\tSo we can think of… I know a lot of people probably watched Love Is Blind recently [Laughs] on Netflix. [Laughs]\n \n\n11:39\tHannah McGregor:\tI did not, but continue your point.\n \n\n11:40\tStacey Copeland:\tOh, gosh.\n \n\n11:42\tHannah McGregor:\t[Laughs]\n \n\n11:42\tStacey Copeland:\tAs a, as a nerdy, like, gender and voice scholar, I was like, “Whoa!”\n \n\n11:46\tHannah McGregor:\tOh, oh…\n \n\n11:47\tStacey Copeland:\t“A show where they meet and they don’t see each other in person? They just have to fall in love with their voice??”\n \n\n11:52\tHannah McGregor:\t[Laughs] Okay, yep. I see why this would have interested you.\n \n\n11:56\tStacey Copeland:\tBut there’s this one character and there’s a great article online when the show first came out by Anne Karpf who’s also a feminist voice and radio scholar and critic [sic: the article was by Poppy Noor, in which she interviewed Anne Karpf]. And it was talking about how this one particular character on the show actually has this sort of baby voice that she puts on whenever she’s–\n \n\n12:16\tHannah McGregor:\tMm.\n \n\n12:16\tStacey Copeland:\t–speaking to the person that she’s dating. And it actually pitches more baby and higher when they’re in person, rather than when she’s behind the screen. So…\n \n\n12:29\tHannah McGregor:\tHuh!\n \n\n12:30\tStacey Copeland:\tRight there’s like this very fascinating demonstration for everyone watching Love Is Blind in the way that we change our vocal performance and interaction depending on who we’re talking to because she wasn’t doing this to her voice when she was just talking to the other women in the social off time that they had, it was only in these particular situations. And so it brought up these really great conversations online around baby voice–\n \n\n12:58\tHannah McGregor:\tYep.\n \n\n12:59\tStacey Copeland:\t–and the long history of that voice. We think of characters like Marilyn Monroe.\n \n\n13:03\tHannah McGregor:\tMhm.\n \n\n13:04\tStacey Copeland:\tAnd why do we think that’s sexy? Why does anyone think baby voice is sexy, right?\n \n\n13:08\tHannah McGregor:\t[Laughs]\n \n\n13:10\tStacey Copeland:\tSo it brings up these really interesting conversations around how we identify what’s sexy, what’s masculine, what’s feminine.\n \n\n13:18\tHannah McGregor:\tMhm.\n \n\n13:19\tStacey Copeland:\tIs it a way to be more submissive in having this kind of youthful sounding voice? And, and it comes–\n \n\n13:26\tHannah McGregor:\tMhm.\n \n\n13:26\tStacey Copeland:\t–into biology, like you said. As we age, we tend to have lower voice. And that also translates to–\n \n\n13:33\tHannah McGregor:\tMhm.\n \n\n13:33\tStacey Copeland:\t–our understanding of what voices have authority, as well, both men–\n \n\n13:39\tHannah McGregor:\tMhm.\n \n\n13:39\tStacey Copeland:\t–and people who are older. And so we then hit this like youth demo using baby voice to be sexy because it’s a little submissive. And then also having vocal fry, which I know I have a ton of–\n \n\n13:51\tHannah McGregor:\t[Exasperated Sigh in Agreement]\n \n\n13:51\tStacey Copeland:\t–because we’re, our voices–\n \n\n13:52\tHannah McGregor:\t[Exasperated Sigh]\n \n\n13:53\tStacey Copeland:\t–are trying to hit those lower registers to seem authoritative.\n \n\n13:57\tHannah McGregor:\tMhm!\n \n\n13:58\tStacey Copeland:\t[Laughs]\n \n\n13:58\tHannah McGregor:\tI…could scream about vocal fry until the cats come home.\n \n\n14:01\tStacey Copeland:\t[Laughs]\n \n\n14:01\tHannah McGregor:\tOne of my early sort of personal encounters with how much I was gonna fixate on gendered voices in podcasting was Marcelle my co-, the co-host of Witch, Please and I were invited onto CBC Edmonton AM–\n \n\n14:18\tStacey Copeland:\tOkay.\n \n\n14:19\tHannah McGregor:\t–to talk about gender and podcasting. In particular, to talk about why there are so many fewer women in podcasting than men. Though, that has change–… I mean, this was like a good five or six years ago.\n \n\n14:29\tStacey Copeland:\tMhm.\n \n\n14:29\tHannah McGregor:\tThat demographic is shifting decisively.\n \n\n14:32\tStacey Copeland:\tYeah, hot conversation in like 2014.\n \n\n14:34\tHannah McGregor:\tYes.\n \n\n14:35\tStacey Copeland:\t[Laughs] Yeah.\n \n\n14:35\tHannah McGregor:\tSo it was a hot conversation at the time. It was like, podcasting is 75% men, what’s going on, what are the barriers to access? And so we came on this radio show to talk about this. And we were talking about how one of the barriers to access for women is the policing of women’s voices.\n \n\n14:49\tStacey Copeland:\tMhm.\n \n\n14:49\tHannah McGregor:\tThe way that women talk is always wrong. And that… We were talking about that iconic This American Life story, “If You Don’t Have Something Nice to Say, SAY IT ALL IN CAPS,” [sic: should read “If You Don’t Have Anything Nice to Say, SAY IT IN ALL CAPS”] where they talk about how the top form of hate mail they get is about the voices of their young women producers.\n \n\n15:04\tStacey Copeland:\t[Sadly] Yeah.\n \n\n15:04\tHannah McGregor:\tLike, nothing makes their listeners as mad as the sound of a young woman with vocal fry.\n \n\n15:08\tStacey Copeland:\t[Laughs]\n \n\n15:08\tHannah McGregor:\tLike, just makes them lose their fucking minds. And we were talking about how there’s sort of this pseudoscientific concern-trolling attached to it.\n \n\n15:17\tStacey Copeland:\tMhm.\n \n\n15:17\tHannah McGregor:\tLike, “Oh, well, it’s bad for your voice. And that’s why you need to stop. Vocal fry wrecks your voice. We’re really just worried about you.” Which every woman has experienced somebody using this kind of like pseudomedical concern-trolling to–\n \n\n15:31\tStacey Copeland:\tGaslighting. [Laughs]\n \n\n15:32\tHannah McGregor:\t–to control us. Ga- precisely. It is absolutely gaslighting with a thin veneer of the medical on top of it.\n \n\n15:37\tStacey Copeland:\t[Laughs]\n \n\n15:39\tHannah McGregor:\tAnd the host was like, “Oh, well actually vocal fry is extremely bad for your voice, though.” And then just launched into like, mansplaining vocal fry to us. We like lost our goddamn minds. [Laughs] What is happening here?? Anyway, all of our listeners listened to the segment and then were really mean to him on Twitter all day.\n \n\n15:57\tStacey Copeland:\t[Laughs]\n \n\n15:58\tHannah McGregor:\tAnd it was very satisfying.\n \n\n16:00\tStacey Copeland:\tYeah. I mean, vocal fry is really fascinating that way. And you have to ask the question well, who is being, you know, bothered by vocal fry? What’s the demographic behind that? Because it’s very unlikely that it’s younger women who also have vocal fry. There is–\n \n\n16:19\tHannah McGregor:\tYeah, we’re not mad. [Laughs]\n \n\n16:19\tStacey Copeland:\t–the argument that it is a millennial and Gen Y, just, vocalization the same way that we had Valley Girl as a kind of slang and vocalization in generations before us. So, there’s… Part of what I found in my MA work was that a lot of younger women actually really enjoy the sound of vocal fry–\n \n\n16:40\tHannah McGregor:\t[Laughs]\n \n\n16:40\tStacey Copeland:\t–because to them, it sounds like them. It’s, it’s more–\n \n\n16:43\tHannah McGregor:\tYep.\n \n\n16:43\tStacey Copeland:\t–like having a conversation with a friend, rather than a, a formal radio broadcast presenter, you know?\n \n\n16:50\tHannah McGregor:\tYeah, yeah. And I wonder if the embrace of things like vocal fry is one of the sonic differences between radio and podcasting, that podcasting has sort of emerged as a space where in fact, because there’s a younger demographic who are hosting sometimes, and because there’s a sort of casualness behind a lot of the recording settings, that you are more likely to hear vocal fry on a podcast than on the radio and that becomes part of what makes it feel like a cozier medium.\n \n\n17:14\tStacey Copeland:\tMhm. Yeah, and it’s easier for vocal fry to come across, too, because there’s not as much high compression on the voice. You’re maybe listening or most likely listening on headphones versus on a blasting car stereo.\n \n\n17:28\tHannah McGregor:\tMm…\n \n\n17:29\tStacey Copeland:\tSo even when you maybe have a vocal fry voice—I’ve had this experience—and are doing a radio broadcast, it doesn’t necessarily come through because it’s smoothed out and compressed, versus on a podcast where we kind of let things breathe a little bit more because it is more conversational.\n \n\n17:46\tHannah McGregor:\tMhm.\n \n\n17:47\tStacey Copeland:\tSo I think podcasting, yeah, it’s definitely more conversational, but it’s also produced differently. There’s a different–\n \n\n17:54\tHannah McGregor:\tMhm.\n \n\n17:54\tStacey Copeland:\t–logic behind it often.\n \n\n17:56\tHannah McGregor:\tUgh, I love that. Okay, let’s fast forward now to that, to that next chapter. Tell me about what your research is about now.\n \n\n18:04\tStacey Copeland:\tOh, gosh. So I just presented my, and defended my, proposal a couple weeks ago. So…it’s fairly fresh in my mind.\n \n\n18:11\tHannah McGregor:\t[Laughs]\n \n\n18:13\tStacey Copeland:\tBut– [Laughs]\n \n\n18:13\tHannah McGregor:\tAnd still in, in that pure form before you’ve actually started trying to write it.\n \n\n18:17\tStacey Copeland:\tYeah, exactly.\n \n\n18:18\tHannah McGregor:\tWhen it’s just a, just a perfect idea.\n \n\n18:19\tStacey Copeland:\t[Laughs] I’m in the ethics stage now and quickly realizing how much work I have ahead of me in the next year.\n \n\n18:27\tHannah McGregor:\tMhm.\n \n\n18:27\tStacey Copeland:\tBut it’s exciting. So, basically, the, the one-liner or the elevator pitch version is–\n \n\n18:33\tHannah McGregor:\tMhm.\n \n\n18:35\tStacey Copeland:\t–I’m, I’m looking to ask the question, how is gender and sexuality communicated through audio media?\n \n\n18:41\tHannah McGregor:\tMm!\n \n\n18:41\tStacey Copeland:\tSpecifically asking that question in relation to audio produced by queer women in different decades. So the two kind of foundational shows that I’m looking at are The Lesbian Show, which was on Vancouver’s co-op radio in the 1970s, 1979, all the way into the early 2000s. So quite a few decades on air.\n \n\n19:07\tHannah McGregor:\tYep.\n \n\n19:08\tStacey Copeland:\tAnd then Dykes on Mykes, which is a community radio show out of Montreal, CKUT. And these are kind of my foundational shows of thinking about the production of audio and radio by queer women for queer women talking about queer identity. And from these shows, the goal is to create an intergenerational analysis where I interview these, these particular producers and then make linkages to contemporary podcasts that are making content either connected to or influenced by or reflecting back to these, these foundational shows. So for instance, I’m sure a lot of people, if they’re into queer podcasting or just like more intimate feminist podcasting, have listened to The Heart.\n \n\n20:00\tHannah McGregor:\tMhm.\n \n\n20:01\tStacey Copeland:\tIt’s a great podcast. But what a lot of people don’t know unless they dig deeper is that podcast, The Heart, was actually a community radio show audio smut on CKUT at the same–\n \n\n20:13\tHannah McGregor:\tHuh!\n \n\n20:14\tStacey Copeland:\t–community radio station as Dykes on Mykes. So making these kind of linkages to where are we finding these groups of feminist and queer community who are making audio either in the same spaces or together or are influencing each other and how does that transition from historical understandings of community radio, and how that was produced,–\n \n\n20:35\tHannah McGregor:\tMhm.\n \n\n20:35\tStacey Copeland:\t–into podcasting today? So with shows like The Heart… There’s another great one, Asking For It, by the same collective, which is Mermaid Palace. And… There’s quite a few out there there’s, there’s Queer Public, which is another great podcast out there, also someone from Montreal CKUT-background who’s producing that. So making these kind of connections early on made me wonder what the intergenerational overlap is in–\n \n\n21:04\tHannah McGregor:\tMhm.\n \n\n21:04\tStacey Copeland:\t–the experience and underlying desires in producing queer media as queer women.\n \n\n21:11\tHannah McGregor:\tMhm.\n \n\n21:11\tStacey Copeland:\tWho is it for? What’s the intention behind it? What does it sound like?\n \n\n21:16\tHannah McGregor:\tYeah.\n \n\n21:17\tStacey Copeland:\tWhat’s queer media anyways? And what, what is that when you’re doing it on the radio, when both queer politics and feminist movements have this very long history of visual metaphors, of visibility, of coming out, right? What does it mean when that’s being done only through sound?\n \n\n21:36\tHannah McGregor:\tMhm.\n \n\n21:36\tStacey Copeland:\tSo that’s what I’m really interested in exploring over the next year, anyways.\n \n\n21:40\tHannah and Stacey:\t[Laughs]\n \n\n21:40\tHannah McGregor:\tYeah, yeah. I love this focus on the intergenerational, which is such a necessary and often fraught conversation when we are talking about, I think, both feminist and queer, intergenerational solidarity and divisions.\n \n\n21:54\tStacey Copeland:\tMhm!\n \n\n21:55\tHannah McGregor:\tI’ve been talking a lot with other queer and feminist friends about this feeling sometimes that, I think because we are so invested in a constant movement towards greater liberation, that there is a tendency to, as I usually put it, eat our mothers.\n \n\n22:17\tStacey Copeland:\tYeah. That’s, that’s a great way to say it.\n \n\n22:19\tHannah McGregor:\tWhich is to say that in order to articulate our greater liberation, it often involves a kind of disavowal of those who came before us. And we’re seeing that playing out in Vancouver in all kinds of complex ways, especially around the surprisingly [Laughs] vocal TERF movement in this city and the way that a trans inclusive queerness and a trans inclusive feminism feels this need to break with what is not necessarily, but it’s often seen as, a generational divide. I think that’s important to, to distinguish: that it isn’t necessarily a generational divide, but that’s often how we understand it as a like, “Oh, those are like… Lesbians from the ’70s hated trans women. And so we distinguish ourselves from that generation.” And the figuring out ways to find forms of continuity and to build dialogue, like, intergenerational dialogue feels like really vital work…right now to try to sort of, I don’t know, figure out how we can find different ways to relate to the generations who came before us that are not a sort of burn it down, build something new out of the ashes. [Laughs]\n \n\n23:27\tStacey Copeland:\tMhm! I mean, that’s a big part of the issue with the waves metaphor in feminism, that–\n \n\n23:33\tHannah McGregor:\tMm!