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"],"Note":["[]"],"Related_works":["[]"],"_version_":1853670549345009667,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:53.966Z","score":2.7048998},{"id":"8693","cataloger_name":["Cole,Mash"],"partnerInstitution":["Concordia University"],"collection_source_collection":["SpokenWeb Archive of the Present"],"source_collection_label":["SpokenWeb Archive of the Present"],"collection_contributing_unit":["Project Archives"],"source_collection_uri":[""],"collection_image_url":[""],"collection_source_collection_id":[""],"persistent_url":[""],"item_title":["Book Launch for Canlit Across Media on Zoom, 2020"],"item_title_source":["Cataloguer "],"item_title_note":["_camlot-jason-and-mcleod-katherine_canlit-across-media-launch_zoom_cu_2020-11-12"],"item_series_title":["SpokenWeb Archive of the Present"],"item_identifiers":["[]"],"creator_names":["Katherine McLeod","Jason Camlot"],"creator_names_search":["Katherine McLeod","Jason 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"],"Note":["[]"],"Related_works":["[]"],"_version_":1853670549345009669,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:53.966Z","score":2.7048998},{"id":"8695","cataloger_name":["Cole,Mash"],"partnerInstitution":["Concordia University"],"collection_source_collection":["SpokenWeb Archive of the Present"],"source_collection_label":["SpokenWeb Archive of the Present"],"collection_contributing_unit":["Project Archives"],"source_collection_uri":[""],"collection_image_url":[""],"collection_source_collection_id":[""],"persistent_url":[""],"item_title":["Listening for Hope in the Archives, 2021 "],"item_title_source":["Cataloguer "],"item_title_note":["Listening for Hope in the Archives - SpokenWeb - Blue Met"],"item_series_title":["SpokenWeb Archive of the Present"],"item_identifiers":["[]"],"creator_names":["Jason Camlot","Katherine McLeod"],"creator_names_search":["Jason Camlot","Katherine McLeod"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"https://viaf.org/viaf/90740324\",\"name\":\"Jason Camlot \",\"dates\":\"1967-\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Speaker\",\"Series organizer\"]},{\"url\":\"https://viaf.org/viaf/44156495389117561605\",\"name\":\"Katherine McLeod \",\"dates\":\"1981- \",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Speaker\"]}]"],"contributors_names":["Deanna Fong","Faith Pare","Emma Telaro","Deanna Radford","Nicole Furlonge","Mathieu Aubin"],"contributors_names_search":["Deanna Fong","Faith Pare","Emma Telaro","Deanna Radford","Nicole Furlonge","Mathieu Aubin"],"contributors":["[{\"url\":\"https://viaf.org/viaf/102855198\",\"name\":\"Deanna Fong \",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Speaker\"]},{\"url\":\"\",\"name\":\"Faith Pare\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Speaker\"]},{\"url\":\"\",\"name\":\"Emma Telaro \",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Speaker\"]},{\"url\":\"\",\"name\":\"Deanna Radford \",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Speaker\"]},{\"url\":\"https://viaf.org/viaf/49151050054433411712\",\"name\":\"Nicole Furlonge \",\"dates\":\"1972-\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Speaker\"]},{\"url\":\"\",\"name\":\"Mathieu Aubin \",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Speaker\"]}]"],"Speaker_name":["Deanna Fong ","Faith Pare","Emma Telaro ","Deanna Radford ","Nicole Furlonge ","Mathieu Aubin "],"Performance_Date":[2021],"material_description":["[]"],"digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"\",\"file_path\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/folders/1mfK8g74QrA9OwtwAFbf9-mLCSPZndHOb\",\"filename\":\"Listening for Hope in the Archives - 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Close Listening: Poetry and the Performed. Charles Bernstein. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.\\n\\nCamlot, J., Swift, T. (eds) (2007) Language Acts: Anglo-Québec Poetry, 1976 to the 21st Century (Véhicule, 2007).\\n\\nFong, Deanna and Karis Shearer. Gender, “Affective Labour, and Community-Building Through Literary Audio Artifacts,” No More Potlucks, online http://nomorepotlucks.org/site/gender-affective-labour-and-community-building-through-literary-audio-artifacts-deanna-fong-and-karis-shearer/\\n\\nMcKinnon, Donna. “A New Frontier of Literary Engagement: SpokenWeb’s network of digitized audio recordings brings new life to Canada’s literary heritage.” https://www.ualberta.ca/arts/faculty-news/2018/august/a-new-frontier-of-literary-engagement\\n\\nMorris, Adalaide, ed. Sound States: Innovative Poetics and Acoustical Technologies. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997.\\n\\nMurray, Annie and Jared Wiercinski. “Looking at Archival Sound: Enhancing the Listening Experience in a Spoken Word Archive.” First Monday 17 (2012). https://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/3808/3197\\n\\nShearer, Karis. “Networks, Communities, Mentorships, Friendships: An SSI Reflection” http://amplab.ok.ubc.ca/index.php/2019/07/09/networks-and-communities-an-ssi-reflection/\\n\\nToppings, Earle. “Gwendolyn MacEwen.” Accompanying Material by Earle Topping about Gwendolyn MacEwen. Earle Toppings Fonds. Victoria University Library (Toronto).\\n\\nUrbancic, Ann, editor. Literary Titans Revisited: Earle Toppings Interviews with CanLit Poets and Writers of the Sixties. Ed. Ann Urbancic. Toronto: Dundurn P, 2017.\\n\"}]"],"_version_":1853670549348155393,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:53.966Z","contents":["SpokenWeb is a literary research network, dedicated to studying literature through sound. But how did this project begin? What kinds of literary recordings inspired it and where were they found? And what happened next in order for these recordings to be heard?\n\nFor this inaugural episode of the SpokenWeb Podcast, Katherine McLeod seeks to answer these questions by speaking with SpokenWeb researchers Jason Camlot, Annie Murray, Michael O’Driscoll, Roma Kail, Karis Shearer, and Deanna Fong. All of their stories involve a deep interest in literary audio recordings and all of their stories, or nearly all, start with a box of tapes…\n\n00:07\tTheme Music:\tCan you hear me? I don’t know how much projection to do.\n00:17\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.\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. I’m so excited to introduce our inaugural episode Stories of SpokenWeb, an introduction to this very podcast and the project it stems from. SpokenWeb is first and foremost a literary research network dedicated to studying literature through sound, but how did it all begin and how did these audio archives make their way from basements and car trunks to university libraries? In this episode SpokenWeb contributor Katherine McLeod takes us into the lives and archives of some of the founding spoken web members to uncover the origins and future of the project.\n01:30\tHannah McGregor:\tHere is “Stories of SpokenWeb”\n01:39\tTheme Music:\t[Instrumental]\n01:39\tKatherine McLeod:\tWhat is SpokenWeb? SpokenWeb is a research program, a network of scholars, students and artists all studying literature through sound. But how did it all begin? What does the story of SpokenWeb sound like? My name is Katherine McLeod and I asked SpokenWeb collaborators at universities across Canada how they got involved in the project. Needless to say, each story is different and there are many more than are told here, but their stories do have a few things in common that tell us something about the project. All of their stories begin with an interest in audio well before SpokenWeb assumed its current form, and all of their stories, or nearly all, involve a box of tapes. In 2014 I joined SpokenWeb as a postdoctoral fellow at Concordia University in Montreal. I met Jason Camlot, the principal investigator or project lead of SpokenWeb. At that point SpokenWeb was based out of one university, but I remember him saying that there was an interest in widening the network. So how did SpokenWeb become what it is today? To answer this question, I spoke with a number of SpokenWeb scholars from across Canada. We’ll start the conversation with one story of how it all began.\n03:22\tJason Camlot:\tI’m Jason Camlot. I’m a professor in the Department of English at Concordia University. I am the author of several books about literature and sound recording and I’m the director of the partnership grant of SSHRC Social Science, Humanities Research Council of Canada, called SpokenWeb. I was going to say it began when I was a graduate student and became, in earnest, interested in the history of early sound recordings of literary performance. But I was an undergraduate at this institution at which I now teach, and the first time that I heard an early sound recording was in my Victorian literature class played to me by my professor, John Miller, who later became a colleague of mine for a spell. And he played to this class a barely audible recording of Tennyson reciting “The Charge of the Light Brigade.” And that really piqued my interest and, well, really just what it was that we were listening to and what it meant and what its significance was. So I think the interest in sound recordings of literary works or of something that identified with literature really began when I was an undergraduate. When I went to grad school, I became interested in really thinking about this as a research project. It wasn’t my dissertation project, but it became my second project that you always have to be able to talk about when you go to job interviews and things like that. And at Stanford University they had a pretty good sound archive with a lot of historical recordings. So I was able to look into the longer history of spoken recordings and began to research that topic. I’ve always been interested in sound recording because I play music, and I’ve recorded myself writing songs and playing my own songs or playing in bands with friends since I was a teenager, and I’ve always been saving up for the latest recording device.\n05:41\tJason Camlot:\tWhen I came to Concordia – it’s almost like in this sort of fortuitous moment – I was asked to have a meeting with the department chair in the first week that I was installed in the department, just to go over very practical things. And sitting in his office I noticed, out of the corner of my eye, a bunch of tape boxes – boxes that held reel to reel tapes. And I remember asking him what those boxes contained. And he said to me, “Oh, that’s just some poetry reading series that took place here in the 60s.” And I remembered that, although I didn’t do anything about it at the time. I went about my business of teaching and publishing and getting tenure here at Concordia. And then maybe a decade later I thought about those recordings again and I went back to him and asked, “Do you still have those recordings?”\n06:47\tJason Camlot:\tThe department had moved floors and I remember we threw out a lot of stuff during the move. So I kind of feared that maybe those reel to reel tapes didn’t make it during the move, but he told me that he had deposited them in the university archives that held the English department fonds, the records of the English department. So knowing that the tapes were still accessible, I started looking into them and found a bunch of boxes again that I couldn’t listen to. So it was a bit of a stumbling block, not being able to actually hear what was on them and I set about trying to rectify that problem, and to figure out whether this collection of tapes might be of interest from a literary point of view.\n07:38\tKatherine McLeod:\tThat was Jason Camlot, the principal investigator or project lead of SpokenWeb. As SpokenWeb grew, researchers began working across disciplines. In addition to working across disciplines in one university SpokenWeb has built collaborative connections across different universities. We’ll hear from researchers at a few of those universities in a moment, but we’ll start first with someone who has been part of the project since the beginning.\n08:07\tAnnie Murray:\tMy name is Annie Murray. I’m Associate University Librarian for archives and special collections. At the University of Calgary. What we were really interested in was how a lot of these poets, were going on reading tours. And so the Sir George Williams section was just one slice of literary life in a given year.\n08:32\tAudio Recording:\tWelcome to the fourth, third, week of the fourth series of our readings here at Sir George. And this one is a special one partly in that it was, it is being presented… [Overlapping audio recordings, exact words not audible]\n08:57\tAnnie Murray:\tAnd we were imagining these sort of traveling poets leaving behind a trail of recordings or not leaving behind. And wouldn’t it be great to understand where did all these readings end up and could we ever access them in all the places poets would have read to kind of sonically recreate those years of very active poetry reading performances?\n09:24\tAudio Recording:\tGets hard to read your own stuff after a while, you forget what it sounded like the last time.\n09:29\tAnnie Murray:\tCause we knew different archives across the country would have some audio record of these events. And we thought: this should all be brought together. This should be a massive aggregation of recordings so that you could listen to a poet across the country and kind of, just as bands tour, see how a poet toured and how they intersected with other poets. So I think we saw the meaning in the individual readings for sure for literary history and analysis. But that the sort of possibilities opened up by knowing what all readings were preserved and bringing those archives together. And I will say in most cases, these are hidden collections that hadn’t been digitized before. So with a partnership grant, it allows us to bring all of these collections out, focus on them in a different and concerted way and try to create that sort of national recording of all of these performances that had taken place.\n10:36\tKatherine McLeod:\tThe project continued to grow. Now it is in over 13 universities right across the country.\n10:44\tMichael O’Driscoll:\tI think I’d be remiss if I didn’t say how incredibly grateful I am to be able to work with these materials and with the multidisciplinary scholars that are a part of this project. This is honestly, as I came to recognize during our days together in Vancouver this past summer, this is one of the great research and intellectual opportunities of my career and I couldn’t be more excited to be a part of this.\n11:11\tKatherine McLeod:\tThat was Michael O’Driscoll, professor in the Department of English and Film Studies at the University of Alberta.\n11:18\tMichael O’Driscoll:\tI’ve been here for the last 22 years and my work ranges across into the areas of critical and cultural theory. Various kinds of media studies. I’m interested in American literature, poetry and poetics. And I spend a lot of my time thinking a lot about archives and thinking about digital media as well too. You know, the lessons of the world’s great archives theorists – I’m thinking about Arjun Appadurai, I’m thinking about Jacques Derrida – is that archives are oriented not towards the past, but towards the future. Archives are how we build community, archives are aspirational. We only put things in boxes and save them because we imagine a future for them. And the true focus of an archive is its own futurity, not the history that it records.\n12:08\tKatherine McLeod:\tMichael shared with us some background as to how the recordings were made.\n12:13\tMichael O’Driscoll:\tWhen personal recording became available, when somebody could pick up a portable or reasonably portable reel to reel recorder and show up at a reading with it, folks just simply started recording everything that moved. There was so much enthusiasm about the new technology. Many, many of the readings that happened in the late sixties and through the 70s and the eighties, eighties, were recorded on reel-to-reel and then subsequently on cassette tape. But one of the realities of that enthusiasm as well as while there’s lots of enthusiasm for the recording, more often than not, those recordings were put in boxes, stored away and never listened to again. And they have as a result, sat inert for the last 50 years or so at this incredible cultural and scholarly resource, untapped.\n13:03\tKatherine McLeod:\tIn fact, many of the people we spoke with for today’s episode shared with us a story that, at some point mentioned a box of tapes. Just like that story that Jason described earlier of finding a box of tapes and eventually listening to them.\n13:21\tAnnie Murray:\tI think that’s an origin story in a lot of people’s involvement with SpokenWeb; “Hey! What are those tapes?”\n13:28\tDeanna Fong:\tGoing to SFU, Simon Fraser University, and just by happenstance came across this box of tapes as we all do.\n13:35\tRoma Kail:\tOur research assistant was so excited about the project that she went to our chief librarian with the archivist and they found us unprocessed box.\n13:45\tKaris Shearer:\tHe went to get a cardboard box at one point and brought it back to her and said, “You know, I want to give this to you and someday you’re going to know what to do with it.” And she said to me, “I think, I think this is it. I think this is what I’m supposed to do with this box.”\n14:04\tKatherine McLeod:\tI’ll introduce you to each of those voices in a moment. But for now, let’s go back to Michael who shared with us the process of working with this kind of material.\n14:14\tMichael O’Driscoll:\tSo the process that we are working by is, first of all, the materials are digitized and we create the digital records of them. Then we produce the metadata that will be associated with those records. At the same time, once those materials have been digitized, they will be made available to the library for formal accession\n14:36\tKatherine McLeod:\tWhile that seems easy enough, there are in fact many challenges in working with these found recordings, which are often made with older technology such as reel to reel or cassette tapes. The challenges aren’t just technical, they are also legal. Let’s go back to our conversation with Annie Murray.\n14:56\tAnnie Murray:\tIt can be expensive to do digitization. It’s very time consuming. If you don’t have ready equipment or infrastructure in your organization, you need to contract out an expert to make the recordings. With archival audio recordings, you don’t always know what’s on tapes that an author gives you with their archive. So you could be investing resources in something that might not even be a performance. It could be somebody’s voice answering machine tape, which is also interesting. But, if a collection is kind of under-processed, because it’s an audio item it does take resources to get the content out and usable. The other thing is that copyright can be a barrier. So if people don’t know who made the recording or what the status is of the audio work, it can be an impediment to digitizing it because the library or archive might not know how widely it can be shared. So those are some of the things that libraries and archives grapple with. But I also think we’ve just got to work through those problems to make sure that this content gets preserved.\n16:09\tKatherine McLeod:\tPart of the reason it can be challenging to sort out the rights around these recordings is that they were not always straight-forward recitations or performances. Sometimes recordings include informal conversations, off the record interviews and discussions around a presentation of a work.\n16:29\tRoma Kail:\tSo my name is Roma Kail. I’m a librarian at Victoria University Library in the University of Toronto. I have done some work with the Earle Toppings fonds here at our special collections at Vic Library.\n16:45\tKatherine McLeod:\tEarle Toppings was an editor at Ryerson Press and worked for CBC Radio. He interviewed many Canadian writers such as poets, Gwendolyn MacEwen, Dorothy Livesay, Earle Birney, and Al Purdy. The archival collection for Toppings includes correspondence with writers along with audio recordings of readings and interviews and background notes compiled by Toppings himself.\n17:10\tRoma Kail:\tSo here he is talking about – he wrote this in his notes, he wrote about his recording of Gwendolyn MacEwen – he writes that a standard microphone was used. It was a standard RCA Victor 44 – he called it the radio workhorse – and it recorded her voice softly and beautifully. Gwen was a gentle caressing reader, a sort of Billie Holiday reciting poems as she did at creative hangouts of the 1960s, such as, the creative hangouts of the 1960s, such as the Bohemian Embassy. There was a musical feeling in all her work and she almost, saying her poems, which had their own melodies. So it’s just an extra, as my research assistant pointed out, all of that accompanying material brings in an extra bit of narrative, or a different narrative to the actual sound recordings. And it was the sound recordings which really correlate with the initial goal of SpokenWeb as it was presented to us.\n18:20\tKatherine McLeod:\tHere’s Karis Shearer, the director of the UBC Okanagan AMP Lab and Associate Professor of English in the faculty of Creative and Critical Studies who has been working with the SoundBox collection, sharing another example of the rich but curious sounds found in these archives.\n18:39\tKaris Shearer:\tSo we recently acquired a new set of tapes, a gift from George Bowering and Jean Baird, which include 19 tapes that George Bowering made, going back to the 1960s. One of them that I particularly like is a tape that was made in July of 1969 and it’s labeled ‘Warren, Roy, Moon, etcetera.’ And so I was just too curious not to give this a listen before we started digitizing it, and it is on the occasion of the moon landing…\n19:17\tAudio Recording:\t[Beep] Now selection [Beep]\n19:18\tKaris Shearer:\t…in 1969, and what you hear on this tape is George Bowering, Angela Bowering, Roy Kiyooka and Warren Tallman. All of whom were in Montreal at the time, Warren was passing through, Roy Kiyooka was teaching at Sir George Williams, now Concordia, and George Bowering was teaching there as well. And they’re all just hanging out in their living room, at George and Angela’s living room on Grosvenor Avenue in Montreal, and they’re listening to the broadcast of the moon landing.\n19:50\tAudio Recording:\tWell, we had a picture with the earth right in the centre of the screen, over.\n19:53\tKaris Shearer:\tSo again, it’s a very messy, interesting tape because there’s lots of, people talking over each other. There’s a broadcast going on in the background. But what’s interesting to me is they’re not recording just the broadcast. Right? It’s not like, “Shh, everybody, we’re gonna record the broadcast of this historical moment.” What the recording is, this kind of very social dynamic moment of them talking about poetics, talking about poetry. Fred was on his way back from Albuquerque to Canada. Did you know, they’re talking about writing, they’re also at various moments, you know, looking at the astronauts on TV and in some cases, you know, making some great jokes. And so it’s a moment of recording their interaction with this historical moment, their interaction with each. So it’s a wonderful tape and I’m excited for people to be able to listen to it.\n20:52\tKatherine McLeod:\tHere’s one of Karis’ collaborators across the SpokenWeb network explaining why this sort of recording can be so interesting to study.\n21:00\tDeanna Fong:\tSo my name is Deanna Fong. I’m a postdoctoral fellow working with SpokenWeb. My work with Karis has been so indispensable for my thinking. We’ve worked together on numerous occasions, but thinking about that question of what it is we’re listening to when we listen to this certain kind of artifact, or I suppose what, what are we listening for? And I think one of the things that we’ve found ourselves listening for is that, in any sort of informal or speech-y accounts that we have, we get a sense of the labour that goes on behind the scenes in the production of literature. And a lot of that labour is unevenly divided along gendered lines. So, you know, thinking about women’s contributions to building communities and to maintaining community spaces, acting as public historians, maintaining community archives, taking care of community members when they’re ill or when they need help, providing feedback, being auditors for work in progress, all these sorts of things that you hear, that don’t necessarily make it to the page. So I think that’s been a really crucial concept for the work that she and I have been doing. I don’t know if this is some continuation of my past or something, but I remember when I was a kid and going to hall shows and stuff like that, oftentimes I was way more interested in just sitting outside and talking to people about the bands, like, just as interested in that as I was in actually listening to the bands. So I think there’s a great interest, for me, in listening around rather than listening to, and I find conversations about literature vastly more interesting than a lot of literature itself.\n22:55\tMichael O’Driscoll:\tI’ve learned along the way to appreciate the virtues of close listening in the sense that one can learn a lot about the cultural moment of the reading by paying close attention, not just to the words that come from the speaker, but to everything else that is happening in the room. So I think, for example, about Margaret Atwood reading in 1970 and a now defunct gallery of a hub mall on the University of Alberta campus. [Audio, from the 1970 recording: Please come in and sit down, there’s lots of room at the front.] And you can hear during the recording, [Audio: He will be very unhappy if you stand up during all this. So please sit down.] Her coming in and trying to wend her way through the audience and get herself settled down in a hubbub of things, and an introduction starts, and then stops, and then there’s a moment where people have to direct people into the room to find space ’cause it’s so crowed. [Audio: The people standing up at the back can, you not sit down?] And you just get this incredible sense of the energy of that moment and what it meant to have this really fantastic young emerging writer [Audio: There’s lots of room, does everybody, everybody just shuffle forward] show up to do her thing. And the kind of excitement that that could generate along the way [Audio: That’s more like it.]\n24:15\tMichael O’Driscoll:\tLet me give you one other one, and that has to do with when Phyllis Webb is performing at the student union building art gallery in 1972. It’s March 9th, 1972 and she comes into the room, the recording’s already going and she’s completely breathless. She’s breathing hard and she’s clearly rushed over to get to this moment and she’s there late and she says.[I have to catch my breath.] And you can hear her say that, and just that moment of that physical presence and embodiment of this poet, again, with all of that energy that gets pulled into that archival moment into that event of the archive, it’s a really exciting thing. These are real people doing real things and real situations and the audio is a rich medium for capturing that if you’ve only listened closely enough.\n25:24\tTheme Music:\t[Instrumental]\n25:24\tKatherine McLeod:\tAfter speaking with Deanna I thought about how important it was for her to be involved in the SpokenWeb project early on in her graduate education. After speaking with Roma and her work with student research assistant, Eva Lu, I thought even more about how student training through SpokenWeb is changing what it means to study literature. At UBC Okanagan [UBCO], Karis has taught and mentored many students who have gotten involved with the SpokenWeb project. I asked her more about student training and she had a terrific story.\n25:59\tKaris Shearer:\tFor me, pedagogy is central to what we do here at UBCO on the SpokenWeb team, and it always has been. So the example that you brought up of Lee Hannigan: first student to work on the project back when it was just in its very early stages. Lee came on as a work study student and we trained him in digitization, and so I reached out to a colleague, Stephen Foster, who very kindly invited us into the media centre that he was running at that time. Mike Berger, who’s a technician trained both me and Lee in the digitization process and gave us space in the lab to do that. So it’s always been a very collective process and SpokenWeb has always been such an interdisciplinary project that has required me to reach out to and do some of that community building with other experts in the area, in order to train students and bring them onto the project. That has stayed true all the way through to the current iteration of the team. We have students who are, again, central to the project and bringing their own expertise. And, at the same time, we are training them. We’re training them in the digitization process. We’re training them in design work. We’re training them in cataloguing and producing metadata. But their expertise as they’re learning that is, again, central, so in our team meetings we always come back to having the students talk about – do a bit of a round – and talk about what they’re learning and what they’re doing, and also what directions they see the project needing to go in or areas that need to be developed. And so the pedagogy is something that is student driven. It’s also, I guess for me, it’s also something that comes right out of our archive – it comes out of the cardboard box, which is at the pedagogy of the archive itself. The collection is very pedagogical. It records Warren Tallman in the classroom. It records Tallman inviting students to his living room to talk about poetry with his wife, Ellen Tallman; they bring up Robert Duncan and record Robert Duncan giving lectures and talking with students. So within the archive and the collection itself, students are central to that. And so, for me, the pedagogy we’re enacting now is very much in dialogue with, or taking a card from that, from the collection.\n28:47\tMichael O’Driscoll:\tFrom a cultural and scholarly point of view, well, audio is, almost and surprisingly so, a kind of unknown frontier. One of the ways I like to think about it is texts are never stable entities: they sit on the page surely, but as they go through various forms of socialization and cultural mediation, they change and shift over time. We deal with versions, we deal with variants, we deal with different contexts of reading and circulation and so forth – so they’re certainly not inert. But I would say if you take a poem by a particular mid century Canadian author that has sat on that same page for the last 50 years, and then you add to that archive, you add to that corpus 6 or 8 or 10 recordings of that author reading the poem, performing the poem, describing it to audiences, responding to audience questions, to hearing the audience itself respond to that poem.\n29:44\tAudio Recording:\tFairly recent poem, which isn’t a political poem. I told them, but a human poem and one that I wrote as a result of watching on television, the debates in the United Nations on the Middle East crisis. And one of the horrible things I felt as I watched it was how completely dehumanized it all was, that the real human issues had been lost sight of and sort of round in an ocean of resolutions and memos from embassies and all this sort of thing.\n30:33\tMichael O’Driscoll:\tWell then that thing suddenly leaps off to the page to an nth dimension of variability and versioning, And suddenly the scholarly opportunities to work with those poems as cultural objects, as objects subject to scholarly comparison and critical analysis becomes all the more richer, all the more lively, all the more vibrant. And that’s a really exciting thing from my perspective.\n30:59\tJason Camlot:\tThere’s still a lot of work to be done before the field recognizes archives of sound as really significant or relevant, even still to the study of literature. Part of the, I wouldn’t call it resistance, but just sort lack of a sense of how to go about engaging with these materials is a result of changes in the way literature had been taught over the course of the 20th century. I think that recitation or oral interpretation was a very important part of the way literature was taught. The way interpretation was understood so that, when we thought of interpretation, it wasn’t critical analysis done silently in an essay about a poem on the printed page, but it was actually an oral performance in which one’s understanding of the poem was communicated through the intonations and vocal actions that one took in order to literally interpret, you know, deliver in sound their version of the poem. Students would be, in a sense, graded on their oral interpretations that would be part of the exam. Exams in the 19th century were called recitations and a lot of the performance of knowledge in the 19th century – Catherine Robson has written about this – was delivered orally, right? But I think during the course of the 20th century, Especially from the 30s on when methods, identified with what was called the New Criticism came into being, certain ideas of oral performance dropped out of the critical analysis of literature. And it became in a sense, silenced or replaced by more abstract concepts of the voice of the poem or in the poem, but not one that one expects to actually hear. But one voice that one expects to find, to give a sense of unity to the poem, and to describe, but the noisy classroom filled with recitation sort of became silenced. And students were asked to scan poems on the page and the sounds of voices were replaced by the sounds of pencils, scribbling paper on the printed poem. So I think that long tradition in pedagogy related to the teaching of literature has created a kind of barrier to our sense of even how to begin engaging with this kind of archive in relation to the development of sort of literary history, the analysis of a different kind of prosody that one can hear in performance, et cetera. So things were already being done in the late nineties, or some initial thinking was being done around this, but I think the archives themselves weren’t prepared, and still to a large extent haven’t been yet prepared for us to engage with this material in the same way, with the same facility, or with a facility that’s even close to that of the printed archive.\n34:26\tDeanna Fong:\tI will say, I’ll begin by saying that I wasn’t that interested in audio at the time. So I remember feeling a great deal of apprehension when I started working on the project in that I had no idea what these artifacts were or why they were, why they would be of interest to anybody or, you know, who would possibly want to listen to them. But when I dove into them and listened to, I found myself particularly drawn to the kind of extra-poetic speech, which is something that I’ve become very interested in, in my own research. But I was really interested in the liveness of these events. And so I remembered one of my first tasks as an RA on that project was to develop just a sort of lit survey around the research that had been done around audio poetry, like audio recordings of poetry. So I dove into Charles Bernstein’s close listening, and had this major revelation where I was like, “Whoa, a live reading of a poem is totally different than the reading of a poem on a page,” which is something that had really never occurred to me before. Like, I just, that it was a simple recitation and I really got a sense of the difference between a performed poem versus a poem on the page. And that difference became immediately very interesting to me.\n35:49\tKatherine McLeod:\tIn many ways, Karis – and really everyone we’ve heard from today – are all asking us to consider: what can these archives teach us? And it seems that sometimes these lessons can come from unexpected places. For example, what can this cross-disciplinary and deeply collaborative project teach us about academic collaboration more generally?\n36:14\tJason Camlot:\tI’ve been very interested this past year, throughout the past year, in having intensive conversations with Yuliya Kondratenko, the Project Manager of SpokenWeb on project management methods. And which ones are best suited to a research program of this kind. And really to begin to map out what project management for humanities-based research might look like. So I think what we’ve been doing to a large extent has been listening and watching to see how activities have unfolded, what approaches have worked, which ones haven’t been picked up as successfully as a way to then reflect upon and describe, and then ultimately, I wouldn’t say codified, but, you know, abstract in a way so that we could perhaps learn from our methods that are initially just sort of iterative experiments. So that’s another thing that I’m really interested in from that sort of more distant perspective. And it’s been great having Yuliya as a kind of sounding board so that we can actually begin writing this up a little bit and sort of maybe map out a whole new project management approach based on the disciplinary messiness of our project.\n37:40\tKatherine McLeod:\tThat was Jason Camlot, who we met at the top of the show. So what pulls all of these stories together? Well, at the heart of this project is an ethos of sharing. And as we’ve heard, it often starts with a box of tapes that a community member shares with a member of the team. But that is not all.\n38:06\tKaris Shearer:\tOne of the things that we see in the archive, vis-à-vis copies, is the circulation and gifting of recordings and tapes within members of the poetry community. Our current SpokenWeb project at UBCO is very much founded on gifting and sharing. And so when I look around the AMP Lab, which is where our collection is housed, so much of what we do is made possible through gifts, and so I’m thinking particularly of Stephen Foster, who is my colleague in visual arts. Our hardware, and even the early, the very first time that we digitized the reels, again, made possible by Stephen’s inviting us into his own lab and sharing his resources with us. And that’s been true all the way through for us, that that idea of the work on the SoundBox project is made possible through the sharing of things, the donation of tapes, and the gifting of hardware. So we really appreciate that.\n39:16\tKatherine McLeod:\tIn many ways, the web of SpokenWeb is not only the collaborative network of researchers, but it is also this web of archival recordings held together by a desire to make these available to more listeners. And this plays into what we’re trying to do here with this podcast. Provide a platform not only for researchers to share with the wider public the outcomes of their work, but a place where people might access the recordings, reflections, and sounds that have inspired so many of us and that continue to inspire us as the SpokenWeb partnership moves into its next year.\n39:57\tJason Camlot:\tOne thing I’m looking forward to in the coming year is beginning to see our metadata ingest system, which we call SWALLOW, which is sort of swallowing up or capturing all of the metadata that’s being typed in to that system, to see it build up and then to see what kinds of questions we can start asking as a result of having all of this metadata built up about the collections.\n40:26\tRoma Kail:\tOnce we have our records in and other institutions have theirs in, it will be interesting to see how they overlap or how they compliment each other. So we certainly have material that would maybe fill gaps in other institutions collections or vice versa. So I’m very excited to see when we are able to search it, for example, who has what and how that how that represents sort of all the institutions across Canada in terms of a collection.\n41:04\tKaris Shearer:\tSo we are, at UBCO with our SpokenWeb team, we’re actively building a website, so there’ll be a landing page very soon, and there’ll be a selection of tapes from a much larger collection that will feature – once we’ve cleared permissions and created some contextualisation for them – a number of recordings that’ll be featured on that site for people to listen in while we’re actively processing the rest of the collection. And so we can stay tuned for that, in fall 2019.\n41:35\tMichael O’Driscoll:\tSo one of the things I’m also really excited about is having some conversations with some of the individuals who were involved with these moments of recording in their day. And learning a little bit more, not only about the events and the authors and the atmosphere of that moment, but also learning a little bit more about their motivations for recording; what they were doing and how they understood, they were producing an archive and for whom and for what kind of future. I’d like to learn a little bit more about the history of the collection that we have. But I’d also like to learn a little bit more about the heart of the collection that we have.\n42:14\tJason Camlot:\tPart of the reason that this past year has been so successful has been just because of the people who are involved. That they’re very open minded, courteous and interested, and also extremely hard working, and so we have a bunch of people who share the desire to make things happen, but also a shared desire to have a great time while doing it. You know, I think that’s been a winning combination for our project and has really allowed us to get a lot done, and has allowed for that kind of flexibility and reflectiveness without panicking about whether we’re getting to where we want to go even before we might know where we want to go. And the other thing has been that I didn’t mention yet but that I think is very important in the development of this project has been the role of graduate students and even undergraduates. I mentioned that they were at the beginning of the project in terms of describing that first collection, but I think the network was in great part built because of students who moved from here to go on to study at other universities. Simon Fraser and Alberta and UBCO in particular come to mind where those students came from here, where they’d been working with sound collections and then arrived there and said, “Where are your sound collections? I want to work with them.” And that required those universities to sort of think about, “Oh yeah, we do have huge holdings in this area that we haven’t really looked at or listened to or touched in years.” And it’s really through the students in great part that a lot of the connections with some of these great people I’ve been describing are made possible. I think there’s a lot to learn. And this became very clear from our first institute, from the students and their approaches and the methods that they’re experimenting with in making sense of these kinds of materials. I think the highlight for everyone were the two and a half hours where we heard short talks from all the students across the network on what they had been doing and what they had learned over the past year. And I think that’s a sound that I think we’re going to be amplifying really over the next year or two.\n45:01\tTheme Music:\t[Instrumental]\n45:07\tHannah McGregor:\tThanks so much for listening to the first episode of The SpokenWeb Podcast, 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 producer this month is Cheryl Gladu and our podcast project manager is Stacey Copeland. A special thank you to Jason Camlot, Deanna Fong, Roma Kail, Annie Murray, Michael O’Driscoll, and Karis Shearer for their candid interviews and continued contributions to SpokenWeb. To find out more about SpokenWeb visit spokenweb.ca and subscribe to The SpokenWeb Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Play, or wherever you like to 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."],"score":2.7048998},{"id":"9268","cataloger_name":["Jason,Camlot"],"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 S1E1, Stories of SpokenWeb, 7 October 2019, McLeod and Gladu"],"item_title_source":["SpokenWeb Podcast web page."],"item_title_note":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/stories-of-spokenweb/"],"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 (BY)"],"rights_license":["Creative Commons Attribution (BY)"],"rights_notes":["Check the Rights and License Category"],"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":[2019],"material_description":["[]"],"digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://cdn.simplecast.com/audio/28a9da/28a9da1f-8cca-410c-b5d7-8165a73f9394/dafaa46d-8602-4296-8aa7-0a66ba8253f2/ep-1-stories-of-spokenweb_tc.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"ep-1-stories-of-spokenweb_tc.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"44.1 kHz\",\"duration\":\"46:19\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"44,524,400 bytes\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"MP3 audio\",\"title\":\"ep-1-stories-of-spokenweb_tc\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/stories-of-spokenweb/\"}]"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"2019-10-07\",\"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\",\"latitude\":\"45.4968036\",\"longitude\":\"-73.57792785757887\"}]"],"Address":["1400 Boulevard de Maisonneuve Ouest"],"Venue":["Concordia University McConnell Building"],"Note":["[]"],"Related_works":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"Bernstein, Charles, ed. Close Listening: Poetry and the Performed. Charles Bernstein. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.\\n\\nCamlot, J., Swift, T. (eds) (2007) Language Acts: Anglo-Québec Poetry, 1976 to the 21st Century (Véhicule, 2007).\\n\\nFong, Deanna and Karis Shearer. Gender, “Affective Labour, and Community-Building Through Literary Audio Artifacts,” No More Potlucks, online http://nomorepotlucks.org/site/gender-affective-labour-and-community-building-through-literary-audio-artifacts-deanna-fong-and-karis-shearer/\\n\\nMcKinnon, Donna. “A New Frontier of Literary Engagement: SpokenWeb’s network of digitized audio recordings brings new life to Canada’s literary heritage.” https://www.ualberta.ca/arts/faculty-news/2018/august/a-new-frontier-of-literary-engagement\\n\\nMorris, Adalaide, ed. Sound States: Innovative Poetics and Acoustical Technologies. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997.\\n\\nMurray, Annie and Jared Wiercinski. “Looking at Archival Sound: Enhancing the Listening Experience in a Spoken Word Archive.” First Monday 17 (2012). https://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/3808/3197\\n\\nShearer, Karis. “Networks, Communities, Mentorships, Friendships: An SSI Reflection” http://amplab.ok.ubc.ca/index.php/2019/07/09/networks-and-communities-an-ssi-reflection/\\n\\nToppings, Earle. “Gwendolyn MacEwen.” Accompanying Material by Earle Topping about Gwendolyn MacEwen. Earle Toppings Fonds. Victoria University Library (Toronto).\\n\\nUrbancic, Ann, editor. Literary Titans Revisited: Earle Toppings Interviews with CanLit Poets and Writers of the Sixties. Ed. Ann Urbancic. Toronto: Dundurn P, 2017.\\n\\n\"}]"],"_version_":1853670549450915840,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:53.966Z","contents":["SpokenWeb is a literary research network, dedicated to studying literature through sound. But how did this project begin? What kinds of literary recordings inspired it and where were they found? And what happened next in order for these recordings to be heard?\n\nFor this inaugural episode of the SpokenWeb Podcast, Katherine McLeod seeks to answer these questions by speaking with SpokenWeb researchers Jason Camlot, Annie Murray, Michael O’Driscoll, Roma Kail, Karis Shearer, and Deanna Fong. All of their stories involve a deep interest in literary audio recordings and all of their stories, or nearly all, start with a box of tapes…\n\n00:07\tTheme Music:\tCan you hear me? I don’t know how much projection to do.\n00:17\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.\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. I’m so excited to introduce our inaugural episode Stories of SpokenWeb, an introduction to this very podcast and the project it stems from. SpokenWeb is first and foremost a literary research network dedicated to studying literature through sound, but how did it all begin and how did these audio archives make their way from basements and car trunks to university libraries? In this episode SpokenWeb contributor Katherine McLeod takes us into the lives and archives of some of the founding spoken web members to uncover the origins and future of the project.\n01:30\tHannah McGregor:\tHere is “Stories of SpokenWeb”\n01:39\tTheme Music:\t[Instrumental]\n01:39\tKatherine McLeod:\tWhat is SpokenWeb? SpokenWeb is a research program, a network of scholars, students and artists all studying literature through sound. But how did it all begin? What does the story of SpokenWeb sound like? My name is Katherine McLeod and I asked SpokenWeb collaborators at universities across Canada how they got involved in the project. Needless to say, each story is different and there are many more than are told here, but their stories do have a few things in common that tell us something about the project. All of their stories begin with an interest in audio well before SpokenWeb assumed its current form, and all of their stories, or nearly all, involve a box of tapes. In 2014 I joined SpokenWeb as a postdoctoral fellow at Concordia University in Montreal. I met Jason Camlot, the principal investigator or project lead of SpokenWeb. At that point SpokenWeb was based out of one university, but I remember him saying that there was an interest in widening the network. So how did SpokenWeb become what it is today? To answer this question, I spoke with a number of SpokenWeb scholars from across Canada. We’ll start the conversation with one story of how it all began.\n03:22\tJason Camlot:\tI’m Jason Camlot. I’m a professor in the Department of English at Concordia University. I am the author of several books about literature and sound recording and I’m the director of the partnership grant of SSHRC Social Science, Humanities Research Council of Canada, called SpokenWeb. I was going to say it began when I was a graduate student and became, in earnest, interested in the history of early sound recordings of literary performance. But I was an undergraduate at this institution at which I now teach, and the first time that I heard an early sound recording was in my Victorian literature class played to me by my professor, John Miller, who later became a colleague of mine for a spell. And he played to this class a barely audible recording of Tennyson reciting “The Charge of the Light Brigade.” And that really piqued my interest and, well, really just what it was that we were listening to and what it meant and what its significance was. So I think the interest in sound recordings of literary works or of something that identified with literature really began when I was an undergraduate. When I went to grad school, I became interested in really thinking about this as a research project. It wasn’t my dissertation project, but it became my second project that you always have to be able to talk about when you go to job interviews and things like that. And at Stanford University they had a pretty good sound archive with a lot of historical recordings. So I was able to look into the longer history of spoken recordings and began to research that topic. I’ve always been interested in sound recording because I play music, and I’ve recorded myself writing songs and playing my own songs or playing in bands with friends since I was a teenager, and I’ve always been saving up for the latest recording device.\n05:41\tJason Camlot:\tWhen I came to Concordia – it’s almost like in this sort of fortuitous moment – I was asked to have a meeting with the department chair in the first week that I was installed in the department, just to go over very practical things. And sitting in his office I noticed, out of the corner of my eye, a bunch of tape boxes – boxes that held reel to reel tapes. And I remember asking him what those boxes contained. And he said to me, “Oh, that’s just some poetry reading series that took place here in the 60s.” And I remembered that, although I didn’t do anything about it at the time. I went about my business of teaching and publishing and getting tenure here at Concordia. And then maybe a decade later I thought about those recordings again and I went back to him and asked, “Do you still have those recordings?”\n06:47\tJason Camlot:\tThe department had moved floors and I remember we threw out a lot of stuff during the move. So I kind of feared that maybe those reel to reel tapes didn’t make it during the move, but he told me that he had deposited them in the university archives that held the English department fonds, the records of the English department. So knowing that the tapes were still accessible, I started looking into them and found a bunch of boxes again that I couldn’t listen to. So it was a bit of a stumbling block, not being able to actually hear what was on them and I set about trying to rectify that problem, and to figure out whether this collection of tapes might be of interest from a literary point of view.\n07:38\tKatherine McLeod:\tThat was Jason Camlot, the principal investigator or project lead of SpokenWeb. As SpokenWeb grew, researchers began working across disciplines. In addition to working across disciplines in one university SpokenWeb has built collaborative connections across different universities. We’ll hear from researchers at a few of those universities in a moment, but we’ll start first with someone who has been part of the project since the beginning.\n08:07\tAnnie Murray:\tMy name is Annie Murray. I’m Associate University Librarian for archives and special collections. At the University of Calgary. What we were really interested in was how a lot of these poets, were going on reading tours. And so the Sir George Williams section was just one slice of literary life in a given year.\n08:32\tAudio Recording:\tWelcome to the fourth, third, week of the fourth series of our readings here at Sir George. And this one is a special one partly in that it was, it is being presented… [Overlapping audio recordings, exact words not audible]\n08:57\tAnnie Murray:\tAnd we were imagining these sort of traveling poets leaving behind a trail of recordings or not leaving behind. And wouldn’t it be great to understand where did all these readings end up and could we ever access them in all the places poets would have read to kind of sonically recreate those years of very active poetry reading performances?\n09:24\tAudio Recording:\tGets hard to read your own stuff after a while, you forget what it sounded like the last time.\n09:29\tAnnie Murray:\tCause we knew different archives across the country would have some audio record of these events. And we thought: this should all be brought together. This should be a massive aggregation of recordings so that you could listen to a poet across the country and kind of, just as bands tour, see how a poet toured and how they intersected with other poets. So I think we saw the meaning in the individual readings for sure for literary history and analysis. But that the sort of possibilities opened up by knowing what all readings were preserved and bringing those archives together. And I will say in most cases, these are hidden collections that hadn’t been digitized before. So with a partnership grant, it allows us to bring all of these collections out, focus on them in a different and concerted way and try to create that sort of national recording of all of these performances that had taken place.\n10:36\tKatherine McLeod:\tThe project continued to grow. Now it is in over 13 universities right across the country.\n10:44\tMichael O’Driscoll:\tI think I’d be remiss if I didn’t say how incredibly grateful I am to be able to work with these materials and with the multidisciplinary scholars that are a part of this project. This is honestly, as I came to recognize during our days together in Vancouver this past summer, this is one of the great research and intellectual opportunities of my career and I couldn’t be more excited to be a part of this.\n11:11\tKatherine McLeod:\tThat was Michael O’Driscoll, professor in the Department of English and Film Studies at the University of Alberta.\n11:18\tMichael O’Driscoll:\tI’ve been here for the last 22 years and my work ranges across into the areas of critical and cultural theory. Various kinds of media studies. I’m interested in American literature, poetry and poetics. And I spend a lot of my time thinking a lot about archives and thinking about digital media as well too. You know, the lessons of the world’s great archives theorists – I’m thinking about Arjun Appadurai, I’m thinking about Jacques Derrida – is that archives are oriented not towards the past, but towards the future. Archives are how we build community, archives are aspirational. We only put things in boxes and save them because we imagine a future for them. And the true focus of an archive is its own futurity, not the history that it records.\n12:08\tKatherine McLeod:\tMichael shared with us some background as to how the recordings were made.\n12:13\tMichael O’Driscoll:\tWhen personal recording became available, when somebody could pick up a portable or reasonably portable reel to reel recorder and show up at a reading with it, folks just simply started recording everything that moved. There was so much enthusiasm about the new technology. Many, many of the readings that happened in the late sixties and through the 70s and the eighties, eighties, were recorded on reel-to-reel and then subsequently on cassette tape. But one of the realities of that enthusiasm as well as while there’s lots of enthusiasm for the recording, more often than not, those recordings were put in boxes, stored away and never listened to again. And they have as a result, sat inert for the last 50 years or so at this incredible cultural and scholarly resource, untapped.\n13:03\tKatherine McLeod:\tIn fact, many of the people we spoke with for today’s episode shared with us a story that, at some point mentioned a box of tapes. Just like that story that Jason described earlier of finding a box of tapes and eventually listening to them.\n13:21\tAnnie Murray:\tI think that’s an origin story in a lot of people’s involvement with SpokenWeb; “Hey! What are those tapes?”\n13:28\tDeanna Fong:\tGoing to SFU, Simon Fraser University, and just by happenstance came across this box of tapes as we all do.\n13:35\tRoma Kail:\tOur research assistant was so excited about the project that she went to our chief librarian with the archivist and they found us unprocessed box.\n13:45\tKaris Shearer:\tHe went to get a cardboard box at one point and brought it back to her and said, “You know, I want to give this to you and someday you’re going to know what to do with it.” And she said to me, “I think, I think this is it. I think this is what I’m supposed to do with this box.”\n14:04\tKatherine McLeod:\tI’ll introduce you to each of those voices in a moment. But for now, let’s go back to Michael who shared with us the process of working with this kind of material.\n14:14\tMichael O’Driscoll:\tSo the process that we are working by is, first of all, the materials are digitized and we create the digital records of them. Then we produce the metadata that will be associated with those records. At the same time, once those materials have been digitized, they will be made available to the library for formal accession\n14:36\tKatherine McLeod:\tWhile that seems easy enough, there are in fact many challenges in working with these found recordings, which are often made with older technology such as reel to reel or cassette tapes. The challenges aren’t just technical, they are also legal. Let’s go back to our conversation with Annie Murray.\n14:56\tAnnie Murray:\tIt can be expensive to do digitization. It’s very time consuming. If you don’t have ready equipment or infrastructure in your organization, you need to contract out an expert to make the recordings. With archival audio recordings, you don’t always know what’s on tapes that an author gives you with their archive. So you could be investing resources in something that might not even be a performance. It could be somebody’s voice answering machine tape, which is also interesting. But, if a collection is kind of under-processed, because it’s an audio item it does take resources to get the content out and usable. The other thing is that copyright can be a barrier. So if people don’t know who made the recording or what the status is of the audio work, it can be an impediment to digitizing it because the library or archive might not know how widely it can be shared. So those are some of the things that libraries and archives grapple with. But I also think we’ve just got to work through those problems to make sure that this content gets preserved.\n16:09\tKatherine McLeod:\tPart of the reason it can be challenging to sort out the rights around these recordings is that they were not always straight-forward recitations or performances. Sometimes recordings include informal conversations, off the record interviews and discussions around a presentation of a work.\n16:29\tRoma Kail:\tSo my name is Roma Kail. I’m a librarian at Victoria University Library in the University of Toronto. I have done some work with the Earle Toppings fonds here at our special collections at Vic Library.\n16:45\tKatherine McLeod:\tEarle Toppings was an editor at Ryerson Press and worked for CBC Radio. He interviewed many Canadian writers such as poets, Gwendolyn MacEwen, Dorothy Livesay, Earle Birney, and Al Purdy. The archival collection for Toppings includes correspondence with writers along with audio recordings of readings and interviews and background notes compiled by Toppings himself.\n17:10\tRoma Kail:\tSo here he is talking about – he wrote this in his notes, he wrote about his recording of Gwendolyn MacEwen – he writes that a standard microphone was used. It was a standard RCA Victor 44 – he called it the radio workhorse – and it recorded her voice softly and beautifully. Gwen was a gentle caressing reader, a sort of Billie Holiday reciting poems as she did at creative hangouts of the 1960s, such as, the creative hangouts of the 1960s, such as the Bohemian Embassy. There was a musical feeling in all her work and she almost, saying her poems, which had their own melodies. So it’s just an extra, as my research assistant pointed out, all of that accompanying material brings in an extra bit of narrative, or a different narrative to the actual sound recordings. And it was the sound recordings which really correlate with the initial goal of SpokenWeb as it was presented to us.\n18:20\tKatherine McLeod:\tHere’s Karis Shearer, the director of the UBC Okanagan AMP Lab and Associate Professor of English in the faculty of Creative and Critical Studies who has been working with the SoundBox collection, sharing another example of the rich but curious sounds found in these archives.\n18:39\tKaris Shearer:\tSo we recently acquired a new set of tapes, a gift from George Bowering and Jean Baird, which include 19 tapes that George Bowering made, going back to the 1960s. One of them that I particularly like is a tape that was made in July of 1969 and it’s labeled ‘Warren, Roy, Moon, etcetera.’ And so I was just too curious not to give this a listen before we started digitizing it, and it is on the occasion of the moon landing…\n19:17\tAudio Recording:\t[Beep] Now selection [Beep]\n19:18\tKaris Shearer:\t…in 1969, and what you hear on this tape is George Bowering, Angela Bowering, Roy Kiyooka and Warren Tallman. All of whom were in Montreal at the time, Warren was passing through, Roy Kiyooka was teaching at Sir George Williams, now Concordia, and George Bowering was teaching there as well. And they’re all just hanging out in their living room, at George and Angela’s living room on Grosvenor Avenue in Montreal, and they’re listening to the broadcast of the moon landing.\n19:50\tAudio Recording:\tWell, we had a picture with the earth right in the centre of the screen, over.\n19:53\tKaris Shearer:\tSo again, it’s a very messy, interesting tape because there’s lots of, people talking over each other. There’s a broadcast going on in the background. But what’s interesting to me is they’re not recording just the broadcast. Right? It’s not like, “Shh, everybody, we’re gonna record the broadcast of this historical moment.” What the recording is, this kind of very social dynamic moment of them talking about poetics, talking about poetry. Fred was on his way back from Albuquerque to Canada. Did you know, they’re talking about writing, they’re also at various moments, you know, looking at the astronauts on TV and in some cases, you know, making some great jokes. And so it’s a moment of recording their interaction with this historical moment, their interaction with each. So it’s a wonderful tape and I’m excited for people to be able to listen to it.\n20:52\tKatherine McLeod:\tHere’s one of Karis’ collaborators across the SpokenWeb network explaining why this sort of recording can be so interesting to study.