\n \n\n23:33\tStacey Copeland:\t–everything comes in waves, but we have this first, second, and third, and fourth, and arguably fifth, [Laughs] at this point in the way that we’re micro-breaking it down into almost standpoints or initiatives. So…\n \n\n23:46\tHannah McGregor:\tMhm.\n \n\n23:47\tStacey Copeland:\tYeah, part of what I’m really fascinating in, in doing is taking a step back and asking, “Well, we can’t just simply dismiss all of the work that lesbian feminists in particular did in the ’70s.” Yes, there are awful stories, there are dark histories, but we need to open those up and see what else was going on. Well, why was this happening at that time? What are the other stories? What were some of the wins that were coming out of that? And how, how was that politics influencing everyone who came in the decade or wave after, and then now, as well, when we start to see this rising of queer feminist work and people taking up even lesbian feminist and lesbian separatist identities—which I found very fascinating—or using the term “sapphist” for instance.\n \n\n24:39\tHannah McGregor:\tHaha!\n \n\n24:40\tStacey Copeland:\tRight?\n \n\n24:40\tHannah McGregor:\tThat I’ve never come across.\n \n\n24:41\tStacey Copeland:\tOh.\n \n\n24:41\tHannah McGregor:\tBut…\n \n\n24:41\tStacey Copeland:\tIt’s new. If you go on Tumblr…\n \n\n24:42\tHannah McGregor:\t[Laughs] Ah, Tumblr. Fucking Tumblr. Everything I know about gender and sexuality, I definitely learned from Tumblr use.\n \n\n24:50\tStacey Copeland:\t[Laughs] Yeah, so the term sapphist, it’s there. And it’s making a comeback, which is fascinating to me. So there is this kind of desire I think people have of looking back, of trying to understand where these movements came from and reconnecting to feminists who maybe are from older demographics. And this… You know, it’s not unheard of. When we think of the way that we interact with our grandparents or elders in our lives, this should also be happening within queer and feminist communities–\n \n\n25:24\tHannah McGregor:\tYeah.\n \n\n25:24\tStacey Copeland:\t–so that we can understand what people went through and what people experienced before we got to the point we’re at now.\n \n\n25:32\tHannah McGregor:\tYeah.\n \n\n25:32\tStacey Copeland:\tHow did we come to a moment where we have, you know, queer same sex marriage in Canada when we have something like the Me Too movement that didn’t just spring up overnight?\n \n\n25:43\tHannah McGregor:\tNo. Okay, I want to talk more about what queer production sounds like, but just a brief aside about intergenerational and queer ancestors: have you watched A Secret Love yet?\n \n\n25:55\tStacey Copeland:\tNoo, it’s on my, it’s on my, my list on Netflix.\n \n\n25:58\tHannah McGregor:\t[Emotional Exhalations] Hoo, whoa. I mean, I strongly recommend it and I also cried so much.\n \n\n26:06\tStacey Copeland:\tYeah!\n \n\n26:07\tHannah McGregor:\tIt’s…\n \n\n26:08\tStacey Copeland:\tMy social media feed is full of people talking about how emotional it is. And I’m like, I need to be in a space where I’m prepared to watch this.\n \n\n26:13\tHannah McGregor:\tYeah, you gotta be ready. I was not ready. I thought it was just going to be like fun, like, “Ooh, A League of Their Own.”\n \n\n26:20\tStacey Copeland:\t[Laughs]\n \n\n26:20\tHannah McGregor:\t“Like, look at this, old-timey lesbians!” But it was a full on like five Kleenex situation.\n \n\n26:24\tStacey Copeland:\tMm.\n \n\n26:25\tHannah McGregor:\tIt was, it was intense. But also really exciting to get even this micro history told through a queer lens. I was chatting with a friend—a friend of the show—Cynara Geissler about it afterwards. And she was like, “Isn’t it interesting that the two women being described met in Moose Jaw and moved to Chicago in the ’40s because it was safer.” And she was like, “What narratives do we hear about Chicago in the ’40s? It’s never that it is a safe place to be.” It’s always articulated as this like, den of iniquity, this wildly dangerous city. But all of our definitions of like what makes a city safe are really, really different when you’re like…a couple of lesbians in the ’40s–\n \n\n27:10\tStacey Copeland:\tMhm.\n \n\n27:10\tHannah McGregor:\t–doing something that is literally illegal. You know, all of a sudden the big city becomes safe for you in a different way. And it was just like, even in that small register, the way that we understand reality, historically, becomes so, so different when we’re offered different lenses on it. Anyway.\n \n\n27:27\tStacey Copeland:\tNo, completely. So I–\n \n\n27:28\tHannah McGregor:\tRec-, recommend.\n \n\n27:29\tStacey Copeland:\t–I’ve listened to quite a bit of The Lesbian Show so far. There’s a big collection of it as part of the Archives of Lesbian Oral Testimony, which is an initiative by Elise Chenier here at Simon Fraser. And then there’s a new big collection at the Vancouver Archives, which I’m very excited about. But listening back to these shows, there is so much fascinating history and interesting, very queer sound moments like sexual innuendo commentary over a lesbian baseball game [sic: should read “track and field”] at the Gay Games, you know?\n \n\n28:05\tHannah McGregor:\tYep!\n \n\n28:06\tStacey Copeland:\tOr a tap dancing competition on air. [Laughs] And then like…\n \n\n28:12\tHannah McGregor:\tSo many of the lesbians I know love tap dancing. [Jokingly] Can you explain that to me?\n \n\n28:16\tStacey Copeland:\t[Laughs] I don’t know.\n \n\n28:17\tHannah McGregor:\t[Laughs]\n \n\n28:17\tStacey Copeland:\tMaybe it’s connected to this ’70s and ’80s fad.\n \n\n28:21\tHannah McGregor:\tOkay, great.\n \n\n28:21\tStacey Copeland:\tI don’t know, right? And then other moments like Valentine’s call-in shows where women could call in anonymously and the host would read out a love letter to the person that they were having a crush on if they wanted to stay anonymous. And so we get all of these kinds of historical points and we also get a lot of discussions around like working class lesbians and Black feminist lesbianism. And they also do discussions on global issues and transgender issues and solidarities, as well, throughout the LGBTQ community and the poor community, because they were also rooted in community radio stations.\n \n\n29:03\tHannah McGregor:\tYeah.\n \n\n29:04\tStacey Copeland:\tSo making those kind of connections and hearing those stories really does question and rewrite the histories that we understand.\n \n\n29:11\tHannah McGregor:\tThat’s so exciting. History’s great, right? What a fun discipline.\n \n\n29:15\tStacey Copeland:\t[Laughs]\n \n\n29:15\tHannah McGregor:\tMedia history is the best. So, you mentioned that you’re interested in, like, what does queer media sound like?\n \n\n29:21\tStacey Copeland:\tMhm.\n \n\n29:21\tHannah McGregor:\tWhat does queer production sound like? And that was like… It really struck me even when you were describing like how podcasting and radio sound differently because they’re produced differently.\n \n\n29:31\tStacey Copeland:\tMhm.\n \n\n29:32\tHannah McGregor:\tSo have you started to hypothesize what queer production sounds like?\n \n\n29:37\tStacey Copeland:\tYeah, it’s tough, but there’s already some examples that have come out of my kind of initial research into the subject. And some of them are when you’re looking back at community radio, those moments where you can imagine someone flipping through the dial and then all of a sudden they’re hearing two lesbians talk very sexually about another woman playing baseball [sic: should read “track and field”]. That kind of a moment is really, very queer, very queer–\n \n\n30:03\tHannah McGregor:\t[Laughs]\n \n\n30:04\tStacey Copeland:\t–in a way that–\n \n\n30:05\tHannah McGregor:\tYep!\n \n\n30:05\tStacey Copeland:\t–in a way that isn’t the same as podcasting because podcasting, in contrast, someone’s going to be choosing to listen to that show.\n \n\n30:12\tHannah McGregor:\tMm…\n \n\n30:13\tStacey Copeland:\tSo then how are those produced in a more… To create a more queer audio experience? And I think shows like Asking For It that Kaitlin Prest and the collective at Mermaid Palace are, are making–\n \n\n30:25\tHannah McGregor:\tMhm.\n \n\n30:26\tStacey Copeland:\t–are great example of some of the queer feminist work that we’re going to see moving forward where we have lesbian, queer, and feminist protagonists–\n \n\n30:36\tHannah McGregor:\tMhm.\n \n\n30:36\tStacey Copeland:\t–and taking on more difficult subjects, like same-sex relationship abuse and domestic abuse, but in ways that really bring us into the spaces in new ways. So it’s not just voice-over conversation or a journalistic style of production. It’s actually taking us into those rooms with the couple…\n \n\n30:58\tHannah McGregor:\tMm.\n \n\n30:59\tStacey Copeland:\tHearing both sounds of violence but also sounds of intimacy and sex in a podcast between two women, right?\n \n\n31:10\tHannah McGregor:\tYep!\n \n\n31:10\tStacey Copeland:\tCreates these very queer audio experiences that we aren’t used to hearing. And really, podcasting is perfect for creating that kind of experience in contrast to radio, because little coos from a woman, for instance, or soft crying is something that’s much harder to communicate because of the compression and way that radio is broadcasted in contrast to a podcast.\n \n\n31:36\tHannah McGregor:\tOh, that’s, that’s super interesting. I just finished listening to the second season of Within the Wires.\n \n\n31:42\tStacey Copeland:\tMhm, yeah!\n \n\n31:43\tHannah McGregor:\tWhich is also–\n \n\n31:43\tStacey Copeland:\tI’ve started listening to that. It’s so good!\n \n\n31:45\tHannah McGregor:\tIt’s, it’s really good. And the second season has all of these examples of both crying and also intentional silences where the narrator is supposed to be recording these audio guides to art that was created by her former lover. And she begins to cry and then just stops talking for lengths of time. And as I was, was walking around and listening and I was like, “Oh, this is impossible in any other medium.” Because you can’t… There’s an intentionality to listening and a kind of duration to listening with podcasting where like, I will sit here and listen to a solid minute of silence because I understand you have put it here intentionally.\n \n\n32:27\tStacey Copeland:\tMhm.\n \n\n32:27\tHannah McGregor:\tAnd that will register to me. Whereas if you’re flipping… [Laughs] I mean, I imagine if you’re flipping through the radio, ’cause when have I flipped through the radio in my adult life? The answer is zero times.\n \n\n32:36\tStacey Copeland:\t[Laughs]\n \n\n32:37\tHannah McGregor:\tBut I imagine if you’re flipping through the radio and come across a station where there is a minute of silence, you will assume it’s just not a station and keep going.\n \n\n32:44\tStacey Copeland:\tYeah, exactly. You’ll assume something’s going wrong and go somewhere else.\n \n\n32:47\tHannah McGregor:\tYeah, Yeah.\n \n\n32:49\tStacey Copeland:\tYeah. Yeah, moments like that. And there’s also work with groups like Constellations. I don’t know if you’ve heard of, of Constellations, but it was originally an installation—sound art installation—in Toronto and then it was put online as a series of podcasts. And it’s really sound artists and podcasts and audio producers making these pieces that kind of push the boundaries in the way that we understand radio and podcast production and asking–\n \n\n33:20\tHannah McGregor:\tMhm.\n \n\n33:20\tStacey Copeland:\t–really intimate questions. So one of the episodes, for instance, takes us into a session where the audio producer is learning how to sing and voc-…and vocalize. But it takes us into these very intimate spaces in a way that sounds quite different because we’re hearing the room, we’re hearing overlap of time, so I think that’s another way that we can think about it: a queering of audio and queering of media is playing with our sense of time and space–\n \n\n33:50\tHannah McGregor:\tMm, mhm.\n \n\n33:51\tStacey Copeland:\t–in a way that we don’t necessarily hear in traditional, linear, radio formats, right? It’s ’cause–\n \n\n33:57\tHannah McGregor:\tYeah.\n \n\n33:57\tStacey Copeland:\t–radio is traditionally produced as very linear: you tune in at six o’clock, it’s going to be the six o’clock news. You tune in at five, we’ve got the traffic, right?\n \n\n34:08\tHannah McGregor:\tYep!\n \n\n34:09\tStacey Copeland:\tAnd it’s cyclical as well. So it’s always pre-produced and cyclical every day. Versus podcasting can really play with those senses of time and space in a new way.\n \n\n34:18\tHannah McGregor:\tYeah. So this… Listening to you talk about production in this way… I mean, you are a great example of a scholar who comes into their work with a kind of experiential knowledge because of your background in audio production.\n \n\n34:33\tStacey Copeland:\tMhm.\n \n\n34:33\tHannah McGregor:\tAnd I imagine your knowledge of audio production heightens your ability to understand what you’re hearing and the kinds of deliberate choices that people are making when they are producing radio or podcasts. But I wonder if sort of before SpokenWeb and the other work we’re doing together, if you had been thinking about, you know, sharing some of your research as a podcast, like, is that an impulse that you have given that you both work on and think about sound and are also a producer yourself?\n \n\n35:05\tStacey Copeland:\tYeah, and it’s hard. [Laughs] So…\n \n\n35:07\tHannah McGregor:\t[Laughs]\n \n\n35:09\tStacey Copeland:\tIt’s very, very… It’s a very different experience ’cause when you’re writing academic work, you’re writing with an academic audience in mind versus when–\n \n\n35:17\tHannah McGregor:\tMhm.