\n21:00\tDeanna Fong:\tSo my name is Deanna Fong. I’m a postdoctoral fellow working with SpokenWeb. My work with Karis has been so indispensable for my thinking. We’ve worked together on numerous occasions, but thinking about that question of what it is we’re listening to when we listen to this certain kind of artifact, or I suppose what, what are we listening for? And I think one of the things that we’ve found ourselves listening for is that, in any sort of informal or speech-y accounts that we have, we get a sense of the labour that goes on behind the scenes in the production of literature. And a lot of that labour is unevenly divided along gendered lines. So, you know, thinking about women’s contributions to building communities and to maintaining community spaces, acting as public historians, maintaining community archives, taking care of community members when they’re ill or when they need help, providing feedback, being auditors for work in progress, all these sorts of things that you hear, that don’t necessarily make it to the page. So I think that’s been a really crucial concept for the work that she and I have been doing. I don’t know if this is some continuation of my past or something, but I remember when I was a kid and going to hall shows and stuff like that, oftentimes I was way more interested in just sitting outside and talking to people about the bands, like, just as interested in that as I was in actually listening to the bands. So I think there’s a great interest, for me, in listening around rather than listening to, and I find conversations about literature vastly more interesting than a lot of literature itself.\n22:55\tMichael O’Driscoll:\tI’ve learned along the way to appreciate the virtues of close listening in the sense that one can learn a lot about the cultural moment of the reading by paying close attention, not just to the words that come from the speaker, but to everything else that is happening in the room. So I think, for example, about Margaret Atwood reading in 1970 and a now defunct gallery of a hub mall on the University of Alberta campus. [Audio, from the 1970 recording: Please come in and sit down, there’s lots of room at the front.] And you can hear during the recording, [Audio: He will be very unhappy if you stand up during all this. So please sit down.] Her coming in and trying to wend her way through the audience and get herself settled down in a hubbub of things, and an introduction starts, and then stops, and then there’s a moment where people have to direct people into the room to find space ’cause it’s so crowed. [Audio: The people standing up at the back can, you not sit down?] And you just get this incredible sense of the energy of that moment and what it meant to have this really fantastic young emerging writer [Audio: There’s lots of room, does everybody, everybody just shuffle forward] show up to do her thing. And the kind of excitement that that could generate along the way [Audio: That’s more like it.]\n24:15\tMichael O’Driscoll:\tLet me give you one other one, and that has to do with when Phyllis Webb is performing at the student union building art gallery in 1972. It’s March 9th, 1972 and she comes into the room, the recording’s already going and she’s completely breathless. She’s breathing hard and she’s clearly rushed over to get to this moment and she’s there late and she says.[I have to catch my breath.] And you can hear her say that, and just that moment of that physical presence and embodiment of this poet, again, with all of that energy that gets pulled into that archival moment into that event of the archive, it’s a really exciting thing. These are real people doing real things and real situations and the audio is a rich medium for capturing that if you’ve only listened closely enough.\n25:24\tTheme Music:\t[Instrumental]\n25:24\tKatherine McLeod:\tAfter speaking with Deanna I thought about how important it was for her to be involved in the SpokenWeb project early on in her graduate education. After speaking with Roma and her work with student research assistant, Eva Lu, I thought even more about how student training through SpokenWeb is changing what it means to study literature. At UBC Okanagan [UBCO], Karis has taught and mentored many students who have gotten involved with the SpokenWeb project. I asked her more about student training and she had a terrific story.\n25:59\tKaris Shearer:\tFor me, pedagogy is central to what we do here at UBCO on the SpokenWeb team, and it always has been. So the example that you brought up of Lee Hannigan: first student to work on the project back when it was just in its very early stages. Lee came on as a work study student and we trained him in digitization, and so I reached out to a colleague, Stephen Foster, who very kindly invited us into the media centre that he was running at that time. Mike Berger, who’s a technician trained both me and Lee in the digitization process and gave us space in the lab to do that. So it’s always been a very collective process and SpokenWeb has always been such an interdisciplinary project that has required me to reach out to and do some of that community building with other experts in the area, in order to train students and bring them onto the project. That has stayed true all the way through to the current iteration of the team. We have students who are, again, central to the project and bringing their own expertise. And, at the same time, we are training them. We’re training them in the digitization process. We’re training them in design work. We’re training them in cataloguing and producing metadata. But their expertise as they’re learning that is, again, central, so in our team meetings we always come back to having the students talk about – do a bit of a round – and talk about what they’re learning and what they’re doing, and also what directions they see the project needing to go in or areas that need to be developed. And so the pedagogy is something that is student driven. It’s also, I guess for me, it’s also something that comes right out of our archive – it comes out of the cardboard box, which is at the pedagogy of the archive itself. The collection is very pedagogical. It records Warren Tallman in the classroom. It records Tallman inviting students to his living room to talk about poetry with his wife, Ellen Tallman; they bring up Robert Duncan and record Robert Duncan giving lectures and talking with students. So within the archive and the collection itself, students are central to that. And so, for me, the pedagogy we’re enacting now is very much in dialogue with, or taking a card from that, from the collection.\n28:47\tMichael O’Driscoll:\tFrom a cultural and scholarly point of view, well, audio is, almost and surprisingly so, a kind of unknown frontier. One of the ways I like to think about it is texts are never stable entities: they sit on the page surely, but as they go through various forms of socialization and cultural mediation, they change and shift over time. We deal with versions, we deal with variants, we deal with different contexts of reading and circulation and so forth – so they’re certainly not inert. But I would say if you take a poem by a particular mid century Canadian author that has sat on that same page for the last 50 years, and then you add to that archive, you add to that corpus 6 or 8 or 10 recordings of that author reading the poem, performing the poem, describing it to audiences, responding to audience questions, to hearing the audience itself respond to that poem.\n29:44\tAudio Recording:\tFairly recent poem, which isn’t a political poem. I told them, but a human poem and one that I wrote as a result of watching on television, the debates in the United Nations on the Middle East crisis. And one of the horrible things I felt as I watched it was how completely dehumanized it all was, that the real human issues had been lost sight of and sort of round in an ocean of resolutions and memos from embassies and all this sort of thing.\n30:33\tMichael O’Driscoll:\tWell then that thing suddenly leaps off to the page to an nth dimension of variability and versioning, And suddenly the scholarly opportunities to work with those poems as cultural objects, as objects subject to scholarly comparison and critical analysis becomes all the more richer, all the more lively, all the more vibrant. And that’s a really exciting thing from my perspective.\n30:59\tJason Camlot:\tThere’s still a lot of work to be done before the field recognizes archives of sound as really significant or relevant, even still to the study of literature. Part of the, I wouldn’t call it resistance, but just sort lack of a sense of how to go about engaging with these materials is a result of changes in the way literature had been taught over the course of the 20th century. I think that recitation or oral interpretation was a very important part of the way literature was taught. The way interpretation was understood so that, when we thought of interpretation, it wasn’t critical analysis done silently in an essay about a poem on the printed page, but it was actually an oral performance in which one’s understanding of the poem was communicated through the intonations and vocal actions that one took in order to literally interpret, you know, deliver in sound their version of the poem. Students would be, in a sense, graded on their oral interpretations that would be part of the exam. Exams in the 19th century were called recitations and a lot of the performance of knowledge in the 19th century – Catherine Robson has written about this – was delivered orally, right? But I think during the course of the 20th century, Especially from the 30s on when methods, identified with what was called the New Criticism came into being, certain ideas of oral performance dropped out of the critical analysis of literature. And it became in a sense, silenced or replaced by more abstract concepts of the voice of the poem or in the poem, but not one that one expects to actually hear. But one voice that one expects to find, to give a sense of unity to the poem, and to describe, but the noisy classroom filled with recitation sort of became silenced. And students were asked to scan poems on the page and the sounds of voices were replaced by the sounds of pencils, scribbling paper on the printed poem. So I think that long tradition in pedagogy related to the teaching of literature has created a kind of barrier to our sense of even how to begin engaging with this kind of archive in relation to the development of sort of literary history, the analysis of a different kind of prosody that one can hear in performance, et cetera. So things were already being done in the late nineties, or some initial thinking was being done around this, but I think the archives themselves weren’t prepared, and still to a large extent haven’t been yet prepared for us to engage with this material in the same way, with the same facility, or with a facility that’s even close to that of the printed archive.\n34:26\tDeanna Fong:\tI will say, I’ll begin by saying that I wasn’t that interested in audio at the time. So I remember feeling a great deal of apprehension when I started working on the project in that I had no idea what these artifacts were or why they were, why they would be of interest to anybody or, you know, who would possibly want to listen to them. But when I dove into them and listened to, I found myself particularly drawn to the kind of extra-poetic speech, which is something that I’ve become very interested in, in my own research. But I was really interested in the liveness of these events. And so I remembered one of my first tasks as an RA on that project was to develop just a sort of lit survey around the research that had been done around audio poetry, like audio recordings of poetry. So I dove into Charles Bernstein’s close listening, and had this major revelation where I was like, “Whoa, a live reading of a poem is totally different than the reading of a poem on a page,” which is something that had really never occurred to me before. Like, I just, that it was a simple recitation and I really got a sense of the difference between a performed poem versus a poem on the page. And that difference became immediately very interesting to me.\n35:49\tKatherine McLeod:\tIn many ways, Karis – and really everyone we’ve heard from today – are all asking us to consider: what can these archives teach us? And it seems that sometimes these lessons can come from unexpected places. For example, what can this cross-disciplinary and deeply collaborative project teach us about academic collaboration more generally?\n36:14\tJason Camlot:\tI’ve been very interested this past year, throughout the past year, in having intensive conversations with Yuliya Kondratenko, the Project Manager of SpokenWeb on project management methods. And which ones are best suited to a research program of this kind. And really to begin to map out what project management for humanities-based research might look like. So I think what we’ve been doing to a large extent has been listening and watching to see how activities have unfolded, what approaches have worked, which ones haven’t been picked up as successfully as a way to then reflect upon and describe, and then ultimately, I wouldn’t say codified, but, you know, abstract in a way so that we could perhaps learn from our methods that are initially just sort of iterative experiments. So that’s another thing that I’m really interested in from that sort of more distant perspective. And it’s been great having Yuliya as a kind of sounding board so that we can actually begin writing this up a little bit and sort of maybe map out a whole new project management approach based on the disciplinary messiness of our project.\n37:40\tKatherine McLeod:\tThat was Jason Camlot, who we met at the top of the show. So what pulls all of these stories together? Well, at the heart of this project is an ethos of sharing. And as we’ve heard, it often starts with a box of tapes that a community member shares with a member of the team. But that is not all.\n38:06\tKaris Shearer:\tOne of the things that we see in the archive, vis-à-vis copies, is the circulation and gifting of recordings and tapes within members of the poetry community. Our current SpokenWeb project at UBCO is very much founded on gifting and sharing. And so when I look around the AMP Lab, which is where our collection is housed, so much of what we do is made possible through gifts, and so I’m thinking particularly of Stephen Foster, who is my colleague in visual arts. Our hardware, and even the early, the very first time that we digitized the reels, again, made possible by Stephen’s inviting us into his own lab and sharing his resources with us. And that’s been true all the way through for us, that that idea of the work on the SoundBox project is made possible through the sharing of things, the donation of tapes, and the gifting of hardware. So we really appreciate that.\n39:16\tKatherine McLeod:\tIn many ways, the web of SpokenWeb is not only the collaborative network of researchers, but it is also this web of archival recordings held together by a desire to make these available to more listeners. And this plays into what we’re trying to do here with this podcast. Provide a platform not only for researchers to share with the wider public the outcomes of their work, but a place where people might access the recordings, reflections, and sounds that have inspired so many of us and that continue to inspire us as the SpokenWeb partnership moves into its next year.\n39:57\tJason Camlot:\tOne thing I’m looking forward to in the coming year is beginning to see our metadata ingest system, which we call SWALLOW, which is sort of swallowing up or capturing all of the metadata that’s being typed in to that system, to see it build up and then to see what kinds of questions we can start asking as a result of having all of this metadata built up about the collections.\n40:26\tRoma Kail:\tOnce we have our records in and other institutions have theirs in, it will be interesting to see how they overlap or how they compliment each other. So we certainly have material that would maybe fill gaps in other institutions collections or vice versa. So I’m very excited to see when we are able to search it, for example, who has what and how that how that represents sort of all the institutions across Canada in terms of a collection.\n41:04\tKaris Shearer:\tSo we are, at UBCO with our SpokenWeb team, we’re actively building a website, so there’ll be a landing page very soon, and there’ll be a selection of tapes from a much larger collection that will feature – once we’ve cleared permissions and created some contextualisation for them – a number of recordings that’ll be featured on that site for people to listen in while we’re actively processing the rest of the collection. And so we can stay tuned for that, in fall 2019.\n41:35\tMichael O’Driscoll:\tSo one of the things I’m also really excited about is having some conversations with some of the individuals who were involved with these moments of recording in their day. And learning a little bit more, not only about the events and the authors and the atmosphere of that moment, but also learning a little bit more about their motivations for recording; what they were doing and how they understood, they were producing an archive and for whom and for what kind of future. I’d like to learn a little bit more about the history of the collection that we have. But I’d also like to learn a little bit more about the heart of the collection that we have.\n42:14\tJason Camlot:\tPart of the reason that this past year has been so successful has been just because of the people who are involved. That they’re very open minded, courteous and interested, and also extremely hard working, and so we have a bunch of people who share the desire to make things happen, but also a shared desire to have a great time while doing it. You know, I think that’s been a winning combination for our project and has really allowed us to get a lot done, and has allowed for that kind of flexibility and reflectiveness without panicking about whether we’re getting to where we want to go even before we might know where we want to go. And the other thing has been that I didn’t mention yet but that I think is very important in the development of this project has been the role of graduate students and even undergraduates. I mentioned that they were at the beginning of the project in terms of describing that first collection, but I think the network was in great part built because of students who moved from here to go on to study at other universities. Simon Fraser and Alberta and UBCO in particular come to mind where those students came from here, where they’d been working with sound collections and then arrived there and said, “Where are your sound collections? I want to work with them.” And that required those universities to sort of think about, “Oh yeah, we do have huge holdings in this area that we haven’t really looked at or listened to or touched in years.” And it’s really through the students in great part that a lot of the connections with some of these great people I’ve been describing are made possible. I think there’s a lot to learn. And this became very clear from our first institute, from the students and their approaches and the methods that they’re experimenting with in making sense of these kinds of materials. I think the highlight for everyone were the two and a half hours where we heard short talks from all the students across the network on what they had been doing and what they had learned over the past year. And I think that’s a sound that I think we’re going to be amplifying really over the next year or two.\n45:01\tTheme Music:\t[Instrumental]\n45:07\tHannah McGregor:\tThanks so much for listening to the first episode of The SpokenWeb Podcast, 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 producer this month is Cheryl Gladu and our podcast project manager is Stacey Copeland. A special thank you to Jason Camlot, Deanna Fong, Roma Kail, Annie Murray, Michael O’Driscoll, and Karis Shearer for their candid interviews and continued contributions to SpokenWeb. To find out more about SpokenWeb visit spokenweb.ca and subscribe to The SpokenWeb Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Play, or wherever you like to 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."],"score":2.7048998},{"id":"9288","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 S2E8, Talking about Talking, 3 May 2021, McLeod"],"item_title_source":["SpokenWeb Podcast web page."],"item_title_note":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/talking-about-talking/"],"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":["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":[2021],"material_description":["[]"],"digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://cdn.simplecast.com/audio/28a9da1f-8cca-410c-b5d7-8165a73f9394/episodes/3ce8b0fe-6175-403e-8a62-87afba9aed34/audio/8aae097f-18b7-4b66-8223-57c76570c48e/default_tc.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"sw-s2ep8-talking-about-talking.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"44.1 kHz\",\"duration\":\"00:57:00\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"54,780,700 bytes\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"MP3 audio\",\"title\":\"sw-s2ep8-talking-about-talking\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/talking-about-talking/\"}]"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"2021-05-03\",\"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\":\"Music used in episode:\\n\\nOriginal SpokenWeb Theme by Jason Camlot\\n\\nNight Watch by Blue Dot Sessions https://app.sessions.blue/browse/track/34642\\n\\nLinks to sounds and artists mentioned in this episode:\\n\\nLillian Allen: https://lillianallen.ca/\\n\\nOctavia Butler, Kindred: https://www.octaviabutler.com/kindred\\n\\nMichelle Pearson Clark, Suck Teeth Composition (After Rashad Newsome): https://www.michelepearsonclarke.com/suck-teeth-compositions/\\n\\nNikita Gale, Hot World: https://www.nikitagale.com/hot-world\\n\\nAlexis Pauline Gumbs, Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals: https://www.alexispauline.com/\\n\\nJessica Karuhanga, through a brass channel: https://www.jessicakaruhanga.net/through-a-brass-channel\\n\\n“Riddim and Hardtimes” by Lillian Allen https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Pm80etkAzE\\n\\nShani Mootoo fonds, https://www.lib.sfu.ca/about/branches-depts/special-collections/manuscripts\\n\\nSoledad Munoz: https://soledadmunoz.com/\\n\\nRashad Newsome, Shade Composition: https://rashaadnewsome.com/performance/shade-compositions-pittsburgh/\\n\\nJeneen Frei Njootli: https://www.jeneenfreinjootli.com/\\n\\nRucyl, Sound Prism: https://rucyl.com/\"}]"],"_version_":1853670549504393216,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:53.966Z","contents":["In this episode of The SpokenWeb Podcast, jamilah malika and Jessica Karuhanga talk about the sounds and sound-based practices that have informed their projects as recipients of the 2020-2021 SpokenWeb Artist-Curator in Residence Award. For her residency, jamilah is building an online archive highlighting Black women sound artists across Canada to provide inspiration and representation for future sound art from Black femmes across Turtle Island. Jessica is creating “a sanctified Black space in the form of a website that celebrates aural, visual and somatic witnessing” through shared audio recordings of personal stories.\n\njamilah and Jessica sit down – over Zoom – with producer Katherine McLeod to share two pieces of audio from past works that set the groundwork conceptually and methodologically for their current projects. As the producer of the series ShortCuts on The SpokenWeb Podcast feed, Katherine brings her approach of using an audio clip as the starting point for conversation. When talking with jamilah, they start by listening to the audio composition “Listen to Black Womxn” and, when talking with Jessica, they start by listening to the audio composition, “ALL OF ME.” In between these conversations, Katherine talks with SpokenWeb RA, poet, and spoken word artist Faith Paré about her work with jamilah and Jessica in listening to and searching through the SpokenWeb audio collections with their projects in mind. Questions of the archive and the archival impulse run throughout these conversations about the sound of sound art, archival recordings of voices speaking specifically as Black women and Black non-binary folks, the vocalic body in and as archive, and the agency of the listener. All of these questions start with talking, or, as jamilah says early on, “talking about talking.”\n\n\n00:08\tSpokenWeb Podcast Theme Music\t[Instrumental Overlapped With Feminine Voices]\n00:18\tHannah McGregor:\t[Music Continues: SpokenWeb Podcast Theme Music] 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. [End Music: SpokenWeb Podcast Theme Music]\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. An archive is a space of collective memory, a place where materials deemed to have historical or social significance are stored and ordered. But who controls what is collected – what gets remembered? Archives are inherently political. And we can rethink the archive as a space for celebrating marginalized voices, for contending with historical exclusion violence, and under-representation through addressing the politics of the archive, what futures might we imagine? In this episode of the SpokenWeb Podcast, artists and SpokenWeb fellows jamilah malika and Jessica Karuhanga sit down with producer Katherine McLeod to talk about the sounds and sound based practices that have informed their projects as recipients of the 2020-2021 SpokenWeb Artist-Curator in Residence award.\n01:44\tHannah McGregor:\tWe also hear from SpokenWeb RA poet and spoken word artist Faith Paré about her work with jamilah and Jessica in listening to and searching through the SpokenWeb audio collections. Questions of the archive and the archival impulse run through these conversations about the sound of sound art, archival recordings of voices speaking specifically as Black women and Black non-binary folks, the vocalic body in and as archive, and the agency of the listener. All of these questions start with talking, or as jamilah says early on, “talking about talking”. As the producer of the ShortCut series on the SpokenWeb Podcast feed, Katherine brings her approach of using an audio clip as the starting point for conversation. Here are jamilah malika, Jessica Karuhanga, Faith Paré, and Katherine McLeod [Begin Music: SpokenWeb Podcast Theme Music] with “Talking about Talking”. [End Music: SpokenWeb Podcast Theme Music]\n02:46\tjamilah malika:\t[Begin Music: ‘Night Watch’ by Blue Dot] I’m reading Undrowned by Alexis Pauline Gumbs. And she has this quote here – chapter one is called “Listen”, and she says, “listening is not only about the normative ability to hear, it is a transformative and revolutionary resource that requires quieting down and tuning in.”\n03:08\t Katherine McLeod:\tThat was jamilah malika. jamilah holds the position of Artist in Residence with SpokenWeb this year.\n03:15\tjamilah malika:\tHey everyone, I’m jamilah malika and I’m so happy to chat with you today, Katherine, about sound and my upcoming project with SpokenWeb. [End Music] I am a sound artist. I also work with tech stuff – page, but also thinking about video and installation. Mostly my practice is thinking about Black women and care. So whatever I make, no matter what it looks like, or what it reads like, or sounds like, Black women are always at the center.  [Music Interlude: SpokenWeb Podcast Theme Music]\n03:48\tKatherine McLeod:\tFor this episode of the SpokenWed Podcast, I sat down over Zoom with the two recipients of this residency, jamilah malika and Jessica Karuhanga. In these conversations, we’ll start with an audio piece and we’ll learn how the piece began, the voices that inform it and how it’s influenced the current residency projects.\n04:11\tAudio Recording, Katherine McLeod, Zoom interview\tWhy don’t we jump right into talking about the audio that you sent over and use that as our ground –\n04:17\tAudio Recording,  jamilah malika, Zoom interview.\tOkay! Cool.\n04:18\tKatherine McLeod:\tThe way that I approached these conversations was like sitting down to talk and listen together like we do on shortcuts. Yes, I’m Katherine MacLeod and you may recognize my voice from ShortCuts, a monthly feature on the spoken web podcast feed on shortcuts. I play a shortcut from spoken web audio collections as a starting point for reflecting upon what it means to listen to archival sound for my interviews with jamilah and Jessica, I thought I’d try using the ShortCuts approach in which an audio clip would be the starting point for our conversations. Listening to this piece was how jamilah and I started our conversation and that’s what we will listen to now. This is “Listen to Black Womxn” by jamilah malika.\n05:51\tAudio Recording, “Listen to Black Womxn”, by jamilah malika:\t[Layered background sounds] This is / As a Black woman / which is / Black, Blackness/ calling myself / constantly being called out for/ my people/ my people/ I even subjugated myself and tried to hide / thinking about/ as a Black woman/ it’s expected/ it’s expected/ it’s expected/ my people/ my white boyfriend/ I said “hi, thank you!”/ [inaudible] talking in a way that makes white people comfortable has become a second skin/ I worked for 24 years in a telecommunications company without using my Trinidad dialect /super comfortable/ super comfortable/ dialect/ [Repeated breaths] Yeah/ Um, um /Yeah, um/ I’ve been moving and loving / My spirit in a way, I feel it/ As a Black woman/ in my spirit I can feel it /moving, trusting/ [Repeated breaths]/ in spirit I can feel it/ navigating /it’s so powerful /yeah / power/ like I said/ brown girl that was Black/ authority/like I said/ in relation to others/ brown girl that was Black/ brown girl that was Black/ brown girl that was Black/ finding space for yourself/ finding space for yourself/ less small /with and in my body in totality/ [Repeated breaths] Um, ah, um, and, um, um, uh, / Yes, what do you feel it is in order to get your needs met?/ Which seems like a lot, but all of those things are happening/ Ugh! I don’t know [Laughs]\n10:31\tjamilah malika:\tYeah, “Listen to Black Womxn” is such a community – and lonely – it was such a weird evolution of a project. I was out in Chicago at the School of the Art Institute having a really hard time. And I was in this cool class – it was called psychoacoustics and it was led by this great artist named Kamala Patterson. And he had asked us to think really broadly about a sound project, and thinking about how sound occupies space. And I started thinking a lot about code switching and how in the space of the school, I was doing something with my voice in certain exchanges, notably with white women, where I was trying to mimic pitch and tone and like register as a way to navigate a lot of this terrible tension around being a Black girl who was making a lot of trouble.\n11:38\tjamilah malika:\tSo in my first month and a half at that school, I was in about five meetings with admin about things that we talked about in Canada, like cultural competency and decolonizing your curriculum, and what’s going on with your cannon, and how can you transform that and make it more accessible for different kinds of people. I was trying to figure out how to be a part of shifting that, and hearing myself bend and contort vocally. And so I thought, “Oh, I’m just going to do a project where I record myself doing these shifts.” And I just, I felt so lonely [Laughs]. I was just really intensely lonely. And I just put a call out to my friends, like “can you send me audio of yourselves just talking about what it’s like to talk as Black women?” Just talking about talking –\n12:37\tAudio Recording, “Listen to Black Womxn”, by jamilah malika:\n \n\nLess small/ how I’m actually always in my body / in totality/ in relation to my body/ in relation to/ trusting [Breathing]\n12:48\tjamilah malika:\t[Audio Recording of “Listen to Black Womxn” continues and fades] I made it for the class and then I took it to a sound symposium at school, and I felt really weird.\n13:54\tjamilah malika:\tAnd other times I’ve had it playing in conjunction with a video work. Other times through headphones, and I ask people to look in a mirror and watch themselves listen. And then there’s a notebook where I ask them to leave me a reflection. What does it feel like to listen to Black women? And the idea of: pay attention. So once it was at Prefixed Gallery and they have an audio art gallery, so that’s like this just very nice enclosed space. And a curator who saw it there reached out to me and asked me if I would design an enclosure. So now, I got to think about what’s the interiority of that sound as an experience of what I could wheat paste in terms of a collage, or what the smells might be in that space or what the lighting would be like that space. So it’s really been this exciting evolution at work.\n14:57\tKatherine McLeod:\tIt’s fantastic to hear about all the different iterations of it –\n15:00\tjamilah malika:\t[Laughs] Yeah.\n15:00\tKatherine McLeod:\t– and there’s so many things from what you just – because the piece is about the speaker and the speaker’s voice, but really – especially as I made a note of the word relation that starts to emerge through. And so thinking that even in the presentation of it, if there’s a sense that there’s a connection between the sound and the listener and that you could be part of developing a sound booth to design that experience, or really to be thinking about “how is this sound reaching the listener, and what is that experience like?” And so then the piece becomes about that listening experience too, which is really, really fascinating.\n15:36\tjamilah malika:\tI’m always really curious – what is it like to listen to Black women? When’s the last time? – so some of the prompts in the notebook were like, “when’s the last time you listened to Black women?” And what are those circumstances? And I think one of the showings was around the moment of Trump’s election and there was so much social commentary around –we should have listened to Black women and this idea of the Black women in your office or the Black women in your private personal spaces – how do you listen? When do you listen? Do you listen? I’m really interested in that as a bigger question.\n16:20\tKatherine McLeod:\tCircling back to that very first – the very first sound that we hear in the piece. Could you speak about that?\n16:25\tjamilah malika:\tYeah. Like the non-verbal. And I think there – in the first iterations I made, they were very legible and I think – somewhere conversations with friends, with advisors, what is a move more towards like fugitivity, and mystery and not explaining everything? And so a lot of those [makes sounds] – those sounds, they do a lot more. They do the thing they’re talking about – and how we can’t explain everything, but it can be something the body does – just a letting go of something or a sucking in of something and how that just comes out really organically.\n17:24\tKatherine McLeod:\tAnd even the sound of it – I felt like it caught attention. You almost do take a breath yourself or just kind of really pause – the breath is so integral, but also it really says it says everything. So it’s –.\n17:39\tjamilah malika:\tYeah. You know, and there’s ways – I’m Nigerian and Trinidadian and in both of those cultures, we suck teeth and Michèle Pearson Clark has this beautiful sound work that’s also a visual, it’s an audiovisual work that’s just acquired by the National Gallery. It’s exciting when sound work is becoming a part of that echelon of art to me, because that work, you know, it’s “Suck Teeth Composition”. And it’s really just about that sound and everybody making that sound and how that sound relates to grief and to emotion and to all kinds of responsiveness and and it has meaning. And Michèle names that work “Suck Teeth Composition” after Rashaad Newsome. And he’s an African-American sound artist and that – his work is called “The Shade Composition” and it’s all these Black women making all these nonverbal sounds. And I learned about it only after making “Listen to Black Womxn”. I was like, “Wow!” It’s this really beautiful performance where he has all these Black women on stage.\n19:00\tjamilah malika:\tAnd it’s really orchestral and like a symphony of these nonverbal sounds. It’s really– it’s very special about these – [Laughs] like I just did it. These sounds that are just a part of knowing Black women. If you’re –in knowing this kind of little responses. But it’s very personal, it’s very intimate.\n19:31\tKatherine McLeod:\tYeah. And it also – thinking too about something becoming something that is so personal and intimate becoming, say a composition or becoming compositional. And I did think of the way that the voices – like I wrote down the word polyphonic at one point of thinking about what it creates. And it really – it’s this overwhelming sort of polyphony of voices, but they’re, and they, they become very musical. It felt like a very polyphonic experience in listening to it –.\n19:57\tjamilah malika:\tYeah. There’s definitely rhythm. And I think there are places when I really played that up. And it just –it felt good.\n20:06\tKatherine McLeod:\tYeah, exactly. Exactly. And it feels good to listen to as well.\n20:11\tjamilah malika:\tYeah! That’s great to hear.\n20:13\tKatherine McLeod:\tAnd I love the idea too of it being sort of – coming out of also thinking about talking about talking too –\n20:20\tjamilah malika:\tYeah.\n20:20\tKatherine McLeod:\t– because that’s something that – just thinking of it’s a way too, to think of how we connect as bodies together too. So…\n20:32\tAudio Recording, “Listen to Black Womxn”, by jamilah malika:\t[Words with echoes and layered sounds] Just as I am/ As a Black woman/ Power in her voice/ That’s her bass/ that’s her bass / that’s her bass / that’s her bass\n20:40\tjamilah malika:\tWhen it comes to the SpokenWeb project, this is really an opportunity to build an archive that shows that Black Indigenous and People of Colour artists who make sound works, who are women, femmes, gender nonconforming, are really contributing to what sound art looks like, and it doesn’t have to be verbal. So Nikita Gale is a sound artist who I really love who makes works that – there’s an installation she has where it’s water rolling off of drum kits. And there’s an artist named Ruth Seal, some Black woman who makes a solar informed sound work. Right. So has these panels and they are connected to different notes and they sat out in this field and they just produced sound. Right? There’s just so much sound art that is really about found sound, about evoking sound, and also all the way into the spectrum of recordings that include voice, and how do Canadian Black artists show up in this work?\n22:17\tjamilah malika:\tAnd in my work, I know who I’m in conversation with. I don’t know who else knows. So the project is really about giving –and I hate to use the word visibility because it’s not about visualuality right? Because it’s giving an audibility to these sound artists who I’m really certain that when it comes to people who face the burden of representation and just the way the art as the market drives certain trends in reproducing Black pain and trauma. And I think what sound does is it undoes what visualuality does. And I think it does what visualuality cannot. It makes the listener almost interrogate themselves in a different way than looking. When I think about art and its limitations or its libertory capacity, I really think that sound art is this really exciting opportunity to free yourself of visualuality and to give whole new possibilities in terms of relating to the audience.\n23:42\tjamilah malika:\tI hope the website as an archive serves to highlight these Canadian contributions. I think there might be some works like across Turtle Island, but largely Canadian contributions to sound art – and in my greatest hopes will inspire a lot of young people who are Black Indigenous and of colour to try their hand at some sound art. There’s some great stuff in the archives like Lillian Allen, so sound poems, and Faith Paré as being really super helpful, helping me navigate the archives. So I think if I had to kind of go into the SpokenWeb archive and dig around myself, I would probably be having a way harder time. So it’s really helpful that Faith, as someone who’s at SpokenWeb is really collaborating with me and I owe her a great deal for helping me figure out –she’s like, “okay, kind of what are you, who are you looking for?”\n24:51\tjamilah malika:\tAnd I’m like, “Okay, these people, these people, these people.” And she’s like, “Got it”. And so there’s some great recordings of Shani Mootoo that she’s found. And so it’s – Shani is a writer and a novelist and also a painter it’s this quite large range, so Shani talking is going to be included. And I think it does – this idea of drawing a circle is kind of where I’m at in this moment of like, what is in, what is out, how do I make something that feels not comprehensive, but as generative as possible so that people are like, “Oh, there’s all kinds of possibilities”. And yeah, I think kind of hard definitions isn’t really what I’m going for, but more so this feeling of range. [Begin Music: ‘Night Watch’ by Blue Dot]\n25:50\tKatherine McLeod:\tAfter speaking with jamilah, I was interested in the kinds of resources in the SpokenWeb audio collections that she might be tapping into. And what could these recordings tell us about the sound of Black women’s voices in the archives? She mentioned SpokenWeb RA Faith Paré and I asked Faith about what she had found so far and also about the process. [End Music: ‘Night Watch’ by Blue Dot]\n26:17\tFaith Paré:\tYeah. I think what was really interesting and starting off with Cumulus project reading through it for the first time after she was selected by the jurors and starting to get acquainted with it and our first Zoom meetings, was how much I felt immediately that her project, as well as Jessica’s, was going to impact my own research as a Black woman poet with a huge research interest in Black cultural production in Canada. I’m really invested in taking a look at Black created artifacts and my own experience at SpokenWeb for the last year or so – almost a year – has been digging through and seeing what is also in the archives that is waiting to be discovered or waiting to be animated in a particular way. Last summer, I had worked with the Words and Music shows metadata and community collection which contains a lot of spoken word.\n27:16\tFaith Paré:\tThat’s a tradition that’s full of Black innovators, and it’s a tradition that I’ve come out of and I’m very familiar with. From the get-go I revisited this collection because I’d grown to know it so closely and known grown to know the curation and the collaborators on that project. I started off by essentially listening to pieces that I had already listened to a few times – sets by Lillian Allen, for example, or Takita Tanya Evanson. And then from there, it was a matter of consulting Swallow, which has SpokenWeb’s open source metadata ingestion system, as many will know, and using keywords around Black poetry and poetics in an attempt to find recordings from other institutions. Because we have lots of community collections, there were also really exciting pieces by young Black spoken word artists, who may be recording technically for the first time, as well as there were more formal readings coming out of SFU, for example, of Esi Edugyan and Juliane Okot Bitek And there was also some materials too that probably will make it into the final, just because of the particular interests that jamilah has run her project, which is really about honouring the sonic artistry of Black artists. But there were some interviews as well with Gwendolyn Brooks and the Amiri Baraka, and some more materials of Amiri Baraka’s that I wouldn’t have expected to find not only in SpokenWeb’s archives, but just to Canadian archives, per se, as well.\n28:50\tKatherine McLeod::\tIn terms of recordings that really sort of caught your attention, what would they be?\n28:55\tFaith Paré:\tWell, I’m a huge, huge, huge Lillian Allen fan. And particularly when we think about Lillian’s career and her huge influence in dub poetry, not only in Canada but in the Caribbean and around the world, that dub poetry is the perfect example of a form that integrates a literary form, and what’s going on in a studio, and also the oral performance tradition and also rejects all of those labels at once.\n29:38\tAudio Recording, “Riddim and Hardtimes” by Lillian Allen\t[Caribbean Beat] Riddim and hardtimes [Singing] [Speaking] [Repeated]\n29:38\tFaith Paré:\tTo hear some of her work again in the archives was very exciting. And because I also have a huge interest in what a Black aesthetic is and what tradition of Black criticism around poetics is finding some of those Amiri Baraka interviews was very, very exciting too. And I’m very excited to revisit them. And we also –me and jamilah had another gushing moment when we got sent some Shani Mootoo  recordings and Shani Mootoo  is an Indo-Caribbean, particularly Indo-Trinidadian writer. She’s not Black, but because jamilah is Trinidadian and has a relationship and all of Shani’’s work, we had this, “Oh, wow!” moment of, I can’t believe this is like sitting in an institution. We haven’t been able to listen to it! So, it’s one of those things where I think when you’re researching, everything is never going to make it into the final cut, but still finding those recordings and knowing that they can enrich your own listening experience, or also you can pass them along to someone else who might benefit from it.\n30:48\tKatherine McLeod:\tIt makes me think too, that it really – in finding these recordings, it’s also changing the sound of SpokenWeb as a project and sort of it not only changes the sound of what one thinks of in terms of the sound of it [Music Begins: Night Watch by Blue Dot Sessions], but also the what kind of sound-based research can be done through its archival collections.\n31:13\tJessica Karuhanga:\tI really think storytelling is about self articulating. It’s also about witnessing. It’s also about every assertion or an affirmation of presence that I am here. [Music Ends: Night Watch by Blue Dot Sessions] I am Jessica Karuhanga – I also go by Kichoncho. I am a multi-disciplinary artist.\n31:39\tKatherine McLeod:\tI spoke with Jessica on Zoom. We started with an audio clip of where it all began. It is a piece called “ALL OF ME”. You can find a link to the entire piece in the show notes for this episode. We started our conversation by listening together to the opening section.\n32:05\tAudio Recording, “ALL OF ME” by  Jessica Karuhanga:\t[Electronic Orchestra Chords – interspersed and underlaid throughout] People ask me all the time, what kind of stories do you want to tell? And I say exhume those bodies. [Choral Singing] Exhume those stories. The stories of the people who dreamed. Big. And never saw those dreams to fruition. People who fell in love and lost. [Choral Singing] Because we are the only profession that celebrates what it means to live a life. [Choral Singing] [Drumming and singing begins, underlaid] I don’t want to think about the past so, like, I don’t really, like, I don’t really like to think about nostalgia because it just makes it sad because we don’t really have a family anymore. I don’t know sometimes like, cause like, just when you think about happy memories with your family, but, and you remember when your family was happy, your family is just so not even existed anymore. So thinking about those happy times, or we had like a childhood and, and we would get in the van and go camping every weekend. And our, like our summers used to be us as a family, swimming in the pool and how happy we were and I guess sometimes you gotta think about that stuff because you remember when you were just like purely happy and just didn’t have to stress out about, about the dynamic that your family was in, because you thought – felt safe and you felt secure. So I feel like I feel nostalgia. I feel nostalgic for the feeling of when I was a child and I felt secure and safe and happy, and I didn’t have any care in the world. I’m really – I was nostalgic about not necessarily even nostalgia – I just yearn for that feeling. And I wish I knew at that time that I should enjoy that feeling because I have – because of all the stuff that was going to happen. And like, I guess it makes you look forward to when I have children of my own, I want them to have those memories and then never let those memories get ruined, like the way that those memories have kind of been ruined for me. Yeah. Is that good? Sure. [Vocalizing music]. [Piano chords] There is no time in the past that I want to return to in my life because I have trouble relating to who I was in the past. I can never quite return to that headspace. I experience regret and time travel for me would be an opportunity to correct those mistakes, rather than stay within the same history as it played itself out.\n35:35\tJessica Karuhanga:\t“ALL OF ME” is the name of the piece. It’s an assemblage of voices, Black women, femmes, nonbinary, gender non-conforming folk, and I basically ask people who are close to me – so there’s that innate trust there, which felt very pertinent – to just address how they were feeling. The original voice that we listened to, the initial voice is an acceptance speech that Viola Davis made for an Emmy or a Golden Globe. I remember being really blown away by this because she was articulating something for me that transcended – kind of affirmed or reminded me that there’s a lot that you’re still injuring in doing the work or the work that she may be doing, a person that I do not know, but I felt there was analogies I could draw to my experience. So I was very moved to that notion of exhuming and withstanding these kinds of thresholds. So yeah, that just felt like the initial impulse.\n36:42\tJessica Karuhanga:\tAnd then I was – from that I wanted to just hear from people that I know intimately to speak to these kinds of alterities, these self-forming self articulations – the imagination, like how we imagine ourselves. So, I find that in moments of despair, there are two-fold responses: one that is kind of this nostalgic past tense, looking to the past, romanticizing it. And then it’s like, for what? For whom? Often the greater your proximity to whiteness or able-bodied cis-hetero embodiments, maybe the more likely you are to have this kind of nostalgia, or it’s about these alterities, they’re trying to imagine, a kind of Afro-future, or maybe it’s just an entirely different dimension. And there is one of the speakers who speaks to – later on to dimensionality and time travel and all these beautiful, strange things. So, it’s in a constellation with Octavia Butler’s thinking and is – actually, the project was heavily inspired by texts of her as like Kindred and Black science fiction as well. So that’s –it’s really through the voice I feel like there’s something there that maybe is tied to storytelling, mythmaking, and like oral rituals.\n38:11\tKatherine McLeod:\tYeah. I’m thinking the opening line of like, “they ask me all the time, what stories do you want to tell?”\n38:17\tJessica Karuhanga:\tYeah. I really wanted to take you kind of on a journey –a journey like where you begin being hyper aware and attentive to every word that’s being said, but that the music can be a kind of compliment or buttress or support to that voice. So, I listened over and over and over again to the recordings I recorded on voice memos, on recorders that I have – so they’re a mix of low and very high fi, depending on if I can meet in person for person or if we are geographically dislocated. But I basically listened – spent time with these recordings after getting their consent and okay to use the material, and just spot about what sounds could compliment it. Already in having these voices, it speaks to a history of assemblage and sampling, and these kind of markers of hip hop, R&B, pop music, all music at this point involves a lot of sampling and remixing.\n39:24\tJessica Karuhanga:\tThere’s all these different stylistic things that happened that were really just me kind of reflecting back –back and forth between us. So I really wanted to reinforce that kind of call and response. So I asked a question, they responded to it and I– and when they’re comfortable a few seconds into speaking, it becomes kind of free form. You kind of lose yourself in the storytelling. And then the same –then I respond again with the sound. So it’s this kind of call and response in the actual making and coalescing of the project. And also it’s a project that’s about, it’s almost 30 minutes long, the entire piece, so it’s something – I mean the experience, or witnesser always has a choice to stay or go. And also I usually have it playing on a loop on headphones, kind of evoking what might be a listening booth at music stores, just as an experience.\n40:19\tKatherine McLeod:\tTo step outside the conversation for a moment on Jessica Karuhanga’s website, there’s some documentation from a piece called through a brass channel from 2017. I wanted to ask her about a woman moving while listening to headphones. I asked her if she was listening to “ALL OF ME”.\n40:41\tKatherine McLeod:\t– the visual of the listening… so I had to ask you that.\n40:43\tJessica Karuhanga:\tAbsolutely. And what are you privy to? So, you’re close. Yep. Yes and no. So, in that installation, it’s – I call it like a multi-vaillant, multi-channel installation. So I had about six different works that were either sculptures, video installations, and whatnot. So, in that documentation of the performance and exhibition making, you are really saying, seeing exhibition making happening in real time and temporality, which is also like an element of music making it space making, but it’s like oral, you know? And so that person, they’re listening on headphones to the sound of a video that’s looping, but you’re not privy to the screen. And that was also a structure – a structural or a devisive choice I made – that when you entered the space, through the doorways, that the back of the screen would be towards you.\n41:50\tJessica Karuhanga:\tSo you as a spectator have to acknowledge that being a viewer, observer is a verb, is an action, that you are complicit in the space making. So someone else can go to the listening booth, listen to “ALL OF ME”on their headphones and then be watching what it is you’re looking at. So that’s why I was saying yes and no. It’s both, the two co-exist – is because someone actually had that experience where they were – they’re explaining to me that they had the headphones on and they were listening to “ALL OF ME”. And then they saw the performer in the corner, swaying back and forth with their headphones on kind of in their own world and felt like there was a moment of synchronicity, a moment that they shared that was temporal that no one else could embody and experience. So I really was wanting to cultivate that.\n42:44\tKatherine McLeod:\tAfter hearing that response, I knew that I had to ask Jessica one more question about through a brass channel. I saw that the performance had featured a guest M. NourbeSe Philip, and I had to ask her about what that performance was like.\n43:01\tJessica Karuhanga:\tthrough a brass channel was the installation, and “ALL OF ME” was one of the art-i-facts in that constellation of words. So there – there is that another project was called Kiss the Sky, another object, and they all had different names. The video that the person’s witnessing with the headphones on is called Moon and the 12th House. And there were four constant performers that are circulating the space. And I just basically told them come and go, as you please. And the roommate, the initial kind of precursors or determinants were, “I want you to come to the space with an object or a gesture. That’s something that only we share.” So someone brought in an urn, someone else brought in turmeric, someone brought in salt, someone brought in cloths. And at first you were using them the way that the general public might think to use them. Like salt, I’m pouring it out, picking it up.\n43:56\tJessica Karuhanga:\tI’m like –a scarf. I’m folding it, unfolding it. But over time, it went from not just using these objects to like the wall becomes material. The headphones that have a utilitarian function for visitors becomes an art material as well. So that’s where those boundaries started to blur. It’s like giving that – in the spirit of liberatory politics, giving that freedom to the people I invited in to activate the thing. And then with NourbeSe Philip we met through a childhood friend of mine who has worked with her for years. So through this connection of a mutual close person in our lives, we kind of built this friendship, or this like – from my side, it’s deep affinity and respect and reverence. And also from someone who’s very kind and generous and you feel like they’re approachable.\n45:01\tJessica Karuhanga:\tAnd so just based out of that kind of respect or affinity– I shot my shot, so to speak and asked if she would be willing to be a guest in my piece. And I think she found it really interesting because I don’t think she considers herself a performance artist, even though she does these – every year, this kind of elergy. And to be clear, I think the enactment raison is not at all a performance. It is like a reading. It is a response. It is elergic. So it isn’t – it isn’t an enactment that happens annually or sometimes multiple times a year. It’s different from performance art capital. But even with my performance art, I’m not – precisely because I am a Black queer person, it’s very different for me because of the gaze that I’m there, that we have to deal with but have no power over. It also doesn’t feel like performance art for me.\n46:00\tJessica Karuhanga:\tIt’s not – I’m not ever playing a character. It’s never play time for me. In fact, it’s exhausting. And that is why I told the performers, show up however you are, if you need to take a break, if it’s only for 15 minutes today, if it’s for four hours, what is it that you can do? So in asking Nourbese I –yeah, we didn’t, I just invited her. We’d decided on a date. We opened it to the public for people who wanted to witness. So we had seating there. And we kind of just improvised and intuited what we did. So she brought in leafs from [inaudible] – photocopied leafs and some libations and other ritual objects, because that was also –it was already happening in this space. And we just did this call and response.\n46:52\tJessica Karuhanga:\tI couldn’t tell you if it lasted an hour or two hours, there’s no documentation of it at all. Maybe some poor quality cell phone photos that were very discreetly taken so as not to disrupt the energy exchange that was happening. And the few people that shared with me, their experiences of watching us said, they thought we rehearsed it. Like there are moments of profound synchronicity or just sharing. Like there was a moment where she was making these sorts of sounds or gestures, and I kind of received it, but my eyes were closed. Just these beautiful moments that happen over and over and over again. And I think it involves trust and risk and an openness to allow for something like that to happen, to not want to control the thing, to understand that it isn’t, that it is art, but it also transcends art.\n47:45\tAudio Recording, “ALL OF ME” by Jessica Karuhanga:\t[Electronic Orchestra Chords – interspersed and underlaid throughout] People ask me all the time, what kind of stories do you want to tell? And I say exhume those bodies. [Choral Singing].\n47:56\tJessica Karuhanga:\tI guess I’ll start with how my relationship to SpokenWeb took shape or came into vision. The feel of the vision. There was an open call and I responded. And then was at a moment where, we are reeling around more unmoored from not simply the deaths of George Floyd and others – just the kind of response to that. Like suddenly, because we are all forced to be silent and home and obedient kind of proletariats to care – suddenly people were like, “Oh, I have proof I’m witnessing anti-Blackness differently”. And so there’s this retraumatization that was also going on. So I had a lot of feelings thatI was going through, a lot of grief, a lot of rage, a lot of this. So that there’s that bit and then all the opportunities predicated – are riffing off of people’s guilt. Do the Instagram takeovers, to do, to make art, not even people naming that it’s directly a result of this, but we know that it is no coincidence you have all these positions popping up in institutions of Black people doing Black things and the IG takeovers, whatever it is, like all of these positions being formed in the wake. There that’s the second bit. The third bit is in my way of dealing that was plugging out and ignoring that thing. And in resistance to the pervasive circulation of images, violent images being like, I want to return to this other space. I want to be with the music I’m doing. I want to – I want to feed my senses, nourish my senses, and I want to start to heal. So I actually was remembering this piece in that project and as a whole and how nourishing it was for a different point in my life where I was also dealing with a lot of grief and illness.\n49:54\tJessica Karuhanga:\tAnd some friends of mine had brought up the project. So I was like, okay, there seems to be this need for this. I found myself sharing a lot of voice notes with close friends. And I was like, Oh, there’s something here with the voice note, even musically, how something like an interlude functions as this kind of interstitial thing. So I kind of put all those things together and vomited up a proposal very last minute, kind of undulating –should I, shouldn’t I? And then I was like, no, I’m gonna, this feels important. I’m going to just do this. It’d be nice to have support and resources to help make this happen because I’m one person and I don’t know how much I could actually facilitate different people being vulnerable. You know, I’m not a therapist. I don’t have a practice like that and all of these things. So that’s kind of what happened.\n50:43\tJessica Karuhanga:\tI responded to this open call. I got selected. And now what – how that has to do “ALL OF ME” is “ALL OF ME”  was started within my own circle. These are people that I cared deeply about. These are close friends. But I wanted to bring it expanded outward to people who are not my family, but are kin, are fam. So I was like, Oh, maybe it has to be an open call. I want to facilitate something that is bigger than me, larger than me. That can become a self-sustaining thing. So that’s how I arrived at my current project, which is basically a digital artwork, website repository for people to unleash their stories.\n51:27\tKatherine McLeod:\tWe’ve covered a lot. But I was wanting to ask you about whether you see this as an archive…?\n51:31\tJessica Karuhanga:\tI think it is. I think– I have this project that is also involved sound and performance called a #carefree. And with that, I made a video collage out of all the images and videos and Vines – when Vine was still a thing – and Twitter. With that is all archived cause hashtags are a form of archiving or classification we can say, classified through carefree Black girls. And I was like, Oh, it’s interesting –or carefree Black boy– and I was like, Oh, what if all of these things – I assembled all of these things into this visual assemblage and I responded to them. So again, that call and response thing is there. What if it’s cues for choreography? So I think of it in a similar way because these people are still living people, they’re present. They were in the moment and present when they made these videos. It’s all about self defining. Like I am deciding the terms of how I reveal and conceal and what I share, what I don’t share.\n52:38\tJessica Karuhanga:\tThat’s where the social media bit is distinct, but interesting. So I do see this as in proximity to that or in a constellation of that. So it is an archive, but I just don’t feel like oftentimes when we speak about archive particularly in relation to Indigenous subjectivities, I mean that globally. So let’s get even more specific about African peoples. There’s primitivism, it’s always about this past and this thing of like, rareify our subjectivities to the past as objects, so a larger thing, like these museological conversations, cabinet of curiosities, these kind of colonial capturing of artifacts and living beings, whether they be plant life or humans that are captured. So yeah, archive is loaded. [Begin Music: Night Watch by Blue Dot Sessions] Artifact is loaded, but I don’t know what other words to use. It is situated in not saying, but in a space of reclamation or something\n53:40\tKatherine McLeod:\tAt one point, Jessica refers to the recordings as “cues for choreography”, a phrase that not only suggests that the recordings invite a response, a doing, a making, but also that this doing and making might happen in another medium or art form altogether. I think back to speaking with jamilah and how throughout our conversation, she was sitting beneath a vivid painting, and only when our conversation veered into the archives towards the end and about the writers whose voices are recorded there, she mentioned Shani Mootoo  and that the painting behind her was in fact, a Shani Mootoo painting. [End Music: Night Watch by Blue Dot Sessions] I tell that story here, because it feels as though it brings it all together, the painting, the recording, the speaking body in front of the painting, the listening, the conversation.