\n \n\n35:17\tStacey Copeland:\t–you’re creating something like a podcast or a radio documentary, you really want to make it as accessible as possible. And that can often be difficult to do–\n \n\n35:26\tHannah McGregor:\tMhm.\n \n\n35:27\tStacey Copeland:\t–as you know, from making this–\n \n\n35:28\tHannah McGregor:\tUh-huh\n \n\n35:28\tStacey Copeland:\t–show and working with SpokenWeb. So I actually… I attempted to do that for a first time during my MA. So I made a three-piece radio documentary that went with my MA work. I think the first part is really good and I think then I got too heady and it’s really still–\n \n\n35:46\tHannah McGregor:\t[Laughs]\n \n\n35:46\tStacey Copeland:\t–for an academic audience in the second–\n \n\n35:48\tHannah McGregor:\tYep.\n \n\n35:48\tStacey Copeland:\t–and third part. But my, my goal is to try and do that again with my PhD work.\n \n\n35:53\tHannah McGregor:\tMhm.\n \n\n35:53\tStacey Copeland:\tSo radio documentary, audio documentary is part of the process that I’m going through. So I’ll be keeping an audio diary as a feminist reflexive method–\n \n\n36:04\tHannah McGregor:\tYes.\n \n\n36:04\tStacey Copeland:\t–throughout my research process. So after each interview, I’ll sit down with my microphone and kind of detox and have a bit of a–\n \n\n36:11\tHannah McGregor:\t[Laughs]\n \n\n36:12\tStacey Copeland:\t–confessional moment and work through my material that way. And so I am trying to think through, and I think working with SpokenWeb and thinking about the way that we can translate academic work into something that’s more publicly accessible and just more enjoyable, to be honest. Sometimes reading–\n \n\n36:30\tHannah McGregor:\tMhm!\n \n\n36:31\tStacey Copeland:\t–a lot of large manuscripts and articles can, can be a lot if you want to grasp a subject. I know I’m more of an oral learner. So thinking about the ways that we can use some of these production techniques, and especially when you’re thinking about sound and in something intimate, like queer experience and queer identity, how can I marry these two things together in a way that really makes it useful and enjoyable and also informative, right?\n \n\n36:59\tHannah McGregor:\t[Laughs] Yeah.\n \n\n36:59\tStacey Copeland:\tAt the end of the day, getting those ideas across is a big part of it.\n \n\n37:02\tHannah McGregor:\tYep.\n \n\n37:02\tStacey Copeland:\tAnd so I do think SpokenWeb is doing some interesting work that way.\n \n\n37:06\tHannah McGregor:\tAnd it’s also interesting, as part of working on this project, to see the places that are challenges and the places that come more easily and maybe whose work lends itself to that kind of translation or mobilization more readily, right? Because there are, there are different kinds and levels of translation that are required for different kinds of fields. And there is… I, I’ve been finding myself… I’m trying to relearn how to write right now–\n \n\n37:37\tStacey Copeland:\tMm.\n \n\n37:38\tHannah McGregor:\t–because I was rigorously trained how to write over a decade of education in a very particular way with a very narrow audience in mind and have come to the conclusion that I personally don’t particularly want to write to that audience. I mean, I don’t want to exclude that audience either, but I don’t want that to be my primary audience. But the ease with which I produce scholarly prose at this point is such that it is like physically difficult [Laughs] to produce anything else. But I have to stop myself and be like, “Nope, okay, nobody understands any of these words and also that sentence was 14 lines long. Why are you doing this?”\n \n\n38:18\tHannah and Stacey:\t[Laughs]\n \n\n38:19\tHannah McGregor:\tA friend of mine once said, “I write as though I’m challenging myself to fit every preposition into every sentence.”\n \n\n38:25\tHannah and Stacey:\t[Laughs]\n \n\n38:26\tHannah McGregor:\tWhich was rude, but true. And podcasting for me, especially sort of over these different projects, has been a way to try to find a different voice as a scholar. That rather than starting with the work and then trying to translate it, by actually doing the thinking through this medium I’m finding the ability to, to articulate a different kind of scholarly voice with a different audience and a different conversation in mind. So I love that idea of like keeping the audio journal as you go, of, of building sound into the process itself so that it’s not a sort of “once all the research is done and I’ve written all of the papers and I know everything and exactly how I want it to sound, then I will translate it.” It’s like, how do I actually think when I think out loud?\n \n\n39:17\tStacey Copeland:\tMhm.\n \n\n39:17\tHannah McGregor:\tBecause we think differently, don’t we, when we think out loud?\n \n\n39:21\tStacey Copeland:\tI mean, I know I do. Yeah. And sound does bring this entirely new element into it. Part of the other sound element that I’m bringing into my process is actually playing archival clips for my interviewees to kind of evoke–\n \n\n39:35\tHannah McGregor:\tMm…\n \n\n39:35\tStacey Copeland:\t–some of those memories and experiences back. And I think that’s part of what excited me about the SpokenWeb project, too, is thinking about how can we use sound archives in new ways? How can we take all of these fascinating stories and voices out of places that are usually exclusively for researchers and librarians and archivists and bring them to the public, take them out of the dusty box and into–\n \n\n40:02\tHannah McGregor:\t[Laughs]\n \n\n40:02\tStacey Copeland:\t–the digital space, right, and create this kind of time overlap. So there is some, some relationship between maybe me listening to a lesbian’s experience in 1982 when I’m listening in 2020. And I think–\n \n\n40:18\tHannah McGregor:\tYeah.\n \n\n40:19\tStacey Copeland:\t–we have, you know, this very long history of sound recordings, not being archived properly, not being given the same value, but we’re seeing a huge change in the last couple years and it’s definitely exciting times for sound scholars.\n \n\n40:33\tHannah McGregor:\tDo you think that there’s anything behind this, this sonic turn in the humanities? Why are we suddenly taking sound seriously?\n \n\n40:39\tStacey Copeland:\t[Laughs] I mean, this is a great question. There’s a couple theories behind it, one of them being that we’re finally really used to the visual, we’re bombarded with it every day, the novelty’s kind of wearing off. And so we’re actually finding ourselves retreating into sound in new ways that we never had before. We’re wearing headphones as we commute to curate our own spaces, to listen–\n \n\n41:04\tHannah McGregor:\tMhm.\n \n\n41:05\tStacey Copeland:\t–and create these experiences for ourselves in ways that we never had before. Listening used to be very communal, now it’s very personal. So it’s creating new connections and new relationships to sound that we didn’t necessarily have before, which I think, I think gives more value or at least perceptive value to some of these recordings from the past. [Theme Music]\n \n\n42:44\tHannah McGregor:\tSpokenWeb is a monthly podcast produced by the SpokenWeb team as part of distributing the audio collected from and created using Canadian literary archival recordings found at universities across Canada. This episode was a special cross-over with Secret Feminist Agenda. To learn more about that podcast, check out secretfeministagenda.com. Our producers this month were me, Hannah McGregor, and of course our podcast project manager Stacey Copeland. A special thank you to Stacey for taking the time to talk with me. To find out more about SpokenWeb, visit spokenweb.ca and subscribe to the SpokenWeb Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you may listen. If you love us, let us know. Rate us and leave a comment on Apple Podcasts or say hi on our social media @SpokenWebCanada. We’ll see you back here next month for another episode of the SpokenWeb Podcast: stories about how literature sounds.\n\n"],"score":1.0},{"id":"9670","cataloger_name":["Ella,Hooper"],"partnerInstitution":["Concordia University"],"collection_source_collection":["SpokenWeb AV"],"source_collection_label":["SpokenWeb AV"],"collection_contributing_unit":["SpokenWeb"],"source_collection_uri":[""],"collection_image_url":["https://archiveofthepresent.spokenweb.ca/_nuxt/img/header-img_1000.fd7675f.png"],"collection_source_collection_description":["SpokenWeb Audio Visual Collection"],"collection_source_collection_id":["ArchiveOfThePresent"],"persistent_url":["https://archiveofthepresent.spokenweb.ca/"],"item_title":["SpokenWeb Podcast S2 Trailer, Season 2 Trailer. We’re Back!, 21 September 2020, McGregor and Copeland"],"item_title_source":["SpokenWeb Podcast web page."],"item_title_note":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/season-2-trailer-were-back/"],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Podcast"],"item_series_title":["The SpokenWeb Podcast"],"item_series_description":["Series of podcasts by the SpokenWeb network."],"item_subseries_title":["The SpokenWeb Podcast Season 2"],"item_series_wikidata_url":["https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q117038029"],"item_series_uri":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/spokenweb-podcast/"],"item_identifiers":["[]"],"rights":["Creative Commons Attribution (BY)"],"rights_license":["Creative Commons Attribution (BY)"],"access":["Streaming and download"],"creator_names":["Hannah McGregor","Stacey Copeland"],"creator_names_search":["Hannah McGregor","Stacey Copeland"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/20153713810358661443\",\"name\":\"Hannah McGregor\",\"dates\":\"1984-\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Producer\"]},{\"url\":\"\",\"name\":\"Stacey Copeland\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Producer\"]}]"],"contributors":["[]"],"Publication_Date":[2020],"material_description":["[]"],"digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://cdn.simplecast.com/audio/28a9da1f-8cca-410c-b5d7-8165a73f9394/episodes/cfd03a52-ba91-41a2-a177-e69003d4427e/audio/a85328c9-9743-4a2d-9c46-079bec3cd2d5/default_tc.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"swp-s2-teaser-trailer-2020-v2.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"44.1 kHz\",\"duration\":\"00:01:30\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"1,512,638 bytes\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"MP3 audio\",\"title\":\"swp-s2-teaser-trailer-2020-v2\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/season-2-trailer-were-back/\"}]"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"2020-09-21\",\"type\":\"Publication Date\",\"notes\":\"\",\"source\":\"\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"venue\":\"Simon Fraser University Maggie Benston Centre\",\"notes\":\"\",\"address\":\"8888 University Drive, Burnaby, BC, V5A 1S6\",\"latitude\":\"49.276709600000004\",\"longitude\":\"-122.91780296438841\"}]"],"Address":["8888 University Drive, Burnaby, BC, V5A 1S6"],"Venue":["Simon Fraser University Maggie Benston Centre"],"City":["Burnaby, British Columbia"],"contents":["Get ready for Season 2 of the SpokenWeb Podcast, stories about how literature sounds. We have a brand-new line up of original episodes for you from archives, universities and in these physically distant times, the many spaces and places we call home, all across Canada and beyond.  Whether it’s a deep dive into deep curation poetry, never before heard interviews with Canadian Literature legends or fresh takes on the role of sound in listening in our lives, this season has something for every canlit curiouso, sonic explorer, poetry connoisseur, and lifelong learner at heart. Season premiere in your rss feed October 5th, 2020.\n\n\n00:03\tHannah McGregor:\t[Upbeat String Music] Last season on the SpokenWeb Podcast, we brought you stories of early spoken word recordings, etched and wax —\n00:10\tJason Camlot:\t[Instrumental Music] [Audio, from SpokenWeb Podcast S1 Ep2 plays: Old sound recordings are weird.] [Inaudible Voice] [Crackling Recording].\n00:19\tHannah McGregor:\t— And the hidden labor behind archiving and caring for literary collections.\n00:23\tKaris Shearer:\t[Audio, from SpokenWeb Podcast S1 Ep3 plays: I think often we don’t understand or see the labor that is behind that presentation.]\n00:28\tHannah McGregor:\tWe listened together to the arresting words of Dorothy Livesay and Elizabeth Smart —\n00:34\tElizabeth Smart:\t[Audio, from SpokenWeb Podcast S1 E4 plays: By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept] —\n00:36\tHannah McGregor:\t— and to the sounds of the changing world around us as the pandemic changed how we work and how we listen.\n00:43\tJason Camlot & Katherine McLeod:\t[Audio, from SpokenWeb Podcast S1 E8 plays: How are you really listening, Catherine? Well, Jason, how am I really listening? Sigh.].