\n54:32\tjamilah malika:\tShani is a writer, and a novelist and also a painter. I’m actually sitting under one of her paintings.\n54:42\tKatherine McLeod:\tI wanted to ask you but I was like, Oh, maybe I’ll wait til the end [Laughs].\n54:46\tKatherine McLeod:\tThey were all invitations or responses to “cues for choreography”. And thinking back to that, painting reminds one that talking about sound art is not only talking about sound. Talking about talking is not only about talking. [Begin Music: Night Watch by Blue Dot Sessions]What kinds of cues for choreography do the sounds of this podcast activate? In which practices of everyday life might this activation bring a kind of freedom? What might you make in response?  [End Music: Night Watch by Blue Dot Sessions]\n \n\n55:21\tMusic:\t[Piano Overlaid With Distorted Beat]\n55:36\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 producer this month is SpokenWeb team member Katherine McLeod of Concordia University. Thank you to Jessica Karuhanga, jamilah malika, and Faith Paré for their candid discussion and contributions to this episode. Our podcast project manager and supervising producer is Stacey Copeland. And our assistant producer and outreach manager is Judith Burr. A special thanks to Dr. Kristin Moria of Queens University and to Tawhida Tanya Evanson of Mother Tongue Media for their role in adjudicating the 2020-2021 SpokenWeb Artist-Curator in Residence Award. To find out more about SpokenWeb visit spokenweb.ca and subscribe to the SpokenWord Podcast on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you may listen. [Begin Music: SpokenWeb Podcast Theme Music] 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. And we’ll see you back here next month for another episode of the SpokenWeb Podcast: stories about how literature sounds. 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Plus, the Alt Text work at the Banff Centre for the Arts: Distinct Aggregations.\\n\\nAmanda Monthei’s Life with Fire podcast\\n\\nBara Hladik – poet. artist. Facilitator.\\n\\nPlace an order for Bára’s first book New Infinity published June 2022.\\nListen to Bára’s ambient electronic album Cosmosis here on Bandcamp.\\nJoin Bára for Dreamspells (@dream_spells), a collaborative project with Malek Robbana (@melekyamalek) with a monthly new moon dreamspells event\\nregistration: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJMpc-ygqTouHtaiP7HfwXvhxLi-GXljKu8o\\nBodies in Translation: Activist Art, Technology, and Access to Life (BIT)\\n\\nCarmen Papalia, An Accessibility Manifesto for the Arts\\n\\nDaniel Britton on typeface design\\n\\nDisability Art is the Last Avante Garde with Sean Lee, Secret Feminist Agenda S4E22\\n\\nSoundBox Signals podcast (UBCO)\\n\\nSpokenWeb Podcast Transcription Style Guide\\n\\nTalila A. Lewis, “Working Definition of Ableism January 2022 Update” \\n\\n‘Terminology’, Critical Disability Studies Collective, University of Minnesota\\n\\n“The Show Goes On: Words and Music in a Pandemic” produced by Jason Camlot for The SpokenWeb Podcast\\n\\n“The Voice That is the Poem, ft. Kaie Kellough” produced by Katherine McLeod for ShortCuts on The SpokenWeb Podcast, 03:10.\\n\\nTranscription Tools\\n\\nDescript (audio and video editing through text, paid), https://www.descript.com/\\n\\nExpress Scribe (speech to text, free), https://www.nch.com.au/scribe/index.html\\n\\nOtter AI (speech to text and real-time transcription, paid), https://otter.ai/\\n\\nTEMI (speech to text transcription, paid), https://www.temi.com/\\n\\nMusic Credits\\n\\n“Wavicles” from Cosmosis by Zlata (Bára Hladík)\\n“Erudition” from Cosmosis by Zlata (Bára Hladík)\\n“Atmosphere” from Cosmosis by Zlata (Bára Hladík)\\n“Scarlett Overpass” by Kajubaa via Blue Dot Sessions\\nCloud Cave by Kajubaa via Blue Dot Sessions\\nPacific Time by Glass Obelisk via Blue Dot Sessions\\nSound Effects\\n\\n“campfire in the woods” by craftcrest, ​​https://freesound.org/people/craftcrest/sounds/213804/\\n\\n“Page turn over, Paper turn over page turning” by flag2, https://freesound.org/people/flag2/sounds/63318/\\n\\n“Wall clock ticking” by straget, https://freesound.org/people/straget/sounds/405423/\\n\\n“Mechanical Keyboard Typing” by GeorgeHopkins https://freesound.org/people/GeorgeHopkins/sounds/537244/\"}]"],"_version_":1853670549723545600,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:54.290Z","contents":["Transcriptions of podcasts provide visual renderings of audio that increase accessibility. But what are the best practices for transcribing a podcast, specifically a podcast about literary audio? In this episode, Katherine McLeod of ShortCuts and Kelly Cubbon, transcriber of The SpokenWeb Podcast, explore the role of transcription in the making of podcasts and how responsible transcription unfolds through collaboration and conversation. In fact, their episode uncovers just how much transcription is collaboration and conversation.\n\nPart One starts with reflections from Katherine and Kelly about how they came to the work of transcription and key concepts that have influenced their thinking throughout the process of making this episode, such as accessibility and ableism. This section also features an interview with Dr. Maya Rae Oppenheimer, a studio arts professor at Concordia University and a regular user of podcast transcripts.\n\nPart Two consists of an interview with Judith Burr, the Season 3 SpokenWeb Podcast supervising producer and project manager, about generative challenges that have come up during collaboration on podcast transcription for the podcast and how decision making has evolved over time.\n\nAnd Part Three is an interview with Bára Hladík, a poet, writer, and multimedia artist, about  the convergence of disability, accessibility, technology, and poetics. Here, Bára discusses the healing possibilities of sound and the creative potential of transcripts.\n\n \n\n00:00:19\tSpokenWeb Podcast Theme Music:\t[Instrumental Overlapped With Feminine Voice] Can you hear me? I don’t know how much projection to do here.\n \n\n00:00:19\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. [End Music: SpokenWeb Podcast Theme Music].\n \n\n00:00:35\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. How do we make sound accessible across different forms of media? How do we read and interpret sound? What can it look like? At the SpokenWeb Podcast, we create and release transcripts for every episode. These are written versions of the audio we produce that are publicly available on the SpokenWeb website. But why do we create transcripts —and what is involved in transcribing a podcast about literary audio that often includes archival recordings and experimental audio performances? This episode is produced by Katherine McLeod (ShortCuts producer and host) and Kelly Cubbon (SpokenWeb Podcast transcriber). Together they explore the role of transcription in the making of podcasts and how responsible transcription unfolds through collaboration and conversation. They also reflect on transcription as an accessibility practice, scholarly practice, and creative practice. As the producers themselves share, podcasting is a space where we encounter ideas—where we find opportunities to contribute to dialogue and engage in ongoing conversations and creative practices. And so an episode of a podcast by producers who are part of the podcasting production team is, in so many ways, the perfect space to investigate the how and why of transcripts. Our team has often asked: what kinds of editorial choices need to be made when making transcripts for a podcast about literary sound? And how does ethical listening inform these decisions? In conversation with Dr. Maya Rae Oppenheimer, Assistant Professor of Studio Arts at Concordia University; Judith Burr, the Season Two SpokenWeb Podcast project manager and supervising producer; and Bára Hladik, multimedia artist and disability advocate, Katherine and Kelly spend this episode thinking through transcription—and how transcription itself is a way to “think through” sound and be transparent about accessibility goals in podcast production. And so whether you’re listening to the audio of this episode, reading the accompanying transcription, or both we invite you to “think through” transcription with us—here are Katherine McLeod and Kelly Cubbon with Episode 9 of the third season of the SpokenWeb Podcast: “Talking Transcription: Accessibility, Collaboration, and Creativity.” [Musical Interlude: SpokenWeb Podcast Theme Music]\n \n\n00:03:18\tKelly Cubbon:\t[Start Music: Flowing Electronic Instrumental] Transcript. What is a transcript?\n \n\n00:03:22\tKatherine McLeod:\tIf you are reading the words of this podcast episode, you are reading a transcript of it.\n \n\n00:03:28\tKelly Cubbon:\tTo transcribe. To create a visual written version of something originally presented in another medium.\n \n\n00:03:34\tKatherine McLeod:\tTrans: across. Scribe: to write. Writing across\n \n\n00:03:40\tKelly Cubbon:\tTranscription, a writing across that creates new points of access.\n \n\n00:03:45\tKatherine McLeod:\tIt has come to mean a written copy, but really it is a creative process along with being a form of recording.\n \n\n00:03:56\tBára Hladik, Zoom interview, February 2022:\tI love transcription because it is part of the making and it creates it into a new medium, so then it becomes, it almost becomes a new piece or version.\n \n\n00:04:08\tJudith Burr, Zoom interview, February 2022:\t[…] and then to say, what does it mean to have a written version of this? And I was absolutely co-learning with Kelly as we developed best practices around some of these hard points.\n \n\n00:04:22\tMaya Rae Oppenheimer, Zoom interview, March 2022:\t[…] and maybe with how folks use transcriptions, there’s traces and evidence of how reading is inherently collaborative, be that audio reading or visual reading, tactile reading. And sometimes we take that for granted when we centre visual modes of reading. When we then make more inclusive sensory receptions, then there’s different ways of reading that trace of collaboration.\n \n\n00:04:54\tKelly Cubbon:\tHi. I’m Kelly Cubbon. I’m a Master of Publishing student at Simon Fraser University and a Research Assistant for the SpokenWeb Project. I’ve been transcribing the SpokenWeb Podcast since Season 2 and working behind the scenes of the podcast with our team to think through the possibilities and responsibilities of transcription.\n \n\n00:05:11\tKatherine McLeod:\tAnd I’m Katherine McLeod. You may recognize my voice from ShortCuts, or other past episodes, and I work with Kelly monthly on the transcripts for that audio. Making this episode together has given us the chance to really reflect on this process, and to ask ourselves: what are the best practices for transcribing a podcast about literary audio?\n \n\n00:05:35\tKelly Cubbon:\tPart One of this episode starts with reflections from me and Katherine about how we came to the work of transcription and key concepts that have influenced our thinking throughout the process of making this episode. We will talk about what role transcription plays within podcast production and within podcast studies. This section features some of our conversation with Dr. Maya Rae Oppenheimer, a studio arts professor at Concordia University and a regular user of podcast transcripts. In Part Two we chat with Judith Burr, the outgoing SpokenWeb Podcast supervising producer, about generative challenges that have come up during our collaboration on podcast transcription for this podcast and how transcription within this podcast has evolved. And in Part Three we’ll join Bára Hladík – a poet, writer, and multimedia artist – to have a conversation about the convergence of disability, accessibility, technology, and poetics.\n \n\n00:06:24\tKatherine McLeod:\tThanks for joining us on this journey into the sounds of transcription. Let’s get started! [End Music: Flowing Electronic Instrumental].\n \n\n00:06:30\tKatherine McLeod:\tTranscription increases accessibility. And increased accessibility is the first and foremost reason to transcribe a media format like a podcast episode.\n \n\n00:06:43\tKelly Cubbon:\tTo grasp the work of accessibility, it is important to understand the systems and barriers that make the world inaccessible. Abolitionist community lawyer and social justice consultant TL Lewis defines ableism as: [Quote] “A system that places value on people’s bodies and minds based on societally constructed ideas of normalcy, intelligence, excellence and productivity. These constructed ideas are deeply rooted in anti-Blackness, eugenics, colonialism, and capitalism. This form of systemic oppression leads to people and society determining who is valuable and worthy based on a person’s appearance and/or their ability to satisfactory [re]produce, excel and ‘behave.’ You do not have to be disabled to experience ableism.” [Unquote]. [Start Music: Atmospheric Instrumental] Assumptions about how people engage with media information and stories or expectations that there is only one right way to do so places restrictions on audiences, communities, and creative possibilities, and also excludes the vital contributions of people with diverse and changing access needs. At face value, podcasts are an auditory medium. But there are many reasons why someone may find podcast transcripts useful or vital to engaging in the world of podcasting, a now ubiquitous source of media and education. As podcast creators, we should always be asking ourselves: what space are we trying to create? Who is it for? Transcripts make podcasts more accessible for: – Deaf and Hard of Hearing people, – Neurodivergent people, such as those with dyslexia, autism, ADHD, and more, – People with disabilities and illnesses. Transcripts are also useful for people with different learning styles. Working online, in hybrid or virtual settings during the pandemic has heightened some of our attention to how access needs at work and school can shift and change. Two quotes related to access we’ve come across that we’d like you to keep in mind as you listen or read along to this episode are: Access is [Quote] “the power, opportunity, permission, or right to come near or into contact with someone or something… the relationship between the disability bodymind and the environment. [Unquote] – Historian Bess Williams\n \n\n00:08:56\tKatherine McLeod:\tAs Carmen Papalia states at the opening of “An Accessibility Manifesto for the Arts”: [Quote] “Let’s try thinking of accessibility as a creative, long-term process. It’s not just about the built environment, but about ideas of agency and power” [unquote]\n \n\n00:09:17\tKelly Cubbon:\tWhen I began transcribing for SpokenWeb a key accessibility goal was working towards the simultaneous release of transcripts with the audio for each episode. Improving accessibility is an ongoing effort, but this is something we are now able to do on a regular basis. Part of my motivation for working on this podcast episode about transcription with Katherine has been to document some of our team’s learnings about transcription best practices, workflow, and decision making as a way to share our learning, as well as be accountable to our communities. When we release this episode, we will also be sharing our transcription style guide. [See show notes for details.] This is a living document that we regularly add to. I inherited it from Natasha Tar, another SFU student who was working on transcription. The style guide supports consistent formatting, but it is also a place where we provide context for collective decisions we’ve made when encountering common transcription challenges – we’ll touch on this more when we chat about collaboration with Judee.\n \n\n00:10:16\tKatherine McLeod:\tOur work on this podcast exists within the larger research activities of SpokenWeb. [End Music: Atmospheric Instrumental] Within SpokenWeb, there are so many examples of transcription taking place, such as: student researchers listening to recordings of literary events are often transcribing as they listen [Sound Effect: Typing] or checking transcriptions while listening — timestamping or describing the extra-poetic speech [Sound Effect: Page Turning] — all of which are forms of creating a written record of an audio object. Transcription of oral history interviews is another example. Or artists transcribing, notating and scoring. Then, stepping back into the world of the podcast, producers transcribe their audio and script their voice overs. In making this episode, we ourselves transcribed our interviews, wrote a script, and now are creating an audio file which we will be transcribing again in order to post it on the website with the launch of this episode. For myself, having published and presented work on poetry scores for overlapping voices, I’ve always been fascinated by the interplay between performance and transcription. That approach, not to mention all of the new technologies out there for transcription, will only be touched upon in this episode, but we hope that future episodes might dive into all of these sounds of transcription. [Start Music: Atmospheric Instrumental] In this episode, Kelly and I focus on transcription as collaboration, conversation, and as an unfinished process.\n \n\n00:11:58\tKelly Cubbon:\tAnd that approach lets us focus on the format of the podcast itself, how it reaches its audiences and its potential to reach across modes of sensory engagement.\n \n\n00:12:08\tKatherine McLeod:\tPodcast listening can be podcast reading. And what does that reading experience feel like? That is the question that Kelly and I wanted to talk about and we decided to do a call out on social media to hear from regular users of podcast transcripts. By the way, if you would like to share your story of how you use podcast transcripts, check the show notes for how to get in touch. [End Music: Atmospheric Instrumental]\n \n\n00:12:35\tKelly Cubbon:\tDr. Maya Ray Oppenheimer uses transcripts in her personal creative and educational practices. She responded to our call on social media and we were grateful to have a virtual chat.\n \n\n00:12:47\tMaya Rae Oppenheimer, Zoom interview, March 2022:\t[Sound Effect: Zoom Door Bell] My name is Maya Rae Oppenheimer, and I’m from treaty one territory, Middlechurch, Manitoba, which is near Winnipeg. And I’ve moved around since leaving Winnipeg, but I’m now living and working in Tiohtià:ke / Mooniyang / Montreal and am an assistant professor in the department of Studio Arts with a cross appointment to Interdisciplinary Studies in Fine Arts. And perhaps, an additional item of introducing myself is that I identify as disabled. I have several diagnosed neurodivergencies. So, one of my neurodivergencies is dyslexia. And for those who don’t know about dyslexia, it’s often described as a learning difficulty, but it’s, you know, that takes us to a social model of disability where, you know, it’s, it’s a learning difficulty because dyslexic folks have different learning tendencies. So for some that might mean that letters move on the page, words hop and jump and skip around. One thing that happens to me is I’ll often conceive of a word, but I’ll say a different one. So you can imagine in someone who works as an academic and had to go through the rigours of getting a PhD, that’s really presented some emotional and intellectual and physical challenges. And over the years, as I was trying to figure out manners and modes of consuming information and engaging with language, I found that listening to written texts was really, really helpful. And also just listening constantly to the radio, to podcasts, to soak up intonation, to soak up emphasis on language and to get a sense of the effect behind written words when I’m reading, because that’s also something that can sometimes happen with dyslexic folks is missing the ordering of language on the page to infer emphasis. So poetry can also be a wild experience! [Laughs] So in my writing practice and reading practice, I find listening as well as reading simultaneously very, very interesting because what will sometimes happen and say, for example, here, moving to a podcasting example, if I’m listening to an episode and reading the transcript at the same time, I won’t always read the word that’s being vocalized at the same time, or with the same impression. So it opens up this kind of textured moment of language, what you might describe as like a third text or maybe even elision. But I started using the word errant, which I kind of like, because errant is sort of like this wandering meaning, but it’s also very close to the word errata, but it’s not wrong. It’s just wandering in meaning. So I refer to this as my errant reading practice. As one does accruing notes I thought, well, what else can I do with this aside from considering it as something that’s been consumed. Can I analyze my own weird habit here? And then I started writing using the marginalia as text for writing my own thing. So I guess what I’m trying to say is like the errant reading of things sort of became like a transcript for writing a responsive text.\n \n\n00:16:28\tKelly Cubbon, Zoom interview, March 2022:\tWhat does an effective transcript look like to you? And like what would be kind of red flags for a misleading or frustrating or ineffective or unworkable transcript?\n00:16:41\tMaya Rae Oppenheimer, Zoom interview, March 2022:\tWell, I suppose if I had to emphasize some of the qualities that can be a bit alienating are aloof transcripts [Laughs] or rigid transcripts. But very quickly by aloof, I mean, you know, if you have to search out where the transcript lives with an audio documentation. Is it even available? Do you have to ask if it’s available, do you have to get special permission if it’s available? And I feel like that’s maybe linked to the rigidity of transcripting or transcription [Laughs], which is, I think, a concern from content creators that people will copy and paste intellectual content. But what I think is an inclusive standpoint on that from a social model of disability is if you are welcoming more people into your content, then that’s the way to go. So the rigidity: I see that coming in terms of transcripts being downloaded sometimes not entirely. So maybe only the first five to 10 minutes or the beginning 30% of the content is transcribed in this weird translation of printed word publishing copyright at 30% to audio transcriptions. I also find PDFs sometimes difficult because again, everything’s locked in unless you have particular software access. I also wish that there were more open access audio to text and text to audio softwares. One that I use and recommend to students a lot, perhaps you use is Otter AI, which has a certain amount of free use. But then a lot of other apps and services are under a price point. And I think as soon as software that is meant to be inclusive is also barred by a price bracket, then that’s a problem. So I guess, you know, when I reflect on my answer to that, the rigidity relates a lot to capitalism [Laughs] and fear of misuse of content. And that’s a trouble.\n \n\n00:19:06\tKelly Cubbon, Zoom interview, March 2022:\tYeah. When you were sharing, um, the kind of aloof versus rigid, that kind of was exciting to me to hear that those, that framing, because I feel like that’s a useful framing to have in mind to almost even add to a style guide that we kind of pass on to other people in a team of like, kind of almost like a, a check-in point of you know. But I was also thinking, I think a lot about like, how do we make our process transparent to others? Because, you know, a style guide can be kind of technical things like we remove and ums and uhs so that the transcript is more readable for people, in these cases, but maybe having a style guide, visible for people who use transcripts to say, you know, that’s actually not something we like, or that’s something that we would like you to include this instead. And making that almost more open access in terms of showing that our decisions are, for us to have some sort of standardization, but they need to be flexible to meet people’s needs and evolve, to meet people’s needs as well.\n \n\n00:20:09\tMaya Rae Oppenheimer, Zoom interview, March 2022:\tYeah. And I think what you’re bringing up Kelly is an interesting aspect of archiving and transcripts because transcripts is such a user interface, and often there’s perhaps a flow from the cultural producer/host to the user, but then that user is making a layer of interpretation and meaning. And that’s why I think having a workable document is such a hospitable mode of transcription. And I mean, I have, I take that almost to an extreme [Laughs], I realize where in, I’m not only marking the, but I do have to move things around because of my associative way of drawing, meaning and dyslexia, and really needs that mobility on the page that then does sometimes make a collaborative transcript. And I think that’s a really important piece in a conversation like this for accessibility, and maybe with how folks use transcriptions, there’s traces and evidence of how reading is inherently collaborative, be that audio reading or visual reading, tactile reading. [Start Music: Upbeat Electronic Instrumental] And sometimes we take that for granted when we center visual modes of reading, when we then make more inclusive sensory receptions, then there’s different ways of reading that trace of collaboration.\n \n\n00:21:38\tKatherine McLeod:\tWe’ll hear from Maya again at the end of the episode. But, for now, after thinking about transcripts in the contexts of broader communities, we’d like to invite you into our community of the SpokenWeb Podcast, and to hear from Judee Burr, supervising producer and project manager of the SpokenWeb Podcast about transcription as collaboration.\n \n\n00:22:03\tJudith Burr, Zoom interview, February 2022:\tI’m Judee Burr. I use she/her pronouns. I am here on Syilx Okanagan land, and what is often now called Kelowna in BC where I’m a master’s student at UBC Okanagan. I’m in the interdisciplinary graduate studies program in the digital arts and humanities theme. For my thesis podcast, I’m working on an academic podcast about wildfire and living with fire in the Okanagan Valley where I am right now. And I’m also the supervising producer and project manager of the SpokenWeb Podcast, which is how I know you guys and how we’ve all been thinking about transcription together.\n \n\n00:22:44\tKatherine McLeod, Zoom interview, February 2022:\tThank you Judee and thank you for joining us this afternoon to talk about transcription. How did you start to work with sound?\n \n\n00:22:53\tJudith Burr, Zoom interview, February 2022:\tI took a class at the Podcast Garage in Boston, Massachusetts. It was podcasting that got me really interested in doing audio work and it was The Heart is the podcast that sucked me in [End Music: Electronic Instrumental] and spoke to my queer soul and that made me want to think about what heartfelt storytelling and audio storytelling could do for environmental stories. I had been doing a lot of report writing and research that took on this tone that I felt is dry on a topic that actually feels so deeply heartbreaking and hard, and really difficult to know how to communicate about in a way it’s like move, going to move people.\n \n\n00:23:42\tKelly Cubbon, Zoom interview, February 2022:\tThanks for sharing that. It’s always fascinating to hear about your work and what you’re thinking about kind of emotion and connecting people to stories, just really spoke to me because I’ve been thinking about the emotional experience of transcribing, particularly around the most recent episode of the SpokenWeb Podcast. Jason did an episode on reflecting on pandemic events and experiences and it was incredibly overwhelming to be sitting in my apartment by myself, for the purposes of my job transcribing something, but being really affected by the project itself [Start Music: Piano Instrumental] and the intentions around the project, as well as these kind of clips of people, banding together like we all have during this difficult to time to create community and a sense of continuity with what they’ve been doing. So, I just wanted to mention that because I’ve been thinking about that a lot recently.\n \n\n00:24:33\tJudith Burr, Zoom interview, February 2022:\tI feel like every time I get a first draft as the supervising producer to just listen to and think about ways to give feedback and react to, I am so moved. Even though the episodes are so different from each other, they each reflect this really heartfelt engagement with whatever our producers are working on. And yeah, I feel a similar way when I’m reviewing a first draft as it sounds like you feel when you’re listening to it and transcribing it, Kelly. [End Music: Piano Instrumental]\n \n\n00:25:00\tKelly Cubbon, Zoom interview, February 2022:\tYes, definitely. I think that kind of leads into our first question quite nicely. Can you tell us a little bit about your dual role as the SpokenWeb Podcast supervising producer and project manager, are these kind of different hats you put on at different times or is it kind of a hybrid role?\n \n\n00:25:17\tJudith Burr, Zoom interview, February 2022:\tYeah, I think it’s all smooshed together [Laughter] in the experience. So I’m the main touch point for the episode producers– we tend to have different producers every month that come to me with questions that I can then answer or reflect on with the task force and work with producers to make sure they feel supported. So, I’ll give producers feedback on a first audio draft, thenI’ll work with Hannah to script an introduction that we feel is appropriate for introducing the episode in the context of the overall podcast and project. Then, when I get that recorded introduction and final draft of the episode I mix and master it and then send it to you, Kelly for a transcription. Working with you and the producers to make any edits to that, doing the work of just putting all of the content, including the transcript and the audio on our website and on our simplecast tool that we used to release it onto all these podcasting platforms and organizing a listening party, where then as a larger community of SpokenWeb people and fans, we can listen to the episodes together and talk about them.\n \n\n00:26:32\tKatherine McLeod, Zoom interview, February 2022:\tIt makes me think too about the amount of listening you would have to be doing in that role. And in my work with you, especially on ShortCuts, I’ve always been really struck by how you’re such an attentive listener to the audio. In listening to one piece, you’re really able to pull out the overarching threads. Kelly, I was interested, for you, in hearing Judee, describe the workflow, what, from your perspective, what does it feel like on your side?\n \n\n00:27:01\tKelly Cubbon, Zoom interview, February 2022:\tYeah, I think for me the first few months of working on transcription for this particular type of podcast as an academic podcast with lots of archival material and experimental audio kind of – audio collage, different things like that was a real steep learning curve. I’ve done transcription of interviews where there might be one or two voices, maybe three voices max but trying to figure out how to use an existing style guide – which was an excellent tool, provided by the team, that had done this before – but trying to apply that to lots of different I guess use cases or scenarios that needed me to make some decisions. Chatting with Judy was very instrumental –just reframing transcription problems as kind of points of inquiry or kind of a jumping off point for our conversation of me asking Judy, “oh, does the producer maybe have any notes about the archival clip that they used? Was that something that re-occurred throughout that they were using as a theme, or was that a different track?” Things like music cues or overlapping audio or things like that, without the context myself, I could go down a rabbit hole of trying to listen 20 times to see if maybe there was a hidden thing I hadn’t heard, where in fact it was, there was often context from the people with the expertise around the episode, or the kind of academic expertise about certain archives or certain events in communities that was kind of instrumental for providing the context clues for a reader of a transcript. So it became not just technical information, but also information that would make the transcription more beneficial to people down the line for understanding what they were listening to.\n \n\n00:28:57\tKatherine McLeod, Zoom interview, February 2022:\tAs you were talking there, I was struck by how, in the case of this podcast, because of using so many archival audio clips, there is this question around how much information to include as to where the sound is from, or what is the sound in relation to the archives, in addition to just representing the sound in a visual format for a reader. The SpokenWeb Podcast in its sort of remixing of archival sounds raises these questions for transcription, because, again, in representing the sound is when also representing the source of the sound.\n \n\n00:29:36\tJudith Burr, Zoom interview, February 2022:\tYeah, it’s so challenging with so many of our podcast episodes to think about translating it from its audio form that we produce it to be this audio product. And then to say, what does it mean to have a written version of this? And I think I was absolutely co-learning with Kelly, like, as we like went through some of these tough, like, what do we do for this part or this part? Yeah, we really were doing some co-learning there and trying to figure out: how do we develop best practices around some of these hard points?\n \n\n00:30:14\tKatherine McLeod, Zoom interview, February 2022:\tYeah, and also realizing too that a transcript of say a SpokenWeb Podcast episode, that there could almost be, there could almost be multiple transcripts of it. That brings me to […] something that I was also struck by in the summer workshop. In hearing people’s responses to some of the examples, it was really interesting to hear […] different ways of approaching transcription.\n \n\n00:30:37\tKelly Cubbon, Zoom interview, February 2022:\tYeah, I think the two key examples that I used in the July workshop — and the workshop was kind of to take a peek behind the scenes of the decision making and the people involved in transcription and just say, we’re actively learning this and what our kind of primary motivations are, are first and foremost accessibility. And that, that is kind of a necessarily incomplete and ongoing project. And so it is never fixed [Laughs] and we’re kind of always learning ways to improve and be receptive to other people’s tools and resources and perspectives. But I think the two examples that I chose for that workshop, which were really illuminating and kind of spurred quite a lot of conversation, one involved an experimental sound and musical performance that was quite lengthy. [Archival Audio Clip: the Four Horsemen performing “Mayakovsky”: Several Voices Chanting] I believe it’s the Four Horsemen that the clip was from and we had people in the Zoom chat doing their own transcription and seeing what came of it. And, one person might have in square brackets: “a performance happens and there’s various voices.” Another person might do a paragraph long description of the different types of overlap of these voices. And I kind of just spurred that conversation that you were mentioning Katherine of writing something verbatim versus giving a context clue about something that happens and not overly worrying with the details. And I think for me that was illuminating of trying to balance what would be the most useful to someone reading a script. And I think, by and large, having a condensed description of something to represent a performance has been I think more useful than spending ages to interpret something that people are going to interpret in lots of different ways, and we can’t capture exactly what that sounded like for someone on a transcript.\n \n\n00:32:43\tJudith Burr, Zoom interview, February 2022:\tYeah. I also appreciate that point about the interpretations of each listener or reader. In this case, we use different words. We have different like embodied experiences of what the sound is.\n \n\n00:32:56\tKelly Cubbon, Zoom interview, February 2022:\tDefinitely. And things kind of like – do we call this the name of the musical file or what it sounds like? When does it become an interlude, when does it fade into the background? And sometimes that feels really significant to the listening experience, but also I’ve definitely looked back on transcriptions and thought this is – I’m possibly interrupting the reading experience of that conversation or that, archival clip or moment with too many instances of trying to be very faithful to the music coming in and out of things. So I think over time, I’ve learned to be a bit more decisive about where it would be useful to frame things like that and still indicate that there’s music happening without being overly descriptive of it.\n \n\n00:33:46\tJudith Burr, Zoom interview, February 2022:\tAre some of those interruptions actually good in a podcast transcript? I’m still not sure about this. Because when a magazine or something publishes an interview with someone that’s a publication that’s meant for print, it’s never existed to be published as an audio work necessarily. But for a podcast transcript, we’re claiming to be facilitating this written version of the episode. And so I still wonder… I think it’s great to have a ranking of priorities in that and our conversations that lead us to accessibility as the main thing that we really wanna get right in our transcripts feels really good because then we can have a lot more interesting questions while still remaining faithful to the things that feel like a big priority. But, as we do this work, there have been so many interesting questions that have come up.\n \n\n00:34:46\tKatherine McLeod, Zoom interview, February 2022:\tEspecially for overlapping sounds. It sounds like with the music too, again, thinking of if it’s, if the music is there [Start Music: Electronic Instrumental] but it’s not sort of interfering with the experience of hearing the conversation then is it worth mentioning, but it’s also it’s there as a layer and if it’s sort of continuing it’s hard to indicate that something is sort of constant cause again, in print it’s like you can mention it, but then how to, you almost want visually for it to be a sort of painted, like an ocean underneath the words [Laughs]…\n \n\n00:35:19\tJudith Burr, Zoom interview, February 2022:\tYeah. Maybe we should have a graphic novel for each episode, instead of a transcript. Like a painting. The sound can be a painting — the sound could be like a portrait behind that thing. That’ll be easy for you to do right, Kelly, and our standard timeline. [Laughter] [End Music: Electronic Instrumental]\n \n\n00:35:39\tKelly Cubbon, Zoom interview, February 2022:\tThe overlapping sound is one thing, but I think also overlapping context for lack of a better word has been something I’ve I think we’ve been working to indicate such as if someone appears in an episode in a Zoom interview and then in an archival recording of them, and that archival recording includes them speaking to the audience as an aside and then performing poetry. And then maybe they’re in kind of a more formal voiceover audio. There might be four instances of like slightly different context to indicate.\n \n\n00:36:14\tKatherine McLeod:\tIn a recent ShortCuts episode, my conversation with Kaie Kellough included overlapping voices and overlapping contexts. Here’s Kellough performing and then listening back to his own voice and to the context of those recordings.\n \n\n00:36:31\tKaie Kellough, ShortCuts 3.5, February 2022:\tSo, eventually the voice would start to like – it would sound like tape delay is nowhere. [Distorted Tape, Recording of Kaie reciting poetry: “This Prairie, this periphery is intoxicated…” ] You asked me what it was like, what I thought about when hearing it. And um, it’s, it’s strange. It’s strange to hear that kind of reflection of yourself.\n \n\n00:36:50\tJudith Burr, Zoom interview, February 2022:\tYeah. That’s, it brings up a question I have in just good storytelling in general in audio. And I think about this with every podcast episode, how much do we need to say upfront about what the listener should expect to hear? And I think this is what you’re saying about transcripts. Is there something we should say upfront about what the reader should expect to read that makes it easier? But then also remembering how sometimes in some of these episodes it works, somehow it works not having that information up front and we’re really brought along with the story that the episode is telling…\n \n\n00:37:36\tKelly Cubbon, Zoom interview, February 2022:\tDefinitely, and I think maybe after wrestling for a few episodes with the music question or the overlapping voices question it was important to me to capture that in the style guide and also explain how it – the decision was made and how it relates to the mission of the podcast and the mission of accessibility, as you mentioned, so that, when that Google doc is shared with somebody else, they’re also learning about our decision making and about the podcast, not just how do I kind of fix this one thing in this one transcript. So I think that’s been really valuable to me in these, this kind of transition from season two to season three, kind of coming together to figure out what were the sticking points or the circular conversations we were having in Google docs and various notes and emails and stuff and how do we reflect those so that we can be a bit more confident about how we’re gonna approach those instances when they come up later and having that kind of option in our back pocket.\n \n\n00:38:41\tJudith Burr, Zoom interview, February 2022:\tThat also makes me just think about in taking on any of these roles with the podcast, especially as graduate students, where we’re planning to have certain amounts of turnover in these roles, you’ve put so much thoughtfulness into that guide, that transcription guide that you’ll be able to pass onto a new person, but also in thinking about transitions for the producer role, I’ve been reflecting on that there was just a learning period that I don’t think I could have read my way out of either. And I want –do you feel, because as we were talking about, I think earlier some of this stuff is like a judgement call, like do – is us music important to transcribe right here? Or should I check in with the producers about this? Or certain questions. And in the judgement calls, in my role, I feel like, okay, I just needed to be in this role for a few months to be comfortable making them. Do you feel like the judgement calls and transcription are also something that they’ll –the person can read the style guide and then they also have to kind of get used to the judgement call part of it? How does that feel for you, Kelly??\n00:40:00\tKelly Cubbon, Zoom interview, February 2022:\tYeah, I completely agree. I think that kind of steep learning curve I was talking about was also the order of listening to things, and pausing to read the transcripts that I had written. And maybe that sounds completely obvious but I was so devoted to listening verbatim and just really trying my best and getting really tangled in spending far too much time listening to particular bits of audio because I was worried I wasn’t gonna be faithful to people’s work. And I felt quite a lot of responsibility to that and making sure it was legible and something that was valuable for people reading the transcript. But I think it was in that July workshop when we were having these kinds of exercises and discussions around this faithful verbatim versus interpretation versus what is legible to people reading a transcript and one of the participants said, “well, what is it like to read the transcript?” And it just like was a lightbulb for me of oh [Laughs] the context clues need to be at the start and not tangled up throughout.\n \n\n00:41:11\tJudith Burr, Zoom interview, February 2022:\tYeah. And I think you and Megan Butchart really led that workshop. And that was an opportunity for me to see both the way that you framed those examples from a podcast as some in that problem space of “how do we think through this?” And then also learn from Megan Butchart’s work transcribing the Sound Box collection and be able to just see the different problems that people are grappling with and how to think about ethical transcription, caring transcription, accessible transcription in these different contexts. And that was a fun way for us to think about what is unique to podcast transcription and some of the problems we’ve been working through.\n00:41:55\tKatherine McLeod, Zoom interview, February 2022:\n \n\nThank you so much for joining us today.\n \n\n00:41:57\tJudith Burr, Zoom interview, February 2022:\tYeah. I’m so glad that all three of us were able to be here to talk about it together because it does, it just is such a nice representation of the work we’ve done together.\n \n\n00:42:10\tKelly Cubbon:\t[Start Music: Ambient Electronic, Wavicles from the album Cosmosis by Bára Hladik] Bára Hladík is a Czech-Canadian writer and multimedia artist. Bára’s poetic practices often integrate found poetics from sources such as medical texts, self-help books, and medical paperwork as a gesture of transformation and reclamation amongst information that is attributed to complex bodies. She often works in multimedia arts through text, illustration, animation, video, performance and sound, exploring themes of healing, dreams, desire, care, and the body. Katherine and I were thrilled to get the chance to talk to Bára. In this conversation we talk about accessibility as an integrated practice, the healing power of sound, and transcription as a creative opportunity.\n \n\n00:42:52\tBára Hladik, Zoom interview, February 2022:\tI’m Bára Hladík and thanks so much for having me. I’m a Czech Canadian writer, editor, and multimedia artist. I have a bachelor of arts in literature from UBC and I work in many different mediums of art since then and I am tuning in from Esquimalt territory.\n \n\n00:43:17\tKatherine McLeod, Zoom interview, February 2022:\tThank you so much for joining us Bára. So we’re going to start off with a few questions about how you came to work with sound and the role that sound plays in your life. So we’re wondering what drew you to working with sound? [End Music: Ambient Electronic, Wavicles from the album Cosmosis by Bára Hladik]\n \n\n00:43:34\tBára Hladik, Zoom interview, February 2022:\tI grew up playing music around the fire with my dad and my family [Sound Effect: Fire Crackling, Musical Instruments] So like singing and guitar and just kind of collective folk music and often just humming along or shaking shakers or whatnot. So I definitely have a very instrumental background. I learned some sound production skills from someone I used to date and it was at a time where my arthritis was affecting my hands so it was difficult to play with sound in the traditional ways. So I got really into more keyboards and ambient kind of experimental sound and I definitely am drawn to sound as a way of –as I was accepting and learning the new conditions of my chronic illness and becoming okay with how I need to slow down and really, really change pace and sit with things and still transform and process without kind of like the same exertional ways we’re traditionally taught to process things. [Start Music: Ambient Electronic, Wavicles from the album Cosmosis by Bára Hladik] So sound became a way to discographies or very long ambient pieces as a way to just really heal on like a cellular level. So I think sound has a really, really amazing function to affect our bodies and our consciousness and spirits and whatnot. And retune us. [End Music: Ambient Electronic, Wavicles from the album Cosmosis by Bára Hladik]\n \n\n00:45:33\tKatherine McLeod, Zoom interview, February 2022:\tWhen you’re talking about sound as slowing down and just something that is, as you said, kind of like retuning it makes me think of a quotation that Kelly pulled up that you shared on Twitter by Ursula K. LeGuin.\n \n\n00:45:52\tKelly Cubbon, Zoom interview, February 2022:\n \n\nAnd it is “listening is an act of community, which takes space, time, and silence. Reading is a means of listening.”\n \n\n00:46:01\tKatherine McLeod, Zoom interview, February 2022:\tYeah, we were intrigued, what made you share it? Because there was lots that resonated for us, but we were wondering what, what made you share that quote?\n \n\n00:46:10\tBára Hladik, Zoom interview, February 2022:\tI was just reading that book [Sound Effect: Page Turning] and it grounds connection between literature and sound and listening and how reading is a way of listening through time. And, yeah, I think just the idea of art practice as a community form and how the connections between literature and sound and just being with each other as a act of resistance in the time where we are constantly overwhelmed with information and things are happening so fast and our bodies are expected to uphold a very rapid capitalist pace [Music: Bass Plucking] [Sound Effect: Ticking Clock] and our time is monetized. So I think these forms of creativity that are very old, have always been a way for us to create community and connect and communicate beyond just day to day dialogue. [End Music: Bass and Ticking Clock]\n \n\n00:47:23\tKatherine McLeod, Zoom interview, February 2022:\tYeah. And even the way in that quote too, though, the idea that listening –really emphasizing that listening in the making of community, it takes time, it takes time and space and that’s something that’s not just gonna happen instantaneously. And then it’s sort of reminding one that of the time and effort and the work that is involved to make those things happen.\n \n\n00:47:46\tBára Hladik, Zoom interview, February 2022:\tAnd every form has its own value and accessibility. Reading and listening are so tied and it, something may be sound in a way that isn’t so literary, but it’s still valuable. And part of reading can be quite laborious. So I find, I turn to sound when I’m too tired to read or I’ve taken in too much of that type of information but there’s stillI feel like they’re tied.\n \n\n00:48:30\tKelly Cubbon, Zoom interview, February 2022:\tIn podcasting written transcriptions are often a common entry point for people to start thinking about accessibility. People might ask, why do people create transcriptions if this is an audio medium? It is quite a labour intensive process to create them. It’s something that we obviously value and prioritize, but it kind of gets people asking questions sometimes about accessibility and learning about accessibility. So I was wondering, as someone who works in lots of literary and art spaces, what do you find people tend to understand or misunderstand about disability and accessibility in the arts?\n \n\n00:49:11\tBára Hladik, Zoom interview, February 2022:\tI think people often think of it as an afterthought. They’re like, okay, we’ve got this project. Okay. Like how do we make it accessible now? And it’s kind of thought of as extra. And I think that the process of creation in itself and production and development and whatnot it benefits a lot from like, if you’re thinking about it from the get go and it’s an integrative design. And I think people kind of think of it a oh, we’ll make it more accessible to this small group. But I think it actually enhances the piece for everyone, like for – in a transcript for a podcast makes it more accessible, but it also makes it really good for archival purposes. You can repurpose the information in a different way. You can make a Zine. There’s different ways that even people who are listening to the podcast and they forget just one word, they didn’t quite get it, they can go to the transcript. And I think it’s just – it’s a lot simpler than people expect, even if it’s more laborious. Because it’s more creative to share something in multiple ways, and broaden your audience and that may broaden your audience to more than people with disabilities.I feel like accessibility is often simply thought of in the terms of disability, but I think it should be thought of in terms just accessibility to people without disabilities as well. I love transcription because, even though it’s part of the making and it creates it into a new medium, so then it becomes, it almost becomes a new piece or version. And yeah, then it lends like — I almost see it as an opportunity because I’m a poet and a writer and a researcher, so I’m like, “yes, this is the juice! This is the meat.” As much as it’s good to have a recording of something is to be able to view it and listen to it. I’m probably not gonna do that, but I can glance over the transcript, pull out a few ideas. It’s just like, I feel like, a transcript is a creative opportunity. [Start Music: Ambient Electronic, Wavicles from the album Cosmosis by Bára Hladik]\n \n\n00:51:33\tKelly Cubbon:\tThe music that plays throughout Bára’s interview comes from her 2021 ambient electronic album Cosmosis. During our Zoom chat, we took a cue from Bára’s work to take a break from our screens, pause, and listen. Afterwards, Bára was kind enough to share her process for creating the album. Here, she reflects on the creative benefits of working in multiple mediums, disability, and the healing power of sound.\n \n\n00:52:06\tBára Hladik, Zoom interview, February 2022:\tWell, this particular album – I’ve done so many different things over the years and I often work in many mediums because with my arthritis I have to be very flexible with what I’m doing. So sometimes I can’t write at the same pace so I’ve learned to work with many different mediums interchangeably so I can adjust to my body’s needs as I go. But yeah, that particular album was made over a few years. I –the process of making that album was very much using sound as a way to attune and wanting to facilitate a half hour of a process of someone just being able to be with their body and move or be with their self and their thoughts. Yeah. Very intentionally don’t have any sound –sorry, voice or words in it because I wanted it to just be very self in cosmos kind of communication. I finished the album while I was undergoing radioactive treatment at a traditional spa in Czech in the Czech Republic. And so it would be a daily schedule of different treatments, laser, magnet, hydrotherapy, but the main therapy is the radium bath. And it’s just like a bath with water from this ancient well that’s very high in radium and basically it ionizes your cells to have a rejuvenating effect. [Start Music: Ambient Electronic with Water Sounds, Erudition from the album Cosmosis by Bára Hladik] And yeah, like I said, as part of the medical system there, so people with my illness actually have a month a year covered to go get this treatment because it’s so successful. So, a lot of the sound, the water sounds I actually recorded there. The whole production part of it was I had all the sound, many of the synthesizer sounds prerecorded, but the whole production sound part was like a roadblock for me. So I focused in while I was at treatment, and added a bunch of ambient sounds and whatnot. But yeah, that was very cool. And that the sound definitely of the album reminds me of being there and of going through that experience.\n \n\n00:54:37\tKelly Cubbon, Zoom interview, February 2022:\tYeah. Again, thank you for sharing that. And thanks for putting that into the world. It’s meant a lot to me, the album to listen to it over the course of the pandemic and I returned to it a lot. So thank you.\n \n\n00:54:48\tBára Hladik, Zoom interview, February 2022:\n \n\nOh, that’s so nice to hear!\n \n\n00:54:49\tKelly Cubbon, Zoom interview, February 2022:\tYeah. [Laughs] Definitely. It’s an exhale moment of returning to the body. And again, thank you for sharing the details of where you recorded and captured that sound and what it means to you as well.\n \n\n00:55:11\tKatherine McLeod, Zoom interview, February 2022:\tMaybe to frame my question about music and poetry just a little differently of the connections between your sort of your approaches to music, poetry, how they’ve influenced your role as a facilitator, as a community organizer, and advocacy work that you’ve been doing there. [End Music: Ambient Electronic with Water Sounds, Erudition from the album Cosmosis by Bára Hladik]\n \n\n00:55:30\tBára Hladik, Zoom interview, February 2022:\tYeah, I mean, having skills and sound has been really great for accessibility because then it’s pretty intuitive to be like, oh, of course we’re gonna have a sound version and a text version, bare minimum. And yeah, seeing how to make sound more accessible, cuz often people are like, oh, if it’s read by a screen reader, therefore it’s accessible. ButI have an eye condition where sometimes the laptop’s too bright and I use a screen reader. But the screen reader in itself is very alienated because it’s very robotic. It’s very monotone. It’s not, it doesn’t feel accessible to me. It doesn’t make me feel the same as reading a piece. So thinking about sound – I’m seeing a lot of literary magazines doing this, starting to do this too, like the Hamilton Arts and Letters did a disability poetics issue and they had folks read every single piece. So there was audio recordings and the transcript is the piece. So that connection between text and sound was really cool because it really brought you into the work as well, instead of being able to experience it with a screen reader, but it being quite alienating and I think, yeah, it’s suddenly when everything has to be in this robotic tone, it can be quite discouraging. So thinking about, yeah, even making – adding ambience in the background to make it more podcast-style there’s many ways to think of the forms and I think it’s cool the connections between sound and music and poetry because they really lend a creative lens to approaching these mediums. [Start Music: Ambient Electronic with Water Sounds, Erudition from the album Cosmosis by Bára Hladik]\n \n\n00:57:36\tKatherine McLeod, Zoom interview, February 2022:\tYeah. That’s fantastic to hear about because you work across disciplines, you’re sort of attuned to the different potentials within those and always thinking about how you can bring them together. So it can really hear that in all of your work it’s inspiring. So thank you.\n \n\n00:57:58\tBára Hladik, Zoom interview, February 2022:\n \n\nWell, thank you so much for having me. It really means a lot.\n \n\n00:58:04\tKelly Cubbon:\tFor more of Bára’s art, writing, music, and facilitation, see her website. Her newly released book New Infinity is available from Metatron Press. See show notes for links.\n \n\n00:58:18\tKatherine McLeod:\tListening back to our interview with Bára made me think about our conversation with Maya Rae Opphenheimer, who we heard from at the start in response to a question that you asked Kelly about community building. [End Music: Ambient Electronic with Water Sounds, Erudition from the album Cosmosis by Bára Hladik]\n \n\n00:58:31\tKelly Cubbon, Zoom interview, March 2022:\tSo this question is about transcripts as part of community building. And I’ll just preface it by saying, when you were sharing earlier about having life hacks for your own dyslexia, it really resonated with me as a neurodivergent person as well. And I think when we share these things, it kind of can be a light bulb for connecting to others. And having a way of like, oh I wasn’t just doing this alone, or I wasn’t doing this kind of strange thing by myself, there’s actually people being incredibly creative and connecting to each other through these things as well. So, we are wondering how transcripts have been part of community building for you. You’ve shared some about your classroom experiences, but maybe in online spaces as well for like discussions around transcripts as a way to connect to other people rather way to be, to connect to other people’s creative practices as well maybe.\n \n\n00:59:25\tMaya Rae Oppenheimer, Zoom interview, March 2022:\tYeah, well maybe – it’s an experience I share, but I definitely would love to point attention towards a project, but it’s a duo Shannon Finnegan and Bojana Coklyat: the Alt Text Poetry Project. And I first came across their work when Shannon Finnegan was at the Banff Centre on the west coast and was looking at alt poetry as a way of writing about sculpture. And their work is very interesting that, when, you know, Shannon and Bojana are working together and thinking about alt text, it’s not just as descriptive text, but also as critical and creative writing in its own sense. So shouldn’t be dismissed as a necessary provision, I mean, or even like an optional provision [Laughs], it’s progress if we see it as necessary. But it is a valid mode of creative and intellectual writing. And I know Carmen Papalia, who identifies as a non-visual learner and as a performance artist, as well as sculptor and activist, is advocating for different ways of writing about art and engaging with art. And the idea of making a transcript for an artwork that is usually read through visual means only is very cool [Laughs]. And how we can then bring in different resonances of texture and context and association and haptics and smell — that I find as a way of extending how art is often thought to already build community, but it, sometimes, really leaves out community. So the idea of transcription, not just for audio podcasting, which I think in itself is, in the definition of a podcast, is a community building media, [Start Music: Flowing Instrumental] but to do that with art and to then think about those as gateway moments of transcribing and documenting. But as you said, not viewing that as — okay, transcription done, this is the thing — but that it’s another iteration of reading culture.\n \n\n01:01:35\tKatherine McLeod:\tIn making this episode. And listening back to these conversations about transcription, what have we learned about what transcription sounds like?\n \n\n01:01:45\tKelly Cubbon:\tWell, the process of transcription sounds like collaboration, like a conversation. And I think that you could really hear that in our interviews. We were all thinking aloud together about the process. And that’s what happens when putting together a transcript.\n \n\n01:02:00\tKatherine McLeod:\tIt is a process that invites access to content through multiple voices and multiple senses. We could just as easily be asking, what does transcription feel like, Smell like, look like, taste like? It makes us think about how we are experiencing content.\n \n\n01:02:19\tKelly Cubbon:\tIt also makes me think about how much this episode is about making the processes of collaboration more transparent, and being able to actively share the production decisions of a podcast episode and its accompanying transcription to show that this work is ongoing and evolving.\n \n\n01:02:32\tKatherine McLeod:\tIt’s not a finished product at all in that the transcript is something that is in dialogue with the media that accompanies it. And in dialogue with those who engage with it.\n \n\n01:02:43\tKelly Cubbon:\tThe transcript is there as a point of access into the material. But really that is only the start of the conversation. [End Music: Flowing Instrumental]\n \n\n01:03:11\tHannah McGregor:\t[Start Music: SpokenWeb Podcast 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 contributors, Katherine McLeod and Kelly Cubbon. Our podcast project manager and supervising producer is Kate Moffatt. And we are excited to welcome to the team, our new sound designer and audio engineer Miranda Eastwood. Our episodes are transcribed by Kelly Cubbon. 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’d particularly love to hear your thoughts and suggestions on improving transcription accessibility. And stay tuned to your podcast feed later this month for ShortCuts with Katherine McLeod, mini stories about how literature sounds. [Start Music: SpokenWeb Podcast Theme Music]\n \n\n \n\n\n"],"score":2.7048998},{"id":"9641","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 S5E7, ShortCuts Live! Talking about Listening with Moynan King, Erica Isomura, and Rémy Bocquillon, 3 June 2024, McLeod"],"item_title_source":["SpokenWeb Podcast web page."],"item_title_note":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/shortcuts-live-special-edition/"],"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 5"],"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":[2024],"material_description":["[]"],"digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://cdn.simplecast.com/audio/28a9da1f-8cca-410c-b5d7-8165a73f9394/episodes/c9448971-5d6f-4edc-8389-6965f8c8fcd1/audio/cd747ce4-9bf8-4436-a9e9-a0a6013b5185/default_tc.mp3?nocache\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"spokenweb-june-episode-long-shortcuts-master-v22.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"44.1 kHz\",\"duration\":\"00:54:55\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"(52,728,937 bytes)\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"MP3 audio\",\"title\":\"spokenweb-june-episode-long-shortcuts-master-v22\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/shortcuts-live-special-edition/\"}]"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"2024-06-03\",\"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\":\"SHOW NOTES \\n\\nTRACE at Theatre Passe Muraille\\n\\nSteve Roach, Quiet Music 1\\n\\nFalse Knees, Montreal-based graphic artist drawing birds talking\\n\\nÉliane Radigue\\n\\nKishi Bashi, “Manchester.” (Did you catch that this song is about writing a novel and Erica had just talked about novels? Not to mention the bird references. There are many more Kishi Bashi songs to listen to, but linking this since we played a clip from this one in the episode for these serendipitous reasons!)\\n\\n\"}]"],"_version_":1853670549755002880,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:54.290Z","contents":["In this month’s episode of The SpokenWeb Podcast, ShortCuts is taking over the airwaves.\n\nShortCuts is the monthly minisode that takes you on a deep dive into archival sound through a short ‘cut’ of audio. In this fifth season, ShortCuts producer Katherine McLeod has been presenting a series of live conversations recorded at the 2023 SpokenWeb Symposium – and in this full episode, we’re rolling out the last of those recordings. You’ll hear from Moynan King, Erica Isomura and Rémy Bocquillon. You’ll also hear the voices of our then-supervising producer Kate Moffatt and our then-sound designer Miranda Eastwood, who was there behind-the-scenes recording the audio and who joins in the conversations too.\n\nListening is at the heart of each conversation, and each conversation ends with the question: What are you listening to now? That ends up being quite an eclectic playlist and do check the Show Notes below for links.\n\nIf you like what you hear, check out the rest of Season Five of ShortCuts for conversations with Jennifer Waits, Brian Fauteaux, and XiaoXuan Huang. And, of course, this month’s episode with the longest ShortCuts yet: “ShortCuts Live! Talking about Listening with Moynan King, Erica Isomura, and Rémy Bocquillon.”\n\n00:01\tSpokenWeb Podcast Theme Song:\t[Instrumental music overlapped with feminine voice]\nCan you hear me? I don’t know how much projection to do here.\n00:19\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.\n[Music fades]\nMy name is Hannah McGregor–\n00:37\tKatherine McLeod:\tAnd my name is Katherine McLeod. And each month, we’ll be bringing you different stories that explore the intersection of sound, poetry, literature, and history, created by scholars, poets, and students and artists from across Canada.\nIn this month’s episode, Shortcuts is taking over the airwaves. Shortcuts is a monthly minisode, or short episode, distributed on the same podcast feed. Produced by me, Katherine McLeod, Shortcuts takes you on a deep dive into archival sound through a shortcut of audio.\nAnd it wouldn’t quite be Shortcuts without the Shortcuts intro. So, let’s press play on the music and begin.\n01:23\tShortcuts Theme Music\t[Electronic music begins playing.]\n01:27\tKatherine McLeod:\tWelcome to Shortcuts. In season five of Shortcuts, you’ve been hearing Shortcuts Live, conversations recorded at the 2023 SpokenWeb symposium.\nFor this episode, we’re rolling out the last of those recordings. You’ll hear from Moyen King, Erica Isomura, and Rémy Bocquillon. You’ll also hear the voices of Kate Moffatt, our then-supervising producer. And you’ll hear Miranda Eastwood, who is there behind the scenes recording the audio. Miranda even jumps into the conversation from time to time.\nListening is at the heart of each conversation, and each conversation ends with a question: What are you listening to now? That ends up being quite a playlist and do check the show notes for those links.\n02:22\tKatherine McLeod:\tIf you like what you hear, check out the rest of this season five of Shortcuts. There, you’ll find the other Shortcuts live conversations from that same symposium. You’ll hear Jennifer Waits talking about the magic in the archives of college radio stations and Brian Fauteux on widescreen radio. Yes, widescreen radio. And Xiaoxuan Huang speaking about “hybrid poetics” and much more in that conversation.\nSo, without further ado, here is the longest Shortcuts episode yet: Shortcuts Live, Talking About Listening with Moynan King, Erica Isomura, and Rémy Bocquillon.\n03:04\tShortcuts Theme Music\t[Music fades away.]\n03:10\tKate Moffatt:\tSo, hello and welcome to an episode of Shortcuts Live. I am recording this with Moynan King at the 2023 SpokenWeb Symposium at the University of Alberta.\nMoynan, thank you so much for joining us today.\n03:26\tMoynan King:\tOh my gosh, thank you for having me.\n03:28\tKate Moffatt:\tYeah! Um, oh, and I should introduce myself quickly because this is not the voice people usually hear on SpokenWeb Shortcuts. I am Kate Moffatt, the supervising producer, stepping in for our intrepid usual host, Katherine McLeod.\nSo, to get us going here, Moynan, would you just introduce yourself for us briefly?\n03:47\tMoynan King:\tYeah. My name is Moynan King. I’m a theater artist, performance artist, writer, you know, sometimes academic. I’m doing a postdoc at Western University, and the subject of my postdoctoral studies is “Queer Resonance.” So, I’m exploring the concept of sound as queer, queerness as sound, within communities and also within performance practices and art in general.\n04:24\tKate Moffatt:\tIncredible. Yeah. I cannot wait to chat and hear more about this. But I think we’ll kick off by listening to what you’ve brought for us today.\n04:33\tMoynan King:\tSounds good. So, for the listeners, it’s about a minute and 20 seconds. [Overlap from Kate: Perfect.] So, we’ll just have a listen.\n04:42\tAudio Recording:\t[Audio of harmonizing voices starts playing]\n06:09\tMoynan King:\tI guess that’s where it stops. There’s just a bit of dead air at the end.\n06:14\tKate Moffatt:\tWonderful. The listeners won’t be able to see this, but I had to literally put my hand on my chest. I was feeling that in my chest while I was listening. That was so fantastic.\n06:26\tMoynan King:\tThank you.\n06:27\tKate Moffatt:\tYeah, I was gonna say, tell us, what we were just listening to?\n06:29\tMoynan King:\tOkay. So, this is a track called “Ghosts,” and it’s a composition by Tristan R Whiston from a show that Tristan and I co-created called “Trace,” that we started to develop back in, oh my gosh, 2012.\nIt started as an installation performance. We toured it across Canada. So we went to Regina; I know you’re from Saskatchewan. [Overlap from Kate: I am]. In 2015, we went to Regina, Yellowknife, Whitehorse, and Montreal. There’s someone else in our booth from Montreal. [Miranda Eastwood laughs]\nAnd then we put it away, put it in its massive storage cases, and then Theatre Passe Muraille just asked us to remount it. And when we did that, we turned it from being an installation into a play. So, we tore it apart and put it forward. [Overlap from Kate: Wow.]\nAnd, so, what you’re listening to here is a track composed by Tristan Wiston; composed by him and of him.\n07:32\tMoynan King:\tSo, Tristan is a trans singer, performer, community activist. And over the course of his transition – that is over the course of the period during which he started taking “T” [Referring to Testosterone] – he recorded his voice almost every day, repeatedly singing the same songs and, you know, talking and singing and kind of expressing himself into this recorder and then also singing repeatedly over and over these songs.\nAnd one important thing to know about Tristan is that prior to transition, he was an incredible soprano singer. And so had one of those perfect high-pitched voices. And for many, many years, Tristan and I worked together in a group, Toronto-based group called “The Boy Choir of Lesbos.”\nAnd, so, we used to, there were a bunch of us, and we would dress as boys and we would sing in, you know, the harmonies of an Anglican boy choir. [Overlap from Kate: Right.] And so, we would sing and that was just sort of part of the collaborative history of Tristan and I. [Overlap from Kate: Incredible.]\nSo, Tristan came to me, and I think it was around 2011, and said, “I really wanna do something with these tracks. I wanna do something with all this material that I have.” And he’d already, then at that point, done a podcast. Well, you know, I guess at that time we didn’t call it a podcast. I think it had a different name, right? [Laughs]\n08:57\tKate Moffatt:\tAn audio essay. A piece–\n9:00\tMoynan King:\tYes, yes. An audio essay. Thank you.\n9:03\tKate Moffatt:\tYeah, you’re welcome.\n09:03\tMoynan King:\t–called “Middle C,” and that was with the CBC [The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation] – I mentioned that because I believe it’s still in the CBC archives. But he brought it to me because he wanted to do something more experimental with it, something less linear.\nSo, we started to work with all these tracks. And so, we did like tons of listening over, you know, a long period of time and kind of compartmentalize things. So, the important thing to know about that track, and in fact about “Trace” the show, is that all of the sound is made from Tristan’s voice–\n09:38\tKate Moffatt:\tWow–\n09:38\tMoynan King:\tAnd so a lot of the sounds that you hear in this track are fragments taken from different periods, different stages of his transition. And one of the big discoveries we made with, originally working with these tracks – and to be clear, Trey Justin is the composer. [Overlap from Kate: Okay.] So, but in a way maybe I, you could kind of call me a “doctor.” A “compositional dramaturg,” you know, because we worked so much together on the creation of the show, and those compositions were being created at that time. But so just to be clear, this is Tristan’s composition, but that I was involved in the process of it. And so yeah, that’s what you were listening to.\n10:21\tKate Moffatt:\tWow. That’s fantastic. And I’ve already got so many questions around things like the amount of audio that you end up with, like the recordings that become almost like an archive of sorts, that you’re then kind of like working with and engaging with, you know.\nI just think that’s so, so interesting. Wow. Okay. I don’t even know where to start with this. I feel so delighted. So I guess, and I would love to kind of tap into a little bit of that kind of collaboration that you were talking about. I’d love to hear more about that and maybe to think a little bit too about kind of like the role that listening is playing in that I feel like, you know, when it’s multiple people, at multiple ears, and especially working with that much audio. Anyway, I, anything there, that you would like to kind of speak to? I feel like that’s so rich.\n11:13\tMoynan King:\tYeah. It’s so interesting because I think just to address the topic of collaboration, you know, that it’s a collaboration. This piece, “Trace,” is a collaboration, you know, first of all for Tristan with himself [Laughs], you know–\n11:30\tKate Moffatt:\tOh, yeah, yeah, yeah–\n11:31\tMoynan King:\t–With all of his selves, you know, over time. [Overlap from Kate: Totally.]\nAnd then of course with me and, also thinking about collaboration and, artistic collaborations, Tristan and I like to say we’ve been working together since the late 19 hundreds. And because I think saying it that way gives you a sense of the depth of our collaboration and the amount of time and how much we have both changed in many, many ways. And also, how we have not changed in many other ways. You know?\n12:06\tKate Moffatt:\tThat’s such a gorgeous way to think about it.\n12:08\tMoynan King:\tSo, when we, and so when we were, when we created the first piece and, so it’s, again, it’s called “Trace.” And we are the co-creators of it. He kind of takes up certain roles and I take up other roles, but we always developed the thing together. You know, we really had a vision of creating this very immersive piece. And I still love that style, and I’m really committed to that style, like immersive installation, performance, that sort of stuff.\nBut when Theater Passe Muraille, which is a theatre in Toronto, it’s a very old theatre. It’s been around since I think the 1960s. And the space is certainly conducive to certain kinds of performance, but it’s very much a, like theatre, you know, with an audience and a playing space–\n12:56\tKate Moffatt:\tYes–\n12:56\tMoynan King:\tAnd so, what was exciting for us as collaborators was when Theater Passe Muraille approached us to remount – and you can’t see the air quotes, but I’m doing them [Laughs] – remount “Trace,” we just said “Yes.”\nBecause, you know, coming outta the pandemic, we’re like, “Oh God, great. Yes. Like, let’s just do a show. Oh, yeah.” You know, everything has been so crazy, and you all know what I mean.\nSo we just said “yes.” And then of course, at our first meeting, we were both like, “Yeah, but we’re not gonna do the same show” [Laughs]. We’re not even [Laughs], we’re not even gonna tell Theater Passe Muraille because we don’t want any questions. We just wanna do what we wanna do. But the important thing to understand, I think, about this piece, in terms of its like thematic, and this is very much connected to the topic of collaboration and community and the concept of becoming, this is something we were working with a lot that it’s an ongoing process of inventing and reinventing yourself, you know?\n13:57\tMoynan King:\tAnd this idea of like coming out, which is something we do over and over and over again, you know. And there’s a line in the new “Trace” where Tristan’s talking about his sister’s gender reveal party for a child, and then he says “I, nobody ever threw me a gender reveal party. I have to do it myself all the time.” [Laughs]. You know, kind of…And so this idea, it says, connected to this. And so these themes of, these taking the themes of Tristan’s unique experience as a performer and as a singer, and then kind of applying them to broader experiences and to the idea that, to ideas that are familiar to everyone, then that is that non…that stasis is counter to life. That, as long as we are alive, we are changing, and we are becoming. We–\n14:54\tKate Moffatt:\tNever stay the same–\n14:54\tMoynan King:\tYeah. And so the piece had to change too, because the last time we had performed it prior to this was 2015, and we had changed.\n15:02\tKate Moffatt:\tAbsolutely. [Overlap from Moynan: You know?] Okay. And actually, that was the next question that I wanted to take up was you talked about changing it from an “installation” into something.\nAnd it was interesting ’cause as you were, as you were telling us, you even were using your hands to indicate how you had to kind of “break it down,” and you moved your hands in a sweeping motion, and then you were like, and then you pushed away from yourself. You said we had to put it forward, right? [Overlap from Moynan: Yeah.]\nYou had to really reorient yourself [Overlap from Moynan: Yeah.] for the piece. And I thought that was so interesting ’cause to go back, even to my own, like my hand going directly to my chest, like a couple of seconds in, I was like, I could feel it in my chest and then I could feel it in my mouth and it was somehow just this extremely embodied listening experience.\nSo I would love to hear more about what that was like, having to think about the ways in which this piece and the show itself even like that, it’s just the embodiment of the archive that’s creating it. And the process that it was. And anything I did this last time, I very, I’m good at asking twisty questions. So anything there that you’d like to take up? I’d love to hear more about.\n16:07\tMoynan King:\tWell, I think there are a couple of key things that you brought up there. And one of them is that shape, changing the shape of a piece. And, for the listener that, yes, when I was talking about the installation, I kind of moved my fingers into sort of circular motion to sort of indicate like a space within which…And then when I talked about the theatre as Kate said, I put my hands and pushed away. So it’s like putting something out towards the audience so much, and I’m directly addressing you.\nAnd so changing the shape of a piece changes the fundamental quality and essence of the piece. Right? [Overlap from Kate: Yeah.] And then I’ll, I’d like to also talk about the archive a little bit more after that. [Overlap from Kate: Please. Yeah.]\nBut when we decided to do that, just to sort of give you a bit more information, there is some stuff online, which I can give you a link to some of these sounds, are online if anybody wants to listen to more of them.\n17:09\tMoynan King:\tBut, the idea we started with was this idea kind of an idea of Tristan walking through a forest of his own voices. [Overlap from Kate: Wow.]\nYou know, you have in your studio here the YSM5s [Yorkville Sound YSM5 are compact powered studio monitors] beautiful speakers. We had 10 of those. When we created the piece, you know, we first showed it in the summer of 2012 and then toured it in 2015.\nWhen we did that, we had to hire someone to create custom software for us in order to channel the 12 different tracks to 12 different speakers. Sorry, 10, 10, sorry, my numbers come from another iteration. But anyway, so the 10, the 10 speakers, and of course now you can just do that on QLab [QLab is a cue-based multimedia playback software], right? Like, it’s like, and so interesting just in terms of change and time and how the technology has changed along with us, and how in 2012 we were so cutting edge, you know?\n18:09\tKate Moffatt:\tRight, right–\n18:10\tMoynan King:\tAnd now basically it’s something anybody can do if you can have 12 if you can own the 10 speakers [Overlap from Kate: Right, right.] [Laughter] and the cable to get them, not a small thing to do. [Overlap from Kate: Yeah, yeah.]\nNot a small thing to have access to those things. So we were really working with this idea of change and, a lot of the key songs that Tristan was singing over and over as his voice changed were very water-related. Okay. So one of those, the “Waters Wide,” and the other one is called, I think, called “I Am Sailing.” And so interesting. And so we used that theme, and we created kind of a beach scenario, and we had these three huts, and one of them was sort of Tristan’s “Command Central,” and he operated the entire show.\n18:56\tMoynan King:\tAt some point in our development rehearsal process, I remember coming into rehearsal one day and just saying to Tristan, “You have to do everything.” So it’s like, it was like, I, you know, we were creating the piece together, but then when it actually came to the performance, he had to control everything.\nAnd I feel like that was really connected to the thematic of it, that it was, everything was coming out of his body and that this environment represented his whole body. And then he was kind of like the homunculus, if you know, that you would know that term as someone who studies that era. [Overlap from Kate: Yeah.]\nAnyway, that’s what that was. And then we also recorded, set up booths, and had an interactive element where the audience recorded their voices, too.\n19:44\tKate Moffatt:\tThat’s very cool.\n19:45\tMoynan King:\tSo trying to share with the audience this experience that Tristan had of sitting and recording your own voice. And so we set it up with like fragment sentence fragments and ask people to finish them. So we have this incredible archive segue. Here I go segue.\n19:59\tKate Moffatt:\tYes, segue. That was beautifully done.\n20:02\tMoynan King:\tVoices from across the country of people completing the same sentences. And it’s a massive archive. And we use it, we use it in Toronto at the end of the show, so we finish the show with it.\nBut I feel like there’s another thing there. It’s, and I don’t know, [Overlap from Kate: Yeah. Yeah.] it’s untapped. [Overlap from Kate: Yeah. Yeah.]\nI don’t know what it is. So then when we went to do the second iteration, or no, sorry, the latest iteration, because really even in 12 to 15, there were a number of iterations and turn the show out. So again, I’m pushing my hands out in front of me to, for an audience. Early on in our developmental discussions, we started thinking about a lot, about time and change and how much we’ve changed and our archive. So then we reached back further into history prior to, you know, Tristan’s transition in the end of the “Boy Choir” into the deep, into the “Boy Choir” archives.\n20:53\tMoynan King:\tSo we used that material.\nAnd so in 1997, we had done a production, the “Boy Choir of Lesbos and Lord of the Flies.” So we did a production of “Lord of the Flies.” [Overlap from Kate: Oh, wow.]\nAnd we luckily have this incredible VHS [Video Home System] tape of it. So, you know, I mean, back when we were doing VHS, we were like, “Oh my God, it’s not film,” [Laughs]. And now we’re like, “Oh my God, it’s VHS, it’s a VHS,” [Laughs].\nSo that’s really exciting. And so we brought in these archives of the “Boy Choir” and integrated these images with this new material. And then in the process of that, at some point, once we decided to bring in the “Boy Choir,” we thought, “Oh, we need a new choir. We need to make a new choir.” And we need to make a choir that both Tristan and I could be in. So we created this non-binary choir that we then called the “Epic Choir of Trace Land.” [Overlap from Kate: Wow.] And so the show, our show in Toronto ends with the “Epic Choir of Trace Land,” and we plan to keep the “Epic Choir” going, actually. So–\n21:58\tKate Moffatt:\tI’m obsessed with this. I love that so much. This is incredible. And just, you’re talking and I’m like, I’m almost getting, I’m getting goosebumps. Because this is like, you’ve got so many different kinds of archives happening here. And like, intersecting and almost like creating a new one. And I just think this is, it’s so rich, it’s so the possibility, everything here. Oh, wow. And the embodiment and the, oh, all of it. It’s so good. Okay. Last question to wrap up here. [Overlap from Moynan: Okay.] I wanna ask [Overlap from Moynan: Yes.]: What you’re listening to now, like either at the conference or just kind of generally what’s, what are you listening to?\n22:34\tMoynan King:\tSo interesting, because that was the question you asked me. And the reason I brought this was because our show just closed on Sunday. [Overlap from Kate: Oh, yeah.] So all I’ve been listening to is “Trace,” right? Like, we just closed. So I’ve been listening to that.\nAnd then of course, you know, I don’t, I presented at the conference yesterday, and right now I’m engaged in a process of creating what I call “meditations.” And so other than “Trace,” I’ve been listening to meditations and to meditative music. And of course, working on my own material with that. But like last night when I went to bed, I listened to Steve Roach’s “Quiet Music 1.” Highly recommend it [Laughs[, go on YouTube, “Quiet Music 1,” play it quietly. Yep. 1970s experimental electronica. Yep. So that’s it.\n23:38\tKate Moffatt:\tIncredible. Moynan, thank you so much for sitting down and talking to us about this today and for playing the clip. This has just been such a fantastic conversation. Thank you again.\n23:48\tMoynan King:\tThank you very much, Kate. Thanks for listening and thanks for inviting me. It’s wonderful to be here.\n23:53\tKate Moffatt:\t[Background ambient music starts playing] Yeah. This was so good. Thank you. Alright. Yay.\n23:58\tMiranda Eastwood:\tYay.\n23:58\tKate Moffatt:\tOkay. I’m gonna hit stop, which I did last time.\n24:00\tMusic:\t[Ambient music plays faintly]\n24:10\tKate Moffatt:\tOkay. So, hi and welcome back to Shortcuts. This is another episode of Shortcuts Live at the University of Alberta.\nWe are here for the 2023 SpokenWeb Symposium, and we are actually sitting outside if you can hear [Laughs] if you can hear some of our wonderful ambient sounds right now.\nIt has been so insanely beautiful and hot this week. I think it’s about, what do we say, 27 degrees right now? It’s warm.\nMy name is Kate Moffitt. I’m the project manager and supervising producer of the SpokenWeb podcast, stepping in for our usual host and producer, Katherine McLeod. And I am so excited to be joined by Erica Isomura today. Erica, would you mind telling us a little bit about yourself?\n24:52\tErica Isomura:\tSure. Hi everyone. Thanks for having me. My name is Erica, and I am a writer, a poet, and currently an MFA [Master of Fine Arts] student, actually at the University of Guelf. I like drawing, gardening, being outside. I currently live in Toronto, but I was born and raised in New Westminster in Vancouver.\n25:17\tKate Moffatt:\tI love New West [Laughs].\n25:20\tErica Isomura:\tYeah, and it’s really great to be here in Edmonton in Treaty Six Territory. I’ve been really enjoying being here.\n25:25\tKate Moffatt:\tIt’s been so, so lovely. It’s been a great week. Amazing. Okay. Well, we’re gonna listen to something. I don’t know if you wanna say a couple words or if you wanna just, are we gonna jump in?\n25:33\tErica Isomura:\tLet’s just jump into it, and we can chat about it afterwards. So hopefully the volume is up on this. [Wrong audio plays] Oh, sorry. That’s the wrong audio [Laughs].\n25:45\tKate Moffatt:\tThat’s okay.\n25:48\tErica Isomura:\tThat was cool, though, [Laughs]. [Overlap: That was it.]\n25:52\tAudio Recording:\t[Audio recording of chirping and nature sounds]\n26:39\tKate Moffatt:\tWow. Thank you so much. Please tell me what we were just listening to. I feel like there are so many cool layers here because we’re currently sitting outside. What was that?\n26:45\tErica Isomura:\tThat was recorded on a road trip that I took with my sibling to Prince Rupert. We drove from our hometown all the way up north to a three-and-a-half-day drive to Prince Rupert, which is on the northwest coast.\nAnd that audio was of a group of European starlings that were gathered on this, under this dock, on this building where I think a ferry comes in. And so there were so many birds. I hadn’t seen so many like European starlings gathered together before. And it was really cool to see a bird that was also familiar.\nSince being here in Edmonton, I’ve actually seen magpies for the first time. I definitely took some video footage of them on my way to the campus, and I hadn’t seen them before. So it’s always exciting to see new birds and also cool to see birds that you’re familiar with.\n27:44\tKate Moffatt:\tI wanted to ask, ’cause I know I attended your fantastic plenary panel yesterday. And thinking about the ways in which I guess I just, I’ve been thinking about kind of like nature and nature sounds all week and how we listen to it and how we re-listen to it after when we record it, and kind of how we end up being these sort of like mediators between that sound as it’s originally happening and then, and listening to it later.\nSo, can you speak a little bit more, maybe just about listening generally? It could also be the role of listening in what you pick, choose to record, pick up, and how you plan to revisit it or your research.\n28:22\tErica Isomura:\tYeah. Well, it’s interesting ’cause I don’t really, it’s interesting being at this conference ’cause I don’t really consider myself a sound artist. So I haven’t considered myself in that way before. Although I did this, this sound project that, you know, we brought to the conference this week. But then when I stopped to think about it, there’s such a sonic, important sonic quality to poetry and to writing and storytelling. Which is much more, you know, I do identify with those things as a writer, and I’ve been thinking a lot about non-visual ways of engaging with stories this past semester, I was TA-ing [Working as a “teacher assistant”] an “Intro to Storytelling,” “Intro to Creative Writing” class for first-year students. And a lot of new writers are really focused on visual cues in their work. [Overlap from Kate: Interesting.]\nLike, “so-and-so” sees this, it’s green, it’s round, you know like they’re not, there’s like a textural element that sometimes it’s a bit flat. [Overlap from Kate: Wow.] And so that was a big part of revising with students who were learning how to engage with creative writing was bringing in sonic qualities, bringing in texture and touch, and you know, feeling–\n29:40\tKate Moffatt:\tThat there’s more than just looking–\n29:41\tErica Isomura:\tThere’s more than just looking. I was thinking about that while I was listening to this sound and trying to think about what sound I’d want to share because I’m trying to work on a project that engages with drawings and writing.\nSo it’s a graphic project that follows the road trip that my sibling and I took and engaged with a lot of the land-based history. And I was thinking, “Okay, how will I, how will sound be part of this visual project, in a book?”\nA book is so, it’s just, it’s just different, you know? Like, people sometimes will include “SoundCloud” links to listen to “spoken word” in their books or, you know, “QR codes.” But sometimes I find myself not, it’s not necessarily the most organic of processes to pull your phone and scan it or a hundred percent. You know, even if you go on a CD with the book, sometimes you just kind of ignore it. Right–\n30:35\tKate Moffatt:\tEspecially now you’re like, where’s the closest CD player?\n30:37\tErica Isomura:\tTotally. Right. So I’m not an audiobook person. I do listen to podcasts, but yeah. So it’s interesting to think about it. Like just different qualities that bring us into place and space and that interests me.\nSo most of my sound recordings in my phone are probably more nature-based, though I do find the intersections of, like urban landscape noises really interesting. Just the mixture of things that you’ll hear on the street. [Overlap from Kate: Absolutely.] Or even, you know, the crunching of footsteps when you’re out in the forest. There is, you know, thinking about our relationship like I guess the Anthropocene or our imprint on the land. And, you know, the sounds that we make, too.\n31:27\tKate Moffatt:\tYeah. A hundred percent. And it’s so interesting, as you were talking about that, it started to make me think about like, how we capture things. Because yeah, I guess my question is kind of like having that recording from that trip, like how does that take you back as opposed to a picture of you or like a picture of those birds under that underpass. Yeah. Anything there that you would like to respond to? Please Go ahead.\n31:50\tMiranda Eastwood:\tActually, could I jump in? [Overlap: Yeah. Oh yeah.]\nJust because you’re talking about, you know, you get a CD in a book, and you’re not, you’re not probably gonna listen to that or a link or a QR code. It disrupts the relationship that you have with reading because that’s what people agree to when they open a piece they’re reading.\nSo the, even the idea of bringing in a different form of media is almost not, well, you break that relationship, I think, and the idea of sound and going to listen to something like specifically for sound, you’re engaging in a different relationship to whatever text you’re exploring. Right. Which I feel like that kind of pulled into your question about materiality and how like, I guess what your, what your general thoughts on those different types of relationships are.\n32:37\tErica Isomura:\tYeah. Well, I think that what I was thinking about when we, when I, when you made that comment, Kate, and this relates to this too, is thinking about how do you represent sound on the page. Right. You know, like I think in poetry, there’s such interesting things you can do with white space, like… [Overlap: oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.]\nWriters and poets just talk about staring at a blank page. Just the possibilities of form and prose are typically like nonfiction prose, and fiction prose. It’s very blocky and chunky and there isn’t a lot of space for that creativity necessarily. Maybe there is, and maybe I’m not thinking about it. We did have a presentation with Jordan Abel a few nights ago, and I think he’s doing some interesting work with novels and space on the page for sure.\n33:28\tErica Isomura:\tLike disrupting the genre. But yeah, I think there’s so much opportunity for that in poetry. And I think as I’m drawing more and thinking about graphic forms there is the opportunities to visually kind of represent sounds and sound effects on the page, through shapes and through visual cues and kind of blending things in a way that’s really interesting.\nThere’s a comic artist I love on Instagram who actually lives in Montreal. I’m not really, I’m blanking on his handle, but he draws a lot of birds and like, they’re very funny comics. And bird, I think–\n34:11\tMiranda Eastwood:\tI know who you’re talking about ’cause I think I’ve seen these bird comics before of these birds just kind of doing their own thing–\n34:18\tErica Isomura:\tDo you know their name?\n34:19\tMiranda Eastwood:\tHis name? No, I don’t.\n34:19\tErica Isomura:\tHe was just at TCAF [Toronto Comic Arts Festival], but I didn’t make it to his table. But they’re funny, they’re hilarious. They’re great conversations. Like the birds are talking about us.\n34:28\tKate Moffatt:\tOh, I have seen this. Oh. And I can’t remember the handle either. Oh, wow. How many grad students does it take?\n34:33\tErica Isomura:\t[Overlap] End of the, end of the–\n34:35\tKate Moffatt:\tWe’ll put it in the blog post for the episode.\n34:37\tErica Isomura:\tYeah. But yeah, thinking about representations of sound on a page, you know, and Yeah. The non-human kind of elements. And it’s just so funny to think about what the birds are; the birds are watching us too, you know? Right. We’re not just watching them.\n34:50\tKate Moffatt:\tRight, right. Yeah. Which even I think absolutely a hundred percent goes all the way back to Spy’s keynote on the first day. Right. Like, talking about that kind of like awareness of what’s around you, and not just your awareness of it, but it’s awareness of you, and how that’s informed and what it’s been informed by. Incredible.\n35:05\tErica Isomura:\tSo I think that the first sound that I actually accidentally played was, it was water from up north, from probably from the Skeena River ’cause I was, I think the previous audio was a clip from a cannery that I had visited.\nI was trying to record some sounds from a tour I did at the North Pacific Cannery, but also, I can’t remember if they had turned on the machine, of the canning machine that was supposed to be on display there, but wow. I didn’t want it to go into the spoken-like tour part [Laughs] for the audio.\nI’m actually really glad that I have some of those clips and I forgot about them until you prompted me to bring a sound clip. Amazing. So it was cool. And I’ll have to definitely re-listen to all those.\n35:46\tKate Moffatt:\tI love that. Okay. Speaking of listening, I think a last little question here to wrap up this amazing conversation is: what are you listening to right now? Like in your research or just more generally, what are you, what are you listening to?\n36:00\tErica Isomura:\tI’m listening to, like, kind of these like non, like a lot of music without vocals as I’m writing. [Overlap: Ooh.] I call them my “coworking,” like my “writing working” playlists. [Overlap: Yeah.]\nI was listening to Kishi Bashi earlier today in my hotel room, and he’s a violinist, kind of like a pop violin. So he loops his violin and sings, and he has a band, and he’s an amazing live performer. Thinking about sound–\n36:34\t[Sound of Kishi Bashi’s song “Manchester” starts to play]\t[Vocals]\nI wrote me a book. I hid the last page. I didn’t look. I think I locked it in a cage. I wrote a novel because everybody likes to read a novel…\n36:54\tKate Moffatt:\tErica, thank you so much for sitting and chatting with us today outside in this insanely warm weather. Thank you again.\n37:01\tErica Isomura:\tThank you, for, to both of you for hosting me.\n37:05\tKate Moffatt:\tPerfect. Yeah, we got a little windy. [Overlap] I liked our little what was going on there.\n37:11\tErica Isomura:\t[Voices fading] Do you think it’ll be okay?\n37:13\tMusic:\t[Musical Interlude]\n37:17\tKate Moffatt:\tReally just gonna be a conversation where we chat about what we listen to. Did you have any questions before we start?\n37:25\tRémy Bocquillon:\tNo, I think I just go with it.\n37:28\tKate Moffatt:\tOkay. Amazing. Has it been recording this whole time?\n37:31\tMiranda Eastwood:\tYeah.\n37:31\tKate Moffatt:\tOkay. I love that because, at one point, we need to capture that little recording where I’m like, “Here’s like a quick and dirty version of what Shortcuts is. I’m gonna say hello, and I’m gonna be like, Hey, I Kate, it’s gonna be, it’s gonna be great…\n[Voice fades]\n37:49\tKate Moffatt:\t[Music fades]\nHello, and welcome to an episode of Shortcuts Live. We are at the University of Alberta for the 2023 SpokenWeb symposium, which we’re at the, we’re on the last day. And it’s been super incredible. We are very excited to have been here. But this is Kate Moffatt, the supervising producer and project manager for the SpokenWeb podcast, stepping in for our usual host and producer, Katherine McLeod. And today, we’re sitting down with Rémy Bocquillon. That’s right. Yeah, that’s right. Beautiful. can you tell us a little bit about yourself, Rémy?\n38:19\tRémy Bocquillon:\tYeah. Well, thank you for this podcast. And I mean, the whole symposium has been amazing. So that’s, that’s a great experience. I’m so tired, but [Laughter] yeah. So, I am not in sound studies at all. I’m in sociology and sociology theory based in Germany. I work with sound quite a bit as kind of how to use sound, and sound art in my methods of how to do research. So not an analysis of sound, but more like how to do it. And for the SpokenWeb, I have been the artist in residence. So I’ve been very fortunate to prepare a sound installation, which is just across here.\n39:01\tKate Moffatt:\tSo, yeah. Yeah. We’re currently sitting in a big room in the, I think it’s the Cameron Library. We’re right beside the Digital Scholarship Center where the institute is taking place.\nAmazing. Thank you so much. We’re so excited to chat. We’re gonna listen to something. Did you wanna, did you wanna play that for us? Do you wanna say anything about it first?\n39:17\tRémy Bocquillon:\tYeah, so just pay it, and then we can chat about it.\n39:21\tKate Moffatt:\tPerfect.\n39:24\tAudio of Êliane Radigue\t[Audio of Êliane Radigue speaking in an interview: Il est tiré le temps prolongé, le temps ralenti, pour étirer le temps, il faut le ralentir. Et c’est sans doute ce qui permet de mieux saisir ce qu’il contient dans le présent. En fait, la grande vérité du temps, je crois, est celle de s ‘inscrire aussi totalement que possible dans le présent.\nEt la meilleure façon de bien pénétrer le présent, c’est de s’y installer. Et forcément une autre durée intérieure à ce moment -là s’établit, une durée qui est presque sans limite. Et on tente de faire cela avec les sons, c’est un petit peu un artific, parce que le son a son discours, son mode de déroulement temporel.\nMais là, effectivement, je triche sans doute un peu en étirant les choses. En fait, une pièce ou une œuvre, quelle que ce soit le nom que vous lui donniez, peut -être une mesure serait peut -être une seule mesure, mais une mesure en l ‘occurrence de 80 minutes, puisque c’est la durée de Psi 847.\nLe refus de l’anecdotique, je crois que c’est très simple, ça ne m’amuse pas. L’anecdote ne m’amuse pas. Et en fait, je fais des choses pour mon plaisir. Merci d ‘avoir regardé cette vidéo.]\n40:51\tRémy Bocquillon:\tYeah.\n40:51\tKate Moffatt:\tWonderful. Tell us like, what was that, what were we, what were we just hearing?\n40:54\tRémy Bocquillon:\tSo, it’s an interview from Êliane Radigue who was, she’s still active, is a composer, an electronic musician. She’s one of the pioneers in electronic music and drone music. She’s done a lot of music with synthesizers.\nThis recording is from the 70s, 76, 77. It was broadcast on French radio back then, and today it came out as a record. So that’s, that’s actually–\n41:27\tKate Moffatt:\tLike today, today? [Overlap from Rémy: Today, today. Yeah.]\nLike May 5th, 2023, today. [Overlap from Rémy: Exactly. Yes.] Wonderful. That’s so cool\n41:32\tRémy Bocquillon:\tThat was perfect. Like on point for this kind of event. And in this particular recording, she’s talking about time and her perception of time and how, in the stretching of sound, in drone music and electronic music, she has the feeling to manipulate time or to be in time to be in the present. So that’s, that was, yeah. Yeah. It’s, and I love her voice. I love how, how she, she talks about sounds. That’s fascinating. Yeah.\n42:00\tKate Moffatt:\tYeah. I’ve kind of got goosebumps from that. That’s, that’s amazing. That sounds so cool.\nCan you give us a bit of, is that kind of what she’s talking about in the interview? I was gonna ask like, is she very much discussing kind of like this, that idea of like stretching time, this is that what’s in the interview?\n42:16\tRémy Bocquillon:\tYeah, exactly. So she starts out by saying like, that to stretch out time and to play with time, you have to slow it down. And this idea of “slow down” and like that’s at the heart of what we do drone music, for instance.\nBut she did it in the seventies. She was really working with a synthesizer and very meticulously and had this kind of hard work and technique of trying out and having the pieces go on for hours. And a bit later in the interview, she even says, well, one piece can, it’s like one measure, one meter, but it’s like one that lasts 80 minutes. And so that’s, so that’s how long she takes to unfold the sounds.\n43:01\tKate Moffatt:\tThat’s so wonderful. For the listeners, you can’t see, but Rémy likes using his hands just to stretch, to stretch out time, to stretch out the measures. It’s, it’s been, it’s very, it’s very wonderful.\n43:10\tRémy Bocquillon:\tYeah. Sorry, it’s not very radiophonic [Laughs].\n43:12\tKate Moffatt:\tNo, it’s fantastic. That’s so wonderful. And I guess I would love to hear more about how, I guess how this, maybe these ideas that you’re, that are in the interview are intersecting with like your own research and kind of your own work, but also maybe in particular like this interview and like listening to this interview.\nLike, does that intersect too kind of with, ’cause obviously you’re very excited about it, and that’s fantastic. I’d like to just kind of hear more about how it maybe intersects with your own work.\n43:40\tRémy Bocquillon:\tYeah. So that’s a very interesting question and very compelling on certainly many levels because there’s this personal – yeah, I mean, as I said, a lot of her voice –  and I think she because she’s such a pioneer in electronic music… I mean, she has been, in the fifties, working with people like Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henri, who were in France and beyond the first to do musique concrete and this kind of stuff, to integrate different sounds into music – and she was with them and then continued to work on longer forms. And then from the 2000s actually moving away from this synthesizer and doing more acoustic stuff. And that’s where probably it resonates more with my own work because she works a lot with this kind of connection between the instruments, the bodies, and how, in the unfolding of a piece of the music, you have this kind of network happening. A combination of different actors and bodies crafting the sound and crafting the music together how gives you a different sense of experience and of the feeling of space of time. That’s what she’s talking about actually, but really in the performance – how to do this on the spot.\n44:57\tRémy Bocquillon:\tAnd that’s what I found very interesting in how, through sound, you have this kind of connection between different bodies… And I call this as kinda modulating this kind of spacetimes through sound. You can just, yeah. Stretch it out and have this kind of very particular moment in time.\n45:24\tKate Moffatt:\tThat’s fantastic. And it’s so interesting to me too that you brought this interview where she’s talking about it rather than potentially bringing a piece like you were mentioning, like there’s that piece that’s 80 minutes long, but it’s one measure. Is that what you were saying? [Overlap: Yes, yes. Yeah.]\nObviously, we’re not going to play an 80-minute coupon shortcut, but yeah, I think it’s. I love that you brought this interview clip. So I guess, and you can take this kind of as metaphorically or as literally as you’d like, but when you listen to this clip, what do you hear?\n45:57\tRémy Bocquillon:\tOh, I hear a tremendous artist talking about the practice. And that’s something rich is very interesting because so often you don’t talk about the practice that much. And she’s doing that in such a way that you can see how she’s, or you can hear, how she’s working and how she’s very much like going into the material, really going into the synthesizer, into the sound. And, and I think that’s why these kinds of interviews are very interesting.\nBecause she – and I mean, that was on, so it’s in France culture, which is public radio, and this kind of experimental composer. So that’s interesting as well back in the seventies to have this kind of composer talk about their practice, and to have this person in a very maned world, like experimental music, like talk about her practice and having her practice also recognized and acknowledged. So that’s very important as well.\n46:54\tKate Moffatt:\tWow. And what do you think, like, would it be different to read about the process versus hear this interview where she’s talking about it? Like, is it different to listen to it than to read it?\n47:07\tRémy Bocquillon:\tThat’s probably where you could actually tell me that because you, you maybe don’t understand that much. You said you don’t speak French, but you hear a voice–\n47:18\tKate Moffatt:\tWhat did I hear? [Laughs] –\n47:20\tMiranda Eastwood:\tI could jump in on that actually ’cause I was thinking just the way, the way she was speaking slow, not “ma” [The speaker uses the sound “ma” as a vocal filler], that kind of… I haven’t listened to her music obviously, but like to me, it almost sounded like she was mirroring, echoing, paralleling the process of that music and the way she was speaking about it, which I thought was very like, now I wanna listen to that music because of the way she spoke about it. And the process was like in the way she was vocalizing the process almost that, sorry that was my thought–\n47:55\tKate Moffatt:\tNo, that’s lovely. And for, for listeners, that’s Miranda who’s been hopping in occasionally on these Shortcuts conversations, and I’m so, so, so glad they are. Miranda is our audio engineer and sound designer for the podcast. Yeah.\nAnd I guess for me too, like Miranda, you have some French, well, lots of French; you know French. Whereas, whereas I don’t, and I feel, but I feel like I, I did hear very much the same, the same thing, like it, I I don’t think I’d realized beforehand that, that they were a composer or a musician.\nBut you do kind of get that, that sense. It did also feel very – I’m trying to think of the right word – rich, but also almost very like, internalized. Like it was something that I could just felt. So almost intense I guess, about the way that she’s speaking and, and the way that, that she was describing, I guess her, her process. It did sound very musical somehow.\n48:51\tRémy Bocquillon:\tYes. The pace, I mean. as you said, intense. And towards the end of that clip she’s very opinionated. She says the anecdote doesn’t amuse me, so just don’t do it. So that’s why she’s focusing on this long form and taking the time and yeah, the way she has this kind of rhythm in her voice. That’s fascinating. Yeah. I mean, you can listen to her for hours.\n49:02\tKate Moffatt:\tJust don’t do it [Laughs].\n49:03\tRémy Bocquillon:\tInteresting. So that’s why she, she’s focusing on this long form and taking the time and yeah, the, the way she, she has this kind of, of rhythm in her voice. That’s fascinating. Yeah. I mean, you can listen to her for hours.\n49:16\tKate Moffatt:\tI could feel it in my mouth while she was talking. Yeah. Like I could feel it in my own mouth. Yeah. There’s like a, when she was speaking a musical quality. Yeah, Yeah, yeah, yeah. There was something very embodied about it.\n49:25\tRémy Bocquillon:\tAnd I don’t know if it’s, because back then in radio you had a different kind of rhythm in interviews as well. Oh, interesting. Yeah, because nowadays it’s very fast-paced and you have this kind of difference. So maybe it plays as well. But you see on YouTube you have this kind of documentary where she shows what she’s doing and that’s interesting because of this kind of modular synthesizer and she has this kind of stop clock. And so she’s very much in tune with this idea of time keeping time, but also letting time unfold. And that’s, so in a way that’s totally embodied in her practice, but also how she talks.\n50:02\tKate Moffatt:\tThat’s in the interview. Fascinating. I was gonna say, there’s this taking of space of time to, to give it that rhythm, which as you say might be radio conventions kind of changing and then shifting, but regardless that it’s, that it’s there and we hear it and respond to it. Right?\n50:16\tRémy Bocquillon:\tYeah, totally.\n50:17\tKate Moffatt:\tI’ve got two, two kind of final questions. And they’re very much related.\nOne of them is to just, I’d love to hear like a little bit more about how listening both to things like interviews, like process or this, but even in like your own work ’cause you were saying that you’re a sociologist more than like a sound study scholar, but that obviously sound is there. So like, I’d love to hear about the role of listening in your own, your own research, in your own work.\nAnd then maybe just finish off with like, you know, what you’re listening to right now, whether that’s research related or, or otherwise\n50:50\tRémy Bocquillon:\tOh yeah, [Laughs]. Okay. Yeah. So listening in the work is, I think, central in different kinds of different aspects. I mean, in this kind of symposium we have been listening to a lot of things, to a lot of people, to a lot of sounds. And that’s the main aspect of it. Just to listen to each other, I think. And, but in sociology, more directly, it’s also about how to listen and how to actually leave space again to different voices and to different actors and maybe actors we don’t actually hear. So how to work with that.\nAnd how to leave space to those voices, to work with them in different ways. And that bridges to a kind of different way of doing sociology, which is making those kinds of new associations through sound, and which is also a different relation to knowledge and how knowledge production and distribution which is political, which is critical, which is ethical, I think, as well in how to bring this kind of multiplicity of actors, whatever you want to call them, in sounds, and having them like inhabit and then like move, move around.\n52:05\tRémy Bocquillon:\tAnd what I’ve been listening to, oh, that’s a hard question–\n52:08\tKate Moffatt:\t[Laughs].\n52:09\tRémy Bocquillon:\tYeah. I mean, on my way here, I’ve been listening to a very well renowned French rapper called Orelsan, it’s one of his albums, like last year, two years ago, is very popular, so it’s not like “underground dark things,” [Laughs], but there’s this one song, I don’t know, it just like lift my mood and I love it. So [Laughs], yeah. Taking the bus. That’s what I was listening to.\n52:34\tKate Moffatt:\tIncredible. I love it so much. We’ve, we’ve collected quite the little, little almost like a little playlist as we’ve been asking folks what they’ve been listening to. I think we’re gonna have to try and put something together at some point here. This has been so wonderful, Rémy. Thank you so much for bringing, bringing this wonderful clip that I love that it got released today. That feels very serendipitous.\n52:53\tRémy Bocquillon:\tThank you. [Overlappinhg] Thank you very much for having and for coming to chat with us. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you.\n52:56\tMiranda Eastwood:\tYay.\n52:57\tMusic\t[Opera music starts playing]\n53:02\tKatherine McLeod:\t[Low electronic music plays] You’ve been listening to Shortcuts on the SpokenWeb podcast. This episode featured conversations with Moynan King, Erica Isomura, and Rémy Bocquillon. Thank you for all of your sounds and your time. Thank you to Kate Moffatt and Miranda Eastwood for putting such care and energy into recording these interviews onsite at the 2023 SpokenWeb Symposium.\n \nIf you’re at this year’s SpokenWeb symposium, there will be a live recording of an episode coming up as part of the symposium events. So if you’re there, do attend and be part of the audience. Either way, stay tuned, and we’ll look forward to hearing that episode on this feed next month.\nThe SpokenWeb Podcast 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.\nThe SpokenWeb podcast team is: supervising producer Maya Harris, sound designer James Healy, transcriber Yara Ajeeb, and co-hosts Hannah McGregor and me, Katherine McLeod.\nTo 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 social media. Stay tuned to your podcast feed, and as always, thanks for listening.\n[SpokenWeb Podcast Theme Music fades and ends]\n "],"score":2.7048998},{"id":"9649","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 S5 Trailer, Welcome to Season 5!, 18 September 2023, Harris, Healy, McGregor, McLeod and Mix"],"item_title_source":["SpokenWeb Podcast web page."],"item_title_note":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/welcome-to-season-5/"],"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 5"],"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":["Maia Harris","James Healy","Hannah Mcgregor","Katherine McLeod","Zoe Mix"],"creator_names_search":["Maia Harris","James Healy","Hannah Mcgregor","Katherine McLeod","Zoe Mix"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"name\":\"Maia Harris\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Producer\"]},{\"url\":\"\",\"name\":\"James Healy\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Producer\"]},{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/20153713810358661443\",\"name\":\"Hannah Mcgregor\",\"dates\":\"1984-\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Producer\"]},{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/44156495389117561605\",\"name\":\"Katherine McLeod\",\"dates\":\"1981-\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Producer\"]},{\"url\":\"\",\"name\":\"Zoe Mix\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Producer\"]}]"],"contributors":["[]"],"Publication_Date":[2023],"material_description":["[]"],"digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://cdn.simplecast.com/audio/28a9da1f-8cca-410c-b5d7-8165a73f9394/episodes/6511fd80-29e0-41f2-8ad9-dda3420119fd/audio/a6369593-95d4-46c0-a56e-c005845f0179/default_tc.mp3?nocache\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"trailer-v5-master.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"44.1 kHz\",\"duration\":\"00:02:47\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"2,675,682 bytes\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"MP3 audio\",\"title\":\"trailer-v5-master\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/welcome-to-season-5/\"}]"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"2023-09-18\",\"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"],"contents":["The SpokenWeb Podcast is back for another season as we continue our quest to uncover “what literature sounds like.”\n\nWith a whole new line-up of episodes created by researchers across the SpokenWeb network, we’ll explore the sounds of translation, the act of uncertain listening, audio pedagogy, the intersection of computing, voice, and poetics, and much much more.\n\nOur fearless host Katherine McLeod is back and will be joined by Hannah McGregor, host of Seasons 1-3. Welcome back Hannah!\n\nWe have something for everyone curious about the affordances of literature, sound, history, and the amorphous “archive,” so join us for monthly episodes of innovative audio scholarship.\n\nSubscribe to The SpokenWeb Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you find your podcasts. And don’t forget to rate us and send us a shout! Cheers to Season 5 ~\n\n(00:03)\tHannah McGregor\t[Soft strummed guitar music plays and ends]\nWhat does the SpokenWeb podcast sound like?\n\n(00:10)\tKatherine McLeod\t[Quiet percussion music begins to play] In the fourth season of the SpokenWeb podcast, we conversed with a living archive.\n(00:15)\tComputerized Voice\tHello, and welcome to the Fred Wah Digital Archive.\n(00:19)\tKatherine McLeod\tWe listened to firsthand perspectives on living with wildfires in the Okanagan Valley.\n(00:24)\tSharon Thesen\tBy the time, I think, they started trying to put it out, it was out of control.\n(00:29)\tKatherine McLeod\tWe dove deeper into the sounds of data.\n(00:32)\tAdegbola\tHow much more a role will language play in the information age?\n(00:36)\tKatherine McLeod\tWe asked, what is sound design?\n(00:40)\tMiranda\tText, forms, travel, forms constrained, various forms overlap and intersect.\n(00:46)\tKatherine McLeod\tWe explored the impact of recording technology on how poetry finds its audiences.\n(00:53)\tFred Wah\tIn those days, that was really a surprise to be able to hear the voice of a poet who you had been reading off the page.\n(01:01)\tKatherine McLeod\tWe considered the stakes of inviting audiobooks into the literary classroom.\n(01:06)\tJentery\tWe might want to, for good reason, debunk the idea that listening is cheating or that, you know, books are not meant to be listened to.\n(01:12)\tKatherine McLeod\tAnd we heard what libraries actually sound like.\n(01:15)\tDan Hackborn\tLike [Dan makes a nasally “wah” sound with his mouth] and like a [Dan makes a continuous “thunk” sound with his mouth].\n(01:20)\tKatherine McLeod\tOh, and we also went to talk therapy. [Percussion music ends abruptly]\n(01:25)\tPhone Voice 2\tOkay, well, why don’t you start by telling me how long you’ve been feeling this way.\n(01:30)\tKatherine McLeod\t[Percussion music begins again] My name is Katherine McLeod and I’m the voice behind Shortcuts on the SpokenWeb podcast feed. And I’ve been the solo host of the SpokenWeb podcast for this past season. This season I’ll be joined by Hannah McGregor, who is back. Yes, you might recognize her voice as the host of seasons one through three. Welcome back, Hannah.\n(01:51)\tHannah McGregor\tThank you, Katherine. It’s great to be back. And I am so excited to co-host season five with you and to work with our new production team: supervising producer Maia Harris, sound designer James Healey, and returning transcriber Zoe Mix.\n(02:10)\tHannah McGregor\tThis season we’ll continue exploring what literature sounds like with all news stories from researchers across the SpokenWeb Network. We’ll explore the sounds of translation, the act of uncertain listening, audio pedagogy, the intersection of computing voice and poetics, and much more. Subscribe to The SpokenWeb podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you find your podcasts. And join us for season five. [Percussion music ends and guitar strumming music plays and then ends]\n"],"Note":["[]"],"Related_works":["[]"],"_version_":1853670549763391488,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:54.290Z","score":2.7048998},{"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":2.7048998},{"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":2.7048998},{"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":2.7048998},{"id":"9656","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 2.4, You Are Here, 18 January 2021, McLeod"],"item_title_source":["SpokenWeb Podcast web page."],"item_title_note":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/you-are-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 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":[2021],"material_description":["[]"],"digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://cdn.simplecast.com/audio/28a9da1f-8cca-410c-b5d7-8165a73f9394/episodes/d8a35593-1877-46bf-94c7-d64f56737bdb/audio/faa70c17-eb76-4ddb-b635-578765ff8576/default_tc.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"s2e4-shortcuts-you-are-here.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"44.1 kHz\",\"duration\":\"00:09:47\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"9,450,101 bytes\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"MP3 audio\",\"title\":\"s2e4-shortcuts-you-are-here\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/you-are-here/\"}]"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"2021-01-18\",\"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/\\n\\nRobinsong, Erin. “Anemone.” Watch Your Head: Writers and Artists Respond to the Climate Crisis. Coach House Books, 2020. Find out more about Watch Your Head as a book and online project here.\\n\\nRukeyser, Muriel. “Muriel Rukeyser at SGWU, 1969” (audio recording from the Sir George Williams Poetry Series). SpokenWeb, 24 January 1969, https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/muriel-rukeyser-at-sgwu-1969\\n\\nFind out more about poet Muriel Rukeyser by visiting Muriel Rukeyser: A Living Archive. \"}]"],"_version_":1853670549765488641,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:54.290Z","contents":["This ShortCuts minisode listens to one of the January readings that we heard about last time: a reading by Muriel Rukeyser that took place on January 24, 1969. Along with listening for mentions of January in the recording, this minisode listens to how Rukeyser’s reading enacts the very connection that she describes – a connection being created between the poet and the audience during a live reading.\n\nThe audio for this ShortCuts minisode is cut from the recording of Muriel Rukeyser’s reading in Montreal on January 24, 1969.\n\n00:00\tMusic:\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.\n01:17\tSpokenWeb Podcast Theme Music:\t[Instrumental Overlapped With Feminine Vocals]\n01:19\tKatherine McLeod:\tWelcome to ShortCuts. You are here. Last time we listened to clips from the SpokenWeb audio collections in order to try to hear time. Or rather to hear an anticipation of the new year, a marking of time. Whenever the host would say something like “our next reading will take place in January”.\n01:42\tAudio Recording, George Bowering:\tThis is the final reading of the fall series, and we’ll be picked up again in January…\n01:47\tKatherine McLeod:\tHere we are now, in January. And let’s imagine that we are at one of those January readings that we heard about last time.\n01:55\tAudio Recording, Unknown Announcer 1\tI’d just like to express all our thanks to James Wright for sharing his poetry and his curses and his blasphemy with us tonight, and to remind you that our next reading is with Muriel Rukeyser on Friday January 24th. Goodnight.\n02:12\tKatherine McLeod:\tArriving to the reading, most likely in big winter coats, the audience has been looking forward to it. And now it is here…\n02:25\tAudio Recording, Unknown Announcer 2\tI’ll now introduce Muriel Rukeyser [Applause]…\n02:26\tKatherine McLeod:\tRukeyser is in front of us, reading her poems, in Montreal on January 24th 1969. Along with knowing that it took place in January, we can hear a sense of time in the recording. Let’s listen to this clip as our “short cut” into the archives for this minisode. She has just read “Elegy in Joy,” ending with these words that lead her into a story about something that marks this recording in time.\n03:00\t[Simultaneous] Katherine McLeod and Audio Recording, Muriel Rukeyser at SGWU, 1969:\t“Every elegy is the present, freedom eating our hearts, death and explosion and the world unbegun.”\n03:12\tAudio Recording, Muriel Rukeyser at SGWU, 1969:\tI thought of that very much at the beginning of this month in Mexico, and yesterday when I heard a story. It’s a story of what happened at Christmas time. I was in Mexico, I wonder whether you saw it. I heard of it yesterday in New York, as a little, three line story, in the back page of the New York Times, saying that the largest underground bomb-test was about to be held in Nevada in the States. And to that test, came five scientists, in Utah, in the States, to protest, to picket, to try to stop it. And another person who protested was Howard Hughes, who owns most of Las Vegas at this point, and had his own reasons for protesting. These protests did not stop the testing. The test was made. It was the largest underground test made yet. Do you know this story? There was a crack.