\n00:49\tHannah McGregor:\tThis season on the SpokenWeb Podcast we have a brand new lineup of original episodes from archives, universities, and, in these physically distanced times, the many spaces and places we call home all across Canada and beyond. Whether it’s a deep dive into the deep curation of poetry, never before heard interviews with CanLit legends, or explorations of the ethics of listening, season two of the SpokenWeb Podcast has something for every sonic explorer, poetry connoisseur, or lifelong learner at heart. I hope you’ll join us at spokenweb.ca [Musical Tone] or wherever you get your podcasts."],"Note":["[]"],"Related_works":["[]"],"_version_":1853670549795897344,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:54.290Z","score":1.0},{"id":"9682","cataloger_name":["Gloriah,Onyango"],"partnerInstitution":["Concordia University"],"collection_source_collection":["SpokenWeb AV"],"source_collection_label":["SpokenWeb AV"],"collection_contributing_unit":["SpokenWeb"],"source_collection_uri":[""],"collection_image_url":["https://archiveofthepresent.spokenweb.ca/_nuxt/img/header-img_1000.fd7675f.png"],"collection_source_collection_description":["SpokenWeb Audio Visual Collection"],"collection_source_collection_id":["ArchiveOfThePresent"],"persistent_url":["https://archiveofthepresent.spokenweb.ca/"],"item_title":["SpokenWeb Podcast ShortCuts 1.1, Audio of the Month – Daryl Hine’s Point Grey, 20 January 2020, McLeod"],"item_title_source":["SpokenWeb Podcast web page."],"item_title_note":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/audio-of-the-month-daryl-hines-point-grey/"],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Podcast"],"item_series_title":["The SpokenWeb Podcast"],"item_series_description":["Series of podcasts by the SpokenWeb network."],"item_subseries_title":["The SpokenWeb Podcast ShortCuts"],"item_series_wikidata_url":["https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q117038029"],"item_series_uri":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/spokenweb-podcast/"],"item_identifiers":["[]"],"rights":["Creative Commons Attribution (BY)"],"rights_license":["Creative Commons Attribution (BY)"],"access":["Streaming and download"],"creator_names":["Katherine McLeod"],"creator_names_search":["Katherine McLeod"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/44156495389117561605\",\"name\":\"Katherine McLeod\",\"dates\":\"1981-\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Producer\"]}]"],"contributors":["[]"],"Publication_Date":[2020],"material_description":["[]"],"digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://cdn.simplecast.com/audio/28a9da/28a9da1f-8cca-410c-b5d7-8165a73f9394/a736b976-2394-4326-8ba6-8250b6767046/minisode-ep1-edit-v2_tc.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"minisode-ep1-edit-v2_tc.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"44.1 kHz\",\"duration\":\"00:06:35\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"6,387,296 bytes\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"MP3 audio\",\"title\":\"Minisode ep1_Edit V2\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/audio-of-the-month-daryl-hines-point-grey/\"}]"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"2020-01-20\",\"type\":\"Publication Date\",\"notes\":\"\",\"source\":\"\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/22080572#map=16/45.49381/-73.58233\",\"venue\":\"Concordia University McConnell Building\",\"notes\":\"\",\"address\":\"1400 Boulevard de Maisonneuve Ouest, Montreal, QC, H3G 1M8\",\"latitude\":\"45.4968036\",\"longitude\":\"-73.57792785757887\"}]"],"Address":["1400 Boulevard de Maisonneuve Ouest, Montreal, QC, H3G 1M8"],"Venue":["Concordia University McConnell Building"],"City":["Montreal, Quebec"],"Note":["[]"],"Related_works":["[]"],"_version_":1853670549802188800,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:54.290Z","contents":["Welcome to our first SpokenWeb minisode. Each month on alternate fortnights (that’s every second week following the monthly spokenweb podcast episode) – join Hannah McGregor, and minisode host and curator Katherine McLeod for SpokenWeb’s Audio of Month mini series. This month Katherine shares a recording of Canadian poet Daryl Hine reading “Point Grey” (1967).\n\n(0:00)\tSpokenWeb Podcast Theme Music:\t[Piano Overlaid With Distorted Beat]\n(00:10)\tHannah McGregor\tWelcome to our first SpokenWeb minisode. Each month on alternate fortnights—that’s every second week following the monthly SpokenWeb Podcast episode—join me, Hannah McGregor, and minisode host and curator Katherine McLeod for SpokenWeb’s Audio of the Month miniseries. We’ll share with you specially curated audio clips from deep in the SpokenWeb archives. An extension of Katherine’s Audio of the Week series at spokenweb.ca, Katherine brings her favourite audio each month to the SpokenWeb Podcast. So if you love what you hear, make sure to head over to spokenweb.ca for more. Without further ado, here is Katherine McLeod with SpokenWeb’s inaugural Audio of the Month: ‘mini’ stories about how literature sounds.\n(00:57)\tTheme Music\t[Instrumental Overlapped With Feminine Vocals]\n(01:03\n)\tKatherine McLeod\tAt the end of 2019, I was listening back through the December readings in the Sir George Williams Poetry Series and I started exploring the reading by Daryl Hine. At first, I considered selecting his reading of the final poem “The Trout,” but then I noticed something else: a note for one timestamp indicating that Hine had introduced and read quote, “an unknown poem.” End quote. As I listened to his introduction to that poem, I realized that he was preparing the audience for the now-famous poem “Point Grey,” which at the time of this reading was not yet published. In fact, the introducer of Hine at the start of the reading had mentioned that Minutes, the collection that contained “Point Grey,” would be published in the new year, 1968. That voice of the introducer was listed as unknown, too, but it sounded a great deal like Margaret Atwood, possibly meaning that this was the first time that Atwood heard “Point Grey,” a point to expand upon elsewhere and perhaps even to confirm through an Audio of the Week in the new year.\n(02:15)\tKatherine McLeod\tReturning back to the audio clip of Hine’s poem, the unpublished state of “Point Grey” is audible through the sounds of the pages turning, suggesting that Hine read from sheets of paper, not from a book and especially in his decision to restart and read a different version. He introduced the poem by describing its view from the University of British Columbia or Point Grey clarifying that, quote, “I don’t mean the university by any of the architectural things I mention in this poem, but I’m talking about the beach, a very beautiful, barren Pacific beach that lies below Point Grey.” End quote. Many years ago, I heard this poem read in a classroom at UBC, overlooking the same view where, quote, “…rain makes spectres of the mountains.” End quote. Here was “Point Grey, on this recording, as I listened from Montreal where this poem was read in 1967, soon to be published in 1968 and anthologized in poetry collections for years to come.\n(03:27)\tAudio Recording\t[Coughs] [Audio, Daryl Hine] Well, I also—[Shuffling Papers] this year or was it last?—returned to my place of origin, British Columbia [Long Pause, Audio Cuts Slightly] –Grey, which will be familiar to some of you as the site of the University of British Columbia. I don’t mean the university by any of the architectural things I mention in this poem. But I’m talking about the beach, a very beautiful, barren Pacific beach that lies below Point Grey.\n(04:10)\tAudio Recording\t[Audio, Daryl Hine Begins To Recite “Point Grey”] Brought up as I was to judge the weather / Whether it was fair or overcast… [Stops Reciting] Well [Crumples Paper] I’ll read another version, I think. Excuse me. [Begins To Recite A Different Version of “Point Grey”] Brought up as I was to ask of the weather / Whether it is fair or overcast, / Here, at least, it is a pretty morning, / The first fine day as I am told in months. / I took a path that led down to the beach, / Reflecting as I went on landscape, sex, and weather. / I met a welcome wonderful enough / To exorcise the educated ghost / Within me. No, this country is not haunted, / Only the rain makes spectres of the mountains. / There they are, and there somehow is the problem / Not exactly of freedom or of generation, / But just of living and the pain it causes. / Sometimes I think the air we breathe is mortal / And dies, trapped, in our unfeeling lungs. / Not too distant the mountains in the morning / Dropped their dim approval on the gesture / With which enthralled I greeted all this grandeur. / Beside the path, half buried in the bracken, / Stood a long-abandoned concrete bunker, / A little temple of lust, its rough walls covered / With religious frieze and votary inscription. / Personally I know no one who doesn’t suffer / Some sore of guilt, and mostly bedsores, too, / Those that come from scratching where it itches / And that dangerous sympathy called prurience. / But all about release and absolution / Lie in the waves that lap the dirty shingle / And the mountains that rise at hand above the rain. / Though I had forgotten that it could be so simple, / A beauty of sorts is nearly always within reach. [Shuffling Papers]\n(\n06:12)\tMusic\t[Piano Overlaid With Distorted Beat]\n(06:12)\tKatherine McLeod\tHead to spokenweb.ca to find the entire recording where this selection is from. I’m Katherine McLeod and tune in next month for another deep dive into SpokenWeb’s audio collections."],"score":1.0},{"id":"9685","cataloger_name":["Gloriah,Onyango"],"partnerInstitution":["Concordia University"],"collection_source_collection":["SpokenWeb AV"],"source_collection_label":["SpokenWeb AV"],"collection_contributing_unit":["SpokenWeb"],"source_collection_uri":[""],"collection_image_url":["https://archiveofthepresent.spokenweb.ca/_nuxt/img/header-img_1000.fd7675f.png"],"collection_source_collection_description":["SpokenWeb Audio Visual Collection"],"collection_source_collection_id":["ArchiveOfThePresent"],"persistent_url":["https://archiveofthepresent.spokenweb.ca/"],"item_title":["SpokenWeb Podcast ShortCuts 1.2, Audio of the Month – Improvising at a Poetry Reading, 17 February 2020, McLeod"],"item_title_source":["SpokenWeb Podcast web page."],"item_title_note":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/audio-of-the-month-improvising-at-a-poetry-reading/"],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Podcast"],"item_series_title":["The SpokenWeb Podcast"],"item_series_description":["Series of podcasts by the SpokenWeb network."],"item_subseries_title":["The SpokenWeb Podcast ShortCuts"],"item_series_wikidata_url":["https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q117038029"],"item_series_uri":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/spokenweb-podcast/"],"item_identifiers":["[]"],"rights":["Creative Commons Attribution (BY)"],"rights_license":["Creative Commons Attribution (BY)"],"access":["Streaming and download"],"creator_names":["Katherine McLeod"],"creator_names_search":["Katherine McLeod"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/44156495389117561605\",\"name\":\"Katherine McLeod\",\"dates\":\"1981-\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Producer\"]}]"],"contributors":["[]"],"Publication_Date":[2020],"material_description":["[]"],"digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://cdn.simplecast.com/audio/28a9da/28a9da1f-8cca-410c-b5d7-8165a73f9394/f6a7d497-f14f-46d9-a761-055aa0f16b7d/sw-minisode-2_tc.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"sw-minisode-2_tc.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"44.1 kHz\",\"duration\":\"00:06:15\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"6,075,917 bytes\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"MP3 audio\",\"title\":\"SW Minisode 2\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/audio-of-the-month-improvising-at-a-poetry-reading/\"}]"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"2020-02-17\",\"type\":\"Publication Date\",\"notes\":\"\",\"source\":\"\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/22080572#map=16/45.49381/-73.58233\",\"venue\":\"Concordia University McConnell Building\",\"notes\":\"\",\"address\":\"1400 Boulevard de Maisonneuve Ouest, Montreal, QC, H3G 1M8\",\"latitude\":\"45.4968036\",\"longitude\":\"-73.57792785757887\"}]"],"Address":["1400 Boulevard de Maisonneuve Ouest, Montreal, QC, H3G 1M8"],"Venue":["Concordia University McConnell Building"],"City":["Montreal, Quebec"],"Note":["[]"],"Related_works":["[]"],"_version_":1853670549806383104,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:54.290Z","contents":["EPISODE SUMMARY\nAs we come to the end of a holiday long weekend here in Canada, it’s time for a new episode of SpokenWeb’s Audio of The Month: ‘mini’ stories about how literature sounds. This month Katherine shares a recording of Canadian poet Maxine Gadd reading “Shore Animals” with improvised flute by Richard Sommer (1972).\n\n(0:00)\tMusic\t[Piano Overlaid With Distorted Beat]\n(00:09)\tHannah McGregor\tWelcome to the SpokenWeb minisodes. Each month on alternate fortnights—that’s every second week following the monthly SpokenWeb Podcast episode—join me, Hannah McGregor, and minisode host and curator Katherine McLeod for SpokenWeb’s Audio of the Month miniseries. We’ll share with you specially curated audio clips from deep in the SpokenWeb archives. An extension of Katherine’s Audio of the Week series at spokenweb.ca, Katherine brings her favourite audio each month to the SpokenWeb Podcast. So if you love what you hear, make sure to head over to spokenweb.ca for more. Just in time for holiday Monday listening here in Canada, whether you’re spending time with family or enjoying a solo moment, sit back, relax, and join Katherine McLeod for February’s SpokenWeb Audio of the Month: ‘mini’ stories about how literature sounds.\n(01:05)\tTheme Music\t[Instrumental Overlapped With Feminine Vocals]\n(01:10)\tAudio Recording\t[Audio, Maxine Gadd] Well. Okay. Do you want to do, oh, do you want to try, try improvising to, to a chip that’s here? I’ll let you read it.\n(01:18)\tAudio Recording\t[Audio, Richard Sommer] Seriously, you wanna do that?\n(01:18)\tAudio Recording\t[Maxine] Yeah. It’s just going to be some [inaudible].\n(01:19)\tAudio Recording\t[Richard] I don’t know if I should…\n(01:22)\tKatherine McLeod\tIn this Audio of the Month, we’re traveling back to February 1972, when poets Maxine Gadd and Andreas Schroeder read in Montreal. They read at Sir George Williams University, or what is now Concordia. They read on February 18th in the Hall Building in Room H-651. The reading started at 9:00 PM. Yes, readings started late and they went on for a long time. After reading for about 45 minutes, Maxine Gadd invited the host of the evening, Richard Sommer, to improvise on the flute. He improvised along with her reading the poem “Shore Animals.” Before starting to improvise, we can hear a negotiation between Gadd and Sommer about what to read and how to perform together, a process that is its own audible improvisation.\n(02:15)\tAudio Recording\t[Audio, Maxine Gadd] Now, how it goes. You have to keep quiet until… [Random Flute Notes] See, now… He’s never done this one before.\n(02:31)\tAudio Recording\t[Audio, Richard Sommer] What, what, yeah, what do you want me to do then?\n(02:32)\tAudio Recording\t[Maxine] Okay, this is called “Shore Animals” and it says, “speech feasts peace with flute” and the flute has to listen.\n(02:38)\tAudio Recording\t[Richard] Okay.\n  (02:39)\tAudio Recording\t[Maxine] And it can pl–, it can speak, too.\n(02:42)\tKatherine McLeod\tThen the audio clip that you’ll hear includes the first two minutes of a six-minute improvisation. Their improvisation is a singular moment when an audience member—in this case, Richard Sommer—formally performs in the Sir George Williams Poetry Series, though at the same time, this recording reminds listeners that the audience is always present, ready to improvise, to interject, and even to interrupt. And that the audience is also what we are listening to as archival listeners.\n(03:16)\tAudio Recording\t[Audio, Maxine Gadd] What, the food? I think it’s over there. For fun. [Papers Crinkling] The same message. I, I’m asking… Richard is gonna make some noise with my flute.\n(03:32)\tAudio Recording\t[Audio, Richard Sommer] I’ll make some noise if you give me your microphone.\n(03:33)\tAudio Recording\t[Maxine] Okay. Which one you want? Let’s share it. Is–\n(03:39)\tAudio Recording\t[Richard] It doesn’t make any difference.\n(03:39)\tAudio Recording\t[Maxine] It goes with a [inaudible].\n(03:42)\tAudio Recording\t[Richard] When’d you do that?\n(03:43)\tAudio Recording\t[Maxine] What?\n(03:44)\tAudio Recording\t[Richard] This, this knot.\n(03:45)\tAudio Recording\t[Maxine] I’ve tied myself in there.\n(03:50)\tAudio Recording\t[Richard] Here we go.\n(03:59)\tAudio Recording\t[Maxine] [inaudible] I can’t find it. [Long Pause] Pieces, pieces, pieces. Oh, here it is. Now, how it goes. You have to keep quiet until… [Random Flute Notes] See, now… He’s never done this one before.\n(04:17)\tAudio Recording\t[Richard] What, what, yeah, what do you want me to do then?\n(04:19)\tAudio Recording\t[Maxine] Okay, this is called “Shore Animals” and it says, “speech feasts peace with flute” and the flute has to listen.\n(04:27)\tAudio Recording\t[Richard] Okay.\n(04:27)\tAudio Recording\t[Maxine] And it can pl–, it can speak, too. You have to listen to it, yeah, you never heard it before.\n(04:34)\tAudio Recording\t[Richard] I think it’s learning how to speak.\n(04:39)\tAudio Recording\t[Maxine] It’s called “Shore Animals,” it’s a speech piece with flute. [Maxine Begins To Recite, Richard Plays Flute] So hearing where the poppy stopped me, small chance to star spiel, all you have told me, gone, false and beautiful gods and groves. People truth. Put it into song. When the traffic is gone, gone, gone a fleet in in the air. My debt to your tongue, Saturn. In your minds, I’ve split a spleen, lust my lust. Come along, fog. Oh! Soul, I have to whistle to you. [Audience Laughs] [Whistling]\n(05:36)\tKatherine McLeod\tThat was Maxine Gadd reading “Shore Animals” with Richard Sommer improvising on the flute at a reading that took place in Montreal on February 18th, 1972. [Begin Music: Piano Overlaid With Distorted Beat] Head to spokenweb.ca to find out more about the Audio of the Month and how to listen to the entire recording. My name’s Katherine McLeod and tune in next month for another deep dive into the sounds of the SpokenWeb archives.\n(05:49)\tKatherine McLeod\t[Begin Music: Piano Overlaid With Distorted Beat] Head to spokenweb.ca to find out more about the Audio of the Month and how to listen to the entire recording. My name’s Katherine McLeod and tune in next month for another deep dive into the sounds of the SpokenWeb archives.\n(06:06)\tMusic\t[Piano Overlaid With Distorted Beat]\n"],"score":1.0},{"id":"9691","cataloger_name":["Gloriah,Onyango"],"partnerInstitution":["Concordia University"],"collection_source_collection":["SpokenWeb AV"],"source_collection_label":["SpokenWeb AV"],"collection_contributing_unit":["SpokenWeb"],"source_collection_uri":[""],"collection_image_url":["https://archiveofthepresent.spokenweb.ca/_nuxt/img/header-img_1000.fd7675f.png"],"collection_source_collection_description":["SpokenWeb Audio Visual Collection"],"collection_source_collection_id":["ArchiveOfThePresent"],"persistent_url":["https://archiveofthepresent.spokenweb.ca/"],"item_title":["SpokenWeb Podcast ShortCuts 1.7, Audio of the Month – As Though Her Voice is Dancing, 20 July 2020, McLeod"],"item_title_source":["SpokenWeb Podcast web page."],"item_title_note":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/audio-of-the-month-as-though-her-voice-is-dancing/"],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Podcast"],"item_series_title":["The SpokenWeb Podcast"],"item_series_description":["Series of podcasts by the SpokenWeb network."],"item_subseries_title":["The SpokenWeb Podcast ShortCuts"],"item_series_wikidata_url":["https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q117038029"],"item_series_uri":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/spokenweb-podcast/"],"item_identifiers":["[]"],"rights":["Creative Commons Attribution (BY)"],"rights_license":["Creative Commons Attribution (BY)"],"access":["Streaming and download"],"creator_names":["Katherine McLeod"],"creator_names_search":["Katherine McLeod"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/44156495389117561605\",\"name\":\"Katherine McLeod\",\"dates\":\"1981-\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Producer\"]}]"],"contributors":["[]"],"Publication_Date":[2020],"material_description":["[]"],"digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://cdn.simplecast.com/audio/28a9da/28a9da1f-8cca-410c-b5d7-8165a73f9394/9112f64d-f980-465b-8252-4f130d4ea0f6/sw-minisode-ep-7_tc.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"sw-minisode-ep-7_tc.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"44.1 kHz\",\"duration\":\"00:05:45\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"5,599,861 bytes\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"MP3 audio\",\"title\":\"SW Minisode Ep 7\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/audio-of-the-month-as-though-her-voice-is-dancing/\"}]"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"2020-07-20\",\"type\":\"Publication Date\",\"notes\":\"\",\"source\":\"\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/22080572#map=16/45.49381/-73.58233\",\"venue\":\"Concordia University McConnell Building\",\"notes\":\"\",\"address\":\"1400 Boulevard de Maisonneuve Ouest, Montreal, QC, H3G 1M8\",\"latitude\":\"45.4968036\",\"longitude\":\"-73.57792785757887\"}]"],"Address":["1400 Boulevard de Maisonneuve Ouest, Montreal, QC, H3G 1M8"],"Venue":["Concordia University McConnell Building"],"City":["Montreal, Quebec"],"Note":["[]"],"Related_works":["[]"],"_version_":1853670549807431680,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:54.290Z","contents":["In episode 7 of The SpokenWeb Podcast (“The Voice is Intact”), producer Hannah McGregor and guest Jen Sookfong Lee listen together to Gwendolyn MacEwen reading the poem “The Zoo” (recorded in Montreal, 1966). As we listen to them listening on the podcast, we hear a gasp and even an exclamation: “Melodious!” What was it in her voice that they were responding to? To try to answer this question through your own experience of listening, this Audio of the Month features another poem of MacEwen’s in this same 1966 recording: “I Should Have Predicted,” published in The Shadow Maker (1969).\n\n00:00\n\nMusic:\n\n[Piano Overlaid With Distorted Beat]\n\n00:10\n\nHannah McGregor:\n\nWelcome to our SpokenWeb minisodes. Each month on alternate fortnights—that’s every second week following the monthly SpokenWeb Podcast episode—join me, Hannah McGregor, and minisode host and curator Katherine McLeod for SpokenWeb’s Audio of the Month miniseries. We’ll share with you specially curated audio clips from deep in the SpokenWeb archives. An extension of Katherine’s Audio of the Week series at spokenweb.ca, Katherine brings her favourite audio each month to the SpokenWeb Podcast. So if you love what you hear, make sure to head over to spokenweb.ca for more. Without further ado, here is Katherine McLeod with SpokenWeb’s Audio of the Month: ‘mini’ stories about how literature sounds.\n\n01:00\n\nTheme Music:\n\n[Instrumental Overlapped With Feminine Vocals]\n\n01:03\n\nKatherine McLeod:\n\nIn this Audio of the Month, we’re listening to the voice of Canadian poet Gwendolyn MacEwen. Now, if you’re a regular SpokenWeb Podcast listener, you’ll recognize MacEwen’s voice from episode seven: “The Voice Is Intact.” That episode was produced by Hannah McGregor and featured interviews with Jen Sookfong Lee and myself, Katherine McLeod. At the start of the episode, Hannah and Jen listened to MacEwen’s voice as she reads a poem called “The Zoo.”\n\n01:34\n\nHannah McGregor:\n\nHave you ever heard her read?\n\n01:35\n\nJen Sookfong Lee:\n\nNo, I’ve never heard her voice.\n\n01:35\n\nHannah McGregor:\n\nOh my God, do you want to?\n\n01:35\n\nJen Sookfong Lee:\n\nYeah!\n\n01:36\n\nAudio Recording:\n\n[Audio, Gwendolyn MacEwen reading “The Zoo,” overlapping with Hannah McGregor and Jen Sookfong Lee’s commentary] A fugitive from all those truths, which are too true, the great clawing ones and the fire-breathers,–\n\n01:46\n\nJen Sookfong Lee:\n\n[Gasps]\n\n01:46\n\nAudio Recording:\n\n–the ones that rake the flesh–\n\n01:47\n\nJen Sookfong Lee:\n\nSo much nicer with her voice!\n\n01:47\n\nAudio Recording:\n\n–like piranhas, and those that crush the bones to chalk and those that bear their red teeth in the nights.\n\n01:55\n\nJen Sookfong Lee:\n\nSo melodious, her voice.\n\n01:56\n\nAudio Recording:\n\nMy mind emulates,–\n\n01:58\n\nJen Sookfong Lee:\n\nI’ve never used the word melodious.\n\n01:59\n\nAudio Recording:\n\n–dragon, fish, and snake and shoots fire to melt the Arctic night–\n\n02:03\n\nKatherine McLeod:\n\nMelodious, yes. So melodious, her voice. That was their response to her voice now, in 2020. And to be in awe of her voice has been a common response ever since MacEwen started reading poems in the 1960s. She read at places like the Bohemian Embassy in Toronto, where poets would gather on stage to read over the sound of a noisy espresso machine. MacEwen would step onto the stage and, as she started reading, in fact, as she often started reciting her poems by heart, her voice would captivate listeners. That voice is one reason for selecting MacEwen for this month’s Audio of the Month. But another is that there is a very memorable moment of MacEwen introducing one poem in particular in SpokenWeb’s audio collection. To set the scene: the reading was in 1966 at Sir George Williams University (now Concordia), and it was a joint reading with Phyllis Webb. Part way through the reading, MacEwen introduces the poem “I Should Have Predicted.”\n\n03:11\n\nAudio Recording:\n\n[Audio, Gwendolyn MacEwen introducing “I Should Have Predicted] This is a poem which, oddly enough, came out in a Mexican magazine in Spanish not too long ago looking completely unrecognizable to me. It’s called “I Should Have Predicted.”\n\n03:27\n\nKatherine McLeod:\n\nI haven’t been able to locate this publication, but if you have any ideas about which magazine this could have been in, please do get in touch. For now, we know that it exists because of this recording. As we listen to it, hear how MacEwen reads, how she pauses, how her articulation of the poem makes it rise and then fall. Her pacing is exquisite. It is as though she is dancing the poem, as though her voice is dancing.\n\n04:03\n\nAudio Recording:\n\n[Audio, Gwendolyn MacEwen reciting “I Should Have Predicted] I should have predicted the death of this city. I could have predicted it if only there had been no such pretty flowers. No such squares filled with horses and their golden riders. By this I mean that outside all was tame and lucky. But inside, oh, inside houses were wilder things, dynasties, wars, empires crumbling, chariots housed in halls, emperors in cupboards, queens and generals in bed, kingdoms rising and falling between the sheets. Thus I did not predict the death of this city. I was deceived by fountains and apple trees. How could I know what civil wars raged inside out of my sight, which focused only on the horses and the gold, deceptive city.\n\n05:06\n\nKatherine McLeod:\n\nThat was Gwendolyn MacEwen reading “I Should Have Predicted” in 1966 in Montreal.\n\n05:18\n\nMusic:\n\n[Piano Overlaid With Distorted Beat]\n\n05:18\n\nKatherine McLeod:\n\nFind the full recording of this reading by heading to spokenweb.ca. My name is Katherine McLeod and my thanks to Hannah McGregor and Stacey Copeland for their help on the production of this minisode. Stay tuned for the next Audio of the Month: a deep dive into the sounds of the SpokenWeb archives."],"score":1.0},{"id":"9686","cataloger_name":["Gloriah,Onyango"],"partnerInstitution":["Concordia University"],"collection_source_collection":["SpokenWeb AV"],"source_collection_label":["SpokenWeb AV"],"collection_contributing_unit":["SpokenWeb"],"source_collection_uri":[""],"collection_image_url":["https://archiveofthepresent.spokenweb.ca/_nuxt/img/header-img_1000.fd7675f.png"],"collection_source_collection_description":["SpokenWeb Audio Visual Collection"],"collection_source_collection_id":["ArchiveOfThePresent"],"persistent_url":["https://archiveofthepresent.spokenweb.ca/"],"item_title":["SpokenWeb Podcast ShortCuts 1.3, Audio of the Month – Where does the reading begin?, 16 March 2020, McLeod"],"item_title_source":["SpokenWeb Podcast web page."],"item_title_note":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/audio-of-the-month-where-does-the-reading-begin/"],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Podcast"],"item_series_title":["The SpokenWeb Podcast"],"item_series_description":["Series of podcasts by the SpokenWeb network."],"item_subseries_title":["The SpokenWeb Podcast ShortCuts"],"item_series_wikidata_url":["https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q117038029"],"item_series_uri":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/spokenweb-podcast/"],"item_identifiers":["[]"],"rights":["Creative Commons Attribution (BY)"],"rights_license":["Creative Commons Attribution (BY)"],"access":["Streaming and download"],"creator_names":["Katherine McLeod"],"creator_names_search":["Katherine McLeod"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/44156495389117561605\",\"name\":\"Katherine McLeod\",\"dates\":\"1981-\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Producer\"]}]"],"contributors":["[]"],"Publication_Date":[2020],"material_description":["[]"],"digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://cdn.simplecast.com/audio/28a9da/28a9da1f-8cca-410c-b5d7-8165a73f9394/82798c7c-9e61-462e-be60-0d337f42f2a1/sw-minisode-ep-3_tc.