\n04:29\tAudio Recording, Muriel Rukeyser at SGWU, 1969:\tThere’s a crack in the earth, big enough, they said — the way we talk — big enough for the Empire State Building. There’s a crack there, and deep under the crust there’s a three foot crack of some kind, and the rocks are still falling, and they say there will be earthquakes in various parts —unpredictable parts — of the world as a result of the shift of the under-crust. Now, last night, before I came here, on TV — late news in New York — they said that there’d been a quake in the Fiji Islands. I have no idea what the relations between these things are, I give it to you simply that something has happened to shift the under-crust – there will be unpredictable results. This is under the ground, the way we are bound to each other, we are also bound to each other through the air and the fall out has come over Canada – this is also a part of the story that I heard yesterday, and you, I can see by your nods, you know this part of the story…\n05:33\tKatherine McLeod:\t“I can see by your nods, you know this part of the story.” By this point, the audience is with her and thanks to her describing their nodding heads we know that they are. We are listening to the relationality created there in that room. Now, if this is sounding familiar, you might recall that in minisode 2.2, we listened to how Rukeyser introduced this very same reading. She talked about why on a cold January night we come out to listen to poetry…\n06:06\tAudio Recording, Muriel Rukeyser at SGWU, 1969:\t…it is 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…\n06:19\tKatherine McLeod:\tAnd because of something else that is created while listening together…\n06:22\tAudio Recording, Muriel Rukeyser at SGWU, 1969:\tWe come to something with — almost unmediated — that is, the poem among us, between us there…\n06:34\tKatherine McLeod:\tIn her reading, there are poems in which one is acutely aware of being together, listening, even while listening to the recording apart. So how did her reading create that effect? Well, I would say that the story that we just heard of how we are all bound to each other does precisely that by asking us to think about our relation to one another. But that was through a story, an extra-poetic diversion between poems. What about in the poems themselves?\n07:05\tKatherine McLeod:\tLet’s listen to one more ShortCut from that same reading – a poem called “Anemone.” It’s one that not only exemplifies the creation of connection between the poet and the audience, but it’s also one that expresses the ecological attention of her story: the ways in which we are bound to each other through the earth and, in this case, through the ocean. In a recent collection of poems called, Watch Your Head: Writers and Artists Respond to the Climate Crisis, there is another “Anemone” poem by Canadian poet Erin Robinsong – and I would say that Rukeyser’s “Anemone” poem could be in this collection too as she too is responding to the climate crisis in her own way in 1969.\n08:23\tAudio Recording, Muriel Rukeyser at SGWU, 1969:\tAnemone, my eyes are closing. My eyes are opening. You are looking into me with your waking look. My mouth is closing. My mouth is opening. You are waiting with your red promises. My sex is closing. My sex is opening. You are singing and offering the way in. My life is closing. My life is opening. You are here.\n09:04\tKatherine McLeod:\tThat was Muriel Rukeyser reading “Anemone” a poem that creates a space of listening that is, at once, oceanic and intimate. And a poem that says to the listener: “You are here.”\n09:22\tKatherine McLeod:\t[Music Begins: Piano Overlaid With Distorted Beat] I’m Katherine McLeod, 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. 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Macmillan, 1963.\\n\\n—. “Käthe Kollwitz.” The Collected Poems of Muriel Rukeyser. U of Pittsburgh P, 2006. \\n\\n—. The Life of Poetry. Current Books, 1949.\\n\\n—. “Muriel Rukeyser at SGWU, 1969” (audio recording from the Sir George Williams Poetry Series. SpokenWeb, 24 January 1969), https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/muriel-rukeyser-at-sgwu-1969\"}]"],"_version_":1853670549766537216,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:54.290Z","contents":["In this season of ShortCuts we’ve spent some time in a 1969 recording of poet Muriel Rukeyser, and we’re going to stay in that recording for this minisode, partly due to the depth of material within this single recording and partly as an opportunity to reflect upon what a minisode can do – through archival listening – to make connections. Rukeyser once said that poetry is “a meeting place” and this minisode suggests that, like poetry, a podcast is a meeting place. Listen to find out how we arrive at this meeting place and listen, once more, to the voice of the poet who spoke these words: “What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? / The world would split open.”\n\n\n(00:10)\tMusic\t[Piano Overlaid With Distorted Beat]\n(00:10)\tHannah McGregor\tWelcome to 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. We’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.\n(01:14)\tKatherine McLeod\tWelcome to ShortCuts. This season of ShortCuts we’ve spent some time in a recording of American poet Muriel Rukeyser. [Start Music: Piano Overlaid With Distorted Beat] We’re going to stay in that recording, immersing ourselves in it, for one more minisode. We’re going to do that for two, no three, reasons: one, this recording lets us talk about spontaneous and unexpected moments that can happen during a reading and then end up being recorded; two, this recording lets us reflect on what this medium of a minisode on a podcast feed can do to create connections; and, three, this recording lets us continue to ask the question taken up in the past two minodes: How can we hear time? [End Music: Piano Overlaid With Distorted Beat]. With that, let’s begin our archival listening to specific clips in the reading by Rukeyser.\n(02:08)\tSpoken Web Podcast Theme Music\t[Instrumental Overlapped With Feminine Vocals]\n(02:08)\tKatherine McLeod\tOn a cold January night in 1969, Muriel Rukeyser started her reading in Montreal by asking the audience to consider …\n(02:27)\tAudio Recording, Muriel Rukeyser, Montreal, 1969\tAnd as you get a very, very rainy evening, why do people come and listen to poems? Well, you’ve got some marvelous summer night. Why do people come and listen to poems?\n(02:37)\tKatherine McLeod\tIn minisode 2.2 we listened to those opening remarks and we thought about how it creates a relationship between the listener and the poet, or really between the listener and the event of the reading. One of the poems she read that night was “Anemone.”\n(02:53)\tAudio Recording, Muriel Rukeyser, Montreal, 1969\t“Anemone. My eyes are closing, my eyes are opening, you are looking at me with your waking look…”\n \n\n(03:04)\tKatherine McLeod\tWe listened to that poem in minisode 2.4 as a way of hearing the relationality that she spoke of as being created through the poetry reading, and how it was enacted through that poem. We also considered how an archival listening creates a connection between the past and present. Rukeyser’s critique of nuclear testing in 1969 speaks very much to our current climate crisis.\n(03:30)\tKatherine McLeod\tAfter making those minisodes, I shared the link, I tweeted it out, and I was elated to see a notification [Sound Effect: Phone Notification]: “Muriel Rukeyser has liked your post” No, it wasn’t Rukeyser herself haunting my Twitter feed, but it felt as though she had heard it – it was the Twitter account of the archival project, Muriel Rukeyser: A Living Archive. They had listened to ShortCuts and were excited about the recording that existed of Rukeyser – a recording that they had not yet been aware of.\n(04:01)\tKatherine McLeod\tMuriel Rukeyser: A Living Archive is holding a symposium during the same week when this minsode will go live – the entire symposium is based around Rukeyser’s series of “Elegies.” I assumed that there would be many recordings of Rukeyser reading from “Elegies” but it turns out that there are not – in fact, there might be very few – or even one. I know there is because, yes, it is on that very same 1969 reading by Rukeyser here in Montreal. Not only does this recording have a rare sound in that Rukeyser reads from “Elegies” but also when she introduces it she notes that she has never read it like this before. She cuts it up, and we’ll listen to her read the poem “Elegy in Joy” as our short cut [Sound Effect: Scissors Cutting] this month…\n(04:55)\tAudio Recording, Muriel Rukeyser, Montreal, 1969\tHere’s one piece of a long poem. It’s the last of a group called “Elegies,” which one hardly dares name anything anymore. It’s called “Elegy in Joy.” And it’s just the beginning piece. I wanted to do it tonight this way. I’ve never cut it up. “Elegy in Joy.” Now green, now burning, I make a way for peace. After the green and long beyond my lake, among these fields of people on these illuminated hills gold, burnt gold, spilled gold and shadowed blue. The light of enormous flame, the flowing wide of the sea. Where all the lights and nights are reconciled. The sea at last. Where all the waters lead and all the wars to this peace. For the sea does not lie like the death you imagine. The sea is the real sea. Here it is. This is the living. This peace is the face of the world. A fierce angel who in one lifetime lives fighting a lifetime, dying as we all die. Becoming forever, the continual God. Years of our time, this heart. The binding of the alone, bells of our loneliness, finding our lines and our music. Branches full of motion, each opening in its own flower. Lines of all songs, each speaking in its own voice. Praise in every grace, among the old same war. Years of betrayal, million deaths breathing its weaknesses and hope buried more deep, more black than dream. Every elegy is the present freedom eating our hearts, death and explosion, and the world unbegun.\n(07:29)\tKatherine McLeod\t“Every elegy is the present” – what an ending to that poem. But, that is not how the poem ends on the page. However, by choosing to “cut it up,” as she says, she creates a new version — a version in sound — that lets those lines ring out, as though they were the end of the poem. “Every elegy is the present” is a line that reminds me of how she ends the entire reading by asking the audience to encounter the present moment. She reads “The Speed of Darkness” which ends with a question: “Who will speak these days, /if not I, / if not you?”\n(08:09)\tAudio Recording, Muriel Rukeyser, Montreal, 1969\tThinking of the poet yet unborn in this dark who will be the throat of these hours, no of those hours. Who will speak these days, if not I, if not you? [Applause]\n(08:32)\tKatherine McLeod\tThe juxtaposition of those three sounds I find incredibly affecting: the powerful call out to you, the barely audible “thank you very much,” and the roar of applause that goes on for some time. I listen again and again to that…\n(08:50)\tAudio Recording, Muriel Rukeyser, Montreal, 1969\tThank you very much.\n(08:53)\tKatherine McLeod\tI am in that room and can see her standing at the front with the microphone and her papers; and it is as though the entire room takes a collective breath between the reading and the applause, an in-between space, an in-between sound. That voice who had just spoken these words with such volume: “who will be the throat of these hours?” A phrase that reminds us of the body as the source of sound. This is the same voice, the same body, who wrote and spoke these words within the past year of this reading: “What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? / The world would split open.”\n(09:40)\tKatherine McLeod\tNow hear the applause again, all 25 seconds of it. If we listen to it all the way through we hear the announcement of the F.R. Scott reading on February 14th, bringing us back in time to the present moment of the reading, and back to Montreal with F.R. Scott the Montreal modernist. Let’s hear all of that again.\n(10:07)\tKatherine McLeod\tWho will speak these days, /if not I, / if not you?… Thank you very much… [Full applause for 25 seconds].\n(10:46)\tAudio Recording, Unknown Announcer at Muriel Rukeyser Reading, Montreal, 1969\tWe wish to announce that the next reading will be by F.R. Scott and that will be on February 14th at the same time in the theatre in the basement of this building. Thank you. [Audience Background Noise]\n(10:57)\tKatherine McLeod\t[Start Audience Background Noise Underlaid] As you can hear, the recording doesn’t stop. Nobody presses the button. It continues recording. Now this is the sound of the room, this is the sound of the audience, this is the sound of what it felt like to be there. This recording of the social interactions, even as muffled as there are, conveys the sound of that reading in its time, which is even more interesting to us during our current time of the pandemic when we long for attending an in-person event. We are hearing what Rukeyser has described as defining the poem: the poem as a meeting place. It is a point that Jane Malcolm makes in her brilliant analysis of this recording. Do check the show notes for that reference. And it is a point that I hear again, listening now. A meeting place…\n(11:53)\tKatherine McLeod\tI think of the conversations that I’ve had recently with Muriel Rukeyser: A Living Archive and I hear it almost as one of these conversations happening after the reading; but, it didn’t happen after a reading, it happened after a listening. That makes me imagine what connections can come of future sound-based criticism as forms like the podcast continue to circulate and to be heard. The podcast, like poetry, relies upon its “moving relations” – to quote a phrase of Rukeyser’s – moving relations within itself and with its listeners. And, to me, it seems that, like poetry, the podcast is a meeting place…\n(12:41)\tMusic\t[Piano Overlaid With Distorted Beat]\n(12:44)\tKatherine McLeod\tI’m Katherine McLeod, and these minisodes are produced by myself, hosted by Hannah McGregor, and mixed and mastered by Stacey Copeland. Head to SpokenWeb.ca to find out more about ShortCuts and The SpokenWeb Podcast. And head to Muriel Rukeyser: A Living Archive to find out more about the symposium on Feb 19. If you are tuning in after the symposium, thank you for listening and for being part of these connections. Tune in next month for another deep dive into the sounds of the SpokenWeb archives. [Audience Background Noise Continues And Fades]"],"score":2.7048998},{"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? Signal, Noise, Silence, 4 May 2020, Camlot and McLeod"],"item_title_source":["SpokenWeb Podcast web page."],"item_title_note":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/how-are-we-listening-now-signal-noise-silence/"],"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":["Jason Camlot","Katherine McLeod"],"creator_names_search":["Jason Camlot","Katherine McLeod"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/90740324\",\"name\":\"Jason Camlot\",\"dates\":\"1967-\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[]},{\"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/fe25911a-e576-402d-ae9c-4b96143ad40a/sw-ep-8-how-are-we-listening-now-signal-noise-silence-v4_tc.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"sw-ep-8-how-are-we-listening-now-signal-noise-silence-v4_tc.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"44.1 kHz\",\"duration\":\"01:03:05\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"60,630,039 bytes\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"MP3 audio\",\"title\":\"sw-ep-8-how-are-we-listening-now-signal-noise-silence-v4_tc\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/how-are-we-listening-now-signal-noise-silence/\"}]"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"2020-05-04\",\"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\":\"Print References\\n\\nDolar, Mladen.  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":2.7048998},{"id":"9658","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 2.6, Living Together, 15 March 2021, McLeod"],"item_title_source":["SpokenWeb Podcast web page."],"item_title_note":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/listening-together/"],"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":[2021],"material_description":["[]"],"digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://cdn.simplecast.com/audio/28a9da1f-8cca-410c-b5d7-8165a73f9394/episodes/7da3e459-6a0f-453f-89b9-abab0f2e6c07/audio/8d91254e-ec0f-4b5e-b988-11cda316e954/default_tc.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"s2e6-shortcuts-listening-together.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"44.1 kHz\",\"duration\":\"00:16:54\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"16,283,734 bytes\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"MP3 audio\",\"title\":\"s2e6-shortcuts-listening-together\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/listening-together/\"}]"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"2021-03-15\",\"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\":\"AUDIO SOURCES\\n\\nArchival audio clips for this ShortCuts minisode are cut from this recording of Margaret Avison’s reading in Montreal on January 27, 1967.\\n\\nAudio clips of Stephanie Bolster and Barbara Nickel are from SpokenWeb’s Listening Practice, led by Katherine McLeod and held on January 27, 2021.\\n\\nAudio clips of Katherine McLeod in conversation with Mathieu Aubin were recorded over Zoom on March 9, 2021.\\n\\nRESOURCES\\n\\nAubin, Mathieu, “Audio of the Month – From Poetic Surveillance to an Avant-Garde Dinner Fit for a Queen.” ShortCuts 1.6, 15 June 2020, https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/audio-of-the-month-from-poetic-surveillance-to-an-avant-garde-dinner-fit-for-a-queen/.\\n\\n@mathieujpaubin. “In today’s listening to the Sir George Williams collections, I heard Margaret Avison, who was introducing one of her poems, being interrupted by a man in the audience who mansplains her own work… eh boy. But, as a bad ass, Avison calls him out, making the audience laugh.” Twitter, 23 February, 2021, https://twitter.com/mathieujpaubin/status/1364328694341246980.\\n\\nAvison, Margaret. Winter Sun and The Dumbfounding, Poems 1940-66. McClelland & Stewart, 1982.\\n\\n“Listening to Winter Sun: A Virtual Ghost Reading (Margaret Avison, January 27, 1967) [led by Katherine McLeod.” SpokenWeb, https://spokenweb.ca/events/virtual-listening-practice-guided-by-katherine-mcleod/.\\n\\nMcLeod, Katherine. “Margaret Avison reading ‘Thaw’.” SPOKENWEBLOG, 30 March, 2020, spokenweb.ca/margaret-avison-reading-thaw/. Accessed 12 March, 2021.\\n\\nSarah, Robyn. “How poems work: Thaw by Margaret Avison.” Globe and Mail, 2 September 2000, https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/how-poems-work/article25470778/.\\n\\nNickel, Barbara and Elise Partridge. “The Wholehearted Poet: A Conversation about Margaret Avison.” Books in Canada 33. 6 (September 2004), 34-36.\\n\\nQuebec, Ike. It Might as Well Be Spring. Blue Note Records, 2006.\"}]"],"_version_":1853670549782265856,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:54.290Z","contents":["March is a time of year when you can hum along to “It Might as Well be Spring,” but, on other days, it can feel like winter might never end. Can we hear spring in the archives? And what does it feel like to listen to sonic representations of change – at a distance – together? Listen to Margaret Avison read “Thaw” (on 27 January 1967) as our ‘short cut’ this month. Then, get ready for the first ShortCuts audio challenge when a special guest joins us to talk about a perplexing moment in archival listening.\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.\n01:10\tSpokenWeb Podcast Theme Music:\n \n\n[Instrumental Overlapped With Feminine Vocals]\n01:18\tKatherine McLeod:\tWelcome to ShortCuts. It’s March 2021. Our deep dive into the SpokenWeb audio collections continues to ask the question of how to hear time. We’ll be listening to a poem that describes the moment between winter and spring. I’m recording this minisode in a city where the month of March feels a lot like winter. Here, March is a time of year when it might as well be spring, but, on other days, it can feel like winter might never end. It is a time of year when you can hear snow melting – a sound [Sound Effect: Snow Melting] that tells of the coming spring, and a sound that conveys the lasting presence of the past season, a frozen archive of winter… What does it feel like to listen in and to this season of change? Can we hear the spring thaw in archival recordings of poetry?\n02:21\tAudio Recording, Margaret Avison at SGWU, 1967:\tThis is one of the very cold days, I guess, about 10 below, cold enough. It’s inside the pane of glass – separating inside from outside comes into it, a certain kind of sky that goes with that which is like glass again…\n02:46\tAudio Recording, Margaret Avison at SGWU, 1967:\tThe sun has not absorbed this icy day and this day’s industry in behind glass hasn’t the blue and gold cold outside. Though not absorbing this sought that…\n03:03\tKatherine McLeod:\tThat was Canadian poet Margaret Avison introducing her very wintery poems on January 27, 1967. She read that night at Sir George Williams University, at what is now Concordia, in Montreal. That is the first event you’ll hear audio from in this ShortCuts. The second event was also held on January 27, but in a different year, not in 1967 but in 2021. On that January 27, I played some clips from Avison’s reading as part of a SpokenWeb Listening Practice.\n03:40\tKatherine McLeod:\tIn choosing to listen to the recording on the same day, it was like organizing a Ghost Reading, a listening activity in which the reading is listened to on the same day as it would have taken place and, while listening, listeners make things out of the listening (such as notes, doodles, booklets, paintings and more). I thought I’d try out how the Ghost Reading translates into a virtual environment in which we are listening together, but not in the same place. How would we listen and what would we make?\n04:12\tKatherine McLeod:\tPoet Barbara Nickel joined us for the Listening Practice and I asked her what it was like to hear that opening that we just heard of Avison introducing the wintery poem “The Absorbed” from Winter Sun…\n04:30\tAudio Recording, Barbara Nickel, Listening Practice:\tI spent the whole morning just reading Winter Sun. I have, from years of reading her, I have a certain voice in my mind: the voice of the page. And then to hear her voice for the first time … I can’t put words to it – it’s so mundane to me, her voice, it feels mundane in one sense it’s almost disappointing; but then, on the other hand, I find that the articulation of the consonants, something I love so much about Avison’s work, comes through so clearly, and articulates those sounds to me in a way that I’ve never noticed before.\n05:13\tKatherine McLeod:\tAlso listening was poet Stephanie Bolster and she had a very similar reaction to Barbara, in that this poet who she had spent so much time listening to on the page was now audible. I asked Stephanie if she had ever heard an Avison recording before…\n05:29\tAudio Recording, Stephanie Bolster, Listening Practice:\tNo, I never have, that’s what was sort of magical about it is her authentic voice, having had the voices of poems in my head, but never attributed any particular voice. And I guess I’m getting a sense of expectation of formality based on the work itself, but never really having thought about what she would sound like.\n05:46\tAudio Recording, Katherine McLeod, Listening Practice:\tYeah, I think, that’s such a great point, even to introduce her voice to us – to start with – because she’s somebody who —we’ve seen titles of her work — she has a book called Listening. So you think: what is this voice going to sound like? Or all of her work — say the poem “Snow,” maybe encountering that as an undergrad, and her words about “the sad listener” or “optic heart” that get so often quoted from that poem, but thinking: what does her voice sound like reading it?\n06:15\tKatherine McLeod:\tAs I started riffing upon Stephanie’s point, she added a comment into the Zoom chat that it was important to remember that Avison’s voice is mediated through recording technologies. So that really raises the question of where the authentic voice is, and whether there are other ways of understanding it’s embodied and material source – where the voice is coming from. Let’s hear more of Avison’s voice from this archival recording, as she reads the poem…\n06:45\tAudio Recording, Margaret Avison at SGWU, 1967\t“The Thaw”. Sticky inside their winter suits / The Sunday children stare at pools/ In pavement and black ice where roots/ Of sky in moodier sky dissolve. / An empty coach train runs along / The thin and sooty river flats / And stick and straw and random stones / Stream faintly when its steam departs. / Lime-water and liquorice light / Wander the tumbled streets. A few/ Sparrows gather. A dog barks out / Under the dogless pale pale blue. Move your tongue along a slat / Of raspberry box from last year’s crate. / Smell a saucepantilt of water / On the coal-ash in your grate. / Think how the Black Death made men dance, / And from the silt of centuries/ The proof is now scraped bare that once/ Troy fell and Pompei scorched and froze. / A boy alone out in the court/ Whacks with his hockey-stick, and whacks / In the wet, and the pigeons flutter, and rise, / And settle back.\n08:15\tKatherine McLeod:\t“Thaw” is a poem that I wrote about last year in March 2020 – when ShortCuts used to be Audio of the Week – I chose the poem as a way of coping with the uncertainty of the pandemic. By chance, the poem ends up having a reference to the plague in it. There I was, trying to find a poem to guide us from winter to spring, through a transition, and I was forced to confront the pandemic again. I could have pressed stop, but I chose to re-play the poem and to re-listen to it again, as I have done again here and in the listening practice. The poem depicts a solitary image – “a boy alone,” making a sound with the hockey stick, causing the pigeons to “flutter and rise and settle back” – a scene and a sound of winter solitude and of repetition. What was it like to listen to this poem together?\n09:22\tAudio Recording, Stephanie Bolster, Listening Practice:\tI guess I’ll say that I kept wishing I could seize everything, and slow it down and take in the details, just the density and abundance of details. I was scribbling things down, and couldn’t keep up. And, in that sense, it really felt the same sense I would have had in a live reading. Even though it was recorded, because we were listening to it together, I couldn’t just stop it and go back. And so I think it really did replicate that sense of having a communal experience. Sharing something, and gaining all that I gained and also losing what one does lose in a live reading.\n09:53\tKatherine McLeod:\tHere we were on January 27, 2021, listening to a recording of Avison from January 27, 1967, and we were struck by the immediacy of her voice. I couldn’t help but think that maybe all of these online readings were making us even more attuned to the recorded voice. With nearly all literary events as virtual over this past year, we are practising our skills of hearing an archival recording as a performance, one that is mediated and live. Let’s liven up the end of this miniside – get ready for our first ShortCuts audio challenge, [Sound Effect: Fanfare] solving mysteries in the audio archives, together! There’s a very curious moment in the recording of the Avison reading. I had wanted to talk about this curious moment in the recording but we didn’t have time in the listening practice… Then a couple weeks later I saw that SpokenWeb researcher Mathieu Aubin – a friend of ShortCuts as you may recall he guest-produced a minisode last season – he had posted a tweet about this very same moment. He agreed to revisit this moment in the archives together.\n11:02\tAudio Recording, Katherine McLeod, Zoom interview:\tSo, thank you for joining me for this conversation, and welcome back to ShortCuts.\n11:09\tAudio Recording, Mathieu Aubin, Zoom interview:\tHi, happy to be here.\n11:11\tAudio Recording, Katherine McLeod, Zoom interview:\tWhat was the tweet that you wrote after listening to the Avison reading? Would you mind reading that out for us?\n11:16\tAudio Recording, Mathieu Aubin, Zoom interview:\tYeah, of course. So “In today’s listening to the Sir George Williams collections, I heard Margaret Avison, who was introducing one of her poems, being interrupted by a man in the audience who mansplains her own work… eh boy. But, as a badass, Avison calls him out, making the audience laugh.”\n11:35\tAudio Recording, Margaret Avison at SGWU, 1967:\tI think it is just beautiful, but nobody gets it unless I explain, so I’ll explain, it’s like you take a piece of 8 by 11 typing paper….\n11:44\tAudio Recording, Audience Member  at Avison at SGWU, 1967:\n \n\nDon’t explain, just say it.\n11:46\tAudio Recording, Margaret Avison:\tAlright, you can tell me then, eh? “Said the mite on the single page of a sad letter: Eureka.” Now, come on… [Audience Laughs] Hmm? Does anybody want the explanation? Well I’ve read it. It’s just a crumpled-up letter, you know, you get it and you read it and you cry and you crumple it up and you throw it down and the mic goes up…now I’ll read it again. “Said the mite on the single page of a sad letter: Eureka.”\n12:45\tAudio Recording, Mathieu Aubin, Zoom interview:\tWhen I was listening to it the first and second time – because I re-listened to it immediately – it’s different with you, obviously, because we’re actually responding and we’re both in on this is about to happen – but it’s, first, the audacity of that anonymous man just interrupting her and then telling her to do something, on the one hand. On the other hand is her being like, come on, do you want to do it? Do you, do you really want to – just calling him out and you could feel it generations later of that awkwardness and everyone is like ‘eee’….\n13:24\tAudio Recording, Margaret Avison at SGWU, 1967:\tI’ll read it again: “Said the mite on the single page of a sad letter. Eureka!”\n13:35\tAudio Recording, Katherine McLeod, Zoom interview:\tThat point that we’re almost, we’re listening, almost anticipating knowing what she’s going to do —.\n13:39\tAudio Recording, Mathieu Aubin, Zoom interview:\tYeah.\n13:39\tAudio Recording, Katherine McLeod, Zoom interview:\t— I love thinking of all the sounds in there. Even I’m wondering what this is: it almost sounds like she stamps the desk with her hand or something. So, I’ll just play this here…\n13:52\tAudio Recording, Margaret Avison at SGWU, 1967:\tAll right. You can tell me then. [Muffled Bang] Eh?\n13:58\tAudio Recording, Mathieu Aubin, Zoom interview:\tYeah, you’re right! I didn’t notice that — I was paying attention more to the sorts of the words that I could understand. But you’re right. You hear the book hitting the — I don’t know the podium or whatever it was.\n14:07\tAudio Recording, Katherine McLeod, Zoom interview:\tYeah, just that sound. It really sounds like either hitting something down onto the desk or a book hitting… but it punctuates it. [Sigh] It’s also interesting that the whole joke or pun is about paper and a letter. And then, this, if she does like slam the book down, the presence of the weight of the page is right there.\n14:34\tAudio Recording, Margaret Avison at SGWU, 1967:\t[Recording overlaps with Katherine] It’s just a crumpled up letter – you cry, you crumple it up, you throw it down…\n14:36\tAudio Recording, Katherine McLeod, Zoom interview:\t[Katherine overlaps with Avison recording] You cry, you crumple it up, you throw it down – and there are so many emotions happening in this moment.\n14:41\tAudio Recording, Margaret Avison at SGWU, 1967:\n \n\nNow I’ll read it again…\n14:41\tAudio Recording, Katherine McLeod, Zoom interview:\tDo you feel like, do you feel like you get it?\n14:46\tAudio Recording, Mathieu Aubin, Zoom interview\tYeah. I think –I mean I’m trying to picture it in my head and obviously when I’m listening to it and I can kind of see it. Do I immediately get this symbolic significance? Not necessarily. At the same time, I think it gains more significance with what’s happening in that moment, and in the performance, like with the “Eureka!” – the here we are! Like what you were saying earlier, almost like drawing a parallel between what’s happening with the paper and her using the paper and speaking up. If I were to read it on the page, I would probably sit with it a bit longer, but that’s the thing about audio, right? You can pause it, but you’re trying to listen along and trying to be in that moment.\n15:27\tAudio Recording, Katherine McLeod, Zoom interview:\tWe talked about it even more than I could have imagined from the clip itself. So thanks so much for listening back to this moment in the archives and for joining me once again on ShortCuts.\n15:38\tAudio Recording, Mathieu Aubin, Zoom interview:\n \n\nAnd it’s been my pleasure. Thanks for having me.\n15:40\tMusic:\tPiano Interlude\n15:45\tKatherine McLeod:\tLet’s leave this mystery unsolved. And, more than solving the mystery, I hope that this audio challenge will unite us as an audience – in 1967 and in 2021 – as having to figure something out, together, as having to share our confusion and our curiosity. My name is Katherine McLeod, [Piano With Distorted Beat] and ShortCuts [Sound Effect: Chime] is produced by myself, hosted by Hannah McGregor, and mixed and mastered by Stacey Copeland. This minisode was recorded in the city of Montreal, on the unceded lands known as Tiohtià:ke by the Kanien’kehá:ka Nation. A special thanks to Stephanie Bolster, Barbara Nickel, and to all of the listeners in the Listening Practice. And, of course, to our guest Matthew Aubin for taking on the first ShortCuts Audio Challenge. Tune in next month for another deep dive into the sounds of the SpokenWeb archives, and next month… it might be spring."],"score":2.7048998},{"id":"9664","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 4.1, Archival Listening, 17 October 2022, McLeod"],"item_title_source":["SpokenWeb Podcast web page."],"item_title_note":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/archival-listening/"],"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\":[]}]"],"contributors":["[]"],"Publication_Date":[2022],"material_description":["[]"],"digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/archival-listening/\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"shortcuts-4-1.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"44.1 kHz\",\"duration\":\"00:10:29\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"10,059,067 bytes\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"MP3 audio\",\"title\":\"shortcuts-4-1\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/archival-listening/\"}]"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"2022-10-17\",\"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"],"content_notes":["Interim Transcript"],"Note":["[]"],"Related_works":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"Katherine McLeod, from ShortCuts 3.1 “Sounds”: https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/sounds/\\n\\nKatherine McLeod, from ShortCuts 3.9 “Re-Situating Sound”: https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/re-situating-sound/\\n\\nArchival audio, Dionne Brand, 1988 reading, from ShortCuts 3.3 “Communal Memories”: https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/communal-memories/\\n\\nArchival audio: Douglas Barbour, from Penny Chalmers (Penn Kemp) at the University of Alberta, February 18, 1977; Douglas Barbour introducing Penny Chalmers (Penn Kemp) at the University of Alberta, February 18, 1977; Douglas Barbour introducing Leona Gom at the University of Alberta, February 21, 1980; Douglas Barbour, from John Newlove at the University of Alberta, March 19, 1981 — all from ShortCuts 3.6 “Listening Communities: The Introductions of Doug Barbour” (guest produced by Michael O’Driscoll): https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/listening-communities-the-introductions-of-douglas-barbour/\\n\\nArchival audio, Daphne Marlatt, 1970, from ShortCuts 3.4 “Sonic Passages”: https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/sonic-passages/\\n\\nDaphne Marlatt interview with Karis Shearer and Megan Butchart played on “SoundBox Signals presents Performing the Archive” an episode of SoundBox Signals that was aired on The SpokenWeb Podcast (co-produced by Karis Shearer, Megan Butchart, and Nour Sallam), clipped on ShortCuts 3.4: https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/sonic-passages/\\n\\nInterview with Kelly Cubbon, “Talking Transcription: Accessibility, Collaboration, Creativity,” (co-produced by Kelly Cubbon and Katherine McLeod), S3E9 The SpokenWeb Podcast, June 2022: https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/talking-transcription-accessibility-collaboration-and-creativity/\\n\\nInterview with Kaie Kellough, ShortCuts 3.5 “The Voice that is the Poem”: https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/the-voice-that-is-the-poem-ft-kaie-kellough/\\n\\nArchival audio, Oana Avasilichioaei, from ShortCuts 3.8: https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/the-event/\\n\\nArchival audio, bpNichol, November 1968, from ShortCuts 3.2: “What the Archive Remembers”: https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/what-the-archive-remembers/\\n\\nArchival audio, Phyllis Webb, from ShortCuts 3.7 “Moving, Still”: https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/moving-still/\"}]"],"_version_":1853670549784363008,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:54.290Z","contents":["In this first episode of Season 4, SpokenWeb’s ShortCuts continues the tradition of starting a new season by diving into its own archives. What kinds of new stories and audio criticism can be produced through short archival clips? Join host and producer Katherine McLeod to listen to clips from Season 3 of ShortCuts as a way of asking what literary criticism sounds like through cutting and splicing sound. It is a short exercise in archival listening, and archival making.\n\n[Music: Piano Overlaid With Distorted Beat] ]\n\nKatherine McLeod: Welcome to ShortCuts. My name is Katherine McLeod. Join me, each month on alternate fortnights (that’s every second week following the monthly SpokenWeb Podcast episode) for SpokenWeb’s ShortCuts. Short stories about how literature sounds.\n\n[End Music: Piano Overlaid With Distorted Beat]\n\nOn ShortCuts, we explore what you can make by cutting up [scissor cut] and splicing sound digitally. What kinds of new stories and audio criticism can be produced through these short archival clips? If you’re a researcher with the SpokenWeb Project, do think about joining me on ShortCuts to discuss an archival clip that has impacted your work, especially if you’re a student who has been digitizing and cataloguing recordings and there’s a sound that stands out to you after all those hours of listening. Get in touch! Write to SpokenWebPodcast@gmail.com\n\nNow, as I’ve always done to start each season, let’s dive into the archives of ShortCuts. We’ll listen to clips from the previous season, Season 3, in order to hear what ShortCuts sounds like… We’ll do this as is an exercise in listening – an exercise in archival listening. From now on…\n\nKatherine McLeod, from ShortCuts 3.1: All of the sounds will be clips from Season Three of ShortCuts, and that includes my voiceover. [Overlapping] My Voiceover, my voiceover.\n\nKatherine McLeod, from ShortCuts 3.9: And I say that while holding out my arms gesturing as though I’m attempting to hold the sound.\n\n[Tape rewinding]\n\nKatherine McLeod, from ShortCuts 3.9: I am holding the sound carefully, knowing how difficult it can be to take a recorded voice, with all of its situated affect attached to it, out of the archives. To unarchive carefully.\n\n[Tape rewinding ends]\n\nArchival audio, Dionne Brand, 1988 Reading, from ShortCuts 3.3: Lee read the epigram back to me in Montreal. And I was very honoured too, that she had written it back to me and I’ve been trying to write her back an epigram. We might make a book [Audience Laughter]. So I haven’t got very far with the epigram except to say: “Write me out of this epigram, Lee, you are so much water. You are too much water, too much rock, so much eagle. Write me out of this epigram, Lee. I am so much bush, so much ocean, so much rage…” And that’s just the beginning. [Laughter] It’s not finished. [Clapping] It’s supposed to go and like “write us out of this goddamn epigram.” [Audience Laughter]. I want to read a couple poems about South Africa.\n\nKatherine McLeod, from ShortCuts 3.3: Brand starts her reading after Maracle with a poem for South Africa. And that is exactly how Maracle had started hers. I am taking all of these audio clips out of their contexts, out of their linear order in which they would’ve been heard in the reading, but, in doing so, I’m trying to bring to the forefront, the connections that are embedded within it and the conversation happening between poets in the reading itself.\n\nArchival Audio, Douglas Barbour, from Penny Chalmers (Penn Kemp) at the University of Alberta, February 18, 1977, from ShortCuts 3.6: They’ll be right up to your feet but that won’t be too bad.\n\nArchival Audio, Douglas Barbour introducing Penny Chalmers (Penn Kemp) at the University of Alberta, February 18, 1977, from ShortCuts 3.6: …Penny is the author of Most Recently Transformed, which is a marvelous looking book, as well as a very, very fine book…\n\nArchival Audio, Douglas Barbour introducing Leona Gom at the University of Alberta, February 21, 1980, from ShortCuts 3.6: [Audience Chatter] …still a bit of… Not much [Audience Laughter]. We’re happy to welcome Leona Gom. [Audience Applause]\n\nArchival Audio, Douglas Barbour, from John Newlove at the University of Alberta, March 19, 1981, from ShortCuts 3.6: [Audience Chatter] …there’s your friend. There’s a little bit of room if you wanna sit on the floor here!\n\nAudio recording, Daphne Marlatt, 1970, from ShortCuts 3.4: This is a poem that I wrote when I was about… oh I don’t know, seven or eight months pregnant… [Pause] …Bird of Passage. I wrote it in Vancouver… spring time again…. Bird of Passage.\n\nKatherine McLeod, from ShortCuts 3.4: Here, was Marlatt in 1970 saying that she had written this poem ‘Bird of Passage’ while she was pregnant. That is significant in and of itself when thinking of the body but now I was hearing it with the full resonance of her recent conversation with Shearer and Buchart from the podcast and what Marlatt says when the date of the recording, July 1969, is mentioned…\n\nArchival audio played on “SoundBox Signals presents Performing the Archive”, 2019, from ShortCuts 3.4: Interesting that date, because I had given birth to my son at the beginning of May. So, I was a young mother, my body had gone through a major experience. That was not the experience that I’d had when I wrote those poems. What was interesting to me hearing last night at the reading – there was so much – my voice was so much more present in those poems than I had remembered my voice being…\n\nKelly Cubbon, S3E9, SpokenWeb Podcast: […] I think also overlapping context for lack of a better word has been something I’ve I think we’ve been working to indicate such as if someone appears in an episode in a Zoom interview and then in an archival recording of them, and that archival recording includes them speaking to the audience as an aside and then performing poetry. And then maybe they’re in kind of a more formal voiceover audio. There might be four instances of slightly different context to indicate.\n\nZoom interview with Kaie Kellough, from ShortCuts 3.5: : You asked me [Start Music: ShortCuts Theme Music] what it was like, what I thought about when hearing it and it’s strange to hear that kind of reflection of yourself and to – I didn’t realize it was as far back as 2016, because it feels a lot sooner. I remember what I was thinking about. I remember what my poetry, my poetic preoccupations were at the time. I remember how far that poem came because it was young and sentimental when I wrote it, and then it was not like that by the time it was published. It took on a different sort of personality by the time it was published. But yeah, I remember everything that I was thinking about. I remember how excited I was about it. Yeah. It’s just a — so thank you.\n\nZoom interview, Katherine McLeod, from ShortCuts 3.5: Thank you so much.\n\nArchival audio, Oana Avasilichioaei, from ShortCuts 3.8: [Performing “Chambersonic”] Let form be oral / a foundation / sonority / an impossible lone sound / recording / the ghost of sound [whispered] the ghost of sound. Let form be oral. A foundation of phonemes. Distorted – [overlapping voice] fragments. Re-assemblages. [Whispered] The ghost of sound…\n\nKatherine McLeod, from ShortCuts 3.8: This. This is a setting on music. This is. What is this? It is as though she is asking us to consider: what is this this-ness of sonority? Of an impossible lone sound? Of the ghost of sound?\n\nArchival Audio, bpNichol, November 1968, from ShortCuts 3.2: [Reading poem] Wanting you, I forgot you. You erased my name. Erasing you, the wanting forgot, I tried your name.\n\nKatherine McLeod, from ShortCuts 3.2: The emotional weight of archives.\n\nArchival audio, Phyllis Webb, from ShortCuts 3.7: [Reading from “Naked Poems”] In the gold darkening light / you dressed / I hid my face in my hair. / The room that held you is still here. / You brought me clarity / gift after gift I wear / poems / naked, in the sunlight / on the floor [sound of pages turning]…\n\nKatherine McLeod, from ShortCuts 3.2: To what extent are we trying, trying to remember or trying to erase a memory that may not be ours in the first place –\n\nArchival Audio, bpNichol, November 1968, from ShortCuts 3.2: [Reading a poem] I wanted to forget you, so I tried to erase your name.\n\nKatherine McLeod, from ShortCuts 3.2: — and yet having heard it, that memory can never be forgotten. The feeling of having heard it is still there.\n\n[Ambient music begins]\n\nKatherine McLeod, from ShortCuts 3.9: You’ve been listening to ShortCuts. ShortCuts is transcribed by Kelly Cubbon, mixed and mastered by Miranda Eastwood, and written and produced by me, Katherine McLeod. Thanks for listening.\n\n[End of music]"],"score":2.7048998},{"id":"9665","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 4.2, ShortCuts Live! Talking with Sarah Cipes about Feminist Audio Editing, 21 November 2022, McLeod"],"item_title_source":["SpokenWeb Podcast web page."],"item_title_note":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/shortcuts-live-talking-with-sarah-cipes-about-feminist-audio-editing/"],"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":[2022],"material_description":["[]"],"digital_description":["[]"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"2022-11-21\",\"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"],"content_notes":["Draft transcript."],"Note":["[{\"note\":\"The wrong file is linked on the podcast site, so this episode cannot be listened to/downloaded and some information is missing.\",\"type\":\"Cataloguer\"}]"],"Related_works":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"Cipes, Sarah. “It’s more of a feeling… Digitizing Reel-to-Reel for the SpokenWeb SoundBox Collection.” AmpLab, online.\\n\\nFong, Deanna and Shearer, Karis. “Gender, Affective Labour, and Community-Building Through Literary Audio Recordings.” SPOKENWEBLOG, 21 April, 2022.\\n\\nHeld, Virginia. The Ethics of Care. Oxford University Press, 2005.\\n\\nHobbs, Catherine. “Personal Ethics: Being an Archivist of Writers.” Basements and Attics, Closets and Cyberspace: Explorations in Canadian Women’s Archives. Eds. Linda M. Morra and Jessica Schagerl, Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2012, pp. 181–92.\\n\\nWanting Everything: The Collected Works of Gladys Hindmarch. Eds. Deanna Fong and Karis Shearer.  Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2020.\"}]"],"_version_":1853670549786460160,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:54.290Z","contents":["This month, it is ShortCuts Live! We’ll still take a deep dive into the SpokenWeb archives through a short ‘cut’ of audio, but, in these ShortCuts Live! episodes, ShortCuts host and producer Katherine McLeod takes ShortCuts out of the archives and into the world. This month’s episode was recorded on-site at the SpokenWeb Symposium and Sound Institute in May 2022 at Concordia University. It is a conversation with UBCO doctoral candidate Sarah Cipes. \n\nAt the time of recording this conversation, Sarah had just presented a paper called “Finding Due Balance: Sound Editing as a Feminist Practice in Literary Archives.” In fact, this paper was already in conversation – that is, part of a collaborative article in development with Dr. Deanna Fong and Dr. Karis Shearer who have developed feminist listening methodologies in their introduction to Wanting Everything: The Collected Works of Gladys Hindmarch and to their article, “Gender, Affective Labour, and Community-Building Through Literary Audio Recordings.” Listen to ShortCuts Live! to hear Sarah talk with Katherine about feminist redaction when working with sensitive materials in audio archives, and where this collaborative research will take her next.\n\nShortCuts, Live! Talking with Sarah Cipes about Feminist Audio Editing\n\n[Theme music]\n\nKatherine McLeod [host intro]: Welcome to ShortCuts. This month, it is ShortCuts Live! We’ll still take a deep dive into the SpokenWeb archives through a short ‘cut’ of audio, but, in these ShortCuts Live! episodes, ShortCuts host and producer Katherine McLeod takes ShortCuts out into the world and records them as conversations, live. This month’s episode was recorded on-site at the SpokenWeb Symposium and Sound Institute in May 2022 at Concordia University in Montreal.\n\n[Theme music ends]\n\nAmid the bustle of a packed week of talks and workshops, it was such a treat to sit down with some of the presenters and have a conversation about their archival audio. It was especially meaningful considering how ShortCuts started in 2020 and so nearly all of its episodes have been recorded during the pandemic, and mostly in my closet. It felt great to be sitting down with folks at our microphones in the same space, and to embrace the background noise around us – after all, it was all happening live! In this ShortCuts Live, you’ll hear my conversation with UBCO doctoral candidate Sarah Cipes. At the time of the recording, Sarah had just presented a paper called “Finding Due Balance: Sound Editing as a Feminist Practice in Literary Archives.” We sat down together at microphones set up in Concordia’s 4th Space, and you can hear the buzz of the symposium behind us – reminding us that this is being recorded live…\n\nKatherine: Welcome to ShortCuts. We’re recording this ShortCuts, live, in 4th Space at Concordia University during the SpokenWeb Sound Institute. I’m here with Sarah Cipes. Thanks so much for joining me, Sarah!\n\nSarah: Thanks so much for having me. This is very exciting.\n\n \n\nKatherine: Well, the reason that I asked Sarah to join me is that, during the SpokenWeb Symposium she delivered a paper that was really based on an audio clip. It was really all about one audio clip, which seemed perfect for ShortCuts because we love diving into the complexity of a single audio clip. So I thought that one way of starting would be for Sarah and I to listen to the clip together…\n\n \n\nArchival audio,Warren Tallman: \n\nNow one thing I’m curious about [inaudible – distortion]….\n\n \n\nArchival audio, Gladys Hindmarch:\nThat the young recognize, the elders two years older.\n\n \n\nArchival audio, Warren Tallman:\nAnd they’re both, they’re both and, but now…\n\n \n\nKatherine: So rather than starting with a question of “What are we listening to?” I’m going to ask you, Sarah, what it’s like to listen to that clip – here and now in this moment…\n\n \n\nSarah: That was a really lovely refresher and a nice moment – and, I don’t know if you noticed I was smiling while I was listening to it. I am really pleased with what we were able to sort of tease out of the sound that was left when the voices are gone. And I – I actually said something in my talk on Tuesday that I hadn’t planned to say – and that I hadn’t thought of previously – but I was being sparked by all of these amazing questions and thoughtful comments from the audience – and that is that I wanted people to feel, when they’re listening to it, uncomfortable, as if they’re trying to listen in onto a conversation that they shouldn’t be listening to, like trying to listen through a door. I think that even though this is a preliminary version of the idea of the feminist edit, I think that I was able to bring home that feeling of discomfort and of tonal variance… And, yeah, tonal discomfort for the listener that you should feel when you’re trying to hear other people’s gossip <laugh>.\n\n \n\nKatherine: You refer to this as a feminist edit, and what do you mean by that, generally?\n\n \n\nSarah: So when I initially started working with the idea of feminist edits, it was really, it’s really a large idea. It can, it can really incorporate anything that comes within the idea of feminist ethics of care. So, I looked at Virginia Held’s Ethics of Care, as a big proponent of my understanding of what to do with feminist edits. And I also looked at Catherine Hobbs’s discussions and scholarship about literary archives and what it means to be respectful when you’re archiving.\n\n \n\nKatherine: Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>\n\n \n\nSarah: And so bringing that into audio was a really interesting idea for me because redaction restriction and censorship and all of these things that have a lot of negative feelings around them for researchers can actually be turned into positive things, I think, particularly within audio that actually allow users to listen to tapes that they might otherwise be totally barred from.\n\n \n\nKatherine: Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>.\n\n \n\nSarah: And so my desire was to create sound edits that allow the listener to hear the vast majority of the tape while also protecting the privacy of those on the tape, or even in this case, someone who’s mentioned who’s not there. But really a feminist edit could also be about amplifying voices that are not usually central to the microphone.\n\n \n\nKatherine: Yeah, I can imagine – it makes me think of in the 1963 Poetry Conference that was recorded by Fred Wah’s tape recorder. That now is at UBCO <laugh> I think you have that recorder. When listening to those recordings it’s so interesting to hear a question asked, and you can tell that it’s a voice from very far back in the room, and often those voices are women because – you know, you really hear it – the men are up front, closest to the mic. And, you know, hearing say a question asked by a voice that is, say, quite soft in terms of the recording and the placement in the room, and just like literally amplifying that voice, let alone all of the other ways that voices could be amplified. That just just makes me think of the, the potential there for centering voices through audio edits – making them clearer, making them louder – on a very technical level.\n\n \n\nSarah: There really is so much that that could be done. And that’s why I love the idea of the feminist edit within archives because archiving itself is such an intuitive practice and sound editing. These kinds of sound edits have all been very intuitive and very personal. And I think that every single person who encountered and tried to edit this tape would’ve ended up with a different edit, which is really, it’s really cool. It allows you to think about how people’s brains work in terms of what: Do you want the listener to feel when they can’t hear specific kinds of audio?\n\n \n\nKatherine Yes, and you’ve been working with Dr. Karis Shearer and, I believe, [Dr.] Deanna Fong as well, and could you speak to a little bit about that collaboration?\n\n \n\nSarah: It’s been really wonderful. I am lucky enough to have Dr. Karis Shearer as my supervisor. She has just been such an amazing, inspiring person leading me through this. I tend to focus more on the practical, and in those ways I sometimes leave the theoretical behind and I forget to ground my work in theory. And so working with Karis and Deanna has been really amazing and really important for me because it has pushed me to step back and say: Okay, I’m trying to create this practical edit, but what am I grounding my work in? Where is this coming from? Instead of just assuming that everyone understands my desire to do a feminist edit. You have to express, you know, why that’s necessary. Where does this work already exist? Where did it begin? Where am I? Where am I pulling from?\n\n \n\nKatherine: Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>.\n\n \n\nSarah: So in terms of understanding how to ground my work within feminist ethics of care, Deanna and Karis have been there sort of showing me the light <laugh> – and giving me readings!\n\n \n\nKatherine: Yes <laugh> I can imagine that augmenting and building upon your training in library sciences and just really bringing that theoretical richness to the technical skills that you have already. It makes me think too that the way that like redaction works in the archives and say in the print archives or maybe something is redacted. Here you are redacting through audio editing, but the important thing is that you’re keeping that audio somewhere else. Could you explain how that works? How does the audio remain while also being redacted?\n\n \n\nSarah: Yes. This is something that’s really important to me based on my work in archives, I think I may have overly expressed this actually in my talk because it’s so necessary, but transparency is key in every archive. And I now realize it’s not just necessary for the practical reasons that you would – that I generally – think of, but also for ethical reasons.\n\n \n\nKatherine: Mm-hmm. <Affirmative>.\n\n \n\nSarah: And so I have been working with digitizing audio digitizing the sound box collection, specifically the reel-to-reels at UBCO at the AMP Lab. And that has been – that is my joy. I love, love working with reel-to-reel. It’s actually been really interesting because a lot of people at this conference have been talking about sound as ephemeral. And to me it’s, it’s very physical.\n\n \n\nKatherine: Right\n\n \n\nSarah: It’s attached to this whole, to working with this machine to being so careful with these amazing tapes. And so the way that we are maintaining them is obviously we are keeping the original magnetic tape recordings, very carefully. And they’ve been archived and gently babied because they are – I call them my babies <laugh> – and then also, upon digitizing them, you have to work to a specific. There’s audio specifications – within, that’s just understood – that’s necessary within archival maintenance of digitized recordings. And so you digitize the tape, which means that you play the tape on its original on a playback machine that’s able to do that; put it through a secondary, a mix-preamp or some other secondary source, and then directly into your computer; and you digitize it at a high enough rate and specificity that it sounds almost exactly the same. And in fact, if it’s done to the highest standards, sounds exactly the same. So you can’t differentiate. And then you maintain that. That’s your master access copy, and you do not edit that copy. You save that, and it’s for no one, it <laugh> it exists solely in case of emergency. Really, and then you can make copies of that, and edit them. So what I’m playing with is not the original.\n\n \n\nKatherine: Right, okay.\n\n \n\nSarah: For its own safety. <Laughter> And then you can also save those. Your copied files as lower quality so that you can make them more accessible. Because not everyone has the ability to play wav files.\n\n \n\nKatherine: That makes sense. You have original or the preservation copy and then you’re making the edits on the digital files. I also love what you said about sound as being very, very physical, tangible and just, you know, the way that you described working with these recordings. I think as a last question or reflection. We’ve talked… We’ve moved closer and closer to the sound through our conversation, and I’m wondering if you could speak to the difference between for you, for the difference between editing and leaving silence versus editing and leaving some suggestion of sound, whether that’s visual – looking at the sound waves – or audible in what we’re listening to.\n\n \n\nSarah: I love having both available. I love being able to look at the wave forms and listen to the audio at the same time. They’re visually beautiful and that’s a big part of it, but also it’s sort of, it’s sort of lets you know what to expect, like what’s coming up when you’re looking at the waveform and playing the sound. At the same time. I personally prefer to have ambient sound occurring during the silences, during the redactions, if you want to call them that. I think that it is more implicative of like, the world is still continuing, we’re holding space for this to happen, and just because you can’t hear the words doesn’t mean that the conversation has stopped.\n\n \n\nKatherine: Mm-hmm. <Affirmative>.\n\n \n\nSarah: So I think that’s really important. I also showed a clip in which I just had the, I had the sound removed, all of the vocals removed. And because the tape that I used didn’t have a lot of ambient noise, it was actually really beautifully recorded. It ended up being essentially silent, in the, in the background of that. But for a lot of archives, if you are listening to tapes that were recorded in loud areas or there’s a lot of background noise, if you do remove the vocals, you’re still going to have all of this delicious background sound. So it’s really as with everything each, each object is, is so unique.\n\n \n\nKatherine: So how do you remove the vocals? What tool do you use?\n\n \n\nSarah: It’s so easy. It’s actually, it’s so – Audacity’s most recent version, which is 3.1.3, and I use Audacity because it’s free and it’s open source software, so it’s always improving. And it’s also available to archives even that have a lot of financial constraints and staffing constraints. There’s literally a tool called Vocal Isolation and Removal, and you just high highlight, that’s it. You just highlights the part that you want. So that’s how it leaves, it leaves the background noise. That’s, Yeah. That, So what, what, what we were listening to in that that middle portion that was background or was that, That was distortion. <Laugh>. That was distortion. So in the, in the final edit that I liked the most, the way that I was able to maintain the sound of the conversation because there was so little background noise was to use a distortion element called the VO coder. And so while I still had the vocals in there, I added the VO coder, which added distortion around the vocals, kind of fuzzed them up a little, and then you remove the vocals, and so the, the sound is still there. It didn’t, I think I expressed this. I need to, I would like to do further work because what I really wanted was sort of a smoother conversation tone where you can hear it you can hear it sounds more like speech. I think I did this in my, in my discussion, but sort of like the Charlie Brown teacher.\n\n \n\nKatherine: Right.\n\n \n\nSarah: That’s what I was going for…\n\n \n\nKatherine: Hearing that intonation of speech up the, the fluctuations up and down it, well, we could hear it a bit there, but it, it’s, Yeah, I can imagine then you’re even more, you’re aware that you’re not hearing something, but you’re also hearing something and you can, you’re – you’re hearing the fluctuations in the conversation, but not the conversation itself, not the content. It’s so important to know that there’s audio there – there are things to listen to – but also that you know, it’s we don’t have to have access to everything. And in fact, ethically it, it’s not right to have access to everything. And so how to be able to make audio accessible, while still respecting that, respecting the communities that the recordings are from, respecting the individuals and the voices on them, on those recordings because it, it so easily the recordings could just get shelved away and they’re then never listened to. So trying to balance that it’s really exciting that you’re, you’re doing this work. When we know that something’s there, it’s also, it’s tempting to want to hear it. And so it, I think what you talked about about uncomfortableness too, it’s also this sense of even catching oneself, being like: Oh, I want to hear it! And then thinking: Well, wait – am I, am I the listener for this? And realizing that actually you’re, you’re maybe not the person. You’re not in that room, you’re not listening, you’re not privy to that conversation. But that, that sort of checking our impulse of wanting to know everything as researchers and recognizing that that is actually that can actually be problematic too.\n\n \n\nSarah: What you’re speaking to is actually a larger archival issue in terms of wanting to have everything.\n\n \n\nKatherine: Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>.\n\n \n\nSarah: And the idea of leaving space was actually something that came out of archival theory surrounding the archive, the capital ‘A’ – Archive – you know, the institution as not necessarily being a place that should have everything. And that, as opposed to maintaining collections that really belong elsewhere, what they should do is hold space and tell researchers: we don’t have that because it doesn’t belong to us. That’s not ours. And so I’ve tried to take that idea of sort of thoughtfulness and space and bring that down to the level of the personal – to the individual – and, and now to audio.\n\n \n\nKatherine: Yes, I think what you’ve, what you’re working on, it is holding space in sound. And thank you for sharing this with me today here live and shortcuts live and with our listeners. So thank you so much, Sarah.\n\n \n\nSarah: Thank you, Katherine. This has been great.\n\n \n\n[Music begins]\n\n \n\nKatherine McLeod [Outro]: You’ve been listening to ShortCuts. A special thanks to this month’s guest, Sarah Cipes. Thanks to supervising producer Kate Moffatt, sound designer Miranda Eastwood, and transcriber Kelly Cubbon. ShortCuts is written and produced by me, Katherine McLeod. Thanks for listening.\n\n \n\n[Music ends]"],"score":2.7048998},{"id":"9666","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 4.3, ShortCuts Live! Talking with Faith Paré about the Atwater Poetry Project Archives, 20 February 2023, McLeod"],"item_title_source":["SpokenWeb Podcast web page."],"item_title_note":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/shortcuts-live-talking-with-faith-pare-about-the-atwater-poetry-project-archives/"],"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":[2023],"material_description":["[]"],"digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://cdn.simplecast.com/audio/28a9da1f-8cca-410c-b5d7-8165a73f9394/episodes/f7991804-23c4-4608-8996-9b9b7fdce603/audio/7eb476a2-d59e-403b-bb78-019d065205d9/default_tc.mp3?nocache\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"shortcuts-4-3.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"44.1 kHz\",\"duration\":\"00:26:52\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"25,802,336 bytes\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"MP3 audio\",\"title\":\"shortcuts-4-3\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/shortcuts-live-talking-with-faith-pare-about-the-atwater-poetry-project-archives/\"}]"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"2023-02-20\",\"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"],"content_notes":["Draft transcript"],"Note":["[]"],"Related_works":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"The Atwater Poetry Project, https://www.atwaterlibrary.ca/events/atwater-poetry-project/\\n\\n“Performing the Atwater Poetry Project Archives, guest curated by Katherine McLeod and Klara du Plessis, featuring the sounds of poets from the APP archives,” 20 February 2023, https://spokenweb.ca/events/performing-the-atwater-poetry-project-archive/\\n\\n\"}]"],"_version_":1853670549787508736,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:54.290Z","contents":["ShortCuts presents another episode of ShortCuts Live! This month’s episode was recorded as a live conversation on Zoom with the current curator of the Atwater Poetry Project, Faith Paré. As a former SpokenWeb undergraduate RA, Faith’s SpokenWeb contributions have included editorial and curatorial work on Desire Lines; an interview with Kaie Kellough on SPOKENWEBLOG; performing as a spoken word poet in Black Writers Out Loud; leading a virtual listening practice on Black noise; and reading her poetry at SpokenWeb’s “Sounding Undernames” at Blue Metropolis. This is all to say that Faith had a wealth of experience to draw upon when, as a curator, she was handed a folder of poetry recordings.\n\nHow to reactivate the archival past of the Atwater Poetry Project? What is it like to curate the past and future of a reading series? Find out by listening to ShortCuts Live! A conversation with Katherine McLeod and Faith Paré about the Atwater Poetry Project archives.\n\n[Music begins]\n\nKatherine McLeod: Welcome to ShortCuts. This month on ShortCuts, we’re here – live – on Zoom with the Atwater Poetry Project curator Faith Paré. Faith joins me for this conversation to talk about the Atwater Poetry Project archives. These archives are community archives that are being integrated into SpokenWeb in order to preserve them and to make them more discoverable. As part of the Atwater Poetry Project’s programming, Faith reached out to me and Klara du Plessis to see if we’d be interested in curating an event for the Atwater Poetry Project that would activate play and remix the archives in ways that would be both performative and also exploratory. What could we make with these archives? What would it be like to re-listen to clips from this reading series in the very same place in which it has always taken place? Klara and I will be undertaking this performance of the Atwater Poetry Project Archives on the same night that this shortcuts is released. And with all of our conversations about this event with faith, it felt like a shortcuts conversation every time we talked about it. And so I had to get some of those conversations on tape. Hi, Faith, thanks for joining me here today on ShortCuts Live!\n\nFaith Paré: Thanks for having me again, Katherine. It’s really a pleasure.\n\n[Music ends]\n\nKatherine McLeod: Thank you so much. And it really is a ShortCuts Live! By the fact that my three month old daughter is also here with me, and she has already been making a few noises, and she’ll be making some noises throughout. And, for long time ShortCuts listeners, you’ll remember that back in season two, the voice of a poet’s young daughter has already been heard on ShortCuts, so we welcome sounds like that here.\n\nSo, just to give listeners a little bit of background, the Atwater Poetry Project was started by poet Oana Avasilichioaei in 2004. Since then, the series has hosted over 300 poetry readings by established and emerging Canadian poets. The curators of the series have been Avasilichioaei, then it was Katia Grubisic, followed by Darren Bifford, then Simon Jory Steven-Gillie, and Charlotte Harrison, followed by Deanna Radford, then Rachel McCrum. And now you, Faith Paré. What was it like to take on this role as curator of the Atwater Poetry Project? What was most exciting at the start?\n\nFaith Paré: That’s a great question of kind of trying to boil down what the role specifically is because I think by nature and also by the fact that arts administration is so all encompassing and often such a juggle of what you need to do, it changes so often. I think fundamentally it is about trying to listen to your surroundings, I think, and be perceptive to what’s happening,and the different strains of literary existence that are going on around you. And keeping in mind that I am not trying to make it sound too much like following trends but rather trying to kind of put together a larger story of what a poetry scene essentially is – and the different networks and interconnections and entanglements that make that and conflicts. So fundamentally, I think it is about listening, but it’s also about wanting to listen to not only to the kind of literary city around me but also to what people are, might be looking for in the audience as well. But I do have to say it’s a big act to follow coming after, particularly Rachel and the amazing way that she was able to engage, transition, first of all audiences online and then engage them so well. And really try and think about the expansiveness of the online reading form as its own phenomenon, not just as like just something to fill in until we’re back in-person.\n\nKatherine McLeod: You took on the role when it was still online on Crowdcast, which Rachel had started during her time as curator in the Pandemic. And that really was an opportunity to think about the way that the Atwater Poetry Project does always program two readers. So there is this conversation between the two readers, but it seemed that at least to me, that when during Rachel’s curation and then into your curation, there’s really this emphasis on the relationships between those two poets.\n\nFaith Paré: Yeah, totally. And I think it goes back again to the heart of poets are just people, often it’s two poets. Sometimes it’s more, sometimes it’s less. It depends on the kind of event. Particularly I’m thinking about a great reading back in January, 2022. One of my first ones with Gillian Sze who, this was a very important reading for me because she, even though this gig was booked before my time, she’s been a long time mentor of mine in poetry as well as Rebecca Păpacaru. And both of them have wanted to read alongside each other for a long time, but hadn’t had the chance. And during that reading, they would actually they started to read work from their books based on what the previous person had done, because there was a line or an image or a theme that reminded them of something that made them go, oh, I’m actually going to change things up a bit, but I think this might actually fit together really well.\n\nAnd I love that quality of being able to kind of echo each other or answer to each other in this very particular environment for the one, one-night-only quality. Another early reading that I organized was with Tolu Oloruntoba, who’s based on the west coast and with Montreal spoken word artist Jason Blackbird, Salman. Both of them work in very different fields, but I thought about their particular kind of tender, quiet thundering, essentially of their voices together for a really long time. And even though they hadn’t met each other before, they checked out each other’s work and were even saying to each other that they felt like there was a really strong resonance there. So that’s, that’s the really exciting thing for me to also bring together strangers and be able to introduce them and be like, it’s kind of like a dinner party or something, <laugh> being able to be like, I know a lot about you two and I think you guys would actually get along. And it’s a really awesome opportunity when you’re right! <Laugh>.\n\nKatherine McLeod: So this takes us to the archives and I’m interested in, you know, what it’s been like as the, you know, the curator of this series to also be handed these archives. What are these archives?\n\nFaith Paré: The APP archives are interesting, I think, for me as a former or SpokenWeb RA, in that they’re all digital. <Laugh>, Which, you know, sounds kind of silly and mundane to say perhaps, but because so much of our work at the research network has been thinking through questions around, you know, how do we take analog materials, sometimes very fragile analog materials, and then transfer them into the digital, the ways that things can be gained, but also lost in that transformation that allows for for more distribution and disperse all those materials discoverability. But what does like the, the materiality of the object also do? Well? These these archives and recording from the beginning were digital. They were done on Zoom recorders. And they were, I think another thing that became a kind of inherited foundational part of the series by accident that somebody else was, when curators started, I’m not even sure exactly who from the timeline that I do have.\n\nI believe Katia Grubisic was the one who was starting to do it more regularly. Though I believe Oana may have also had some recordings as well. This is also part of the journey with this as I’m trying to fill in missing pieces. But basically from what I have, it seems like the series started to be regularly recorded in 2010. This was also really firmly embraced by the library too, in thinking about the Atwater Library and Computer Center’s mandate – their mission is widespread education on digital literacy particularly for working class and elderly communities who are often left behind when it comes to digital literacy education. And also in just the mandate of being a library for the public, making those materials available. And I think it was kind of forward thinking of them, particularly because so much of event culture and the inc excitement of event culture is the one-night-only quality.\n\nYes. But also  the availability of these archival recordings uploaded onto the website after the fact means greater accessibility. It means an archive for the poets or attendees to return to and revisit a means discoverability. It means bolstering a CV, potentially, because you have a recording. It means being able to find a piece that, you know, you were trying to track down. I’m a poet, but you can’t remember the name, and then you stumble across it again in an audio piece. It’s and it’s also being able to capture and preserve the, the interesting experiments of the one night only and be able to reverberate that through time. This collaboration with spoken w will finally allow its these MP3s to get a little bit out of the Montreal bubble and more into a, a national context, especially as we really pride ourselves from about bringing poets from all across the country\n\nKatherine McLeod: That makes me think of times when being at the Atwater readings and hearing, say, Deanna Radford say that, you know, the evening’s being recorded. And it made me think about the extent to which the audience and the poets are aware of the night being recorded, and whether that makes a difference or not. Often when they would say that you know, I’d sort of think to myself, oh, right, it’s being recorded, but I wasn’t very necessarily aware of the recording taking place. And so it’s still, it just felt like that information was there, but I soon forgot <laugh>. And I guess I wondered whether you have any sense, actually maybe the transition online and then back to in person whether there’s a… to what extent does the fact that it’s being recorded influence the event?\n\nFaith Paré: I really love that question. And it, it expands on some of my own thinking that I’ve done with Jason Camlot and Carlos Pittella about some of the new collections at Spoken Web like the Enough Said series which I was working on for a while, alongside Carlos, which is a video collection – one of the first video collections I believe, in the network. We were thinking particularly about the fact that, you know, what, what does this do to the poet’s performance and the way that people carry themselves in the space and also what does it do for I guess the, the person who’s perceiving the event afterward. So we were thinking along, along the lines of the wave Enough Said, for example, was a performance poetry series mostly was really embracing an ethos of spoken word and like a kind of first big wave of, you know, acknowledging different kinds of performed traditions of poetry under a kind of umbrella of spoken word in Montreal.\n\nAnd the fact that was video recorded allowed for people to not only to capture the dynamic choreography that can occur in different performances. You can also see how people are reacting to a work, which is huge. You can perceive what the environment was like in a way that it’s clearly laid out in front of you visually, or sometimes audio-wise, it could be more difficult to perceive, you know, what is that moving? Is that share, is that a desk? Is it getting in the way of something? Is it part of the, the main goings on of, or the stage goings on of the evening? Or is that to the side? It is a different level of information that is being communicated, and it means that people can sometimes be more complicated in what they’re portraying.\n\n: But what I really have loved about audio recording and I think spoken web is really ingrained this in me is the kind of fly on the wall quality that an audio recording has, that I think there is an element just somehow, maybe it’s because in some ways sound isn’t perceived as with the same kind of surveillance quality as the visual in our contemporary period. Sometimes it can, sometimes it’s not perceived in that way. There’s, there’s something about the audio recorder being its own listener too, or maybe the a signal of future listeners to come, it fades comfortably into the background. A of course, you know, there are poets where they may hate the sound of their voice, or maybe they wanna read something that particular night that feels like a risk for them. And they don’t wanna release it for, to the, to the public afterward because they, they wanna keep that private to the, the space that they were in.\n\nOr maybe they are sound practitioners and because sound is their main way of working, they might want to develop a piece and they’re actually like, well, I don’t want to release this audio yet because I might be releasing this piece on a, on a record soon. So those are also ways that audio can have stakes that makes it incompatible with some poet’s practice, and wanting to acknowledge that. But there’s, there’s something about the series where people seem kind of genuinely excited or just maybe just perfectly fine and relieved with having another ear in the room. I think this is also a testament to the way that previous curators have been really gentle and caring and genuine with poets of checking in with what they want to share, what they don’t want to share, like having that ability to go back and forth make that dynamic relationship between curator and poet. Something that doesn’t have to exist as like this permanent archival object forever, you know?\n\nAnd I think there is an interesting switch when the pandemic happened and Crowdcast became the main platform for the APP, which now was involved, you know a level of intimacy for a lot of people of you are not on the same kind of level of engagement, I guess, in that you can’t see the audience staring back at you, at least on the Crowdcast platform. You are kind of alone with your screen and the other poets and the curator who may also be on screen, and depending on person you are who might hate that, it cuts off, you know, your body from like, you know, your chest to your head. So if you are, or you’re someone who does a lot of choreography in your work, you might reasonably be frustrated.\n\nIf you play instrumentation enjoying your work, you might recently be frustrated, but you also might feel more confident in if you’re a quieter person, you worried about, if you worry about being perceived, if, like the idea of a, a full house freaks you out, being able to have your work listened to and appreciated, but without the pressure of having pairs of eyes look at you might also be a relief and a welcome kind of gesture. I think what I’ve been learning more and more about this down this curation journey is like, there is really no perfect way of being able to host an event, but also to document an event even in a live event because of the kinds of people you could be leaving out that there are so many people who want to be, be able to enjoy poetry, but we’re unable for different ways and different ways and means.\n\n: So there’s no perfect way of documenting these, but how do you contend with the particular stakes, challenges and materials that you have? But I do have to say, being able to be back in the auditorium, and particularly with the sound recorder is something that I’ve personally really enjoyed just because of the way that the, the sound recorder can be a little less intimidating than like, perhaps a big DSLR lens in your face that a videographer and big camera recording equipment in the space might do.\n\nKatherine McLeod: I think a video can sometimes almost give this illusion as if, as if this is what it looked like if you were there. And in fact, no, it only looked like that to that one field of vision going through that camera lens. And I love how audio we’re so, we’re just so aware that we’re getting, we’re getting sound, we’re getting a sense of the room, the voices, but there’s so much that we also are not hearing and we’re not seen, and we’re not sensing, we’re not feeling, and that because we’re so aware of those, the lack of that we also don’t trick ourselves into thinking that we have everything. And I think that’s something when listening to the recordings that I was certainly, I was drawn to recordings that really you could almost hear the room and you could almost hear the, whether it’s like kind of the, the, the voice echoing through the room or else moments of, of applause or laughter or the poets directly speaking to the audience. And even still in those moments when listening, we have to do a lot of work in order to really imagine what it would be like to be there listening. And here I’m thinking about, there’s a moment when Tawhida Tanya Evanson speaks directly to the audience from her reading in 2016…\n\nArchival audio of Tawhida Tanya Evanson, from the Atwater Poetry Project, 2016:\n\nApplause is this crazy habit we have, and it’s a beautiful thing, but maybe just a moment of silence with the eyes closed can also be beautiful. If you’ll indulge, if you’ll indulge me, please close your eyes for a moment and just take a deep breath on your own. [Deep breath.]\n\nKatherine McLeod: Suddenly we’re then imagining that room and we’re imagining that space and what it would’ve looked like and felt like to be there. A last question here is, what’s next? What’s next for the Atwater Poetry Project archives? What are some of the next steps?\n\nFaith Paré: So I think at this point, I’ve collated the best I can in a version one, essentially of the files that we have. And part of my personal next steps is to be able to knock on the doors digital doors, but also possibly literal doors of previous curators looking for missing digital files or things that were linked on the website, but broken. So I have currently <laugh>, you know, I, I have about all just around 200 readings just so far recordings from from 2010 to the present. And there are still a lot more that are to be, you know, found or collated or at least declared, never recorded or pote like lost and, you know, we’ll see if it ever comes up again. But I think, you know, next steps are really to allow the, the Montreal team to, to give the, the files more of a listen, you know, you and Clara have been the people to really take a most of a listen to ’em so far.\n\nBut to be able to have more fresh ears on it and think about our approaches of how do we want to make this discoverable and how do we want to continue animating these recordings? What is important to transcribe and document and these recordings? And even just thinking about like, the fact that previously these were there, there was a kind of mixture of how, like these recordings were categorized by both, by both pe like the people who are reigning, but also kind of by event. I think also one thing that is important to me as I, you know, I think about where we go next is the ways, or the ways that, how do we bring in poets who have animated our space and acknowledge the kind of work that they, they have done, and and the way that they have made the series into what it is today.\n\nThat’s why I feel really excited about this project, particularly and your performative performed curation digging back into the archives, I think one thing I said really early on is that I don’t want this to feel like just some kind of like, narrow celebration of the E p p, you know it’s really important to me that this is a kind of laboratory for, you know, ex exploring the ways that poetry can sound different presences, but also the ways that others are silenced or muted. And the ways that, you know, I think as a reading series, I, I wanna believe that my job is perhaps complimentary, but also different from the role of like the publishing industry, for example. The publishing industry particularly is interested in having a new kind of cohort of people who are brought to the table with new work every year.\n\nAnd that’s all great and fantastic. We all love new work, but also wanting to think about who has been at the table with us for a while. I think, you know, one of the most genuinely moving emails that we’ve, we’ve gone so far was a message from Gerry Shikatani, who is an amazing Japanese Canadian writer, sound performer, experimentalist – also food writer and critic – and that we’ve had different scholars at Spoken Web right on his work, and it was brought to my attention by you and Klara that you wanted to weave his work into this piece and writing him for permissions and seeing how genuinely touched he was to be involved in this work that he said, paraphrasing, that he was really honoured, that people were still thinking about the kind of work that he was doing, you know, over a decade ago was something that felt important to me, really struck at the heart of what I want a reading series to do, that it’s not just a, a space for people to pass through, but really a place of return, of being able to come back and think about work, think about community, think about previous writers who have impacted us.\n\nKatherine McLeod: What a generative approach to the archive and to the series. Thank you so much for, for talking about it in this short, short conversation – ShortCuts Live!\n\n[Music begins]\n\nFaith Paré: Thank you. And I’m, I’m really hoping that folks may be able, if they are in Montreal, to come out to your event debuting this engagement with the archive on Monday, February 20th 7:00 PM the Adair Auditorium at the Atwater Library and Computer Center. It will be in the show notes, I’m sure I will, I will send all the appropriate deeds. Hopefully we will also have it recorded in some kind of way for that preservation as well, and to also add this into its own kind of archival place too. So I really appreciate being here and I really appreciate your work so far on this. Thank you so much.\n\nKatherine McLeod: Thank you so much. Faith.\n\n[Music ends]"],"score":2.7048998},{"id":"9667","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 4.4, ShortCuts Live! Talking with Ariel Kroon, Nick Beauchesne, and Chelsea Miya, 20 March 2023, McLeod"],"item_title_source":["SpokenWeb Podcast web page."],"item_title_note":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/shortcuts-live-talking-with-ariel-kroon-nick-beauchesne-and-chelsea-miya/"],"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":[2023],"material_description":["[]"],"digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://cdn.simplecast.com/audio/28a9da1f-8cca-410c-b5d7-8165a73f9394/episodes/f8ce0167-1805-4a05-8efd-481726b7058c/audio/c98427aa-fbf2-4d5e-aa26-9ccef9fd9cb9/default_tc.mp3?nocache\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"sc-4-4.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"44.1 kHz\",\"duration\":\"00:17:44\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"17,031,044 bytes\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"MP3 audio\",\"title\":\"sc-4-4\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/shortcuts-live-talking-with-ariel-kroon-nick-beauchesne-and-chelsea-miya/\"}]"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"2023-03-20\",\"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"],"content_notes":["Draft transcript"],"Note":["[]"],"Related_works":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"“Academics on Air.” Produced by Ariel Kroon, Nick Beauchesne, and Chelsea Miya. The SpokenWeb Podcast, 2 May 2022, https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/academics-on-air/.\\n\\n“‘A Voice of One’s Own’: Making (Air)Waves about Gendered Language in 1980s Campus Radio.” Presentation by Ariel Kroon, Nick Beauchesne, and Chelsea Miya. SpokenWeb Symposium 2022: The Sound of Literature in Time, a Graduate Symposium. Concordia University, 16 May 2022.\\n\\n\"}]"],"_version_":1853670549788557312,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:54.290Z","contents":["This month, ShortCuts presents another ShortCuts Live! It is a conversation with Ariel Kroon, Nick Beauchesne, and Chelsea Miya about their collaboration in producing “Academics on Air” (May 2022) for The SpokenWeb Podcast. That episode became a paper that Ariel, Nick, and Chelsea co-presented at the 2022 SpokenWeb Symposium and Institute. After that presentation, ShortCuts producer Katherine McLeod sat down with Ariel, Nick, and Chelsea around a microphone in the SpokenWeb Amp Lab at Concordia University. They talked about processes of collaboration and archival listening that shaped their work. Starting with one audio clip as the short ‘cut’ that caught their attention in the archives, they talk about about context of that clip in the Voiceprint archives, the potential for podcasting to be a radical act of unarchiving, and what makes recordings of a radio show a unique task for cataloguers working with literary sounds recordings, and much more.\n\n[Music]\n\nKatherine McLeod: This month, ShortCuts presents another ShortCuts Live! It is a conversation with Ariel Kroon, Nick Beauchesne, and Chelsea Miya about their collaboration in producing the episode “Academics on Air” for The SpokenWeb Podcast. That episode was released in May 2022. And that episode became a paper that they co-presented at the SpokenWeb Symposium and Institute also in May 2022. After that presentation, I sat down with Ariel, Nick, and Chelsea around a microphone in the SpokenWeb Amp Lab at Concordia University. We talked about the collaboration and archival listening that shaped their work. Starting with one audio clip as the short ‘cut’ that caught their attention in the archives, they talk about about context of that clip in the Voiceprint archives, the potential for podcasting to be a radical act of unarchiving, and what makes recordings of a radio show a unique task for cataloguers working with literary sounds recordings, and much more. Plus we hear three collaborators finally talking, and laughing, in the same room together. You can hear a bit of the room’s hum but hey that’s all part of ShortCuts Live!…\n\n \n\n[Music ends]\n\nKatherine McLeod: Just as you’re talking, I was like, oh this sounds great. I’m –.\n\n \n\nNick Beauchesne, Ariel Kroon, Chelsea Miya: <laugh> <laugh>.\n\n \n\nAriel Kroon: Oh good!\n\n \n\nKatherine McLeod: Check the –\n\n \n\nNick Beauchesne: Just pull a Jars and just turn it on and just start interviewing before we know it\n\n \n\nAriel Kroon: Yeah, exactly….\n\n \n\nChelsea Miya: Right.\n\n \n\nKatherine McLeod:I’m going do the same thing that I have done for the other ones that I’ve done this week, which is actually go into “podcast voice” to do the opening <laugh>. I feel like somehow you need headphones to go into podcast voice…\n\n \n\nNick Beauchesne: Yeah.\n\n \n\nAriel Kroon: You gotta put it on… as part of the suit.\n\n \n\nKatherine McLeod: Exactly. <laugh> <laugh> I’m going stay present with you, with the three of you here… So, we’ll start…\n\n \n\nKatherine McLeod: Welcome to Shortcuts. On this ShortCuts, we’re recording live at the SpokenWeb Sound Institute. I’d like to thank Chelsea and Ariel and Nick for joining me on this Shortcuts Live! We’re recording this one in the AMP Lab on the sixth floor of the Library Building at Concordia University. We’re surrounded by audio equipment and silence… So thank you for joining me. Would you like to just say hello and introduce yourself on the mic? Go ahead, Nick.\n\n \n\nNick Beauchesne: Hello, I’m Nick Beauchesne. I teach at TRU in Kamloops and the University of Alberta in Edmonton.\n\n \n\nAriel Kroon: Hi, I’m Ariel Kroon. I am an RA on the SpokenWeb U Alberta team.\n\n \n\nChelsea Miya: I’m Chelsea Miya, and I’m a postdoc at U Alberta with SpokenWeb.\n\n \n\nKatherine McLeod: Thank you. So the three of you just presented a paper this week at the SpokenWeb Symposium and the audio clip that we’ll be listening to today and we’ll be using to inform and guide our conversation is a clip that you played in that presentation. So, to start our conversation, I’d like to play that clip and to listen to it together.\n\n \n\nArchival Audio: [Sound quality makes it audible that archival audio is playing.] A main issue that I’m concerned with, especially as it relates to language, is what kinds of assumptions do people have about sex rules that they don’t recognize? And language is a tremendous carrier of those assumptions, but we don’t know how to self-examine them. Yes, people are beginning to realize that there is a male culture, there’s a female culture, and culture and language are terribly intertwined. But the question is, where have we not even learned how to look and where is it that people are resisting looking? I mean, if you say to somebody, the pronouns you use say tremendous amounts about your beliefs and your culture, people will laugh at you.\n\n \n\nKatherine McLeod: Alright, so could you tell me and listeners what we’re listening to?\n\n \n\nChelsea Miya: So, that was a clip from the Voiceprint episode, “A Room and a Voice of One’s Own.” Voice Print was a campus radio show that was produced between, I think, 1979 to 83, 84, so about four or five years. It was hosted and produced by a student, Jars Balan, who was in the English Department at that time and was really embedded in poetry culture and all the really cool scholarship and creative works that were happening at University of Alberta. There’s also a bit of background about the history of campus radio at that time, which is really cool, and which we talk about a lot in our podcast episode. But what we actually came to present on was this specific episode on women’s voices and on gendered language, which really stood out to us, all of us when we were listening to the archive and to that episode in particular.\n\n \n\nKatherine McLeod: Yeah, well, I was just going to add to that we are recording this in an English department – we’re recording a podcast in an English department – and that radio show was made through an English department. Yes, but, you were saying in the presentation, it wasn’t recorded in an English department?\n\n \n\nAriel Kroon: No, it was actually Jars’s studio was in the basement of the biology building on the University of Alberta campus. And it was not just the basement – it was the basement below the basement. So they were down quite a ways and he talked about how guests found it very odd, and a little bit intimidating, to go visit him there, and so they would try to put them at ease, and that was just very, very cool for all of us to hear.\n\n \n\nAriel Kroon: That was a clip from Jo-Ann Kolmes, and she came on as a guest. She was working as an editor for academic papers. I think maybe an academic journal. And so she was really talking about her practice of feminist editing at the time, and we were so fascinated by what she had to say because it struck us as very resonant and relevant to discussions that are all around us today. And though, back in 1981, they were definitely still talking about gender firmly within the binary of he/she, and, and now we have recognized and there is a linguistic recognition of – that there’s much more out there than the binary, and so language is adapting to that. So we found that extremely fascinating, the way that it speaks to issues today.\n\n \n\nKatherine McLeod:Yeah. And especially how it came out of feminist editing, as you said. That seems to resonate. [as] even in this conference, we heard a paper by Sarah Cipes talking about feminist editing in audio. And so it’s really interesting that Joanne’s thinking about this was coming from the perspective of editing. You’ve now done a presentation on this audio clip and the Voiceprint recordings that it’s from – the Voiceprint Radio show, that it’s from – you have made a podcast episode for The SpokenWeb Podcast. You’ve attended a listening party for that episode. I’m wondering, for the three of you, what has really stood out in those experiences?\n\n \n\nChelsea Miya: I think for me, like what really stood out was… the pleasures and joys and frustrations of working collaboratively with Nick and Ariel and how great it was to do something other than an academic paper, especially after two years of being in isolation, sequestered in my room doing, finishing my dissertation. I’m sure like a lot of people in various professions, but in academia especially it’s isolating being a grad student at any time but during COVID it was especially so. Being able to like have the three of us be brought together for this project was so much fun. And I got so much like energy and like inspiration from, from their different ideas and from learning how to work with people who have different ideas about audio and, and we, all of us brought different, I think, strengths and and perspectives to the experience.\n\n \n\nAriel Kroon: I think –\n\n \n\nChelsea Miya: Go ahead.\n\n \n\nAriel Kroon: Yeah, no, I, I think it was very interesting because, as you mentioned, for grad students, especially of English literature, we’re not used to working with other people. And so it was very eye-opening to work on what is traditionally a solitary endeavour along with other people. But then have the added complicated factor of we were all in different provinces–\n\n \n\nChelsea Miya: Mm-hmm. <affirmative>.\n\n \n\nAriel Kroon: – while we were putting this together. And so we couldn’t, well, we could, we could meet on Zoom simultaneously, but we couldn’t be in the same space editing audio together. And we couldn’t just – I couldn’t just look over and say: Hey Nick, do you mind if I do this and this and this to this clip? Or Hey Chelsea, what do you think about my research into such and such? You know, it was very collaborative and yet at the same time not collaborative because it was so difficult to work with that space between us. And so I was really glad that we were all here together finally at the SpokenWeb conference.\n\n \n\nNick Beauchesne: Yeah, I’ve never presented a paper with like other co-authors before – and we split our paper so to read different sections, but also our different roles. Ariel did a lot of like the research and tracking down of documents and tracking down audio clips and that sort of stuff. Chelsea did a lot of like the main kind of composition for our script for like the podcast, and I did a lot of the technical stuff for the editing. I’ve never really been responsible for this. I’m just a useless singer. I’m used to – so for me to step back from, from the limelight and do more technical behind the scenes work as part of the podcast was fun, but also reading the paper, sharing that with other people. And then we all wrote the paper together. So that felt a little more kind of balanced in the sense that our roles maybe weren’t as specialized as they were for the podcast.\n\n \n\nKatherine McLeod: Mm-hmm. <affirmative>.\n\n \n\nNick Beauchesne: So that was a really great experience.\n\n \n\nKatherine McLeod: Yeah, I was interested in that too. The way that often collaboration, um, might take the form of, um, of an article that you write together, but in this case, the first thing that you made together was a podcast episode… And then maybe the paper was closer to maybe a print based –\n\n \n\nNick Beauchesne: Mm-hmm. <affirmative>.\n\n \n\nKatherine McLeod: – publication. That’s interesting to hear sort of the roles shifting or how that work pans out and it’s shared.\n\n \n\nNick Beauchesne: Well, you know, Klara, Jason, if you’re making a book, call me, call us!\n\n \n\nKatherine McLeod: Yes, it’s possible that you might be collaboratively writing an article <laugh> as the next step of this, which is exciting because it shows how these ideas started in a podcast episode of scholarly research and it will eventually take the form of a print article. Often the print article gets put on a hierarchy above the other, but if you hadn’t made one, you couldn’t get to that other stage. I think starting with the podcast too allowed you to really dive into the sound and think about multiple sound clips and also really reflect on what the podcast is doing as academic scholarship. Which I think you all did so brilliantly in the episode and also in the Listening Party too, really reflecting on what you are doing as academics in making this podcast alongside reflecting on what those who made Voiceprint were doing within an academic institution, which is really a fascinating parallel.\n\n \n\nChelsea Miya: Yeah. It’s interesting too, like podcasting as this sort of radical act of de-archiving, in that we talk a lot about close listening at SpokenWeb, but I mean – and you do that when you’re doing like time codes and timestamps – but to create something from that, you really listen to it and it becomes like part of you, you ingest it and create something out of it in a way that you don’t necessarily do when you’re doing the sort of laborious, tedious work of digitizing something and creating metadata for it. So, and which is good and valuable work, but it can sometimes be like monkey work in that the focus is more on like doing the sort of repetitive tedious tasks that are removed from actual thoughtful intellectual engagement with your materials. And doing this podcast was a way, I think, at least for me, it felt like so great to be engaging with the material in a different way.\n\n \n\nAriel Kroon: Yeah. Those repetitive, tedious tasks definitely prepared us for doing all that we needed to do for this podcast in terms of close listening and honestly just in terms of discovering that it was there at all. When I first joined SpokenWeb, I started digitizing these radio shows, and at that time we didn’t really have any sort of schema for digitizing them because all of the sort of like accepted practices were for poetry readings. And so I was there as this new RA looking at what had been done before and saying: None of this fits, none of these categories work for this. Oh no, what, what do I do with it? And so it started as this problem. And only later was I, or were we, sort of able to get a little bit more deep into the sound of it and the content of that sound.\n\n \n\nKatherine McLeod: Mm-hmm <affirmative>\n\n \n\nNick Beauchesne: It’s surprising and incredible in how generative the material is. So you start off, yeah. So I mean, I did a lot of time-stamping before I did anything intellectual and fun, like what we just did. And it’s like, you know, you listen to all, like, first of all, going to the archive to discover this stuff at the University of Albert Alberta archives, which is where we found this, not from the English department closet, like most of our other stuff, so it’s a different archive. We have to track it down. I have to make an acquisition list. Mike approves it. We get the material, it goes to digitization, we get it, we split it in three. So we all time-stamp different episodes of Voiceprint, and that’s when we all kind of fell in love with the show <laugh> and became fans.\n\n \n\nNick Beauchesne: And then from there, yeah, then you go to making a podcast episode, doing ShortCuts, making, writing a paper, presenting that paper. And it just keeps growing and growing, growing. I mean, we interviewed Jars, we interviewed Terri Wynnyk – his production assistant and a female sound tech, which is very rare for radio shows in the eighties – we interviewed all Brian Fateaux, Stacey Copeland –\n\n \n\nChelsea Miya: Jennifer Waits\n\n \n\nNick Beauchesne: Yeah. We interviewed all these people. We got hours of the interview footage and, and most of it wasn’t used, but it just expands and expands.\n\n \n\nKatherine McLeod: And the conversations with all those people that all came from the archival listening that you were doing. Also, I love the fact that Voiceprint brought you together, <laugh>. I think that’s – I was wondering how you had it first encountered these archival recordings. And so that’s really beautiful hearing that. And also, um, the way that Voiceprint as a radio show was also so embedded within literary communities and just really a show that had so many writers on – and that was something I was really struck by, in listening to the podcast episode, and I can only imagine how many more conversations could come out of the Voiceprint archive –.\n\n \n\nNick Beauchesne: Mm-hmm. <affirmative>,\n\n \n\nKatherine McLeod: – around the recordings of writers and conversations. It also sounded very much like interdisciplinary work too, like talking to people, you know, across disciplines and inviting them into that studio and having those conversations. So I’m excited to hear what else comes out of the Voiceprint archives. So I think that’s a good note to conclude our conversation for today. And also I’m so thrilled that, here, around this microphone, these three collaborators are finally together in person after all your work across distances. So, Chelsea, Ariel, Nick, thank you so much for joining me here on Shortcuts. Thank you all.\n\n \n\nAriel Kroon: Thank you.\n\n \n\nNick Beauchesne: Thank you.\n\n \n\nChelsea Miya: Thanks.\n\n \n\n[Music]\n\nKatherine McLeod: You’ve been listening to ShortCuts. This ShortCuts was a ShortCuts Live! A conversation with Ariel Kroon, Nick Beauchesne, and Chelsea Miya recorded on May 19 2022 on-site at the SpokenWeb Symposium and Institute. Fun fact: we were wearing our SpokenWeb t-shirts that we had been given that day at the institute while recording. Check the Show Notes for photos to prove it! Also check the show notes for a link to their episode, “Academics on Air.” Plus, since talking with Ariel, Nick, and Chelsea, they have interviewed Jo-Anne Kolmes, and a few clips from that interview could be the start of another ShortCuts Live conversation recorded at this year’s symposium and institute. \n\nSpeaking of which, are you listening to this episode and getting excited about this year’s SpokenWeb Symposium? It is coming up in May at the University of Alberta. Check SpokenWeb’s upcoming events to find the link to the full program. And, who knows, there just may be ShortCuts Live recordings happening again this year, and so if you’re attending and interested in talking with the podcast team, let us know! Write to us at spokenwebpodcast at gmail dot com.\n\nShortCuts is a monthly deep dive into archival audio distributed monthly on The SpokenWeb Podcast feed. It is mixed and mastered by Miranda Eastwood, transcribed by Zoe Mix, and written and produced by me, Katherine McLeod. Thanks for listening.\n\n[Music ends]"],"score":2.7048998},{"id":"9668","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 4.5, ShortCuts Live! 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Producer Katherine McLeod talks with Annie Murray about the EMI Music Canada Archives at the University of Calgary, and their way into these archives begins with a cassette tape. And not just any cassette tape. Listen to find out which tape and how this tape tells stories of recording not only in relation to what’s on the tape but also to archival collections of Canadian music. Audio objects are sonic objects in the sounds they hold and the stories they tell – both on their own as materials and in our affective attachments to them – and this episode of ShortCuts dives into all of this, and more. Annie and Katherine’s conversation about archives is full of whimsy, suspense, and even the sounds of a power ballad – yes, archival research can sound like this.\n\n\n(00:03)\tAnnie Murray \tSo what do you wanna talk about? [Laughs] \n(00:05)\tKatherine McLeod\tWell, first I’ll say: Welcome to ShortCuts.\n(00:11)\tShortCuts Theme Music \t[Soft piano music interspersed with electronic sound begins]\n(00:12)\tKatherine McLeod \tWelcome to Shortcuts. This month, it’s another ShortCuts Live. In fact, it’s a final ShortCuts Live conversation that was recorded at the 2022 SpokenWeb Symposium and Institute. That’s because this year’s symposium and institute is coming up, starting May 1st. Check the full program by heading to the events link on the SpokenWeb website. And if you’re attending, do get in touch if you’d like to chat with us on ShortCuts Live in-person this year. \nBack to this episode, it’s a conversation that I had with Annie Murray from the University of Calgary. It was recorded after a packed day of sessions at the 2022 SpokenWeb Sound Institute. The sounds will take us into 4th SPACE at Concordia University. I quite love the background noise because it reminds me of being there with the May sunshine outside the window next to where we were recording and the vibrant conversations that we were having all week. \nSo there I was sitting at a microphone with Annie Murray and I pulled out a cassette tape to start things off. Usually on ShortCuts, it’s an audio clip that starts the conversation. This time it was not an audio clip, but rather an audio object, and not just any audio object. It was my first cassette tape, and this cassette tape that I’m holding right now, well, it’s not only the start of me loving music that’s just so full of emotion, music that is moving, moves you and makes you want to move, but it was also the start of my conversation with Annie Murray about EMI Music Canada Archives. Which tape is it? Well, listen to find out. Here is ShortCuts Live…\n[ShortCuts theme music fades and ends]\n[Transitions into interview recording]\nThank you so much, Annie, for joining me on Shortcuts Live.\n(02:04)\tAnnie Murray\tThank you. This is a great setup.\n(02:07)\tKatherine McLeod\tAnd I’m about to take a tape out of my bag, and Annie’s gonna see this for the first time, but she’s heard that this is the object that will inspire our conversation.\n(02:19)\tAnnie Murray\tWhoa, shall I describe what we’re seeing?\n(02:22)\tKatherine McLeod \tYes. Take a look. What is this tape?\n(02:25)\tAnnie Murray \tKatherine has just handed me a tape called “Over 60 Minutes with Luba”. Luba is on the front. It was issued by Capital Records and EMI Canada in 1987. We had an earlier conversation where I learned this was a seminal tape for young Dr. Katherine McLeod. And the reason I’m interested in her relationship with this tape is because I’ve been working on a project that will bring some Luba content out in the world.\n(03:03)\tKatherine McLeod \tYes, I told Annie that this Luba tape was in fact the first cassette tape that I ever owned. I think I was about seven or eight years old living in Queensboro, which is a neighborhood in New Westminster, British Columbia. And I don’t even know how I had heard of Luba, I think, because I never really watched TV very often when I was young. So somehow much music must have been on. And I was really drawn to the song, “Every time I see your picture, I cry”. And this tape does have it on there.  I think that says a lot about me as a seven year old, that I was really drawn to this very dramatic song, that continues. I feel like it just, I love very dramatic music and dance. So, you know, this was just an early sign of that.\nI could still probably recite the entire song. And I recently found this tape at my parents’ house, and it made me think about the way that this recording, with it being issued by EMI, would be part of the EMI collection. And when Annie was speaking about the EMI collection in a SpokenWeb meeting, she mentioned, you know, it even has Luba. And I was like, oh, Luba! Yes, someone’s talking about Luba! \nSo I thought this would be a perfect  audio object for us to chat about because it brings us into the EMI collection. It makes us think about audio objects and how just a tape that we’re not even playing right now can generate so much conversation. And it can also make us think about rights too. So maybe towards the end, I’ll ask you about, you know, can we even play this tape on the podcast? But, we’ll hold onto that question. \nFirst of all, you know, I see Annie looking at the tape cover, she’s got it out of the, out of the case. And I’m wondering, you know, you’ve been immersed in the EMI collection at the University of Calgary.  What do you, what are you noticing? How does this speak to you as an archival object?\n(05:11)\tAnnie Murray \tWell, what’s interesting about this tape is it’s not one of Luba’s studio albums. It’s a compilation album. So, Luba had already released some albums, and this is a compilation. The other thing I’m noticing is in what great physical condition it’s in. I know you loved it a lot, but you also took really good care of it. A lot of my old tapes from this era,  the writing is rubbed off the cassette, but the tape looks in good shape and the liner notes don’t have the lyrics, which a lot of studio albums did. And I don’t know about you, but did you used to open them up and follow along?\n(05:53)\tKatherine McLeod\tI sure did. [Laughs] Yeah.\n(05:54)\tAnnie Murray\tYes. That, I mean, especially when you first got tapes of your own and you bought them with your own money, you were so proud of them, and you would open up the liner notes and follow the lyrics. So what I’m seeing here, there’s some interesting things about this album. First of all, Daniel Lenoi plays as a percussionist on this album. There’s some really interesting musicians brought in on some of these. And guess who’s the sax player? Kenny G! [Both laugh]  And then there’s a list of tracks or songs, and there’s little symbols next to them that talk about the original recording, where it came from. \nSo this is like an anthology. And then some were mixed by Daniel Lenoi, then it shows how many songs Luba wrote and how many she didn’t. So this is, this is fascinating.\n(06:56)\tKatherine McLeod\tI love thinking about it as an anthology of Luba. Luba is a Canadian singer who was very popular in the eighties. And we really haven’t heard much from since. So, actually, it’s interesting how things, you know, like YouTube. I think like, partly just to go back to your point about how the tape is in such good condition, I think it’s because then when CDs came out, I didn’t listen to my tapes as much, and Luba sort of had faded into the background. \nSo, I’d almost forgotten about this amazing song. And then, recently, you know, searching it on YouTube and thinking, yeah, like, I can listen to this in a digital version without having to, you know, dig out my tape from so long ago. And just listening to it again, I thought, wow, this  almost like, power ballad song, really resonates with today’s moment too.\nSo I thought, yes, Lupa to come back, but then thinking, you know, this is like this anthology and this collection, a collection within a collection thinking of this tape itself is almost like a collection. And how it also speaks to, you know, this moment in Canadian music. And, you know, as you’re noticing all these artists that were part of this tape, that in many ways many people probably would know those names and not necessarily know Luba’s name too. So that’s really interesting thinking of what we can learn from the tape itself. I know you told me that you asked some of your colleagues in the archives about what you have in terms of Luba’s work in the collection.\n(08:26)\tAnnie Murray\tThat’s right. So, maybe just as I recorded my live reactions to the liner notes, I’ll read you some information that my colleagues David Jones and Rob Gilbert provided.  I explained what I was going to be up to and that you were a Luba fan from childhood and that we’d be looking at the tape and they immediately knew, oh, well that’s a compilation, you know, and I, cuz I didn’t know. \nAnd then David said, that’s awesome. So is Luba. And then Rob came along and said a few things that I’ll just read. So Luba was a direct signing. So the capital releases, the EP and the three big albums in the eighties are all extensively documented. So in the EMI Music Canada archive that’s at the University of Calgary, if that artist was signed to Capital or EMI, the archive will contain all of the original studio recordings and will have all the documentation about how that album was produced, how it was recorded, produced, disseminated, marketed and received.\nSo it’s like the whole story, but if the EMI artist was someone like Kate Bush or The Beatles or Pink Floyd, and they weren’t actually recorded in the, for Canadian, like on the Canadian label there would be less recordings and material associated with it. All of those originals would’ve been in England or in the United States. But for Luba, Rob says, I think Luba is one of the more significant artists in the collection. All of the audio is migrated or out with a vendor and/or Nathan. So Nathan Chandler is our audio audiovisual conservator who, in Calgary, we built these studios. So sometimes some types of formats, we’ve migrated them right there in Calgary. Other ones have been sent out in different places in North America, depending on like, would it be too expensive to buy the equipment or too difficult or maybe there aren’t enough recordings in that format because the EMI archive has 94 different media formats.\nSo some of them wouldn’t make sense. But guess how many individual Luba recordings will be available eventually? There will be 400 audio recordings [Katherine laughs] available to users eventually in an online system. So the system we’re using is called Cortex. It’s a digital asset management system. Rob goes on to say all of the quarter inch tapes are done. The half inch tapes were sent out to a vendor last summer and should be done soon. And many of the two inch tapes are on a cart with Nathan waiting to get to them. So even in the time Luba was recording, she first recorded on quarter inch, then half inch, and then on two inch multi-tracks. So even in her eighties, early nineties career, she recorded on these different formats. So. \n(11:58)\tKatherine McLeod\tThat’s incredible! [Laughs]\n(11:59)\tAnnie Murray \tThen all told there are 400 of them because like, say a two inch recording, it’s massive. You might have one to three songs on one reel. And so if you think of how many times you would record something to make an album, that’s why there are so many. So then, let’s see, also, any videos associated with Luba will also become available. So it’s audio, but it’s also video. And then, this won’t be put online or you won’t be able to access this, but there was also all the original artwork that they used to make all the album covers. So that has also been preserved for the Canadian artists such as Luba. \nSo, let’s see. There are whole sets of studio sessions, 24 track tapes and mixes on half inch tapes. The 60 Minutes with compilation is like a “best of” album with a couple extras on it. It was a branded series from Capital, maybe tapping into CD technology, having the ability to play over 60 minutes without switching sides of a tape or a record [laughs]. \nSo there’s gonna be a lot of Luba content that researchers can access. So you could explore the documentation around wow was that album produced there in your hand? How were the other studio albums? Her EP? I don’t know if they would’ve had a demo, but we would be able to find out if there was a demo. So it kind of goes to show the extensive documentation, both audio, video, and then there’s all the textual archives that would’ve been, so perhaps you’ll come to Calgary to do a deep Luba research trip? \n(13:50)\tKatherine McLeod \tYes. Yes. A deep listening in the Luba archives. I also love how it feels like Luba, you know, I was speaking to like maybe she could have a resurgence and maybe she could have a resurgence through the archives.\n(14:03)\tAnnie Murray \tThat would be great. Like, it will be interesting to see how people respond to an archive of this type being made available. Like, first of all, the fact that it’s being preserved, that it is in a public institution, and that we have created some secure and elaborate, but easily available ways to use audiovisual archives, which really isn’t always the case. \nThe traditional model is if there’s a recording in an archive, you travel to the archive and you listen to it in there. We knew that with the way systems have developed and the way digital asset management systems have developed, that you can still have users authenticate and use a recording and access it remotely. And in the time that we’ve been finishing up this project during Covid, there is actually more expectation of remote access now of archives and libraries. So these sort of systems coming online is just perfect timing for these kinds of researcher expectations.\n\n(15:17)\tKatherine McLeod \tMaybe one last question then, leading along those lines around access. On a podcast like this, if I were to play a clip of one of Luba’s songs,  am I allowed to do that?\n(15:34)\tAnnie Murray\tI think so. I think it’s a kind of quotation. We could ask a copyright person about how much is appropriate. But say for example, like broadcasters and news organizations, they generally work with clips of a certain length for reporting, and then scholars can use certain lengths of clips for their academic reporting, so to speak. I don’t know where a podcast is on the spectrum. Is it broadcasting? Is it news? Is it scholarship? Seems to be a blend of those things?\n(16:10)\tKatherine McLeod \tAnd often defined by the producer or the maker of the podcast, rather than the podcast itself being a medium that is defined in those ways. I feel like because we did, you know, we’ve been commenting on the tape and especially offering a bit of commentary around one particular song, that that song perhaps could, you know, appear at some point, audibly in this or- \n(16:37)\tAnnie Murray\tA clip.\n(16:37)\tKatherine McLeod \tA clip. Exactly. It would just a, just a-\n(16:39)\tAnnie Murray\tMaybe the most dramatic part.\n(16:40)\tKatherine McLeod \tExactly. [A clip from “Every time I see your picture, I cry” by Luba plays and ends] \nSo I think that’s, you know, a perfect note to end on. And I want to thank Annie Murray for joining me here on ShortCuts Live in 4th SPACE at Concordia University. Thank you so much, Annie.\n\n(17:12)\tAnnie Murray \t[ShortCuts theme music begins to play] \nThank you. And I just wanna extend an invitation. As a Luba fan, you could create, when you have an account in the University of Calgary’s digital collections, you could create something called a light box where you could keep track of your favorite Luba recordings, and then you could say, Hey, these are my favorite Luba tracks curated by Dr. Katherine McLeod.\nSo, then even if you return later and you’re like, oh, I’m going to think about Luba again. You could keep track of what you’re interested in. You could send it to another user, then they could sign it and say, oh, these are the three songs that most shaped your 1987 life. \n(17:57)\tKatherine McLeod \tYes! A curated listening and yeah. To be able to share that. Oh, yeah. That’s fantastic.\n(18:01)\tAnnie Murray\tSo, when it’s available, I’ll contact you and you can be our guest digital curator of the Luba Collection. [laughs]\n(18:11)\tKatherine McLeod\tThank you so much, Annie. I look forward to that. Thank you. Thank you.\n[ShortCuts theme music ends] \n[A clip from “Every time I see your picture, I cry” by Luba plays] \nYou’ve been listening to ShortCuts. A special thanks to Annie Murray for joining me for this ShortCuts Live recorded on May 19th, 2022. \n[The Luba clip ends and ShortCuts theme music begins again] \nAnd for the invitation to head to Calgary for a curated listening in the archives. Do check the show notes for links to more about that archive, and for a few fun photos to accompany this episode. Yes, you’ll see Annie holding the tape itself, and what you won’t see is me listening to Luba on repeat in the weeks surrounding this conversation. But indeed that happened too. \nMy thanks to the SpokenWeb podcast team. Our supervising producer is Kate Moffatt. Our sound designer is Miranda Eastwood. And our transcription is done by Zoe Mix. ShortCuts is written and produced by me, Katherine McLeod. Stay tuned next month for a full episode of The SpokenWeb Podcast. And as always, thanks for listening.\n[ShortCuts theme music ends]"],"score":2.7048998},{"id":"9671","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 S4 Trailer, Welcome to Season 4!, 19 September 2022, Moffatt, Eastwood, McGregor, McLeod"],"item_title_source":["SpokenWeb Podcast web page."],"item_title_note":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/welcome-to-season-4/"],"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 4"],"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","Kate Moffatt","Hannah McGregor","Miranda Eastwood"],"creator_names_search":["Katherine McLeod","Kate Moffatt","Hannah McGregor","Miranda Eastwood"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/44156495389117561605\",\"name\":\"Katherine McLeod\",\"dates\":\"1981-\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Producer\"]},{\"url\":\"\",\"name\":\"Kate Moffatt\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Producer\"]},{\"url\":\"\",\"name\":\"Hannah McGregor\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Producer\"]},{\"url\":\"\",\"name\":\"Miranda Eastwood\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Producer\"]}]"],"contributors":["[]"],"Publication_Date":[2022],"material_description":["[]"],"digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://cdn.simplecast.com/audio/28a9da1f-8cca-410c-b5d7-8165a73f9394/episodes/aa749423-c429-48b9-8aaf-c150b5c0a869/audio/a0e73918-a5b1-4e35-aa6e-320e73a87208/default_tc.mp3?nocache\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"s4-trailer.