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"sw-minisode-ep-3_tc.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"44.1 kHz\",\"duration\":\"00:04:47\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"4,663,633 bytes\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"MP3 audio\",\"title\":\"Sw Minisode Ep 3\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/audio-of-the-month-where-does-the-reading-begin/\"}]"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"2020-03-16\",\"type\":\"Publication Date\",\"notes\":\"\",\"source\":\"\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/22080572#map=16/45.49381/-73.58233\",\"venue\":\"Concordia University McConnell Building\",\"notes\":\"\",\"address\":\"1400 Boulevard de Maisonneuve Ouest, Montreal, QC, H3G 1M8\",\"latitude\":\"45.4968036\",\"longitude\":\"-73.57792785757887\"}]"],"Address":["1400 Boulevard de Maisonneuve Ouest, Montreal, QC, H3G 1M8"],"Venue":["Concordia University McConnell Building"],"City":["Montreal, Quebec"],"Note":["[]"],"Related_works":["[]"],"_version_":1853670549826306054,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:54.290Z","contents":["This month our SpokenWeb minisode features Kaie Kellough reading at The Words and Music Show, Nov 20, 2016. As Kellough starts to introduce his reading, a pre-recorded voice slowly mixes with his live words. Where, then, does the introduction end, and where does the reading begin?\n\n00:00\n\nMusic:\n\n[Piano Overlaid With Distorted Beat]\n\n00:10\n\nHannah McGregor:\n\nWelcome to our SpokenWeb minisodes. You know the drill. Each month on alternate fortnights—that’s every second week following the monthly SpokenWeb Podcast episode—join me, Hannah McGregor, and minisode host and curator Katherine McLeod for SpokenWeb’s Audio of the Month miniseries. We’ll share with you specially curated audio clips from deep in the SpokenWeb archives. This series is an extension of Katherine’s Audio of the Week series at spokenweb.ca with Katherine brings her favourite audio each month to the SpokenWeb Podcast. So if you love what you hear, make sure to head over to spokenweb.ca for more. Without further ado, here is Katherine McLeod with SpokenWeb’s March edition of Audio of the Month: ‘mini’ stories about how literature sounds.\n\n01:08\n\nTheme Music:\n\n[Instrumental Overlapped With Feminine Vocals]\n\n01:08\n\nKatherine McLeod:\n\nIn this Audio of the Month, we’ll be listening to a recording of Kaie Kellough reading at The Words and Music Show in Montreal. The reading was on November 20th, 2016. Kellough’s voice has been recorded many times throughout the past 20 years of Montreal’s Words and Music Show, a monthly cabaret of spoken word, poetry, music, and dance established and organized by poet and musician Ian Ferrier. The recordings of these shows have now been digitized and cataloged by SpokenWeb researchers at Concordia University. During the digitization process, student research assistant Ali Barillaro noticed that this performance by Kellough stood out from the rest. As Kellough starts to introduce his own reading, a pre-recorded voice slowly mixes with his live words. Where, then, does the introduction end, and where does the reading begin?\n\n02:10\n\nAudio Recording:\n\n[Audio, Kaie Kellough] Hello, thanks Ian for that introduction and thanks to all of the other artists tonight. It’s been a very nice night. I’m going to present something to, at, for you that is somewhat narrative, I guess. But it isn’t related to my, to my novel. It’s some, some other narratives and the narratives are related to adolescence, [Audio, a recording of a masculine voice, overlapping with Kaie speaking. It progressively gets louder and more audible] which is a peculiar time in life. And I think that they’re relevant nowadays because they’re related to adolescents in a particular place in time–\n\n03:03\n\nAudio Recording:\n\n[Masculine Voice] …gripping, steering…\n\n03:03\n\nAudio Recording:\n\n[Kaie] –in Alberta–\n\n03:04\n\nAudio Recording:\n\n[Masculine Voice]…pumpjacks, a sign behind…\n\n03:07\n\nAudio Recording:\n\n[Kaie] –in the–\n\n03:09\n\nAudio Recording:\n\n[Masculine Voice] …I want to forget–\n\n03:09\n\nAudio Recording:\n\n[Kaie] –1980s.\n\n03:10\n\nAudio Recording:\n\n[Masculine Voice] –high school fever–\n\n03:12\n\nAudio Recording:\n\n[Kaie] In, in–\n\n03:13\n\nAudio Recording:\n\n[Masculine Voice] –forever. Forget articles in _The Herald_–\n\n03:15\n\nAudio Recording:\n\n[Kaie] –in the moment of–\n\n03:16\n\nAudio Recording:\n\n[Masculine Voice] –about black-haired teens from the reserves–\n\n03:17\n\nAudio Recording:\n\n[Kaie] –heavy evangelical–\n\n03:18\n\nAudio Recording:\n\n[Masculine Voice] –who drank themselves to death–\n\n03:19\n\nAudio Recording:\n\n[Kaie] –activity–\n\n03:20\n\nAudio Recording:\n\n[Masculine Voice] –in macho contests–\n\n03:20\n\nAudio Recording:\n\n[Kaie] –and extreme conservatism and–\n\n03:22\n\nAudio Recording:\n\n[Masculine Voice] –trying to prove to themselves that they exist.\n\n03:24\n\nAudio Recording:\n\n[Kaie] –some of the [Stutters] ch-ch-challenges–\n\n03:25\n\nAudio Recording:\n\n[Masculine Voice] As night dripped into next day’s headlines,–\n\n03:27\n\nAudio Recording:\n\n[Kaie] –that arise when growing up–\n\n03:28\n\nAudio Recording:\n\n[Masculine Voice] –I want to forget my stupid conviction–\n\n03:28\n\nAudio Recording:\n\n[Kaie] –and trying to live and become oneself–\n\n03:31\n\nAudio Recording:\n\n[Masculine Voice] –that a boy had to be distilled–\n\n03:33\n\nAudio Recording:\n\n[Kaie] –in a climate like that–\n\n03:35\n\nAudio Recording:\n\n[Masculine Voice] –into a man.\n\n03:35\n\nAudio Recording:\n\n[Kaie] –which–\n\n03:35\n\nAudio Recording:\n\n[Masculine Voice] That the terror of being bloodline–\n\n03:35\n\nAudio Recording:\n\n[Kaie] –seems to be a climate that,–\n\n03:37\n\nAudio Recording:\n\n[Masculine Voice] –had to be spiked with rum.\n\n03:37\n\nAudio Recording:\n\n[Kaie] –that is reemerging in spite of–\n\n03:39\n\nAudio Recording:\n\n[Masculine Voice] That amber alcohol preserved–\n\n03:41\n\nAudio Recording:\n\n[Kaie] –all of the,–\n\n03:41\n\nAudio Recording:\n\n[Masculine Voice] –the DNA–\n\n03:41\n\nAudio Recording:\n\n[Kaie] –all of the-,-\n\n03:42\n\nAudio Recording:\n\n[Masculine Voice] –that seeped down centuries–\n\n03:44\n\nAudio Recording:\n\n[Kaie] –all of the,–\n\n03:44\n\nAudio Recording:\n\n[Masculine Voice] –from slavery.\n\n03:45\n\nAudio Recording:\n\n[Kaie] –appearances–\n\n03:46\n\nAudio Recording:\n\n[Masculine Voice] That coloured this reflection on boyhood\n\n03:46\n\nAudio Recording:\n\n[Kaie] –to the contrary, that had, that had appeared–\n\n03:49\n\nAudio Recording:\n\n[Masculine Voice] –in a far-flung suburb–\n\n03:50\n\nAudio Recording:\n\n[Kaie] –in the past.–\n\n03:50\n\nAudio Recording:\n\n[Masculine Voice] –of empire,–\n\n03:51\n\nAudio Recording:\n\n[Kaie] The idea–\n\n03:52\n\nAudio Recording:\n\n[Masculine Voice] –a mighty slum,–\n\n03:53\n\nAudio Recording:\n\n[Kaie] –that, that–\n\n03:53\n\nAudio Recording:\n\n[Masculine Voice] –a bubble, born yesterday–\n\n03:53\n\nAudio Recording:\n\n[Kaie] –that–\n\n03:53\n\nAudio Recording:\n\n[Masculine Voice] –or a 12-pack of empties–\n\n03:53\n\nAudio Recording:\n\n[Kaie] –born yesterday, was finished–\n\n03:53\n\nAudio Recording:\n\n[Masculine Voice] –or a bubble in a bottle,–\n\n03:58\n\nAudio Recording:\n\n[Kaie] –and that–\n\n04:00\n\nAudio Recording:\n\n[Masculine Voice] –broken in the back seat,–\n\n04:00\n\nAudio Recording:\n\n[Kaie] –it was gone and, and, and done–\n\n04:02\n\nAudio Recording:\n\n[Masculine Voice] –a froth that slicked between–\n\n04:02\n\nAudio Recording:\n\n[Kaie] –and suddenly a wave… [Kaie begins distorting his own voice, deliberately stuttering, repeating, and cutting out as the recording of the masculine voice continues to sound clearly] A w-w-w-w-wave of c-c-c-c-conservatism has has has has has crashed…\n\n04:03\n\nAudio Recording:\n\n[Masculine Voice] — slides archived by teenage brains. Autobiography of an outsider screamed at the dragon. Nobody is [inaudible] crashed oldsmobile [inaudible] supreme…\n\n04:14\n\nMusic:\n\n[Piano Overlaid With Distorted Beat]\n\n04:18\n\nKatherine McLeod:\n\nThat was Kaie Kellough reading at The Words and Music Show in Montreal on November 20th, 2016. Head to spokenweb.ca to find out more about where this recording is from. My name’s Katherine McLeod and tune in next month for another deep dive into the sounds of the SpokenWeb archives.\n\n"],"score":1.0},{"id":"9687","cataloger_name":["Gloriah,Onyango"],"partnerInstitution":["Concordia University"],"collection_source_collection":["SpokenWeb AV"],"source_collection_label":["SpokenWeb AV"],"collection_contributing_unit":["SpokenWeb"],"source_collection_uri":[""],"collection_image_url":["https://archiveofthepresent.spokenweb.ca/_nuxt/img/header-img_1000.fd7675f.png"],"collection_source_collection_description":["SpokenWeb Audio Visual Collection"],"collection_source_collection_id":["ArchiveOfThePresent"],"persistent_url":["https://archiveofthepresent.spokenweb.ca/"],"item_title":["SpokenWeb Podcast ShortCuts 1.4, Audio of the Month – Dorothy Livesay listening to the radio, 20 April 2020, McLeod"],"item_title_source":["SpokenWeb Podcast web page."],"item_title_note":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/audio-of-the-month-dorothy-livesay-listening-to-the-radio/"],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Podcast"],"item_series_title":["The SpokenWeb Podcast"],"item_series_description":["Series of podcasts by the SpokenWeb network."],"item_subseries_title":["The SpokenWeb Podcast ShortCuts"],"item_series_wikidata_url":["https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q117038029"],"item_series_uri":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/spokenweb-podcast/"],"item_identifiers":["[]"],"rights":["Creative Commons Attribution (BY)"],"rights_license":["Creative Commons Attribution (BY)"],"access":["Streaming and download"],"creator_names":["Katherine McLeod"],"creator_names_search":["Katherine McLeod"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/44156495389117561605\",\"name\":\"Katherine McLeod\",\"dates\":\"1981-\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Producer\"]}]"],"contributors":["[]"],"Publication_Date":[2020],"material_description":["[]"],"digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://cdn.simplecast.com/audio/28a9da/28a9da1f-8cca-410c-b5d7-8165a73f9394/3e711ac8-1ac2-4526-9497-8f7c82102e60/sw-minisode-ep-4_tc.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"sw-minisode-ep-4_tc.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"44.1 kHz\",\"duration\":\"00:07:28\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\" 7,242,441 bytes\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"MP3 audio\",\"title\":\"Sw Minisode Ep 4\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/audio-of-the-month-dorothy-livesay-listening-to-the-radio/\"}]"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"2020-04-20\",\"type\":\"Publication Date\",\"notes\":\"\",\"source\":\"\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/22080572#map=16/45.49381/-73.58233\",\"venue\":\"Concordia University McConnell Building\",\"notes\":\"\",\"address\":\"1400 Boulevard de Maisonneuve Ouest, Montreal, QC, H3G 1M8\",\"latitude\":\"45.4968036\",\"longitude\":\"-73.57792785757887\"}]"],"Address":["1400 Boulevard de Maisonneuve Ouest, Montreal, QC, H3G 1M8"],"Venue":["Concordia University McConnell Building"],"City":["Montreal, Quebec"],"Note":["[]"],"Related_works":["[]"],"_version_":1853670549827354624,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:54.290Z","contents":["In this Audio of the Month minisode Katherine Mcleod features recordings of poet Dorothy Livesay. We hear Livesay read selections of her work including “Bartok and the Geranium,” a poem that is often anthologized and, in fact, you may have studied it in a course on Canadian poetry. But do you know how Livesay wrote it?\n\n00:00\n\nMusic:\n\n[Piano Overlaid With Distorted Beat]\n\n00:10\n\nHannah McGregor:\n\nWelcome to our SpokenWeb minisodes. Each month on alternate fortnights—that’s every second week following the monthly SpokenWeb Podcast episode—join me, Hannah McGregor, and minisode host and curator Katherine McLeod for SpokenWeb’s Audio of the Month miniseries. We’ll share with you specially curated audio clips from deep in the SpokenWeb archives. An extension of Katherine’s Audio of the Week series at spokenweb.ca, Katherine brings her favourite audio each month to the SpokenWeb Podcast. So if you love what you hear, make sure to head over to spokenweb.ca for more. Without further ado, here is Katherine McLeod with SpokenWeb’s Audio of the Month: ‘mini’ stories about how literature sounds.\n\n00:52\n\nTheme Music:\n\n[Instrumental Overlapped With Feminine Vocals]\n\n01:03\n\nKatherine McLeod:\n\nIn this Audio of the Month, we’ll be listening to Canadian poet Dorothy Livesay. We’ll hear a clip of a recording of Livesay reading in Montreal on January 14th, 1971. The Audio of the Month is selected from a series of Audio of the Week posts that I’ve been creating for the spokenweb.ca site [Audio, recording of Livesay introducing “The Unquiet Bed overlapping with Katherine] and a previous Audio of the Week features Livesay reciting one of her most song-like poems “The Unquiet Bed.”\n\n01:31\n\nAudio Recording:\n\n[Audio, Dorothy Livesay reciting “The Unquiet Bed”] The woman I am / is not what you see. / I’m not just bones / and crockery. / The woman I am / knew love and hate / hating the chains / that parents make / longing that love / might set men free / yet hold them fast / in loyalty. / The woman I am / is not what you see / move over love / make room for me.\n\n01:57\n\nKatherine McLeod:\n\nThat was Livesay reading “The Unquiet Bed” and this Audio of the Month features another musical poem by Livesay from that same reading in Montreal in 1971. The poem is “Bartok and the Geranium.” This poem is one that is often anthologized and in fact, you may have studied it in a course on Canadian poetry. But do you know how the poem began?\n\n02:24\n\nAudio Recording:\n\n[Audio, Dorothy Livesay] The poem simply began because I was teaching an evening class of housewives the art of creative writing. And I gave them an assignment to write an imagistic or perhaps a haiku-type poem… When they got home, to look around the house and find two objects utterly different and disparate and just see if they could link these objects in a tension, which would create a poem. Well, the next day I was, had sent the children to school after lunch and was sitting in the dining room listening to CBC Concert and heard music that I hadn’t heard before at all, a violin concerto it seemed to be. And in the window as I was listening, there was this red geranium. So I thought to myself, well, I’ve given my class an assignment, I wonder if I could do the same thing. And at the end of the concert, they announced it was a Béla Bartók violin concerto. So suddenly these two elements, the music and the geranium, did seem to link in my mind and immediately I wrote the poem, which I think I’ve never revised. I’ll tell you afterwards what some of the professors have said about the meaning of the poem. [Audience Laughs]\n\n03:49\n\nKatherine McLeod:\n\nThis poem, the subject of probably thousands of student analyses by now, all started from an assignment that Livesay had given to her own students, a class full of women. How ironic that Livesay ends up producing a poem that then finds its way into the lecture notes of male professors who claim to reveal the true meaning of it or, as Livesay herself puts it:\n\n04:16\n\nAudio Recording:\n\n[Audio, Dorothy Livesay] He informed the class that this poem represented the conflict between nature and art. While at first I was a bit dumbfounded, you know now how the whole thing began and then what I felt about the he and she of it.\n\n04:32\n\nKatherine McLeod:\n\nWhat I find fascinating about Livesay’s story of writing the poem is not so much that she uncovers its origins. Our own interpretations of the poem are still valid and Livesay remains open to these varied interpretations, too. What I hear in her story is a story of her poetics. By this I mean that Livesay’s story of how she wrote “Bartok and the Geranium” is a story that fuses the imagism of her early poems of the 1920s with the tension of the social that informs her poetry from the mid-1930s onwards. The poem bursts forth from a moment of listening, a private moment of listening to something entirely new, her attention caught by the sound of the Bartók violin concerto and then framed by the space of domesticity in which she listens. It is instantaneous in this moment of listening that Livesay forges a connection between the sound of the music transmitted through the radio and the image of the flower framed by the window.\n\n05:45\n\nAudio Recording:\n\n[Audio, Dorothy Livesay reciting “Bartok and the Geranium”] She lifts her green umbrellas / Towards the pane / Seeking her fill of sunlight / Or of rain; / Whatever falls / She has no commentary / Accepts, extends, / Blows out her furbelows, / Her bustling boughs; / And all the while he whirls / Explodes in space, / Never content with this small room: / Not even can he be / Confined to sky / But must speed high and higher still / From galaxy to galaxy, / Wrench from the stars their momentary notes / Steal music from the moon. / She’s daylight / He is dark / She’s heaven­held breath / He storms and crackles / Spits with hell’s own spark. / Yet in this room, this moment now / These together breathe and be: / She, essence of serenity, / He in a mad intensity / Soars beyond sight / Then hurls, lost Lucifer / From Heaven’s height. / And when he’s done, he’s out: / She leans a lip against the glass / And preens herself in light.\n\n06:53\n\nMusic:\n\n[Piano Overlaid With Distorted Beat]\n\n06:59\n\nKatherine McLeod:\n\nHead to spokenweb.ca to find out how to listen to the entire recording of Dorothy Livesay reading in Montreal in 1971. I’m Katherine McLeod and thanks for listening. Tune in next month for another deep dive into the sound archives of SpokenWeb.\n\n\n"],"score":1.0},{"id":"9689","cataloger_name":["Gloriah,Onyango"],"partnerInstitution":["Concordia University"],"collection_source_collection":["SpokenWeb AV"],"source_collection_label":["SpokenWeb AV"],"collection_contributing_unit":["SpokenWeb"],"source_collection_uri":[""],"collection_image_url":["https://archiveofthepresent.spokenweb.ca/_nuxt/img/header-img_1000.fd7675f.png"],"collection_source_collection_description":["SpokenWeb Audio Visual Collection"],"collection_source_collection_id":["ArchiveOfThePresent"],"persistent_url":["https://archiveofthepresent.spokenweb.ca/"],"item_title":["SpokenWeb Podcast ShortCuts 1.5, Audio of the Month – Then and Now, 18 May 2020, McLeod"],"item_title_source":["SpokenWeb Podcast web page."],"item_title_note":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/audio-of-the-month-then-and-now/"],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Podcast"],"item_series_title":["The SpokenWeb Podcast"],"item_series_description":["Series of podcasts by the SpokenWeb network."],"item_subseries_title":["The SpokenWeb Podcast ShortCuts"],"item_series_wikidata_url":["https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q117038029"],"item_series_uri":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/spokenweb-podcast/"],"item_identifiers":["[]"],"rights":["Creative Commons Attribution (BY)"],"rights_license":["Creative Commons Attribution (BY)"],"access":["Streaming and download"],"creator_names":["Katherine McLeod"],"creator_names_search":["Katherine McLeod"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/44156495389117561605\",\"name\":\"Katherine McLeod\",\"dates\":\"1981-  \",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Producer\"]}]"],"contributors":["[]"],"Publication_Date":[2020],"material_description":["[]"],"digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://cdn.simplecast.com/audio/28a9da/28a9da1f-8cca-410c-b5d7-8165a73f9394/58452fcb-56ec-4594-bb2b-e732c0fcbafc/sw-minisode-5-then-and-now_tc.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"sw-minisode-5-then-and-now_tc.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"44.1 kHz\",\"duration\":\"00:07:38\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"7,406,281 bytes\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"MP3 audio\",\"title\":\"SW Minisode 5_Then and Now\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/audio-of-the-month-then-and-now/\"}]"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"2020-05-18\",\"type\":\"Publication Date\",\"notes\":\"\",\"source\":\"\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/22080572#map=16/45.49381/-73.58233\",\"venue\":\"Concordia University McConnell Building\",\"notes\":\"\",\"address\":\"1400 Boulevard de Maisonneuve Ouest, Montreal, QC, H3G 1M8\",\"latitude\":\"45.4968036\",\"longitude\":\"-73.57792785757887\"}]"],"Address":["1400 Boulevard de Maisonneuve Ouest, Montreal, QC, H3G 1M8"],"Venue":["Concordia University McConnell Building"],"City":["Montreal, Quebec"],"Note":["[]"],"Related_works":["[]"],"_version_":1853670549827354625,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:54.290Z","contents":["This month our SpokenWeb minisode features Canadian poet Daphne Marlatt reading “Lagoon” from Vancouver Poems (1972), a deeply local collection that she had not yet published when this reading took place at Sir George Williams University (now Concordia) in Montreal. When listening to Marlatt reading “Lagoon,” we can hear the many futures of her listening, then and now.\n\n(00:00)\tMusic\t[Piano Overlaid With Distorted Beat]\n(00:10)\tHannah McGregor\tWelcome to our SpokenWeb minisodes. Each month on alternate fortnights—that’s every second week following the monthly SpokenWeb Podcast episode—join me, Hannah McGregor, and minisode host and curator Katherine McLeod for SpokenWeb’s Audio of the Month miniseries. We’ll share with you specially curated audio clips from deep in the SpokenWeb archives. This is an extension of Katherine’s Audio of the Week series at spokenweb.ca. Katherine brings her favourite audio each month to the SpokenWeb Podcast. So if you love what you hear, make sure to head over to spokenweb.ca for more. As the cherry blossoms fall in Vancouver and the snow melts away to spring flowers in Montreal, we’re reminded that spring is a time of renewal, to reflect on the past and celebrate new beginnings from coast to coast. While we find ourselves in uncertain times the season beckons us to collectively celebrate and regenerate in the then and now. No matter where you are listening from, take a deep breath of crisp, spring air and join Katherine in listening back with our ears towards the future. Here is Katherine McLeod with May’s SpokenWeb Audio of the Month: ‘mini’ stories about how literature sounds.\n(01:25)\tTheme Music\t[Instrumental Overlapped With Feminine Vocals]\n(01:30)\tKatherine McLeod\tIn this Audio of the Month, we’re going to be listening to the poem “Lagoon” by Daphne Marlatt. In 1970 in Montreal at Sir George Williams University (now Concordia), Daphne Marlatt read in the Sir George Williams Poetry Series. She began her reading with Vancouver Poems. These poems are from a deeply local collection that she had not yet published when this reading took place.\n(02:00)\tAudio Recording\t[Audio, Daphne Marlatt] I thought that what I’d do first is read to you from the Vancouver Poems.\n(02:05)\tKatherine McLeod\tBefore reading the first poem, “Lagoon,” she tells her Montreal audience that she’ll explain the local references as she goes along, starting with the first poem that refers to Lost Lagoon in Vancouver’s Stanley Park.\n(02:20)\tAudio Recording\t[Audio, Daphne Marlatt] I’ll just try and explain allusions as I go along for those people who have never been to Vancouver or know it because the poems tend to be pretty local as they were intended to be.\n(02:34)\tKatherine McLeod\tMarlatt could not have anticipated that those poems from Vancouver Poems published in 1972 would become pathways to revisit the city when republishing many of them, years later, in Liquidities: Vancouver Poems Then and Now published by Talon Books in 2013. Akin to Marlatt’s revisiting of place in the book Steveston, Liquidities _revisits and revises the city and the poetic voice. As Marlatt writes in her introduction to _Liquidities, “Vancouver Poems was a young woman’s take on a young city as it surfaced to her gaze.” By the way, she calls this introduction “Then and Now.” Marlatt’s return to the poems is not unlike the poet listening again to her own recorded voice. And that’s exactly what Marlatt did in November 2014 at Concordia when she read alongside and responded to her voice from that 1970 recording in the Sir George Williams Poetry Series. And again, five years later in September 2019 at UBC Okanagan, when Marlatt listened and responded to recordings of her voice and other voices in the Sir George Williams Poetry Series and in the UBC Okanagan-based SoundBox collection.’\n(04:01)\tKatherine McLeod\tI met Marlatt here in Montreal when she read alongside that recording of her voice from 1970. She signed my copy of _Liquidities _with the words “Vancouver connection.” Now, by now, if you’ve been listening to these Audio of the Months, you may have figured out that I’m from Vancouver and that the Vancouver-Montreal connection is a meaningful one. I open this book now and read these poems of Vancouver here in Montreal. And I think of the then and the now and whether to hold them together in my reading and in my listening, or let them go, move, slip, liquid, changing, and to listen to the poems, listening to this change. With that, let’s listen to Marlatt reading “Lagoon” in 1970 here in Montreal, listening to her reading in a voice that she will later listen to in a reading, and listening to the many futures of her listening then and now.\n(05:11)\tAudio Recording\t[Audio, Daphne Marlatt reciting “Lagoon.” Some words are absent or different than the version in _Liquidities_] Lagoon, / down a cut on the city side, apartments / shacked uphill, through shadow and hulls and ribs we walk. / You’ve come home. On either side dark nets remember / how a wind fishing for that extent both left and right / ruffles your hair. Here. The city drinks what it collects. / Water or ducks, a nesting place. A neck of land. / Whose profile somehow looks more narrow in the street. / Our eyes reflect … kites, banners, a populous sky. / What you or others brought, come back to / Lie when we / outwalk our dragons, thus, their future tails: catch / fire. / You confirm that we sail to the east at nine, shore wise / having no place, antique, a houseboard. Wind ships our / ship, stands, having completed its turn to, gather to / the bridge… / Wait! I can’t get my hand out of green / pockets green, dissected, frogs. The edges of their / vision littoral. We skirt red. I’m half in, wanting to / pull up reeds to plant. / Your coin proves nothing, no / bottom, don’t. Go (in shoes sucked under). Water / scuttles old men on benches dangle under conifers. Listen: / their edges are always murmuring, Marshes, Your / forced march. / Could we afford your going? A salmon run? On the / corner there, half indecisive, tarnish of atrophied / fish in raffia swung: a house sign, a place to / enter. / Where I’d make tea, your lips on the future, / caught, so you could read me.