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"44.1 kHz\",\"duration\":\"00:03:37\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"3,484,987 bytes\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"MP3 audio\",\"title\":\"s4-trailer\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/welcome-to-season-4/\"}]"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"2022-09-19\",\"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"],"Note":["[]"],"Related_works":["[]"],"_version_":1853670549795897345,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:54.290Z","contents":["Hello and welcome to another season of The SpokenWeb Podcast! We’re back with a new line-up of exciting episodes created by researchers across the SpokenWeb network. The SpokenWeb Podcast asks, “What does literature sound like? What stories do we hear when we listen to the archive?” In this season, we have episodes that dive into the lives of archival objects—university poetry events—what it means to read an audiobook—and so much more. This season has something for everyone from lovers of literature and history to sound studies scholars, so come and join us as we continue listening to literature and the archives.\n\nWe would love to hear your reactions and ideas to our stories. If you appreciate the podcast, leave us a rating and a comment on Apple Podcasts or say hi on our social media @SpokenWebCanada.\n\n00:00\tHannah McGregor:\tWhat does The SpokenWeb Podcast sound like? [Start Music: Acoustic Strings] In our third season, we revisited Myra Bloom’s episode about Elizabeth Smart from Season 1—\n \n\n00:11\tMyra Bloom, S3E1 “Podcasting Literary Sound: Revisiting ‘The Agony and the Ecstasy of Elizabeth Smart’”\tIt suddenly occurred to me that I actually never heard her voice. (Underlaid Archival Audio of Elizabeth Smart: “I thought, if it was agreeable to you, that I’d read a chapter from By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept.”\n \n\n00:17\tHannah McGregor:\t— heard the voices of poets and writers across Canada —\n \n\n00:21\tArchival Audio, Phyllis Webb, in S3E10 “‘starry and full of glory’: Phyllis Webb, in Memoriam”:\n \n\n…stars, stars, stars! [Repeats, fading out]\n \n\n00:23\tInterview Excerpt, S3E2 “Lisa Robertson and the Feminist Archive”:\tIs it the glimpse of mortality that makes you feel a bit differently about it?\nWell, it’s quite literally seeing your friends die.\n\n \n\n00:29\tFaith Paré, S3E5 “The Show Goes On: Words and Music in a Pandemic”:\tThis is not the poem I wanted / It is the poem I could.\n \n\n00:33\tHannah McGregor:\tAnd thought about how we listen.\n \n\n00:36\tStéphanie Ricci:, S3E6: “Listening, Sound, Agency: A Retrospective Listening to the 2021 SpokenWeb Symposium”:\n \n\nHow do we discuss the sounds of human beings\n \n\n00:38\tHannah McGregor:\tWe asked, what does scholarship sound like? and revisited last year’s virtual SpokenWeb Symposium—\n \n\n00:46\tStéphanie Ricci:, S3E6: “Listening, Sound, Agency: A Retrospective Listening to the 2021 SpokenWeb Symposium”:\n \n\nHow do we listen virtually?\n \n\n00:48\tMathieu Aubin, S3E6: “Listening, Sound, Agency: A Retrospective Listening to the 2021 SpokenWeb Symposium”:\n \n\nHow do you listen virtually to a conference about listening?\n00:52\tHannah McGregor:\t—and the 1983 Women and Words conference held in Vancouver.\n \n\n00:56\tArchival Audio from S3E7 “The archive is messy and so are we”:\t“[…]our subject this morning is women facing traditional criticism, criticizing criticism.” (Clip continues under Hannah and resurfaces, underlaid with the next clips)\n \n\n01:01\tHannah McGregor:\tWe explored how collaboration and conversation are central to the research and work that we do.\n \n\n01:07\tKelly Cubbon, S3E9 “Talking Transcription: Accessibility, Collaboration, and Creativity”:\tKelly: Well, the process of transcription sounds like collaboration, like a conversation\n \n\n01:12\tKatherine McLeod, S3E9 “Talking Transcription: Accessibility, Collaboration, and Creativity”:\n \n\nIt is a process that invites access to content through multiple voices and multiple senses.\n01:18\tKate Moffatt, S3E7 “The archive is messy and so are we”:\t[Warped Archival Clip Plays With Some Words Audible] And it’s funny, cuz you can almost hear it. Like you can almost hear something being said.\n \n\n01:26\tHannah McGregor:\tThis past season took us to new places and spaces, from the plains of Northern Alberta–\n \n\n01:32\tMichelle, S3E3 “Forced Migration”:\t[Michelle and a low, gravely voice recite simultaneously] But the bull dragged the man, and the rope lacerated his hands, cutting to the bone.\n \n\n01:37\tHannah McGregor:\t–back to the 80s, to the student-run campus radio shows of the CKUA network.\n \n\n01:44\tTerri Wynnyk, S3E8 “Academics on Air”:\n \n\nWe once found a boa constrictor that had escaped. Because up above us was all sorts of science labs and buildings and rabbits and cockroaches […]\n01:52\tHannah McGregor:\tMy name is Hannah McGregor, and I’ve been the host of the SpokenWeb Podcast since its inception. But I’m stepping out of this role for the next year, and I have the pleasure of passing the mic to this season’s host: Katherine Mcleod.\n \n\n02:08\tKatherine McLeod:\tThank you Hannah! [Music Swells to Atmospheric Chords] My name is Katherine McLeod, and I am so excited to host this new season of the SpokenWeb Podcast. You’ll recognize my voice from ShortCuts – our deep dive into the SpokenWeb archives that you can find right here on the same podcast feed.\n \n\nThis season on the podcast, we have a line-up of episodes that we can’t wait to share: we’re going to hear more about the “Drum Codes” we listened to in Season 2; we’ll be thinking about audiobooks as a literary medium: what is it like to read an audiobook? What is it like to teach with an audiobook in the classroom?\n\n \n\nWe’ll be re-listening to university poetry events, diving into the archives to converse with the archival objects themselves. We’re going to experience environmental sound with an episode on fire and ecopoetics; and we’ll be thinking about literary environmental sound, and even exploring the soundscapes of libraries. Whether you’re a lover of literature or a sound studies scholar, this podcast has something to share with you. Subscribe and join us for Season Four of the SpokenWeb Podcast, coming to your podcast feeds on October 3rd."],"score":2.7048998},{"id":"9672","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 S6 Trailer, Welcome to Season 6!, 16 September 2024, Harris, McLeod, McGregor, Healy, and Ajeeb"],"item_title_source":["SpokenWeb Podcast web page."],"item_title_note":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/welcome-to-season-6/"],"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 6"],"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":["Maia Harris","Katherine McLeod","Hannah McGregor","James Healy","Yara Ajeeb"],"creator_names_search":["Maia Harris","Katherine McLeod","Hannah McGregor","James Healy","Yara Ajeeb"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"name\":\"Maia Harris\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Producer\"]},{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/44156495389117561605\",\"name\":\"Katherine McLeod\",\"dates\":\"1981-\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Producer\"]},{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/20153713810358661443\",\"name\":\"Hannah McGregor\",\"dates\":\"1984-\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Producer\"]},{\"url\":\"\",\"name\":\"James Healy\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Producer\"]},{\"url\":\"\",\"name\":\"Yara Ajeeb\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Producer\"]}]"],"contributors":["[]"],"Publication_Date":[2024],"material_description":["[]"],"digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://cdn.simplecast.com/audio/28a9da1f-8cca-410c-b5d7-8165a73f9394/episodes/3849923d-330b-4a2b-8e36-2347aca1e839/audio/1fac0b3b-c40e-4950-8e0f-966db64790a2/default_tc.mp3?nocache\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"v1-master-season-6-trailer.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"44.1 kHz\",\"duration\":\"00:04:44\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"4,544,931 bytes\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"MP3 audio\",\"title\":\"v1-master-season-6-trailer\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/welcome-to-season-6/\"}]"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"2024-09-16\",\"type\":\"Publication Date\",\"notes\":\"\",\"source\":\"\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/22080572\",\"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":["[]"],"_version_":1853670549795897346,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:54.290Z","contents":["Hold onto your hats, because the SpokenWeb Podcast is back!\n\nThis season, we’ll continue to bring you contemporary treatments of the archive and the ever-changing landscape of literary sounds with all new stories from researchers across the SpokenWeb network.\n\nSubscribe to The SpokenWeb Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you find your podcasts. And don’t forget to rate us and send us a shout.\n\nCheers to Season 6 ~\n\n\n(00:00)\tSpokenWeb Podcast Theme Music\t[Instrumental overlapped with feminine voice]\nCan you hear me? I don’t know how much projection to do here.\n(00:14)\tHannah McGregor\tWhat does the SpokenWeb Podcast sound like? Or should I say — when?\n[Theme music fades]\n(00:21)\tMusic\t[Futuristic, electronic music starts playing]\n(00:26)\tHannah McGregor\tBecause in season 5 of the SpokenWeb Podcast, we travelled through time–\n(00:32)\tKatherine McLeod\tFirst, we paid a visit to the medieval period [choral music starts playing] where we attempted to textually and orally translate the old English poem “The Ruin.”\n(00:42)\tAudio clip from episode 1 of SpokenWeb Podcast, Ghislaine Comeau reciting “The Ruin”\t[Sound effect of fire crackling begins]\nnum geheapen felon/\ngrimly ground/\nIt shone/\n(00:52)\tMusic\t[Upbeat pop music starts playing]\n(00:54)\tKatherine McLeod\tThen we jumped to the 1950s, where we revisited the fascinating early history of Caedmon records.\n(01:02)\tAudio clip from episode 4 of SpokenWeb Podcast, Barbara Holdridge, Writers & Company Interview, 2002\tThe idea was that we were not supplanting the printed book; we were augmenting it and giving it a depth, a third-dimensional depth.\n(01:13)\tMusic\t[Grunge guitar music starts playing]\n(01:16)\tKatherine McLeod\tWe travelled to the 1980s and listened to recovered recordings from the boundary-breaking Ultimatum Festival.\n(01:24)\tAudio clip from episode 6 of SpokenWeb Podcast, Frances Grace Fyfe\tThe question: How did this experimental poetry festival come to be in the first place? And why has there been nothing like it since?\n(01:32)\tMusic\t[Pop-esque, upbeat music starts playing]\n(01:35)\tHannah McGregor\tWe “crossed over” to 2021 and checked in with Linda Morra to hear about Kaie Kellough’s “Magnetic Equator.”\n(01:43)\tAudio clip from episode 3 of SpokenWeb Podcast, Linda Morra\tKellough was the point toward which they were all magnetically drawn. I’ve never seen anything like it.\n(01:53)\tKatherine McLeod\t[Pop-esque upbeat music continues] And we revisited the 2023 SpokenWeb Symposium to ask academics and artists big questions.\n(02:02)\tAudio clip from episode 7 of SpokenWeb Podcast, Kate Moffat\tWhat are you listening to?\n(02:03)\tAudio clip from episode 7 of SpokenWeb Podcast, Rémy Bocquillon\t“What are you listening to?” Ho, that’s a hard question.\n(02:07)\tMusic\t[Eerie echo music starts playing]\n(02:10)\tHannah McGregor\tWe also explored how our bodies experience time, by asking how “not-knowing” feels and how it sounds.\n(02:20)\tAudio clip from episode 2 of SpokenWeb Podcast, Nadège Paquette\tDoes the sound you hear interrupt your breathing? [Music fades, sinister sound from Pulse’s soundtrack rises and falls]\nDoes the voice you reach toward make you move your gaze? [Crickets singing and sound of footsteps]\n(02:29)\tKatherine McLeod\tAnd then, [Sci-fi music starts] we looked to the [echo] “future.”\n(02:36)\tHannah McGregor\tWe heard from the artists harnessing algorithmic processes to generate poetry, music, and dance in a live episode.\n(02:45)\tAudio clip from episode 8 of SpokenWeb Podcast\n– Audio From “A Vocabulary for Sharon Belle Mattlin” By Jackson Mac Low; Performance by Susan Musgrave, George Macbeth, Sean O’Huigin, BpNichol, and Jackson Mac Low, 1974.\t[Overlapping voices] nation share name, nation share name, belly Battle, battle Bay, west Marsh, marble Linen, melon, melon, noble, bitter liberal meat bite, bite meat.\n(02:52)\tKatherine McLeod\tWe also asked computers to help us decide which oral performers are the best at “doing” the voices in the Waste Land.\n(03:01)\tAudio clip from episode 5 of SpokenWeb Podcast, MacOS text-to-speech voice, “Fred,” reading The Wasteland\tTwit twit twit\nJug jug jug jug jug jug\nSo rudely forc’d.\n(03:07)\tHannah McGregor\tAnd we looked ahead to a future without our mini-series Shortcuts, bidding it a fond farewell.\n(03:13)\tAudio clip from SpokenWeb Shortcuts Season 5, Episode 6, Katherine McLeod\tAs always, thank you for listening.\n(03:18)\tHannah McGregor\tThe SpokenWeb Podcast is a monthly podcast that showcases audio from archival literary recordings across Canada.\n[Theme music starts playing] But while we’re fascinated with how audio archives can help us understand the history of literature in Canada, we’re not just a history podcast.\n(03:37)\tKatherine McLeod\tThe SpokenWeb Podcast covers the “then,” the “when,” and the “now” – contemporary treatments of the archive and the ever-changing landscape of literary sounds.\n(03:49)\tHannah McGregor\tThis season, we’ll continue to look back at the past and explore the future with new stories from researchers across the SpokenWeb network.\n(03:58)\tKatherine McLeod\tSeason 6 will be our last season, at least in this current form. The podcast will evolve into a new series, on this very same podcast feed, so don’t go anywhere!\n(04:10)\tHannah McGregor\tIn the meantime, as always–\n(04:13)\tKatherine McLeod\t–My name is Katherine McLeod–\n(04:14)\tHannah McGregor\t–And I’m Hannah McGregor. And we are back as your co-hosts.\n(04:19)\tKatherine McLeod\tThe podcast production team is supervising producer Maia Harris, sound designer James Healy, and transcriber Yara Ajeeb.\n(04:27)\tHannah McGregor\tSubscribe to The SpokenWeb Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you find your podcasts.\nAnd welcome to season 6!\n(04:37)\tSpokenWeb Podcast Theme Music\t[Electronic music fades away]"],"score":2.7048998},{"id":"9675","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 S6E7, Listening on the Radio, 16 June 2025, Camlot and McLeod"],"item_title_source":["SpokenWeb Podcast web page."],"item_title_note":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/listening-on-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 Season 6"],"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","Jason Camlot"],"creator_names_search":["Katherine McLeod","Jason Camlot"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/44156495389117561605\",\"name\":\"Katherine McLeod\",\"dates\":\"1981-\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Producer\"]},{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/90740324\",\"name\":\"Jason Camlot\",\"dates\":\"1967-\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Producer\"]}]"],"contributors":["[]"],"Publication_Date":[2025],"material_description":["[]"],"digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://cdn.simplecast.com/audio/28a9da1f-8cca-410c-b5d7-8165a73f9394/episodes/0ce6d2de-52b4-4599-9c37-54198c620fc4/audio/c33fb792-620d-47f8-afb7-6bfe99eb739d/default_tc.mp3?nocache\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"s6ep7-mixdown.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"44.1 kHz\",\"duration\":\"01:03:43\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"61,173,943 bytes\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"MP3 audio\",\"title\":\"s6ep7-mixdown\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/listening-on-the-radio/\"}]"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"2025-06-16\",\"type\":\"Publication Date\",\"notes\":\"\",\"source\":\"\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/22080572\",\"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\":\"Camlot, Jason. “Toward a History of Literary Listening.” ESC: English Studies in Canada, vol. 46 271.2, 2020 (published in 2023), p. 263-271. https://ojs.lib.uwo.ca/index.php/esc/article/view/17421\\n\\nCamlot, Jason and Katherine McLeod. “Introduction: New Sonic Approaches in Literary Studies.”\\n\\nESC: English Studies in Canada, vol. 46 no. 2, 2020 (published in 2023), p. 1-18. https://ojs.lib.uwo.ca/index.php/esc/article/view/17412\\n\\n“Sonic Lit: A SpokenWeb Radio Show.” CJLO 1690 AM, http://www.cjlo.com/shows/sonic-lit-spokenweb-radio-show\\n\\nThe audio of “Listening on the Radio” is currently presented as part of the digital gallery of Poetry Off the Page, Around the Globe (University of Vienna) in June 2025.\\n\\nListen to the radio show Sonic Lit: A SpokenWeb Radio Show, on CJLO 1690 AM in Montreal on Mondays at 2pm EST, or check out past episodes online at cjlo.com.\\n\\nRecordings played during “Listening on the Radio” include the voices of poets Tawhida Tanya Evanson (Cyano Sun Suite), Maxine Gadd (from SGW Poetry Series), David Antin (The Principle of Fit, II”), FYEAR (FYEAR), A.M Klein (Five Montreal Poets), bpNichol (Ear Rational: Sound Poems 1970 – 1980), Allen Ginsberg (from SGW Poetry Series), and P.K. Page (The Filled Pen).\"}]"],"_version_":1853670549796945920,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:54.290Z","contents":["Sonic Lit: A SpokenWeb Radio Show is a bi-weekly radio show on CJLO, the campus radio station of Concordia University (Tiohtià:ke/Montreal, Canada). On air since September 2024, the show features “sound recordings from 1888 to the present that document times when people have whispered, spoken, howled and screamed literature out loud” (“Sonic Lit”). Co-hosted by us – Jason Camlot and Katherine McLeod – the radio show is an extension of our collaborative and creative research about “new sonic approaches in literary studies” (McLeod and Camlot). Prior to stepping into the booth, we had imagined the show as a curation of audio recordings as catalogued by SpokenWeb researchers working with various community and institutional holdings of literary audio across the network. However, as the show began, we had to sort out how the definition of “spoken word” as understood by regulatory bodies in Canadian radio intersects with “spoken word” as understood by poets and scholars of poetry recordings. Making audio for radio turned out to be a vastly different experience than making audio for podcasts such as this podcast, The SpokenWeb Podcast. We soon realized that our radio show was a performative exploration of a set of research questions relating to the affordances of radio for “literary listening” (Camlot). For example, what are the affordances of radio as compared to a podcast when it comes to sharing and discussing literary audio? How does spoken word poetry register in relation to other discursive forms on the radio? How do we as hosts perform “talk radio” in talking about poetry? And what is our sense of audience when on air? What does listening sound like on the radio? We produced this audio, “Listening on the Radio,” as a radio-show-as-podcast-episode to answer these questions and others – out loud.\n\n\n00:00:05\t[SpokenWeb Intro Song]\t[Instrumental music begins]\n[Oh, boy. Can you hear me? Don’t know how much projection to do here.]\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. [Music fades]\nMy name is Hannah McGregor —\n\n00:00:36\tKatherine McLeod\tAnd my name is Katherine McLeod.\nAnd each month, we’ll bring you different stories that explore the intersections of sound, poetry, literature, and history — created by scholars, poets, students, and artists from across Canada.\n[Vocal instrumental music plays]\n\n00:00:54\tHannah McGregor\tThe lines between radio and podcasting have been blurry for as long as podcasting as a medium has existed. With radio shows now regularly streaming online, that distinction has only gotten blurrier.\nSo it makes sense that when today’s episode producers, SpokenWeb researchers Jason Camlot and Katherine McLeod, first started making their radio show Sonic Lit, they anticipated an experience similar to that of making an episode of this very podcast.\n\nInstead, making audio for radio turned out to be a vastly different experience—one that led them to begin asking about how making radio differs from making a podcast, especially when it comes to sharing and discussing literary audio.\n\n00:01:45\tHannah McGregor\tIn this episode, you’ll hear Jason and Katherine modeling their creative and collaborative approach to exploring these questions through a process of conversation, curation, and careful listening.\nThis is Season 6, Episode 7 of the SpokenWeb Podcast: Listening on the Radio.\n\n00:02:10\tJason Camlot\t[Upbeat instrumental music begins] Rolling.\n00:02:13\tKatherine McLeod\tWelcome to the SpokenWeb Podcast — or should I say, welcome to Sonic Lit, a SpokenWeb radio show–\n00:02:21\tJason Camlot\tPodcast. [Laughter]\n00:02:24\tKatherine McLeod\tIs it a podcast or a radio show? We’re recording this live in the AMP Lab at Concordia University. My name is Katherine McLeod, and I’m here with —\n00:02:37\tJason Camlot\tJason Camlot. [Katherine laughs]\nI hate the way I say that on the radio show, I have to say.\n00:02:43\tKatherine McLeod\tThat’s okay. I always take a deep breath before saying “Sonic Lit: a SpokenWeb radio show.” I’m tempted to almost say—I have to really think and not say “Spoken Lit,” so—\n00:02:56\tJason Camlot\tSpoken Lit: A SonicWeb radio show. [Laughter]\n00:03:00\tKatherine McLeod\tAnd we’re recording this live and kind of pretending that this podcast episode is a radio show — well, we’re more than pretending. We’re recording it as if it’s a radio show, and that’s making us think differently about how we’re talking.\n00:03:16\tJason Camlot\tYeah. Well, wait a second — this is a podcast, right? So welcome to the SpokenWeb Podcast. [SpokenWeb theme song starts playing]\nBut the conceit of this podcast— and we’ve made many podcasts together —\n00:03:25\tArchival Recording – Unidentified Speaker\t[Audio cuts to another recording]\nJoin episode co-producers Jason Camlot and Katherine McLeod. Here are Katherine and Jason—\n00:03:34\tJason Camlot\t[Back to podcast discussion]\n–But the conceit of this one is that we’re going to make a podcast in the spirit, or maybe even the form, of a radio show—so that we can reflect on the differences between our—at least our experience of—podcasting and radio.\n\n00:03:52\tKatherine McLeod\tThat’s right.\n[Soft vocalizing music starts playing]\n\nWe’ve been hosting a radio show on Concordia Campus Radio, CJLO 1690 on the AM dial, or streamed online at cjlo.com, and we’ve been hosting it since September. We’ve been playing recordings of poetry and talking about what we hear as we play those recordings. And we’ve created a bit of a body of work over these past months, and we’re starting to sort of get a sense of what kinds of themes are emerging through the show—but also some experience in making radio.\n\nNeither of us had made radio before when we started this show, so it was not only a question of figuring out what were we going to play on the show and how were we going to talk about poetry, but also quite literally: how are we going to make the show?\n\nBecause when we sit in the booth at CJLO, we also work the board and sort of figure out how to come in and out of commercial breaks—what are we going to do to end the show, how are we going to begin the show, and how are we going to keep track of time while doing all of that?\n\nRadio is really a very timed medium, as we found out.\n\n00:05:06\tJason Camlot\tI mean, really, one of the least podcasting things I could say right now is: “It’s 4:30, and we’re in the AMP Lab podcast studio. It’s partially sunny outside.” Right? You know? [Laughter]\nKatherine opened by saying, “We’re live.” Right? And we are live and we’re speaking live—but you will not be hearing this live, in the same way that when we do our radio shows live.\nPeople who happen to be tuned in to CJLO 1690 [brief hip hop beat] are hearing our shows. So we want to reflect on, you know, some of the differences—that would just be an example. And we’ll talk more about “liveness,” but we’re going to talk about—and just to give some of the themes that we sort of thought of in advance that might be interesting—to play examples of and reflect on:\n\nHow we listen on radio\nWho we’re talking to\nWhat’s our imagined audience for radio\nThis sense of liveness that we’ve been talking about already\nWhat to do with mistakes when they happen on the radio\nBecause, you know, what we do with the mistakes usually when we make podcasts is—we hide them. We cut them out. [Laughs]\nWe erase them. There are no mistakes in our podcasts. But on radio, there are mistakes. And in that sense, it’s a more spontaneous and possibly surprising medium.\n\nSo we want to talk about spontaneity and surprise. We want to talk about: what are some of the things we can do on radio that maybe we wouldn’t do in a podcast? And then I suppose also reflect on some of the larger frames of our show—like Katherine mentioned—one show being part of a larger body of work, but also that our own show plays or is heard among many other shows that are happening, that sound quite different from our show.\n\n00:06:49\tKatherine McLeod\tWe thought that we would follow the format that we usually follow for the radio show, which will involve listening to a series of clips related to those topics that Jason just outlined, and talking about what we hear as we listen to them—and listening to them together.\nThis is Jason and I listening to them together, but also imagining that we’re listening to them with you, our audience.\n\n00:07:15\tJason Camlot\tYeah, that’s great.\nI mean, just to get things straight—usually on a radio show, we don’t play clips of ourselves talking. [Laughter]\n\n00:07:21\tKatherine McLeod\tRight, good point.\n00:07:23\tJason Camlot\tWe play records, we play poetry—\n00:07:26\tKatherine McLeod\tPoetry recordings. Yeah, that’s a good point. We should make that clear.\n00:07:30\tJason Camlot\tBut we’re going to be treating clips from our past radio shows as though we’re DJ-ing them. You know, I was very proud after our first show to come home and tell everyone that I was a DJ now.\n00:07:43\tKatherine McLeod\tAs someone who’s been listening to a lot of recordings of poets on the radio in the CBC archives, I was pretty excited to know what it’s like to be on the other side—making radio.\nAnd then it does make you think about all the different considerations—how the show gets put together and also just how that has changed over time as well.\n\nSo yeah, we’re making radio here—and also making this podcast episode.\n\n00:08:08\tJason Camlot\t[Upbeat instrumental music begins]\nYeah, I was never so proud to claim that I was a podcaster as I was to claim I was a DJ.\nAnyway, let’s move on into the show itself.\n\n[Instrumental music continues for a while]\n\n00:08:48\tJason Camlot\tMaybe we should start by playing a clip or two of what our radio show sounds like, so people have an idea of what we’re talking about.\n00:08:54\tKatherine McLeod\tSounds good. Let’s listen.\n00:08:58\tKatherine McLeod, Audio Clip\t[Transcriber’s note: Audio excerpt from a previous episode of the Sonic Lit show]\n[Soft instrumental music begins]\n\nWelcome to Sonic Lit, a spoken word radio show. I’m Katherine McLeod, and I’m here with —\n\n00:09:09\tJason Camlot, Audio Clip\tJason Camlot.\n00:09:11\tKatherine McLeod, Audio Clip\tAnd every second week, we’ll be bringing you literary audio to the airwaves of CJLO. We decided to call this show Sonic Lit because we’ll be playing many different examples of literary audio.\nAnd today, we’re going to offer you a bit of a sampler of what you can expect to hear on this radio show.\n00:09:33\tJason Camlot, Audio Clip\tYeah — the theme, if we want to think of the theme, is: what is literary audio?\n00:09:37\tKatherine McLeod, Audio Clip\t[Audio cuts into another recording from another episode of Sonic Lit]\nWe’re back with Sonic Lit. Before the break, we heard “America” by Allen Ginsberg. And while listening to that, we were — well, we were sitting here in the booth just laughing to ourselves, because we couldn’t believe that after almost every line there was a roar of laughter from the audience. [Audience laughter and cheering]\nIt almost sounded like we were listening to comedy. [Grand piano music fades in and out]\n\n00:10:01\tAudio Clip, Unknown Speaker\t[Transcriber’s note: The following is an excerpt from William Wordsworth’s poem “She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways,” recited here by an unidentified speaker.]\n…the untrodden ways / Beside the springs of Dove…\n00:10:05\tKatherine McLeod, Audio Clip\tThat track was called Part 1: Trajectory, from a new album by the group “Fire.”\n[Transcriber’s note: Unable to locate a definitive release under this title or artist.]\n[Distorted instrumental music with overlapping heaving sounds]\n\n00:10:20\tKatherine McLeod, Audio Clip\tSo…do we know what a poem is now, Jason?\n00:10:25\tJason Camlot, Audio Clip\t[Pages flipping] I think that I understand. I think I understand exactly what a poem is now after having heard that. How about you?\n00:10:33\tKatherine McLeod, Audio Clip\tI think I do. I also feel like that poem is in my body. [Voice fades]\n00:10:38\tJason Camlot\t[Back to podcast discussion]\nSo that was a collage of a variety of clips from our radio show. What are we listening to there, Katherine?\n\n00:10:45\tKatherine McLeod\tWell, Jason, the question of what we’re listening to is really part of the question: how did this radio show begin?\nWe wanted to extend a practice we’ve been calling “listening practices” — something we’ve been developing here at Concordia as part of the SpokenWeb team since 2019.\nWe’d gather in a room and a “listening guide” would bring a sound or sonic concept for us to listen to. As that evolved — and continued online during the pandemic — the focus was still on bringing a sound and then talking about it, listening together.\n\nAnd I think this radio show has really continued that. When we play something on the show, we usually don’t prepare how we’re going to respond to it. We just respond to what we’ve heard and ask ourselves what it was we were really listening to.\nI think you can hear that in the clips — that moment where we’re still figuring it out, thinking on our feet. You can hear us listening live and responding in real time. It’s rooted in that idea.\n\n00:12:14\tJason Camlot\tYeah, that’s a major difference between how we do the podcast and how we do the radio show. We don’t prepare. [Laughter]\nFor the radio, we barely prepare. Katherine and I will meet like 20 minutes before and say, “Which CD are we going to listen to today?” Sometimes we haven’t even pre-listened — which can cause problems, but usually creates some very exciting moments. It also allows our audience to hear us listening — to experience listening modeled by listening with us.\n\n00:12:48\tKatherine McLeod\tExactly. And the fact that we’ve been doing this show twice a week during a really busy term —\n00:12:56\tJason Camlot\tOnce every two weeks. We’ll get to errors later. [Laughter]\n00:13:01\tKatherine McLeod\tDidn’t I just say every two—?\n00:13:02\tJason Camlot\tYou said twice a week. [Laughter]\n00:13:07\tKatherine McLeod\tNo, no — that would be a bit much. Maybe one day?\n00:13:10\tJason Camlot\tWe’re aiming for twice a week.\n00:13:11\tKatherine McLeod\tRight — the morning poetry show.\nBut seriously, doing the show every two weeks — it’s amazing we’ve kept that up, given everything else going on: teaching, research, life. If we were making a podcast, there would be so much planning involved. But for this, you have to improvise. It’s almost like training for… I don’t know, not a marathon, but something long-term. It’s about sustaining it. You don’t have to make one polished, research-heavy podcast episode — you’re making something every two weeks. So we can try new things, experiment, and not overthink it.\n\n00:14:13\tJason Camlot\tThat’s a great point.\nIf I were to sum up what you just said: radio, as a medium to explore literary listening, is sprawling. We can go deep, we can take our time. We can just talk — no scripts.\nWith podcasts, we at least draft a script, sometimes fully write it out, and then read it. But here, it’s talk-thinking. Thinking aloud in response to sound. It’s all part of the same continuum of listening practices — like those group listening sessions we’ve done. We’ve even listened to full-length readings and modeled that on the show. But again, radio feels different from sitting in a room with people.\n\n00:15:16\tKatherine McLeod\tAnd to extend the podcast comparison a little further, it actually reminded me of the ShortCuts series I did for the SpokenWeb Podcast — where each episode took a deep dive into the archives, really listening to one or two clips and asking: What are we really listening to here?\nWe gave the space and time to reflect. And honestly, there have been moments on the radio show that feel just like that — which has been a really wonderful thing. But unlike the podcast, we can’t assume the audience is ready for a deep dive. Radio has a wider, more general audience — and truthfully, we don’t know who’s listening at all.\n\n00:16:10\tJason Camlot\tRight. As we were talking about listening, you started talking about audience — and of course, you can’t think about listening without thinking about who’s listening.\nFor me, audience is one of the biggest differences between podcasting and radio. With a podcast, it’s a bit like writing a poem or an academic essay — I imagine a reader or listener in mind, and that’s enough for me to move forward. But when I’m live on air — when I’m actually on the air — someone might be listening to me right then. That changes everything. It summons a completely different sense of audience.\n\nSo… who are we talking to on our radio show?\n\n00:17:05\tKatherine McLeod\tIt’s fascinating to imagine — we could be talking to anyone, anywhere. It could be a broad audience… or a very small one.\nSome might be in their cars, others at home, or listening while doing something else. And if they tune in to 1690 AM or stream it online, they may not hear the show from the beginning. They might drop in mid-show and wonder, “What are these sounds I’m hearing?”\nThat’s why we do things like station IDs or say: Welcome to Sonic Lit, a SpokenWeb radio show. I’m Katherine McLeod and I’m here in the booth with…\n00:17:58\tJason Camlot\tJason Camlot.\n00:18:00\tKatherine McLeod\tExactly — and reminding people of where they are, what they’re listening to, and who we are. That’s not something we’d typically do in a podcast. It felt strange at first, but I think we’ve gotten used to it.\nAnd then of course, the show streams online too — and we can archive episodes. That version of the show maybe feels closer to a podcast, but the radio experience still feels a lot more unknown.\n\n00:18:42\tJason Camlot\tYeah, I have to say, I completely block out the idea of a streaming audience—you know, the idea that people might be listening to it streaming afterwards. And probably it’s possible that more people will listen to it because we’ll tell three or four people to listen to it streaming, whereas probably there are zero people listening to our show when it’s playing live.\nBut that’s not the point. The point is: when we’re on the air, it creates a sense of urgency, because if there’s dead air then we’re not being responsible.\nSome of the things you mentioned, like playing the station ID—I like to say, “It’s 1690 on your AM dial”—you know, playing the station ID, playing the advertisements that we’re required to play during the course of the hour that we have on the air, is all part of a kind of responsibility to the station and to the audience.\n\nBut I have to say, the fact that we don’t know who’s listening to us creates a kind of potential—in my mind, anyways—for an actual listening audience. And it allows me to summon them, you know?\n\nAnd I want to give you an example. So we’re on a college radio station, so it’s probably fewer listeners than, say, larger radio stations—either commercial or the CBC. But, you know, I was on the CBC just yesterday morning to promote a show that’s happening at the Blue Metropolis Festival this Friday–\n\n00:20:21\tCBC Host – Archival Recording\t[Transcriber’s note: The following is an excerpt from Jason Camlot’s appearance on CBC Radio.]\nMontreal-based literary group The SpokenWeb is back at the Blue Metropolis Literary Festival. They work out of Concordia University to save the audio history of poetry across Canada. They preserve recordings that date back as far as the 1950s. Their event on Friday: Not Your Mother’s Poetry Reading…\n\n00:20:25\tJason Camlot\t[End of CBC clip – podcast resumes]\nAnd I won’t go into the details of promoting it because this is a podcast, so there’s no point. But yesterday I was on CBC at 7:30 in the morning–\n\n00:20:33\tAudio Clip of CBC Episode\t[Audio cuts back to the CBC clip]\n–Jason Camlot is the director of the SpokenWeb podcast. He’s also a professor of English Literature at Concordia University and joins us on the line.\n\nCBC Host: Good morning.\nJason: Good morning.\nCBC Host: What kind of audio archives is your group trying to preserve?\nJason: These are like–\n00:20:48\tJason Camlot\tI got up to be on the air and I was like, “Oh, why am I getting up? No one’s going to be listening to this.” And I had my eight minutes to talk about the event we’re doing at Blue Metropolis.\nThen, as soon as I got off the air, my phone [phone notification ding sound] was off the hook with texts. I don’t know if that metaphor makes sense anymore, but I was getting a lot of messages from friends.\n\nI was literally thinking to myself, as I got off the air, “Oh no, I’m going to be so tired today. Why did I even do this?” And then all these friends were texting me saying, “I just heard you on the radio!”\n\nIt took me aback. First of all, I was like, what are you doing up listening? I mean—it’s not even that early… Sorry, this is making me sound like a real slacker. [Laughs]\nBut it was a surprise. I got about five texts—that’s five people within my inner circle who had heard me.\n\nSo that made me think, “Wow, there were probably a lot of listeners out there.” And then if we think of college radio in relation to the CBC—maybe it’s only 5% of the CBC audience, but still, that means there are actually people tuned in to that station, listening. So, oh my God—it’s a huge difference.\n\n00:21:53\tKatherine McLeod\tYeah, I haven’t told you this story yet, but I have to add it to what you just said—thinking of stories from these past couple of days.\nOver the weekend, I was at a party, talking about our radio show. And in fact, I think I’ve attracted three new audience members from that.\n\nIt was a party full of poets—so, you know, maybe this came from that. But when I was telling them about the radio show, one person replied, like, they responded, they were like:\n\n“Oh, you know, even if your audience is reaching, like, that 17-year-old listening to the radio in that moment…”\n\n[cryptic sound plays and fades]\n\n“…it’s going to change his life.”\n\nAnd I was like—yes! You know, that’s our imagined audience. If we want to have one of many possible versions out there. But really, if someone’s tuning in, there’s a real potential to change their life. And it’s—it’s—yeah. The possibility is there.\n\n00:22:42\tJason Camlot\tYeah, I wanted to run something by you in relation to audience.\nWe’re running out of time for audience. So that’s the other thing. [Laughter]\n\nYou know, we’re working with a time limit—both with the podcast and the radio show—but the urgency of time is much more dramatic in a radio show, because you literally are the clock–\n\n00:23:00\tKatherine McLeod\t–is ticking, coming up at the hour and we have to be done by then, yeah.\n00:23:03\tJason Camlot\tBut I wanted to tell you this story about David Antin, who was a talk poet.\nHe was an avant-garde poet, and he used to sort of create poems by going before an audience and just starting to talk.\n\n00:23:38\tDavid Antin, Archival Recording\t[Transcriber’s note: The following is a recording of poet David Antin before a live audience.]\nI came here with an intention to do a piece relating to something I’ve been thinking about, and because I don’t come unprepared to do pieces.\n\nOn 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 that comes in certain socially structured events.\n\n00:23:39\tJason Camlot\t[Back to podcast discussion]\nHe would talk for 45 minutes to an hour, and then he would record them, and then he would turn them into print poems as well. And the poem existed across all these different media—live performance, tape, in a book.\n\nI was doing a sort of email interview with him and preparing an article about him. He had done some radio, you know, so I asked him a little bit about what’s the difference between performing a talk poem on the radio versus performing a talk poem in a classroom before a bunch of people who showed up to hear you?\n\nAnd his response was that when you’re on the radio, you’re just speaking into a black hole. It’s as though your words are just evaporating as soon as you speak them. And there’s no sense of reception.\n\nBut that’s not been my experience at all of speaking on the radio. I—somehow, even though I can’t see anyone listening—have a very tangible sense that there are people listening. I mean, big myth perhaps, but you know, that’s how I feel.\n\n00:24:50\tKatherine McLeod\tAnd I feel like the idea of it traveling across the airwaves—and like, you know, again, there’s something about the radio dial or tuning in—that anyone could be tuning in.\nAnd also, that responsibility to put on the show and not have silence, not have that dead air happen. You feel like not only are the listeners depending on you, the station’s depending on you. There’s—again—a sense of responsibility for the sound.\n\n00:25:16\tJason Camlot\tWhat I have, going back to these texts I received from friends, is that I learned things about them — that they have rituals of listening to the radio.\n00:25:24\tKatherine McLeod\tBut yeah, there’s a ritual. Also, really, radio has connection.\nI think of so many times I’ve texted my mom across three hours’ difference out to her in Vancouver. And I did this a lot when I first moved to Toronto and we had moved away from home. But I’d be like, “Oh, turn on the radio at 3:40,” or whatever, to hear this specific piece of music.\nAnd because we were both big CBC Radio 2 listeners, if we could be connected by both having heard that piece of music at that point in the day, there was something very special about both having listened to the same thing at, you know, the same time in our day. [Instrumental music starts playing]\n\nSo radio — connecting across really vast distances — is something that’s really quite, again, special about the medium–\n\nArchival Recording\t[Audio cuts into a prior radio broadcast. Fast-paced instrumental music plays in the background. Voices are slightly distorted.]\nKatherine McLeod [distorted archival recording]\nAnd we’re here on September 30th, which is the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. And here on Sonic Lit, we’re bringing you all Indigenous sounds. You just heard—\n\n[Audio glitch/cut]\n\nJason Camlot [distorted archival recording]\nSo what happened today, Katherine, in the USA?\nKatherine McLeod [distorted archival recording]\nNot sure. Weirdness is about to happen in the USA. Trump’s inauguration?\nJason Camlot [distorted archival recording]\nWe don’t know what’s going to happen in the USA, do we?\nKatherine McLeod [distorted archival recording]\nIt feels very, very uncertain — and a bit weird.\n[Audio glitch/cut]\n\nJason Camlot [distorted archival recording]\nIt feels a bit weird.\nKatherine McLeod [distorted archival recording]\nAnd so today’s Sonic Lit show is basically going to be American weirdness.\n[Fast instrumental music continues briefly, then fades]\n\nJason Camlot [live recording, clearer]\nWelcome back to Sonic Lit, the radio show.\nKatherine McLeod [live recording]\nToday we’re listening to poetry by memory — poems that people carry with them in their minds and in their hearts.\n00:27:09\tJason Camlot\t[Back to podcast discussion]\nIn some ways, what you’re saying makes me think that speaking on the radio is closer to doing a live performance — you know, a live poetry reading — than making a podcast is. You know, there’s a liveness, and it’s about the sort of simultaneity in time, as time is unfolding in the present, that really makes it special.\n\n00:27:32\tKatherine McLeod\tAnd a podcast may be more akin to a vinyl record that a poet has recorded some poems on. And you know, that’s also a very moving sonic experience, but something different — experiencing time together.\n00:27:50\tJason Camlot\tAnd yet, when we’ve been talking about — and even sort of theorizing and talking with experts about — podcasting, the sense of liveness, the sense of immediacy and dialogue and informality is always stressed. But the liveness is maybe just a little bit different. There’s a different kind of liveness in radio than in podcast.\n00:28:10\tKatherine McLeod\tPodcasting — there’s maybe a liveness in, say, the intimacy of the voice, and kind of having that voice with you in your headphones as you’re moving about the world. In those moments in time, you’re experiencing sound along the same time — you’re synced in time through sound, that’s what I’m getting at.\nBut, you know, the intimacy of the voice is maybe something different than the intimacy of time, or being connected through, again, through radio — traveling through the airwaves, connecting you across distances, and connecting through time.\n00:28:47\tJason Camlot, Audio Recording\t[Audio cuts into another recording]\nZen Ship sounds from Tanya Evanson — that’s “Qutb,” or “Qutb (the search for the bull),” from her album Zen Ship.\n\nAnd I mentioned earlier that Katherine McLeod can’t be in the studio with me today. Unfortunately, she had to stay home because little Clara, her daughter, was having some…well, just not having the best day. And I think it was a teething thing. And you know, teeth are important — they’re all part of this oral performance art that we’re highlighting on the show.\nBut since she can’t be with us in studio, we’re gonna try to see if we can get her on the phone. So I’m interested to hear what Katherine thinks of the Tanya Evanson stuff we’ve been playing so far.\nKatherine, are you there? Can you hear us?\n\n00:29:35\tKatherine McLeod, Audio Recording\t[Katherine on the phone]\nI can hear you.\n00:29:36\tJason Camlot, Audio Recording\tAlright, cool, I hear you too. This is ecstatic.\n00:29:40\tKatherine McLeod, Audio Recording\tI’m so thrilled to be live on the show via the telephone.\n00:29:45\tJason Camlot, Audio Recording\tWell, I hope things are going OK. How’s Clara doing?\n00:29:48\tKatherine McLeod, Audio Recording\tShe’s doing well. She’s actually having her nap, so this is perfect timing to be able to call in. I was thinking, well, I’ll get to listen to the show during her nap — but even better, I get to join you on the show today.\nWasn’t expected, but thanks for heading to the radio booth yourself, Jason — and for telling me.\n00:30:07\tJason Camlot, Audio Recording\tYeah, yeah. No, it’s great to have you with us one way or another. And it was really your idea to feature Tanya Evanson in today’s show. So maybe you could tell us a little bit about why you wanted to do that.\n00:30:25\tJason Camlot\t[Back to podcast discussion]\nSo one of the— we’ve been talking about some of the different qualities of liveness in radio, and one of the, in some ways most terrifying and yet also most— it’s become for us most enjoyable, funny, comical, I don’t know, humiliating yet pleasurable— elements of liveness and radio is that when you make mistakes, they just happen. And they’re there. And they’re not going to go away.\n\n00:30:50\tKatherine McLeod\tYes, and they range from things like maybe mispronouncing something–\n00:30:57\tJason Camlot, Audio Clip\t[Audio cuts to another recording]\nWe’re going to be listening to, first of all, some tracks from her new albums. You know— Sun Suite. [Disappointed “womp womp” sound effect plays]\n\nAlright, we’re back—Sonic Lit.\n\nWhile we were off-air, Katherine sent me a text. And Katherine and I have a little bit of a running gag going, at least between ourselves, where we correct each other’s pronunciation or knowledge on the things that we’re playing on air.\nAnd I’ve had a good run. I’ve been—I’ve been able to correct her on a few things over the last few shows. But this time, Katherine texted that I’ve been saying the title of Tanya’s newest record, which I’ve been saying *CNO*, as though it’s *Cyrano*—like the Bergerac—*CNO Sun Sweet*, but it’s actually *Cyano Sun Sweet*.\n\nSo—chalk up a point for Katherine.\nAnd I did want to make that correction: cyanosis.\n\n00:31:50\tKatherine McLeod\t[Back to podcast]\nStumbling over–\n\n00:31:53\tKatherine McLeod, Audio Clip\t[Audio cuts to another recording]\n[Deep voice saying: Now, if you’ll open your book, I’ll begin.] *A Child’s Introduction to the Novel Oliver Twist*, as adopted by J.K. Ross, captures the true spirit of an old England in much of Dickinson’s—Dickens—sorry, in much of Dickens’s own words.\n\n00:31:10\tKatherine McLeod\t[Back to podcast]\nOr the CD player not working—\n\n00:31:12\tKatherine McLeod, Audio Clip\t[Audio cuts to another recording]\n–and I’m going to pause that. [Audio playback fails]\n\nI knew I couldn’t get it on the first try.\n\nHere, let’s try that one more time.\n\n[Audio playback resumes successfully: “Stories of snow…”]\n\nAlright, here we go.\n\n[Audio continues: “Those in the vegetable rain—”]\n\n00:32:25\tKatherine McLeod\t[Back to podcast]\nOr your microphone not working, and realizing that you have to just figure that out on the fly and try to, you know, make it work— and sometimes have the help of our very wonderful station manager, Cameron McIntyre, who sometimes will fly into the booth and, you know, turn the CD player on.\n\n00:32:47\tJason Camlot\tCameron’s like a helicopter parent, nearby in case something goes wrong. I mean, we had to be trained to be on the radio, right?\nYou know, you can’t just walk into a studio and start being a DJ. Like, you have to pay your dues for at least three training sessions.\n00:33:01\tKatherine McLeod\tAnd I think too, though— from making so many podcasts, I think it actually surprised both of us, because we kind of thought, well, we’ve made a lot of podcast episodes, we’re very, very familiar with making audio about literature, and, you know, we can just— we can do this. And then realized— no, no, there’s so much to learn. And we’re still learning.\n00:33:20\tJason Camlot\tYeah, absolutely. I mean, so you mentioned some of the things that can go wrong— equipment failure of different kinds. And there definitely— it happened to us more than once where, you know, we planned a whole show based on a few CDs and— oh, the CD player’s not working. Or, you know, there are three mics in the studio and none of them seem to be picking up any sound. And we don’t know why. And it’s because the person who was in the booth just before us pressed some buttons that they weren’t supposed to. And so, you know, Cameron has to rescue us.\nOh yeah, one of our most common errors is we get too ambitious. We want to— there’s like five more songs before the show is over, but we only have time for one of them. So we actually list all the songs that we hope to play, but then we only play half of one of those songs or poems–\n\n00:34:05\tKatherine McLeod\t–we’re going to, you know, end this— end this show with playing, like, this poem and this poem, and then Jason and I both look at each other and realize that actually— there’s only two minutes. [Laughter]\n00:34:18\tJason Camlot\t[Fast paced instrumental begins] So yeah, managing time is a big cause of errors for us.\n00:34:22\tKatherine McLeod\tYeah. [Fast paced instrumental continues and fades]\n00:34:42\tJason Camlot\tIt seems to me, actually, as we’re talking, that almost all of these different qualities of radio seem to come down to the effects of time on us as radio show hosts. One of the things we’ve been excited about in using time— or about the time— is how much time we actually could devote to listening to, say, a single artist or something like that.\n00:35:03\tKatherine McLeod\tBecause we’ve kind of adopted some of the practices of, say, the ghost reading or again, the listening practice or the podcast— in that we have done some really deep dives. And actually, some of the shows that I think have felt the most satisfying have been where we’ve just really listened closely to, say, a CD of a particular poet or an archival recording.\nAnd I should say that actually— radio, CDs—this is like the best forum for playing poetry. Because on a podcast, you can’t necessarily— you know, you can’t really play commercial recordings. Or if you do, you can just play a clip and talk about it, and all those things about rights.\n\nBut on the radio, playing a commercial recording of a poet is a terrific way of playing the work and then being able to, you know, have it count towards Canadian content on air and everything like that. So we’ve really done some good deep dives into Canadian poets who have made CDs. And I think some of the times that we’ve just really dwelled in one disc have been some of the most generative and enjoyable.\n\n00:36:06\tJason Camlot\tYeah, I love that. I mean— yeah, we literally have license under the legal rubric of radio to play whole records if we want.\n00:36:15\tKatherine McLeod, Audio Recording\t[Audio cuts to a recording]\nThe other thing they really have in common is they’re both off of albums, which I just think is so fascinating. So we really, when thinking about the Montreal sounds to feature on today’s show, we thought: well, why not? Why not feature two albums? But two albums from really different periods… [Voice fades]\n\n00:36:31\tJason Camlot\t[Back to podcast discussion]\nAnd yeah, there is almost a kind of inclination to just talk less, comment less. So it’s less about our intervention, you know, in the pieces we’re playing as illustrations of something, and more of a kind of sharing and collaborative listening with whoever else might be listening at that moment.\n\n00:36:50\tKatherine McLeod\tYou know, in that way, it’s such an ideal format for a listening practice. Because, you know, we’re listening with our audience, and really the focus is on listening.\n00:36:59\tMaxine Gadd, Archival Audio\t[Transcriber’s note: The following is a clip from a previous episode of the podcast, in which Jason Camlot and Katherine McLeod listen to and discuss a recording of Maxine Gadd.]\n[Audio cuts into a previous podcast episode]\n[Maxine Gadd archival recording]\n\nI remember the bell— Some of us are to be half-inch diameter crystal. If there is crystal—Leary—I should have mentioned—was Timothy Leary. I should—I should have explained that before, you know?\n\n00:37:23\tJason Camlot, Audio Clip\tWow. Maxine Gadd, reading at Sir George Williams University in 1972, on February the 18th. So— tomorrow, many, many years ago.\n00:37:37\tKatherine McLeod, Audio Clip\tI love listening to this reading again.\nI was really noticing how it was really hard to tell when she moved in and out of a poem. But I really liked that— because I was like, then I felt like listening to her talk about the poem also kind of felt like her reading the poem.\nAnd then I would suddenly realize: oh wait, now we’re in a poem. And it felt like just her voice kind of carried us through both— again, from the commentary into the poem itself. And then even at the end there, when she says like, “Leary, I should have mentioned it was Timothy Leary,” it almost was like— oh right, now we’re out of this poem. And it again felt like kind of part of the poem.\n\nBut I was also just thinking— Jason, I don’t know if you’re noticing this too, but like— when she was talking about the poem, either before or after, it felt so improvised. And like, we kind of— I think when we were sitting here, we felt like, oh, we feel like we can just imagine her talking to us. And it felt very informal. But we really liked that element of it, because it just felt, again, like we were sitting down with her, hearing her talk about her poems in a very casual way— and then read them. And the improvisational quality of it was just— it felt very live.\n\n00:38:52\tJason Camlot, Audio Clip\tI mean, you really hear her— you hear this in many readings, not all readings— but you really hear Maxine Gadd sort of tuning herself or calibrating herself in relation to the room. So  the opening part of the reading that we just heard after Richard Sommer’s introduction, she was really feeling things out. She didn’t really know what she was going to do. You get a sense that she almost didn’t quite know who she was speaking to yet. And so she needed to explain herself. But at the same time, explain that she would be figuring out what she’d be doing as things unfolded. And I think she needed to start making sound in order to get a sense of some feedback that would help her decide where she would be going with this reading, and what pieces she would choose, and how she would read them— and what it would all mean to her as she did it.\n00:39:52\tKatherine McLeod, Audio Clip\tI think that we’re going to hear more. We might pause for a…well—\n00:39:57\tJason Camlot, Audio Clip\tLet’s— let’s, yeah— let Maxine have a little more time–\n00:39:59\tKatherine McLeod, Audio Clip\tYeah, because she’s about to actually talk about a really important movement in Vancouver called Intermedia. So let’s— let’s hear that before we do anything.\n00:40:07\tJason Camlot, Audio Clip\tSo let’s continue being the audience for Maxine Gadd, February 18th, 1972. And you’re listening to CJLO 1690.\n00:40:21\tMaxine Gadd, Archival Audio\tOh yeah, this—this is where I’m at now. I don’t like it. OK.\n00:40:27\tKatherine McLeod\t[Back to podcast discussion]\nAnd it’s probably not a good point. It’s not necessarily about, you know, disseminating our ideas about these recordings as research. It’s about listening again with other listeners who are tuning in.\n\n00:40:36\tJason Camlot\tYeah, it’s about—it’s about sharing also, right? You know, so the Montreal spoken word performer Fortner Anderson has a show on our rival station, CKUT—not really rival station, but that’s McGill’s station.\nBut on his show, he doesn’t speak at all. He just plays records, right? So basically, he uses his hour purely to share work, to promote work, circulate work, expose work, you know. And there’s definitely a much greater sense of, you know, that being one of the major purposes of what we’re doing on the radio.\n00:41:10\tKatherine McLeod\tYeah, and it’s so exciting to think—like to be like, OK, well, you know, this disc that, you know, we— I don’t just have to choose one clip from it. In fact, we can—we can really—we can listen to the whole thing. We can listen to tracks and also then talk about it a bit. But really, it’s about the listening. And then we have been able to share a lot of local artists and, you know, discs that we’re big fans of and want people to listen to as well.\n00:41:34\tJason Camlot\tYeah, so in the spirit of this topic, the next hour of our podcast will be devoted to listening to a single record. Here we go now. Just kidding.\n[Piano instrumental begins]\n\n00:41:59\tKatherine McLeod\tYou’re listening to the SpokenWeb Podcast— or Sonic Lit. [Laughter]\nYou’ll do it again? Yeah, because I was like, wait—how should I— You’re listening to the SpokenWeb Podcast. My name is Katherine McLeod, and I’m here with—\n00:42:17\tJason Camlot\tJason Camlot.\nKatherine, was that your radio voice that we were just hearing?\n00:42:21\tKatherine McLeod\tYes. I will say you also have a radio voice, Jason.\n00:42:24\tJason Camlot\tDo I ever. [Laughter]\nIt’s so embarrassing. I hear myself speaking that way and I just can’t help myself when I’m in the studio. I was like, “And Jason Camlot,” you know? Like, who am I? Who is that?\n\nBut I think it’s interesting to think about how we speak on the radio and what forms of talk are happening, you know, on our show. Like what forms of talk are happening to us on our show? What forms of talk are we performing on the show? What forms of talk are we listening to on the show? Because there are a lot of different forms of literary talk and performance, but then also our show happens within a much wider context of other forms of discourse and talk.\n\n00:43:03\tKatherine McLeod\tAnd I remember one time when we had arrived early before our show, we were listening to the show that airs just before us. And it’s a sports show–\n00:43:14\tJason Camlot\t–the Tommy John Show.\n00:43:17\tKatherine McLeod\tYeah. [Laughs]\nThat was your radio voice. [Laughs]\n00:43:18\tAudio Recording from Tommy John Show\t[Audio cuts to a recording from Tommy John Show]\nAgain, so this could be a disaster— an absolute disaster— for the Carolina Hurricanes. And so what do you do if you don’t think you can get a deal done? So you try and get something for him. And there’s going to be teams that would be interested— absolutely— it’s Rico Ratman— but not necessarily a team he wants to sign with. A team that’s going to try and win a cup. So I would not be surprised. A team like Winnipeg, Edmonton. Because you know what they’re gonna have to do— Carolina— they’re gonna have to retain some of the salary to make it—\n\n00:43:50\tKatherine McLeod\t[Back to podcast discussion]\nAnd—\n\n00:43:51\tJason Camlot\tHe has a good radio voice—\n00:43:52\tKatherine McLeod\t—Because we were— when we were listening, we were amazed at the way that he just— he talks continuously [music plays] in such an animated way. And just the way that he pauses— there’s just such a style to it. It was just incredible to hear. So, you know— and also sounds really different from our show and the person that comes in after us–\n00:44:10\tAudio Recording from Tommy John Show\t[Audio cuts to a recording from Tommy John Show]\nThat was “Arizona” by Wunderhorse off their newest album “Midas,” which I’ve been a huge, huge fan of lately. It’s not doing anything necessarily reinventing the genre or doing anything particularly special, but it’s just like— I’ve— sometimes I’m in the mood for just some really, really well-made indie plays, you know?\n\n00:44:18\tKatherine McLeod\t[Back to podcast discussion]\nLocal Montreal artist talks about local events and also has a really distinct unique sound to that show as well. And across— again, look across the shows on the station— very diverse sounds of the show across the spectrum of radio. A lot of differences.\n\nAnd yet there’s something about, like, the radio voice that we kind of know when we do it. And you know what? What is that? And, I do it too. And I often, sometimes even on the radio— I’ll notice when I go from sort of a hesitant thinking or like, is the microphone working? Is this working? Is this working? And there’s lots going on in my head.\nAnd then suddenly, in a moment when we’re talking about something we’ve just heard, I’ll realize I’m really just like in the zone of thinking about what we heard and what I’m talking about. Even right now— I’m now gesturing with my hands, whereas I wasn’t before. And my voice changes then. And that’s another kind of, I guess, radio voice.\n\n00:45:32\tJason Camlot\tYeah, I actually like the setup better in here than in the studio— the radio studio— because we get to look at each other. We’re side-by-side in the radio studio, and I think that makes a difference.\nBut I want to say— when we first— or when I first heard the Tommy John Show, because we wait outside before we go in— so it’s playing in the larger studio— I was amazed at how he never says “umm,” you know?\nAnd when I listened back to the first few shows we did, I’m like “umming” every 3 seconds. And I was like— how does he do that? You know? How do I not?\nI think I’ve gotten better at it, actually. And not even thinking about it. It’s just sort of gradually becoming a little more fluid— without “ums.” There’s a good one. I’m definitely going to keep that one there.\n\nBut Matteo, who does the show after us—who does kind of a local music show and bands that are in town, who’s in town—his whole approach is more like, “I love this band,” you know? And basically, the entire approach to the show is, “This band I’ve been listening to like, you know, for 30 years.” He’s only like 20 years old. “And I love them, and they’re great, and they’re in town, and they’re playing here. I remember I last saw them last summer here,” or whatever. And it’s all very personal, you know?\n\nAnd so even just the bookends to our own show have very different— like, when Tommy John’s speaking, you have a sense of a hardcore sports audience who knows as many stats as he does, and he can just rattle them off like nonstop. And is a fan of every sport and can talk extensively about every player, every trade, every—everything. He has a very clear sense of who he’s talking to. And so does Matteo. And I think that’s— that we’re still coming into our own. Like we talked about audience before, but I think we do have that. And—and I suppose the way we talk is going to change as we gain a clearer sense of who we’re talking to.