\n(07:16)\tMusic\t[Piano Overlaid With Distorted Beat]\n(07:16)\tKatherine McLeod\tHead to spokenweb.ca to find out more about where this recording is from. My name’s Katherine McLeod and tune in next month for another deep dive into the sounds of the SpokenWeb archives."],"score":1.0},{"id":"9690","cataloger_name":["Gloriah,Onyango"],"partnerInstitution":["Concordia University"],"collection_source_collection":["SpokenWeb AV"],"source_collection_label":["SpokenWeb AV"],"collection_contributing_unit":["SpokenWeb"],"source_collection_uri":[""],"collection_image_url":["https://archiveofthepresent.spokenweb.ca/_nuxt/img/header-img_1000.fd7675f.png"],"collection_source_collection_description":["SpokenWeb Audio Visual Collection"],"collection_source_collection_id":["ArchiveOfThePresent"],"persistent_url":["https://archiveofthepresent.spokenweb.ca/"],"item_title":["SpokenWeb Podcast ShortCuts 1.6, Audio of the Month – From Poetic Surveillance to an Avant-Garde Dinner Fit for a Queen, 15 June 2020, Aubin"],"item_title_source":["SpokenWeb Podcast web page."],"item_title_note":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/audio-of-the-month-from-poetic-surveillance-to-an-avant-garde-dinner-fit-for-a-queen/"],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Podcast"],"item_series_title":["The SpokenWeb Podcast"],"item_series_description":["Series of podcasts by the SpokenWeb network."],"item_subseries_title":["The SpokenWeb Podcast ShortCuts"],"item_series_wikidata_url":["https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q117038029"],"item_series_uri":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/spokenweb-podcast/"],"item_identifiers":["[]"],"rights":["Creative Commons Attribution (BY)"],"rights_license":["Creative Commons Attribution (BY)"],"access":["Streaming and download"],"creator_names":["Mathieu Aubin"],"creator_names_search":["Mathieu Aubin"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"name\":\"Mathieu Aubin\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Producer\"]}]"],"contributors":["[]"],"Publication_Date":[2020],"material_description":["[]"],"digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://cdn.simplecast.com/audio/28a9da/28a9da1f-8cca-410c-b5d7-8165a73f9394/cef978e4-dfa7-45e2-a2c9-0d9a4a465a38/sw-minisode-ep-6_tc.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"sw-minisode-ep-6_tc.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"44.1 kHz\",\"duration\":\"00:11:06\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"10,734,072 bytes\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"MP3 audio\",\"title\":\"SW Minisode ep 6\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/audio-of-the-month-from-poetic-surveillance-to-an-avant-garde-dinner-fit-for-a-queen/\"}]"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"2020-06-15\",\"type\":\"Publication Date\",\"notes\":\"\",\"source\":\"\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/22080572#map=16/45.49381/-73.58233\",\"venue\":\"Concordia University McConnell Building\",\"notes\":\"\",\"address\":\"1400 Boulevard de Maisonneuve Ouest, Montreal, QC, H3G 1M8\",\"latitude\":\"45.4968036\",\"longitude\":\"-73.57792785757887\"}]"],"Address":["1400 Boulevard de Maisonneuve Ouest, Montreal, QC, H3G 1M8"],"Venue":["Concordia University McConnell Building"],"City":["Montreal, Quebec"],"Note":["[]"],"Related_works":["[]"],"_version_":1853670549828403200,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:54.290Z","contents":["This month we bring you a very special guest curator edition of SpokenWeb’s Audio of the Month. In this minisode, Katherine McLeod is joined by SpokenWeb researcher and postdoctoral fellow Mathieu Aubin for a glimpse into the life and work of Canadian poet bill bissett – from poetic surveillance to an avant-garde dinner fit for a Queen.\n\n(00:00)\tMusic\t[Piano Overlaid With Distorted Beat]\n(00:10)\tHannah McGregor\tWelcome to our SpokenWeb minisodes. Each month on alternate fortnights—that’s every second week following the monthly SpokenWeb Podcast episode—join me, Hannah McGregor, and minisode host and curator Katherine McLeod for SpokenWeb’s Audio of the Month miniseries. We’ll share with you specially curated audio clips from deep in the SpokenWeb archives. This month, we are excited to share a special guest curator edition of the SpokenWeb minisodes from SpokenWeb postdoctoral fellow Mathieu Aubin. Without further ado, here’s Katherine McLeod and Mathieu Aubin with SpokenWeb’s Audio of the Month: ‘mini’ stories about how literature sounds.\n(01:03)\tTheme Music\t[Instrumental Overlapped With Feminine Vocals]\n(01:03)\tKatherine McLeod\tFor this Audio of the Month, I’d like to introduce you to a special guest who will be guiding us through a variety of recordings of Canadian sound poet bill bissett. Our guest is Mathieu Aubin, a SpokenWeb postdoctoral fellow at Concordia University. So how did this Audio of the Month come about, you might ask? Well, Mathieu started by pitching an idea to the Audio of the Week series, and if you’re a SpokenWeb researcher and an audio clip catches your attention, please do get in touch and your audio clip could become part of the Audio of the Week or even an Audio of the Month. Now, what was it that caught Mathieu’s attention? He was conducting an oral history interview with bill bissett and bill started telling him about “that time when he had dinner with the queen.” Yes, had dinner with the queen. That caught my attention, too. But to get to that part in the story, let’s hear, Mathieu set the scene through sound.\n(02:08)\tMathieu Aubin\tThis month, I have the pleasure and privilege to be your Audio of the Month curator. As your curator, I’ll be introducing and briefly discussing three audio clips documenting a decade in bill bissett’s life. As you may or may not know, bissett is a visual artist and award-winning gay poet who has published over 50 books. He was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, November 23rd, 1939, and moved to Vancouver, British Columbia, 1958. There, he co-created blewointment magazine and blewointment press, which published visual, concrete, and sound poetry. Though bissett is now an iconic poet, he faced many difficulties during the late 1960s and the 1970s. For instance, in the late 1960s, when Vancouver narcotics police officers raided counter-cultural communities, bissett was arrested for possession of cannabis. You can hear about this experience in the recording of the poem “another 100 warrants” read during the Sir George Williams Reading Series on October 31st, 1969. Let’s listen.\n(03:11)\tAudio Recording\t[Audio, bill bissett reciting “another 100 warrants issued”] Another hundred warrants issued. News flash. Seven men entered a Vancouver graveyard only to disappear in a flash of white light. What’s it like, oh straight person, square-jawed, to be able to shop around save three vets from the Army & Navy without being stalked, harassed, etc. by the narcs at every turn you take. Hey, what’s it like to get up in the morning, gathered, you and your friends, close ones, around the warming stove without the RCMP crashing through the veils within the embargo of mistrust. Canada, etc.\n(03:45)\tMathieu Aubin\tExperiences such as these with the mounties and narcs were documented by other poets in Vancouver, such as Sharon Thesen in her poem “Chrysanthemum Perfume,” which is discussed by our sister podcast SoundBox Signals in their episode “Only the Imagination Carries Forward.” Though he was freed from jail with the help of UBC English professor Warren Tallman, bissett remained on the local police’s radar. This forced him to spend many of the 1970s living in secrecy while continuing to run his blewointment press, publishing his work with presses such as Talon Books. In 1977, bissett’s poetry was debated in the House of Commons because Conservative MPs cited his work as evidence of the Canada Council’s misuse of public funding. That year, bissett’s Canada Council funding was heavily reduced, causing members of Vancouver’s literary community to come together and defend their friend. In last month’s Audio of the Week post titled “bill bissett on CKVU-TV September 1978,” we hear an example of these efforts. In the recording from the PennSound collection, a partner affiliate of the SpokenWeb research network, we hear Pia Shandel, then-host of The Vancouver Show, document what had happened to bissett as he chants in the background and reads the poem “th wundrfulness uv th mountees our secret police.”\n(05:03)\tAudio Recording\t[Audio, bill bissett reciting “th wundrfulness uv th mountees our secret police”] The wonderfulness of the mounties, our secret police. They open our mail, petulantly they burn down barns they can’t bug. They listen to our political leaders phone conversations. What could be less inspiring to overhear? [Audience Laughs] They had me down on the floor til I turned purple, then my friends pulled them off me. They think breastfeeding is disgusting. Every time we come here to raid this place, you always have that kid on your tit. They tore my daughter’s doll’s head off looking for dope. One of my more memorable beatings was in the backseat locked inside one of their unmarked cars. They work for the CIA. At night, they drive around and shine their searchlights on people embracing and with their PA systems, tell them to keep away from the trees. They listen to your most secret farts, rewinding the tape, looking for hidden meaning. Indigestion is a national security risk.\n(06:13)\tMathieu Aubin\tIn the poem, the speaker documents the mounties surveillance tactics, such as opening people’s mail, recording phone calls, expressing heterosexist comments, and physically attacking him. While I’ve thought about this decade in bissett’s life for many years and I’ve met with him on several occasions to talk about this time in his life, when we last spoke, he shared a surprising twist to the story. In an oral history interview with him, I shared with bissett that Pierre Elliot Trudeau, then-prime-minister, was apparently upset about the accusations against the Canada Council. bissett was surprised when I told them this as he recalled attending a dinner at Ottawa’s Château Laurier hosted by Trudeau and attended by Queen Elizabeth II. The dinner was supposed to be a showcase of Canada’s Avant-Garde artists, including writers like bpNichol, Carol Bolt, Michael Ondaatje, and bissett himself. As bissett told me this story, I learned that his life of being pursued by the Vancouver police and the mounties, living in secrecy, and facing homophobic attacks in the House of Commons had as a counterpoint an experience of dining with the queen and explaining sound poetry to her. Oral histories can be incredible sources of twists and turns. I’m thankful that I’ve been able to have so many fruitful conversations with bissett and that he shared this story with me. Here is a story by bissett about him and his friend Carol Bolt, author of the play One Night Stand, meeting the queen sometime in the late 1970s. I hope you enjoy listening as much as I did when I first heard this story.\n(07:49)\tAudio Recording\t[Audio, bill bissett] There were a lot of beautiful guys there.\n(07:52)\tAudio Recording\t[Audio, Mathieu Aubin] Mhm.\n(07:52)\tAudio Recording\t[bill] And the queen… Carol Bolt was there. She had gone to bed early for a person and she wrote a great play called One Night Stand.\n(08:05)\tAudio Recording\t[Mathieu] Okay.\n(08:05)\tAudio Recording\t[bill] And it got a lot of performances all across Canada. And she wanted to meet the queen. I was wearing a powder– no, I was wearing a blue tuxedo with a powder blue shirt, frills going down the middle of it.\n(08:25)\tAudio Recording\t[Mathieu] I can picture it, yeah.\n(08:25)\tAudio Recording\t[bill] And I just loved it. I just… I was so happy and no one had gotten anywhere for me to spend the night, I’d forgotten about that. Everyone else, don’t know.\n(08:35)\tAudio Recording\t[Mathieu] Yeah.\n(08:35)\tAudio Recording\t[bill] And so anyway, so I wasn’t worried yet. And so I was bringing Carol Bolt over to meet the queen. Like Pierre Trudeau, she’s really short. And I was taller than her as well. And I said, “Your majesty, I’d love you to meet Carol Bolt. And she’s the author of a wonderful Canadian play called One Night Stand. Do you know what a one night stand is?” And she said, “Well, not now, but I did.” And then Carol disappeared. I said, “Good heavens, she’s disappeared.”\n(09:12)\tAudio Recording\t[Mathieu] Yeah.\n(09:12)\tAudio Recording\t[bill] And.. no, it was the queen that said, “Good heavens.” I said, “Oh my God, she’s not here. She got so shy she ran away.”\n(09:19)\tAudio Recording\t[Mathieu] Aww.\n(09:19)\tAudio Recording\t[bill] She couldn’t do it. I understood that. And so then she said, “Well, what do you do?” She said to me. I said, “I do sound poetry.” And she said, “What is that?” I said it was poetry that the main emphasis is on sound and, you know, just make sounds. The sounds are the enchantment or the experience–\n(09:42)\tAudio Recording\t[Mathieu] Yeah.\n(09:42)\tAudio Recording\t[bill] –rather than the meaning. And she said, “Oh, that sounds very interesting.” And then the queen was going to leave after, a little while after that… We’ve been reported a sniper in the lobby or something. And then Carol came back and she said, “I can do it now. I took a deep breath.” I said, “Okay, let’s go.” And so I went after the queen and I touched her on the shoulder, which you’re not allowed to do.\n(10:04)\tAudio Recording\t[Mathieu] [Gasps] Oh!\n(10:04)\tAudio Recording\t[bill] Her skin was like smooth–\n(10:05)\tAudio Recording\t[Mathieu] Yeah.\n(10:05)\tAudio Recording\t[bill] –like smooth. And I said, “Your majesty, Carol’s here!” She said, “Oh, blessings, you’ve reappeared! How excellent,” I mean, she was very festive.\n(10:17)\tAudio Recording\t[Mathieu] Aww.\n(10:17)\tAudio Recording\t[bill] And it was, yeah, it was a lovely evening.\n(10:21)\tMusic\t[Piano Overlaid With Distorted Beat]\n(10:26)\tKatherine McLeod\tThat was bill bissett in conversation with Mathieu Aubin. My thanks to Mathieu for suggesting these audio clips from SpokenWeb, PennSound and an oral history interview conducted as part of Mathieu’s postdoctoral SpokenWeb research. Find out how to listen to all of these recordings and more by visiting spokenweb.ca. Thanks to Hannah McGregor and Stacey Copeland for working with me to produce this minisode. My name is Katherine McLeod and tune in next month for another deep dive into the sounds of the SpokenWeb archives."],"score":1.0}]