\n\n00:47:17\tKatherine McLeod\tYeah, but it is about kind of getting comfortable with your sound, and also knowing that, like, your voice is a radio voice, even if it doesn’t sound like other radio voices. I think that was actually Cameron McIntyre, our station director, who said that when we were doing our training—that every voice is a radio voice. And I was like, yes, that’s right.\n00:47:50\tJason Camlot\tWe’re doing a literary radio show, right? Which is probably—I mean, and it’s a poetry radio show. And it’s like often obscure poetic works. We’re doing sound poetry—[Audio transitions to a distorted clip: “your voice, so what is the bone inside of your body… body.”]\nIt’s probably like the least commercial kind of show imaginable, right? You know, we’re not doing a sports show or one on, like, recent music that’s been through town like the shows before and after ours. And it’s been obvious to me that even at a college station, radio is functioning within a very commercial framework—commercially minded. There are ads we have to play.\n\n00:48:46\tAudio Clip, Unknown Speaker\t[Audio cuts to a recording – Unknown source]\nOne of the lions ladies left behind to scratch coloured gods on rocks.\nLate production. We’d have “Freak, in collaboration with TD Bank Group presents…\n\n00:48:54\tJason Camlot\t[Back to podcast discussion]\nFor the shows that are topical, maybe are supposed to draw in audiences. It’s as though our show is designed to drive audiences away. Almost. No—just kidding! It’s a great show and you should all listen to it. But yeah, I don’t know—what do you think about this element of radio—that it really is sort of functioning within a kind of commercially minded framework?\n\n00:49:21\tKatherine McLeod\tYeah, well, it’s interesting too, because the examples both you and I refer to when talking about the show have often been CBC Radio. And so it’s almost like our go-to comparison is public radio, not commercial radio.\nBut I think that what we’ve noticed is—then realizing, “Oh yes, radio is inevitably influenced by the commercial,” and trying to sort that out when thinking about poetry, which is often not thinking about the commercial. And even things like from the station, getting reminders—because we’re in Canada—to play Canadian content to a certain percentage, or a list of top songs for the week.\n\nI know we just got an email saying that our show was part of the days that will be audited next week, so that means that we’ll have to submit a very elaborate playlist where it really identifies which content is Canadian. And often on our show, most of our content is Canadian, but it’s recordings of poets—not necessarily recordings of the latest Canadian singers. So it’s a different kind—it feels like a different kind of Canadian content.\n\nIt’s also made us think a lot about poetry itself—like, say, playing the poetry, talking about the poetry. Is our show talk radio? That category doesn’t quite feel right for our show, but we are talking about the material. Or is our show more like experimental sound-folk something? You get leaning into more of the recordings, and even the record labels that some of the poets are on. Is it some mix? It feels like it doesn’t quite fit in any of those categories.\n\nBut it’s been interesting to try to apply one of those categories onto our show and sort of see: how does that work? In what ways do we kind of exceed those boundaries or just not quite fit? Which is, it’s funny—for, again, college radio, where everyone’s pushing boundaries—but just this show…it’s a mix.\n\n00:51:33\tJason Camlot\tI do feel that within the college radio environment, being as weird and experimental as you like— [Swooshing sound]\nThere have been a couple of times where Cam has come in from his desk into the studio and said like, “Are you still on air? Or is there something going wrong with the signal?” or whatever. But it’s just because we’re playing a sound poet, you know, or an experimental sound piece.\n\n00:51:55\tKatherine McLeod\tExactly at that moment. I’m glad you told that—told that story. Yeah. He’s like, “Just to check—is that…?”\n00:52:01\tJason Camlot\tAnd he wasn’t like, “Turn it off! Go to the regular programming!” He just pokes in and goes, “Is this what’s supposed to be playing?” But it’s like—oh, that’s cool. That’s great. [Trombone plays]\nThere have been more commercially minded moments of our shows—like when we play Tanya Evanson’s new record or Kaie Kellough’s new record, and we want to promote it.\n\n00:52:26\tAudio Recording, Unknown Speaker\t[Audio cuts to a recording – Unknown source]\nIn the future it’s ache. Strive. A natural continuity.\n\n00:52:46\tJason Camlot\tThe way anyone would be promoting a new band’s record, right?\nBut at the same time, I do feel like the stuff we play on our show is kind of in tension with all the other forms of talk that are expected to be heard on the radio. And I find that really exciting and fun, actually—that like, even though it’s all talk, like you were saying—or music, right? Music is the go-to, really—but of all the talk shows, the fact that we’re playing talk shows that doesn’t register as the correct kinds of radio talk seems to me very exciting.\n\nAnd I think that wouldn’t, again, be a feeling I would have if it wasn’t within the radio context. The fact that it’s actually open to anyone hearing it. The fact that people who probably don’t want to be hearing it are hearing it, because it’s on somewhere or whatever—for me, is very exciting. Because it feels like a discursive intervention of some kind.\n\nStill, when you think about it, for all that talk about how fringy our show is, it is still a radio show. And as Hannah McGregor, our co-producer of the SpokenWeb Podcast, pointed out, there are differences in access to being able to produce shows between podcasting and radio. And the bar—even on a college radio station—may be higher than starting your own podcast would be. So I think it’s important. It’s an important point that Hannah raised, and that we’ve been thinking about surrounding the question of access to the medium, and being able to use it to make interventions of the kind that we’ve just been talking about.\n\n00:54:35\tKatherine McLeod\tI’m really glad that Hannah made that point to us too, because I was thinking a lot about why were we so happy and proud of ourselves to be DJs? And I think it also had to do with the way in which we both just really loved radio as a medium. And that’s been the medium that we’ve grown up with, we’ve listened to throughout our lives.\nAnd so the idea that we were going to do something that others who we have admired have also done—at first, I didn’t think about it so much as about access. It was more like, “oh, we’re getting to do that thing that we’ve always wanted to do.” But then to realize, “oh, right, we’re getting to do that because there’s a degree of access that we have”—to be able to say, like, pitch our show to the station and be trained.\n\n00:55:19\tJason Camlot\tYeah, you’re totally right.\nI think one of the reasons I was so excited to be on the air is because I didn’t have access to that medium growing up. And I wanted to, we would maybe watch a show like “WKRP in Cincinnati” and see the inside of a booth.\nBut it was only when I went to CEGEP—which is like after high school—that I got to see inside a radio booth. And even then, as a first-year CEGEP student, I couldn’t get on the roster of DJs at CEGEP, which was only broadcasting within the building. It didn’t even have a band. So yeah, there was a kind of allure due to the barriers that were set up from using that medium.\n\n00:55:54\tKatherine McLeod\tAnd even for me too—especially the aura of the radio archives. I know when I first went to CBC Radio archives to listen to poets that I was researching there—and I got to go—at that time, CBC Radio Archives were in the basement. And like, going downstairs and seeing the sign for “Radio Archives,” I was just enthralled.\nAnd so then to think of bringing that to my experience of being on the radio—and, you know, not everyone’s going to do that. But I think there was something that then— I hadn’t even thought about access because it was just so exciting to enter into that space itself.\n00:56:31\tJason Camlot\tI mean, I think there’s a continuum of access between commercial radio, public radio, and college radio. College and community radio is certainly more accessible and really big. But we had to be somehow within the community—or within the institutional community in this case—to be able to apply to have a show. The application process wasn’t overly onerous, right? But still, not everyone’s in university, not everyone is in an institution that can provide that kind of access. What does all this add up to?\n00:57:10\tKatherine McLeod\tWell, it makes me think of how this show—it’s not just about one show. The show is a body—the show is a body of work. It’s continuing to grow.\n00:57:21\tAudio Clip\t[Audio cuts to another recording – a collage of audio clips from previous recordings]\n[Overlapping and distorted voices]\nWhich is cool. I don’t know what that was, but I was just listening and looking. Which is the lake of the island, and it’s freezing.\n\n00:57:41\tKatherine McLeod\t[Back to podcast discussion]\nAnd right now, we don’t even have a year’s worth, but we’re sort of reflecting on how this show was evolving. Also thinking about maybe things that, you know, we wouldn’t have known—like doing a deep dive into, say, a CD, or actually just kind of stepping back and listening with listeners would be the way to go.\n\nAnd I think that that was something that we only developed while doing the show. And so it makes me think of almost this show as a space to experiment—or almost kind of like a lab, to use a buzzword—but even more than a lab, almost like—like going back to listening practices—like an opportunity to practice, but also like, it is a performance. Listeners are listening, but it’s evolving. It’s like we’re continuing to practice listening with listeners. And there’s not a conclusion. It’s continuing.\n\n00:58:41\tJason Camlot\tYeah, I’ve found it’s served as a kind of public forum for working our way through content that we don’t have time to do otherwise, right? And which allows us to begin to make connections between some of the different recordings we’re making that we maybe would never have thought of as linking up or connecting to each other. So the fact that we have the time to just play these things, listen to them—it’s almost like doing the first readings, you know, of materials that will then allow you to do something maybe a little more specific, a little more expository with afterwards.\nBut this phase of listening, and then of thinking about connections live as they’re happening, is incredibly generative. And I think interesting in its own way to listen to, actually, because you’re sort of hearing those connections be heard as they’re perceived—and hearing the initial reflections on what those connections might mean right when they were perceived.\n\nSo it is—and I like the idea of—you know, so you have a bad show, right? You make a lot of mistakes or something goes wrong. I like falling back on that argument that—I think it was our colleague Elena Razlogova said to you—is that, well, it’s just, it’s a body of work. Right? So it’s sort of like, you know, OK, that was a bad show, but there’ll be another show.\n\n01:00:00\tKatherine McLeod\tExactly. Exactly. Yeah.\nAnd that idea too, of like listening—hearing the listening unfolding live on air. You know, listeners—they—we really—what we’re doing is listening on air, and listeners are hearing that. And I think that going back to that point about it being live on the radio—that I think that is what is most important about actually doing the show live, is then for listeners to be able to listen with us and hear that listening taking place.\n01:00:35\tJason Camlot\tWhat do we usually say at the end of our show? Like, how do we—how do we sign off, so to speak?\n01:00:40\tKatherine McLeod\tWell, sometimes you’re showing—we announce what’s going to play next and then do an outro. I’ll do it, yeah.\n01:00:50\tJason Camlot\tSorry—we list 10 songs and then play 30 seconds of one of them. Yeah. But apart from that, you know, what do we say? I mean, you’re so good at bringing us into the show. Like, can you do the opening again? Let’s just hear it.\n01:01:01\tKatherine McLeod\tWell, I can do what I did for one of the outros. But I have an idea of how to end this. So let’s see how this goes.\nYou’ve been listening to the SpokenWeb Podcast. This episode has been about Sonic Lit, a spoken word radio show. My name is Katherine McLeod and I’m here with—\n\n01:01:21\tJason Camlot\tJason Camlot.\n01:01:23\tKatherine McLeod\tThanks for listening. [Laughter]\nI couldn’t—I got distracted by your radio voice. [Laughter] Well, that’s good.\n\n01:01:33\tJason Camlot\tThis has been a podcast, not a radio show—even though it really sounded like a radio show.\n01:01:41\tKatherine McLeod\tThat’s right. So, we could say “Tune in next week,” but in fact, stay tuned on the podcast feed for future episodes of the SpokenWeb Podcast.\nAnd if you’re interested in checking out Sonic Lit, the SpokenWeb radio show, head to cjsf.com. Or if you’re in Montreal, tune in Mondays at 2:00 on 1690 AM. Or as Jason likes to say—\n01:02:10\tJason Camlot\tYour AM dial, 2:00 PM Mondays.\n[Audio: Thanks for tuning in—and keep it locked to 1690 AM.]\n[Soft instrumental music plays and fades]\n\n01:02:31\tHannah McGregor\t[SpokenWeb theme song begins]\nYou’ve been listening to the SpokenWeb Podcast, 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.\n\n01:02:47\tHannah McGregor\tThis month’s episode was produced by Jason Camlot and our very own Katherine McLeod.\nThe SpokenWeb Podcast team is supervising producer Maia Harris, sound designer TJ McPherson, transcriber Yara Ajeeb, and co-hosts Katherine McLeod and me, Hannah McGregor.\n\n01:03:05\tHannah McGregor\tTo find out more about SpokenWeb, visit spokenweb.ca and subscribe to the SpokenWeb Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you may listen.\nIf you love us, let us know—rate us and leave a comment on Apple Podcasts, or say hi on our social media.Plus, check social media for info about our listening parties and more.\n\nUntil next episode, thanks for listening."],"score":2.7048998},{"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":2.7048998},{"id":"9660","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 2.7, Moving, 19 April 2021, McLeod"],"item_title_source":["SpokenWeb Podcast web page."],"item_title_note":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/moving/"],"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\":[]}]"],"contributors":["[]"],"Publication_Date":[2021],"material_description":["[]"],"digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://cdn.simplecast.com/audio/28a9da1f-8cca-410c-b5d7-8165a73f9394/episodes/191afc43-7900-41f2-b82e-38b41a4e5eba/audio/a4fd83fa-8a12-4186-b289-0d1e5be20e02/default_tc.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"s2-shortcuts7-moving.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"44.1 kHz\",\"duration\":\"00:13:19\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"12,786,339 bytes\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"MP3 audio\",\"title\":\"s2-shortcuts7-moving\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/moving/\"}]"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"2021-04-19\",\"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\":\"Collis, Stephen. Almost Islands: Phyllis Webb and the Pursuit of the Unwritten. Talonbooks, 2018. \\n\\nMcGregor, Hannah. “The Voice is Intact: Finding Gwendolyn MacEwen in the Archive.” The SpokenWeb Podcast, 6 April 2020, https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/the-voice-is-intact-finding-gwendolyn-macewen-in-the-archive/. \\n\\nMcLeod, Katherine. “Listening to the Archives of Phyllis Webb.” In Moving Archives. Ed. Linda Morra. Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2020. 113-131.\\n\\n—. “Poetry on TV: Unarchiving Phyllis Webb’s CBC-TV Program Extension (1967).” CanLit Across Media: Unarchiving the Literary Event. Eds. Jason Camlot and Katherine McLeod. McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2019. 72-91.\\n\\nWebb, Phyllis. Naked Poems, Periwinkle Press, 1965. \\n\\nWebb, Phyllis. Peacock Blue: The Collected Poems. Ed. John Hulcoop. Talonbooks, 2014.\\n\\n\"}]"],"_version_":1853670549802188801,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:54.290Z","contents":["This month, it is April – the month of poetry. The audio we will be listening to is a poem by Canadian poet Phyllis Webb. In fact, it is a series of poems from Naked Poems, poems that open up space and that leave room for the listener to listen – to listen quietly, or to fill up that space with their listening. How is a poem held in the space in which it is spoken, and what happens to desire in this speaking? How are they held in the archives?\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.\n \n\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.\n \n\n01:10\tSpokenWeb Podcast Theme Music:\n \n\n[Instrumental Overlapped With Feminine Vocals]\n01:17\tKatherine McLeod:\tWelcome to ShortCuts, a monthly minisode in which we listen closely and carefully to a shortcut [Sound Effect: Scissors Cutting] from the SpokenWeb archives. Our last minisode ended up being the most interactive so far. It was a collaborative listening that ended with a conversation, trying to figure out what was happening in a confusing moment in archival listening. It was one of those moments that you wish you could go back and talk about. That’s what we did, and we’ll be talking about more of those moments in future ShortCuts.\n \n\n01:46\tKatherine McLeod::\tWhat kinds of moments might we be revisiting? One of SpokenWeb’s audio collections held by Simon Fraser University is called the Gerry Gilbert radiofreerainforest collection. It’s a series of recordings of a radio program called radiofreerainforest that produced by Gilbert in the 1980s. Coming up in future minsodes we’ll dive into that audio collection, especially to talk about some of the spaces where the recordings take place. One reading happens on a bus, yes, it was recorded on a bus travelling through Vancouver’s downtown streets. Another recording has Dionne Brand and Lee Maracle reading and talking together on a panel, but where did the panel take place? And what was it like to hear this panel on the radio?\n \n\n02:28\tKatherine McLeod:\tWe’ll try to figure all of this out. Plus, we’ve been diving into audio collections from the past, but coming up we’ll be listening to recordings of literary events that took place much ore recently. That’s what we’ll be listening to next month. Subscribe to The SpokenWeb Podcast if you haven’t already to stay tuned for that, along with, of course, the full episodes of The SpokenWeb Podcast on the first Monday of each month. This month, it is April, the month of poetry. The audio that we will be listening to in this ShortCuts is a poem by Canadian poet Phyllis Webb. It is in fact a series of poems from Naked Poems, poems that open up space, that leave room for the listener to listen – to listen quietly, or to fill up that space with their listening. The space is audible in her reading of the poems and it is visible on the page, as Webb comments on when she introduces Naked Poems to her Montreal audience in 1966…\n \n\n03:30\tAudio Recording, Phyllis Webb, 1966:\tI want to move on now to my latest book, which is called Naked Poems, in which one of your local critics – or at least you vote for the Montreal Star at this particular point – exclaimed of the price – because there are so few words in the book [Audience Laughter]. It’s $2.25. [Audience Laughter]. These poems are very small and therefore very expensive [Audience Laughter] and and came at a bitter price. I may say, to me. They came quite as a surprise. I didn’t know what I was doing when I wrote them – the first 14 or so. I thought, my goodness, what are these little things doing here? And I couldn’t quite take them seriously. And then I began to see the order that really was intrinsic, in them. And realized that here was something – almost a new form for me to work on. And it’s very bare, naked, undecorated. And I wanted to get rid of all my affectations. And so I decided to write oh a couple of hundred of them. And I wrote about a hundred and then got hung up on a technical problem and finally reduced them to, I don’t know, 40 or so that are in this book. So this is a distillation let’s say. I’m going to read the first14, which comprise the total poem– in a sense, the whole book is a poem. And then I’ll read a few more, as long as my voice and your patience will hold out.\n \n\n05:46\tKatherine McLeod:\tIn that clip, we hear that Naked Poems has recently been published around the time of that reading. It’s an example of hearing time in the archives, coming back to a theme running through this season. As for how we can hear in this minisode and in the archive of podcasts it is creating, we can think this month of April and what this time brings to our listening to Webb’s poem and to Webb herself. April is the month of Webb’s birthday, and I hope that the sounds of this minisode travels through the airwaves to her on Saltspring Island in British Columbia. I was able to meet with her there a couple years ago while working on articles about her poetry and she graciously made time for a visit. I had hoped to meet again but the sound of this minisode may make it there first before I can travel from Montreal to BC. And so, it is with this spirit of sending the sound across from Montreal to Saltspring Island that I cut the audio of this ShortCuts and make it into a gift, crafted with deep respect and gratitude for your art, Phyllis Webb.\n \n\n06:54\tKatherine McLeod:\tLet’s now hear Webb read from Naked Poems. The reading was recorded in 1966 in Montreal at Sir George Williams University, now Concordia. At that reading, the second reader was Gwendolyn MacEwen. Imagine hearing Phyllis Webb and Gwendolyn MacEwen reading in person on the same night. MacEwen would be sitting in the audience listening to Webb read. Here is Webb reading “Suite I” and “Suite II” from Naked Poems…\n \n\n07:26\tAudio Recording, Phyllis Webb, 1966:\t“Suite 1” Moving to establish distance between our houses. It seems I welcome you in. Your mouth blesses me all over. There is room. And here. And here. And here. And over. And over. Your. Mouth. Tonight, quietness in me and the room. I am enclosed by a thought and some walls. The bruise. Again, you have left your mark. All we have. Skin shuttered secretly. Flies. Tonight in this room, two flies on the ceiling are making love quietly or so it seems down here. [Audience Laughter]. Your blouse. I people this room with things, a chair, a lamp, a fly. Two books by Mary Ann Moore. I have thrown my gloves on the floor. Was it only last night? You took with so much gentleness, my dark. Sweet tooth. While you were away, I held you like this in my mind. It is a good mind that can embody perfection with exactitude.\n \n\n09:36\tAudio Recording, Phyllis Webb, 1966:\tThe sun comes through plum curtains. I said, the sun is gold in your eyes. It isn’t the sun. You said. On the floor, your blouse. The plum light falls more golden, going down. Tonight, quietness in the room. We knew. Then you must go. I sat cross-legged on the bed. There is no room for self pity, I said. I lied. In the gold darkening light you dressed. I hid my face in my hair. The room that held you is still here. You brought me clarity. Gift after gift I wear. Poems naked. In the sunlight. On the floor.\n \n\n10:59\tKatherine McLeod:\tIn that reading, we hear the space of the poem and we feel the presence of that space. We see the sunbeam shining through the air, we see the blouse sitting on the floor of the room, we feel the air thick with eros, between objects, between people, between the poet and subject. What would it be like to hear this in the room in 1966? This expression of female desire, to be contained within the archives of this reading series –\n \n\n11:32\tAudio Recording, Phyllis Webb, 1966:\n \n\nWhile you were away. I held you like this in my mind.\n11:38\tKatherine McLeod:\tWe hear this holding. The quietness of each page …\n \n\n11:43\tAudio Recording, Phyllis Webb, 1966:\tQuietness. In the room. We knew…\n \n\n11:48\tKatherine McLeod:\tWe hear the turning of the page. The room–\n \n\n11:51\tAudio Recording, Phyllis Webb, 1966:\n \n\nThe room that held you. Is still here…\n11:55\tKatherine McLeod:\tWe are listening to desire in the making, every time we press play on this recording, as though we were returning to the same room, the room of the poem, the room of the reading, the voice moving…\n \n\n12:09\tAudio Recording, Phyllis Webb, 1966:\n \n\nYou brought me clarity. Gift after gift, I wear. Poems naked, in the sunlight, on the floor.\n12:26\tKatherine McLeod:\tThe room that held you is still here.\n \n\n12:29\tMusic:\t[Piano Overlaid With Distorted Beat]\n \n\n12:37\tKatherine McLeod:\tMy name is Katherine McLeod, and this ShortCuts minisode was produced by myself, hosted by Hannah McGregor, and mixed and mastered by Judith Burr and Stacey Copeland. It was recorded in the city of Montreal, or what is known as Tio’tia:ke in the language of the Kanien’kehá:ka Nation. Head to SpokenWeb.ca to find out more about The SpokenWeb Podcast and tune in next month for another deep dive into the SpokenWeb archives."],"score":2.7048998},{"id":"9661","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 2.8, Contrapuntal Poetics, 17 May 2021, McLeod"],"item_title_source":["SpokenWeb Podcast web page."],"item_title_note":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/contrapuntal-poetics/"],"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":[2021],"material_description":["[]"],"digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://cdn.simplecast.com/audio/28a9da1f-8cca-410c-b5d7-8165a73f9394/episodes/478fa03a-47f5-46f5-84ee-548433c59706/audio/22aa5df2-7658-4204-997b-9a175efbae6e/default_tc.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"s2e8-shortcuts.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"44.1 kHz\",\"duration\":\"00:12:50\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"12,380,831 bytes\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"MP3 audio\",\"title\":\"s2e8-shortcuts\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/contrapuntal-poetics/\"}]"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"2021-05-17\",\"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\":\"AUDIO SOURCES\\n\\nAudio clipped from “The Words and Music Show” (29 March 2020), https://www.facebook.com/1541307492796466/videos/891396077972589.\\n\\nAudio clipped from “ShortCuts 1.3 Where does the reading begin?” (Kaie Kellough reading at “The Words and Music Show,” 16 Nov 2016),  https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/audio-of-the-month-where-does-the-reading-begin/.\\n\\nRESOURCES\\n\\nGibson, Kenneth. “Jessica Moss ponders the mysteries of the universe.” The Concordian. 22 January 2019,  http://theconcordian.com/2019/01/jessica-moss-ponders-the-mysteries-of-the-universe/.\\n\\nMoss, Jessica. Entanglement. https://jessicamoss.bandcamp.com/album/entanglement.\\n\\nPerry Cox, Alexei. Finding Places to Make Places. Vallum, 2019. \\n\\n—– Revolution / Re: Evolution. Gap Riot, 2021.\\n\\n\"}]"],"_version_":1853670549803237376,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:54.290Z","contents":["In this ShortCuts minisode, listen to the contrapuntal poetics of poet Alexei Perry Cox. In a recording made at home, Alexei reads and improvises in response to a second voice in the room – the voice of her daughter Isla. Their interaction itself could be heard as a poem. Meanwhile, sounds of place enter and exit the room of the recording, with what sounds like cars passing by outside and even the “Zoom room” becoming audible at times. The audio you hear in this ShortCuts was recorded, over Zoom, as part of the first online version of The Words and Music Show on March 29, 2020. What are you listening to when you listen to an online reading? From where do you listen? \n\n\n00:00\tMusic:\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.\n \n\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.\n \n\n01:17\tSpokenWeb Podcast Theme Music:\t[Instrumental Overlapped With Feminine Vocals]\n \n\n01:17\tKatherine McLeod:\tWelcome to ShortCuts. Each month, we listened closely and carefully to a shortcut or cuts from SpokenWeb‘s audio collections. The recent ShortCuts have been from the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, but last season we ventured into a more recent collection in episode three, when we heard a truly innovative way of starting a reading.\n \n\n01:42\tAudio Recording, Kaie Kellough, Words and Music Show:\tI want to forget/ 1980s /high school fever / forget articles in the Herald/ in the moment of heavy evangelical / black-haired teens from reserves / who drank themselves to death in macho contests/activity and much extreme conservativism/ trying to prove to themselves that they exist/ as night drifts into next days headlines / some of the challenges that arise growing up and trying to live and become oneself in a climate like that / I want to forget my stupid conviction that a boy had to be distilled into a man/ that the Caribean bloodline had to be spiked with rum / which seems to be a climate that is re-emerging/ that amber alcohol…\n \n\n02:13\tKatherine McLeod:\tThat was Kaie Kellough reading at The Words and Music Show in Montreal. And the audio collection for Words and Music is where we’re headed to you for this minisode. But we’re not going to be listening to audio that was recorded at Casa de Popolo where so much of the Words and Music show has been recorded live over these past 20 years. No, we’ll be listening to the Words and Music show recorded from home — the first one to be online and hosted on Zoom. On March 29th, 2020, the Words and Music Show took to the Zoom stage. Co-hosted by Ian Ferrier and Jason Camlot. That first online show was meant to test if it worked. And it did.\n \n\n02:58\tAudio Recording, Ian Ferrier, Words and Music, March 2020:\tI wonder how many people can hold.\n \n\n03:01\tAudio Recording, Jason Camlot, Words and Music, March 2020:\t300 people.\n \n\n03:02\tAudio Recording, Ian Ferrier, Words and Music, March 2020:\n \n\nOh wow. Okay.\n \n\n03:04\tAudio Recording, Jason Camlot, Words and Music, March 2020:\n \n\nI think we’ll be okay.\n \n\n03:06\tKatherine McLeod:\tSince then, the Words and Music Show has been online usually every third Sunday of the month. By now, most of us are used to attending Zoom events, or at least whereas used to it as we’ll get — or want to get. But back in March 2020, it was incredibly new. The reason why among the many recordings that are now part of the archive of pandemic poetry readings I’m selecting this one, is because it demonstrates the blurring of the public and the private through sound. In these archival recordings we listen on ShortCuts, we often ask: what are we listening to? And what are the sounds around the poem that tell us about the space, the sociality of the room, and how the sound was recorded? These sounds around the poem give context. They become part of the relationality of the listening. Sound doesn’t exist on its own, but in relation. What is our relation to this sound now? What does it feel like to listen to it? With that in mind, let’s listen to the ShortCut for this month: A reading by poet Alexei Perry Cox on March 29th, 2020.\n \n\n04:21\tAudio Recording, Ian Ferrier, Words and Music, March 2020:\tAnd the next thing we have is a video which was created under 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. Yeah, here she comes.\n \n\n04:46\tAudio Recording, Alexei Perry Cox, Words and Music, March 2020: \tThe unequivocal [french word], according to the [inaudible], comes in the chorus that has a lullaby. It makes use of emphasis on the incantatory present participle and is a consultation. Tropical, the island breathes, and this was where I long to be. Time is portrayed as malleable and is a journey. The samba played in the past and rings the ears presently. The sun would set so high and stings the eyes now. A lullaby operates on its own terms and does its own time. We are taken there to this Isla Bonita, and there is wherever we are. In a vice grip with my lover in exile. As time went by, my lover was gradually overtaken by an urgent desire whose futility exceeded all measures, but the circumference of the universe itself. I desire to grasp the secret of the present, to penetrate the eternal unity of life and see a system’s undulating veil. In the universe of our civil war, systems have the insubstantialabily of hummingbirds song and the iridescence of its plumage. While their manifestations were immutable. Told that my lover, my love for my lover, told that my love for my lover was a vice. That loving another woman wasn’t very womanly of me [Baby Speaking] that our civil war as being against ourselves. Wasn’t the same as their civil war as being against us. [Baby: Coos] My lover believed there had to be a point at which reality perfect in congress would get through to human kind. In exile, in Paris, in Sausalito. I want you to touch me here and here. I want it to be worn for me, for you. I want to love systems that are women so that you can enter them by being untrue.\n \n\n07:10\tKatherine McLeod:\t[Audio Recording: Alexei and Baby continue underneath] We’re listening to the audio of Alexei Perry Cox reading by video at the Words and Music show online on March 29th, 2020. She’s reading from “Finding places to make places” and she’s accompanied by the voice of Isla her then 18 month old daughter –\n \n\n07:35\tAudio Recording, Alexei Perry Cox, Words and Music, March 2020: \n \n\n[Baby: Coos] La revolution ….\n \n\n07:37\tKatherine McLeod:\tWhat are we listening to in this clip?\n \n\n07:41\tAudio Recording, Alexei Perry Cox, Words and Music, March 2020: \n \n\n[Baby: Cries] \n \n\n07:41\tKatherine McLeod:\t[Audio Recording: Alexei and Baby continue underneath] The poem? The interaction between Alexei and her daughter that becomes a duet? The improvisation, or to the quality of the sound, the audibility of the Zoom room? –\n \n\n07:57\tAudio Recording, Alexei Perry Cox, Words and Music, March 2020: \n \n\nThe entropy in an open system –\n \n\n07:57\tKatherine McLeod:\t– [Audio Recording: Alexei and Baby continue underneath] When listening to a recording of Phyllis Web reading from Naked Poems on a previous ShortCuts, I suggested considering how desire is held by the archives and how the poem creates a space for the listener. Similarly, how does this recording hold the poem’s desire and how does the poem make space inhabit space? From where are we listening?\n \n\n08:25\tAudio Recording, Alexei Perry Cox, Words and Music, March 2020: \tTo a certain logic for disappearing. You cannot live the same life as you imagine. [Aside: Alexei laughs at baby] You must live a smaller life. A more compact life. [Aside: Yeah? Laughs] [Baby: Coos] The life is too capacious. You will lose your balance. Driving home, I think this. [Baby: Coos with increasing volume] A door opens on an eye, an eye opens on a line. A line of eyes, looking into a coffin, carrying the body. Body to the river and into a vision. You know your conscience cannot forgive what left you long ago washed away by summer floods like a body loosened from a grip into something death made transformative.\n \n\n09:21\tKatherine McLeod:\t[Audio Recording: Alexei and Baby continue underneath] As I listened to this back in March, 2020, I was right in the middle of making an episode for the SpokenWeb Podcast with Jason Camlot. We were making an episode called “How are we listening, now? Signal, Noise, Silence”, which you can have a listen to if you feel like revisiting that time of March 2020 sonically. When I heard Alexei read at the Words and Music show, I was so moved by her reading. The interweaving voices, what improvisation at a poetry reading. Plus it felt like her reading was enacting exactly what the podcast was trying to say: that we are missing the noise around the signal. We still miss it now. We miss the buzz in the room, the social sounds around the signal, the voice of the speaker. I know I can’t wait until I can stand in a crowded room and listen to Alexei read on stage at a microphone again. By the way, [Audio Recording: Alexei and Baby continue underneath]in January 2019, I was at an album launch for the Montreal musician, Jessica Moss and Alexei read poetry as the opening act. She read with her newborn strapped to her chest.\n \n\n10:38\tAudio Recording, Alexei Perry Cox, Album launch, 2019:\n \n\n[Baby: Cries] Even as a new you moves about the womb –\n \n\n10:41\tKatherine McLeod:\tThis little voice that we’re hearing in this recording had already been with her mother on stage for a poetry reading. [Audio Recording: Alexei and Baby continue underneath]\n \n\n10:48\tAudio Recording, Alexei Perry Cox,___, 2019:\n \n\n– the world is smaller than the center of your eye. But when I –\n \n\n10:51\tKatherine McLeod:\t[Audio Recording: Alexei and Baby continue underneath] Going back to readings onstage doesn’t mean that we will not perform with our full selves, with the public and the private self coexisting. Even if the audience doesn’t always see it or hear it that way. With that, let’s return to Alexei and Isla who inhabit a poem with “Womb or the World”.\n \n\n11:15\tAudio Recording, Alexei Perry Cox, Words and Music, March 2020: \t[Baby: crying and cooing] A book without 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. The present is the time of writing, both obsessed with and cut off from out of time, brimming with life. Fabulous a wing, unfolding in a poultry field appearance while night finds no constellation in night but in it’s eclipse. Like this. [Aside: Kisses baby]. [Baby: Coos].\n \n\n11:54\tTheme Music:\t[Piano Overlaid With Distorted Beat]\n \n\n11:54\tAudio Recording, Jason Camlot, Words and Music, March 2020:\n \n\nAnd there’s bye-bye to Alexei, who was being seriously upstaged there.\n \n\n12:08\tKatherine McLeod:\tShortCuts is mixed and mastered by Judith Burr, hosted by Hannah McGregor, and produced by me, Katherine McLeod. Head to spokenweb.ca to find out more about the sounds in this minisode and to learn more about SpokenWeb and the SpokenWeb Podcast. Thanks for listening. [Piano Overlaid With Distorted Beat continues and fades]"],"score":2.7048998},{"id":"9662","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 2.9, Situating Sound, 21 June 2021, McLeod"],"item_title_source":["SpokenWeb Podcast web page."],"item_title_note":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/situating-sound/"],"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\":[]}]"],"contributors":["[]"],"Publication_Date":[2021],"material_description":["[]"],"digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://cdn.simplecast.com/audio/28a9da1f-8cca-410c-b5d7-8165a73f9394/episodes/93f41bc8-fa9e-4603-96f3-5d3b5b1679ca/audio/cf8f93b4-3c4a-42b3-91f3-f2b8c931f7b8/default_tc.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"shortcuts-2-9-situating-sound.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"44.1 kHz\",\"duration\":\"00:15:01\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"14,480,658 bytes\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"MP3 audio\",\"title\":\"shortcuts-2-9-situating-sound\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/situating-sound/\"}]"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"2021-06-21\",\"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\":\"AUDIO SOURCES\\n\\nDionne Brand, recording played on radiofreerainforest, 7 August 1988, https://digital.lib.sfu.ca/radiofreerainforest-90/radiofreerainforest-7-25-august-1988-and-30-october-1988.\\n\\nRESOURCES\\n\\n“#101 Renee Rodin.” BC Booklook, 28 January 2016,  https://bcbooklook.com/101-renee-rodin/.\\n\\n“Desire Lines: Mapping the metadata of Toronto arts publishing.” Art Gallery of York University, https://agyu.art/project/desire-lines/.\\n\\n“Gerry Gilbert radiofreerainforest Collection.” SFU Digitized Collections, https://digital.lib.sfu.ca/gerry-gilbert-radiofreerainforest-collection.\\n\\nKinesis. Periodicals. Vancouver : Vancouver Status of Women, 1 Sept. 1988. https://open.library.ubc.ca/collections/kinesis/items/1.0045699.\\n\\nOur Lives. Toronto: Black Women’s Collective. Volume 2 5.6 (Summer/Fall 1988), https://riseupfeministarchive.ca/publications/our-lives-canadas-first-black-womens-newspaper/ourlives-02-0506-summer-fall-1988/.\\n\\n“radiofreerainforest 3 & 28 July and 7 August, 1988.” Gerry Gilbert radiofreerainforest Collection: SFU Digitized Collections,  https://digital.lib.sfu.ca/radiofreerainforest-357/radiofreerainforest-3-28-july-and-7-august-1988.\\n\\n“radiofreerainforest 7, 25 August, 1988 and 30 October, 1988.” Gerry Gilbert radiofreerainforest Collection: SFU Digitized Collections, https://digital.lib.sfu.ca/radiofreerainforest-90/radiofreerainforest-7-25-august-1988-and-30-october-1988.\"}]"],"_version_":1853670549804285952,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:54.290Z","contents":["On this ShortCuts, we dive into a new audio collection: Gerry Gilbert radiofreerainforest Collection, accessible through SFU Library’s Digitized Collections. We’ll hear a recording of Dionne Brand reading in Vancouver with Lee Maracle of the Stó:lō nation. The recording of this reading was then played on the local radio program radiofreerainforest on August 7, 1988. What would it have been like to listen to this reading live in 1988? On the radio? And what is it like to hear it out of context in the archives now? This ShortCuts minisode is about the archival research process. ShortCuts producer Katherine McLeod takes us on a brief journey into the research behind an archived tape in SpokenWeb’s collection, all started by and ending with a reading of poetry by Dionne Brand.  \n“a motion heard on my inner ear” – Dionne Brand, Primitive Offensive (1982)\n\n\n00:02\tHannah McGregor:\t[Start Music: Jazzy Techno] Listeners, we want to hear from you. What short clip of literary sound would you propose we listened to in an episode of ShortCuts? If you’re a researcher with the SpokenWeb Project pitch an episode to ShortCuts Season Three. You can start with a blog post on SpokenWeb blog, or go straight for pitching us an episode. If you’re a fan of the show, please suggest an idea by emailing spokenwebpodcast@gmail.com. [End Music: Jazzy Techno]\n \n\n00:43\tHannah McGregor:\t[Start Music: Theme Music]  Welcome to the SpokenWeb ShortCuts. Each month on alternate fortnights at 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 miniseries. We’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? Shortcuts is an extension of the ShortCuts blog posts on SPOKENWEBLOG. So, if you love what you hear, make sure to head over to spoken web.ca for more. Without further ado, here is Katherine McLeod with SpokenWeb ShortCuts, mini stories about how literature sounds. [End Theme Music] [Start Music: SpokenWeb Podcast Theme Music: [Instrumental Overlapped With Feminine Vocals]\n \n\n \n\n01:39\tKatherine McLeod:\t[End Music: SpokenWeb Podcast Theme Music] Welcome to ShortCuts. On ShortCuts we listen closely and carefully to a short cut [Audio Effect: Scissor Snip] from the archives. On this ShortCuts, we dive into a new audio collection, [Underlaid Sound: radiofreerainforest clip with various voices overlapping] radiofreerainforest. radiofreerainforest was a program that aired on Vancouver’s Co-op Radio in the 1980s into the 1990s.\n \n\n02:16\tAudio Recording, radiofreerainforest clip:\t[Echo Effect] [Various Voices] radiofreerainforest.\n \n\n02:16\tKatherine McLeod:\tRecordings that were played on that program were kept by its producer and host Gerry Gilbert. And they’re now one of SFU’s many audio collections currently being processed by SpokenWeb researchers. Something I’ve been thinking about while preparing this ShortCuts, is what kind of a framework does audio clip out of context need to feel supported? And I say that while holding out my arms, gesturing as though I’m attempting to hold the sound. I could select a clip and just simply play it. But I feel like that doesn’t give enough context, but I also don’t want to give too much context. My hope is that I can guide you into the listening and then you can take it from there. Where I’m leading you to is a reading by Dionne Brand in 1988. The recording of the reading was broadcast on the radio, on radiofreerainforest on August 7th, 1988. The tapes of this recording and yes, tapes in the plural – more on that in a moment –indicate that it was Dionne Brand reading with Lee Maracle. It took place in Vancouver and as to where, that required a little searching. One tape says R2B2 Books. And I figured out that it was a bookstore on fourth avenue that had once been the location of Octopus Books and later became Black Sheep Books before closing in the early 2000s. I remember going into Black Sheep Books when I lived in Vancouver and I didn’t realize that it had such a history of holding so many readings as R2B2 Books. What else do we know about the recording? Well, it was a long one. It spans two cassettes, not because it was recorded on those two tapes, but because it was transferred onto them. What I’m getting at here is this: imagine pressing play on a tape labeled “radiofreerainforest, 3rd and 28th of July and 7th August, 1988.” The Dionne Brand and Lee Maracle reading starts part way through one side and then on a completely different tape labeled “radiofreerainforest 7th, 25th, August, 1988 and 30th, October, 1988”.\n04:31\tKatherine McLeod:\tThere is the rest of the recording. On that second tape, the Brand reading starts right in the middle when you press play. And that’s where I found myself in it’s sound without knowing the context in which she was speaking from or where that reading was taking place. It was after finding the other tape that I could piece together, that it was on August 6th, 1988, and then aired on August 7th, 1988. And that it was at R2B2 Bookstore. It was in the middle of this that I consulted SpokenWeb’s metadata system to see a photograph of the tape itself. And that’s how I found the date of the reading. But before that, I was going by the fact that Brand mentions an event in solidarity with South African women against apartheid, that would have happened the next day, August 7th. From doing a bit of searching in print archives, I found out from the feminist newspaper Kinesis that as part of the March, the next day Maracle had given a speech in solidarity against apartheid speaking as an Indigenous woman of the Stó:lō nation.\n05:37\tKatherine McLeod:\tAnd that she had also written about this solidarity in a 1988 issue of the Black women’s newspaper Our Lives that Brand had helped to edit. These pieces of context are only the beginning of unpacking the significance of these two women reading together. And unraveling this history all started by wanting to know more about one archival recording. So as we listen to this reading, what would it be like to be there in that room with Dionne Brand and Lee Maracle in 1988? Now in June, 2021, what does it feel like when you hear this recording wherever you might be listening from? How do we understand this recording in relation to the archive that holds it? I am recording this a week after Brand read from The Blue Clerk at an annual meeting of the Association of Canadian Archivists. How does Brand hear time? When she introduces what she reads from Primitive Offensive in the recording we’re about to hear she says that the poetry is made out of the pieces of history, a history that as she says, if you are Black in the Americas, you have to dig for it. How does that resonate with the lines where she chooses to end?\n \n\n06:56\tAudio Recording, Dionne Brand, 1988:\tI won’t take any evidence of me, even that carved in the sky by the fingerprints of clouds every day. Even those that do not hold a wind’s impression. [Aside to audience] Okay, that’s it. [Audience applause].\n \n\n07:12\tKatherine McLeod:\tAs we could hear in that recording, there are noises in the background. We’ll be hearing what sound like cars passing outside, we’ll hear some voices and might wonder if those are people talking outside the bookstore window, or perhaps this recording has been recorded over another one and we’re actually hearing the voices of another time bleeding through the tape. Here is Dionne Brand reading from her book, Primitive Offensive in a recording that was broadcast on radiofreerainforest on August 7th, 1988, and now that recording is held by and shapes an archive.\n \n\n07:58\tAudio Recording, Dionne Brand, 1988:\t[Static and various background noises throughout] I’m going to read a poem for my grandmother, a poem for my ancestors, really. I wrote this book Primitive Offensive because, for whatever history has left you, if you were Black in the Americas, you have to dig and dig and dig and memorize and memorize and learn and learn it and redo it and recover it and re– you know, because it isn’t anywhere else. And so this was my history book. Sometimes you arrive and find what seems to be nothing, and you have to dig for it. And this is a call to my ancestors about this history. And I looked for my ancestors and I found what there was. And so – and sometimes you find nothing and you make it anyway. [Laughs] You know, you find a piece of cloth, a bit of this, whatever, but you make it humour. So –[Start of reading]  Ancestor dirt/ ancestor snake/ ancestor lice / ancestor whip/ ancestor fish/ ancestor slime/ ancestor sea/ ancestor stick/ ancestor iron/ ancestor bush/ ancestor ship/ ancestor\n09:12\tAudio Recording, Dionne Brand, 1988:\told woman, old bead/ let me feel your skin, old muscle, old stick/ where are my bells?/ my rattles/ my condiments, my things to fill houses and minutes/ The fat is starting, where are my things?/ My mixtures, my bones, my decorations/ old bread, old tamarind switch./ Will you bathe me in oils?/ Will you tie me in white cloth?/ Call me by my praise name/ Sing me Oshun song./ against this clamour [Background noise of voices inaudible] / Ancestor old woman/ Send my things after me./ One moment, old lady more questions./ What happened to the ship in your leap? The boatswain, did he scan the passage’s terrible wet face/ The navigator, did he blink?/ Or steer that ship through your screaming night?/ The captain did he lash two slaves to the rigging, for example?/ Lady! My things/ Water leaden, my maps, my compass/ After all, what is the political position of stars?\n10:29\tAudio Recording, Dionne Brand, 1988:\tDrop your crusted cough, where you want./ My hands make precious things out of phlegm./ Ancestor wood/ Ancestor dog/ Ancestor [tape recording skips] Old man, dry stick, mustache, skin, and bone./ Why didn’t you remember? /Why didn’t you remember the name of our tribe?/Why didn’t you tell me before you died?/ Old horse, you made the white man ride you/ You shot off your leg for him./ Old man, the name of our tribe is all I wanted./ Instead, you went to the swamps and bush and rice paddies for the trading company and they buried you in water/ Crocodile, tears. /It would have been better to remember the name of our tribe./ Now, mosquitoes dance a ballet over your grave and the old woman buried with you wants to leave./ One thing for sure, dismembered woman, when you decide you are alone/ When you decide you are alone, /when you dance, it’s your own broken face.\n11:24\tAudio Recording, Dionne Brand, 1988:\tWhen you eat your own plate of stones/ For damn sure you are alone./ Where do you think you are going dismembered woman?/ Limbs chopped off at the ankles./ When you decide, believe me, you are alone./ Sleep, sleep, tangential phase, sleep,/ Sleeping, or waking/ Understand you are alone./ Diamonds pour from your vagina,/ and your breasts drip healing copper/ But listen, women, dismembered continent/ You are alone./See crying fool,/ You want to talk in gold/ You will cry in iron./ You want to dig up stones./ You will bury flesh./ You think you don’t need oils and amulets compelling powder and rely on smoke./ You want to throw people in cesspits./ Understand dismembered one, ululant /You are alone./ When waterfalls work, land surfaces./ I was sent to this cave./ I went out one day like a fool to find this cave, to find clay, to dig up metals to decorate my bare and painful breasts./ Water and clay for a poultice for this gash to find a map an imprint of me anywhere would have kept me calm./ Anywhere with description./\n12:30\tAudio Recording, Dionne Brand, 1988:\tInstead, I found a piece of this/ A tooth, a bit of food hung on. /A metatarsal, which resembled mine./ Something else like a note. Musical. /ting ting, but of so little pitch so little lasting perhaps it was my voice./ And this too, a suggestion and insinuation so slight, it may be untrue./ Something moving over the brow as with eyes close to black/ a sensate pull/ Phantom! Knocks the forehead back in the middle of a dance. /No, I can’t say dance. It exaggerates./ Phantom. A bit of image./ A motion close to sound, a sound imaged on the retina resembling sound/ A sound seen out of the corner of my eye./ Emotion heard on my inner ear./ I poured over these like a paleontologist./ I dusted them off like an archeologist/ A swatch of cloth./ Skin, atlas, coarse utility, but enough./ Still only a bit of paint, of dye on the stone./ I can not say crude, but a crude thing./ A hair, a marking. That a fingernail to rock an ancient wounded scratch./ I handle these like a papyrologist contours/ A desert sprung here./ Migrations, suggestions, lies./ Phantom. A table and jotting up artful covert mud./ I noted these like a geopolitical scientist./ I will take any evidence of me even that carved in the sky by the fingerprints of clouds every day. Even those that do not hold a wind’s impression.\n14:06\tAudio Recording, Dionne Brand, 1988:\n \n\nOk. That’s it. [Audience Applause]\n \n\n14:08\tKatherine McLeod:\tThat was the Dionne Brand reading from her book, Primitive Offensive. The recording was played on Vancouver’s co-op radio on August 7th, 1988 and the recording is held by the archives of radiofree rainforest. Now part of SFU library’s digital collections.\n \n\n \n\n14:32\tKatherine McLeod:\t[Start Music: Theme Music]] ShortCuts is mixed and mastered by Judith Burr, hosted by Hannah McGregor and produced by me, Katherine McLeod. Head to SpokenWeb.ca to find out more about the sounds in this mini-series and to learn more about SpokenWeb and the SpokenWeb Podcast. Thanks for listening. End Music: Theme Music] [Music: SpokenWeb Podcast Theme Music: [Instrumental Overlapped With Feminine Vocals]"],"score":2.7048998},{"id":"9663","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 2.10, Alone Together, 19 June 2021, McLeod"],"item_title_source":["SpokenWeb Podcast web page."],"item_title_note":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/alone-together/"],"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\":[]}]"],"contributors":["[]"],"Publication_Date":[2021],"material_description":["[]"],"digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://cdn.simplecast.com/audio/28a9da1f-8cca-410c-b5d7-8165a73f9394/episodes/12152e0c-52d7-49a7-9eea-0dccee09b096/audio/ff0bcf56-e9fc-44bf-aa09-abfd557fce3f/default_tc.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"shortcuts-2-10-alone-together.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"44.1 kHz\",\"duration\":\"00:19:37\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"18,903,084 bytes\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"MP3 audio\",\"title\":\"shortcuts-2-10-alone-together\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/alone-together/\"}]"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"2021-07-19\",\"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\":\"AUDIO SOURCES\\n\\nAli Barillaro’s recording of reading of her blog post, “Tanya Davis performing ‘How to Be Alone’” on SPOKENWEBLOG, 6 August, 2020. \\n\\nTanya Davis performing “How to Be Alone,” recorded at The Words & Music Show at Casa del Popolo, Montreal on 12 December 2012. Listen to the entire audio here: https://spokenweb.ca/tanya-davis-performing-how-to-be-alone/.\\n\\nExcerpt of Cover of “Digging my own grave” by Thrice performed by Ali Barillaro and Vincent Pigeon here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7y6H9QuL6q8\\n\\nRESOURCES\\n\\nWatch Tanya Davis and Andrea Dorfman’s 2010 film of the poem “How to Be Alone”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7X7sZzSXYs\\n\\nWatch the 2020 film made by Tanya Davis and Andrea Dorfman in which they revisit the poem as “How to Be at Home”: https://www.nfb.ca/film/how-to-be-at-home\"}]"],"_version_":1853670549805334528,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:54.290Z","contents":["For our last minisode of season two, ShortCuts dives into the archives of The Words & Music Show, a monthly series of poetry, spoken word, music, and dance performances that has been happening in Montreal for over twenty years. Last year, SpokenWeb RA Ali Barillaro was digitizing that collection when she heard a recording that caught her attention. It was a recording of Tanya Davis performing “How to Be Alone.” As Ali listened, she felt a dissonance between Davis’s version of aloneness as freedom and the imposed and necessary aloneness of the pandemic. Along with being an academic, Ali is a singer – and this ShortCuts takes us into Ali’s story of navigating her artistic practice through the pandemic. We embark on this sonic journey by starting with one recording – the recording of Davis – which shows what you can make when you pause to notice what catches your attention.\n\n\n00:03\tHannah McGregor:\t[Start Music: Jazzy Techno] Listeners, we want to hear from you. What short clip of literary sound would you propose we listen to in an episode of ShortCuts? If you’re a researcher with the SpokenWeb Project, pitch an episode to ShortCuts season three. You can start with a blog post on SPOKENWEBLOG, or go straight for pitching us an episode. If you’re a fan of the show, please suggest an idea by emailing SpokenWebPodcast@gmail.com. [End Music: Jazzy Techno]\n00:43\tHannah McGregor:\t[Start Music: Piano Overlaid With Distorted Beat] Welcome to the SpokenWeb ShortCuts. Each month on alternate fortnights, that’s every second week, following the monthly [[Instrumental Overlapped With Feminine Vocals] SpokenWeb Podcast episode, join me, Hannah McGregor and our minisode host and curator, Katherine McLeod for SpokenWeb’s ShortCuts miniseries. We’ll share with you, especially 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? ShortCuts is an extension of the ShortCuts blog posts, on SPOKENWEBLOG. So, if you love what you hear, make sure to head over to SpokenWeb.ca for more. Without further ado, here is Katherine MacLeod with SpokenWeb ShortCuts, mini stories about how literature sounds. [Start Music: SpokenWeb Theme Music, Instrumental Overlapped With Feminine Vocals]\n01:45\tKatherine McLeod:\t[End Music: SpokenWeb Theme Music] Welcome to ShortCuts where we listen closely and carefully to a short cut [Sound Effect: Scissor Snip] from the audio collections of SpokenWeb. This is the last episode of our second season. It’s a chance to think back to our sonic journeys into the archives and the questions that have emerged from them. How does archival listening listen to liveness and sociality? How do we hear time? How do we hear the marking of time in a recording? How can a podcast episode hold sound with care? This season of ShortCuts was a practice in feminist listening with recordings of poets Muriel Rukeyser, Margaret Allison, Phyllis Webb, Alexei Perry, Cox, Dionne Brand, and now in this final ShortCuts for season two, Tanya Davis. We’ll start with the clip of Davis from the archives. Usually on ShortCuts, we build towards hearing the clip. But this time we’ll be starting with it because this ShortCuts is as much about the clip as it is about the conversation afterwards, with a special guest. Let’s dive in. Here is spoken word and musician, Tanya Davis, performing “How To Be Alone” at the Words & Music Show in Montreal. It was performed on the stage of Casa del Popolo on December 16th, 2012.\n03:14\tAudio Recording, Tanya Davis, Words & Music Show, 2012:\tIf you are at first lonely, be patient./ If you’ve not been alone much, or if when you were you weren’t okay with it, just wait./ You’ll find it’s fine to be alone once you’re embracing it./ Start with the acceptable places./ The bathroom, the coffee, shop the library, /where you can stall and read the paper where you can get your caffeine fix and sit and stay there/ where you can browse the stacks and smell the books/ you’re not supposed to talk much anyways, so it’s safe there./ There’s also the gym./ If you’re shy, you can hang out with yourself and mirrors, you could put headphones in./ And there’s public transportation because we all gotta go places/ and there’s prayer and meditation./ No one will think less if you’re hanging with your breath, seeking peace and salvation./ Start simple./ Things you may have previously avoided based on your avoid being alone principles.\n04:06\tAudio Recording, Tanya Davis, Words & Music Show, 2012:\tThe lunch counter, where you will be surrounded by chow downers/ employees who only have an hour and their spouses work across town and so they like you will be alone./ Resist the urge to hang out with your cell phone./ When you were comfortable with eat lunch and run, take yourself out for dinner./ A restaurant with linen and silverware./ You’re no less intriguing a person if you’re eating solo dessert and cleaning the whipped cream from the dish with your finger./ In fact, some people at full tables will wish they were where you were./ Go to the movies, where does dark and soothing,/ alone in your seat to midst of fleeting community./ And then take yourself out dancing to a club where no one knows you./ Stand on the outside of the floor until the lights convince you more and more and the music shows you.\n04:56\tAudio Recording, Tanya Davis, Words & Music Show, 2012:\tDance like no one’s watching because they’re probably not./ And if they are assume it is with best and human intentions,/ the way bodies move genuinely to beats is after all gorgeous and affecting/ Dance until you’re sweating and beads of perspiration remind you of life’s best things/ Down your back like a brook of blessings./ Go to the woods alone./ Trees and squirrels will watch for you./ Roam an unfamiliar city,/ there are always statues to talk to and benches made for sitting./ Give strangers a shared existence if only for a minute./ And those conversations you get in by sitting alone on benches may have never happened had you not been there by yourself./ Society is afraid of alone though./ Like lonely hearts are wasting away in basements./ Like people must have problems if after a while nobody is dating them./ But alone is a freedom that breathes easy and weightless and lonely is healing if you make it/ You could stand…\n \n\n05:58\tKatherine McLeod:\tThat archival audio was selected by SpokenWeb researcher, Ali Barillaro. Ali selected it for a ShortCuts blog post, or what was then called Audio of the Week. Ali is a SpokenWeb researcher who recently completed her MA at Concordia. You may have heard her present her research on audience applause in archival collections, and you very likely have heard her voice. She sings the vocals [Start Music: SpokenWeb Podcast Theme Music, Instrumental with Feminine Vocals] in the SpokenWeb Podcast theme song. [End Music: SpokenWeb Podcast Theme Music, Instrumental with Feminine Vocals] And so, it is very fitting that my conversation with her here veers into talking about singing and performing and the challenges of doing that through times in which our access to spaces that might otherwise have been used for artistic practices have changed. I invited her to revisit what she had said about Tanya Davis’ recording.\n \n\n06:51\tAli Barillaro:\tI originally came across this recording of Tanya Davis performing “How To Be Alone” a few months ago while feeling thoroughly uncertain about life in the midst of a pandemic.\n07:00\tAli Barillaro:\tI’m someone who under normal circumstances would gladly endorse and espouse Davis’s hopeful, poetic guide to finding freedom in solitude and learning to be comfortable inside your own head. But what struck me about this performance was that it made me realize just how far removed I now felt from Davis’s concept of being alone. The public locations listed as ideal spots to practice being by yourself, the coffee shops, libraries, movie theaters, and even the bus and Metro were no longer available to me. The version of alone evoked in the poem is not the alone most of us have come to know since March, 2020. And it’s hard not to feel a sense of loss while listening. The echo trailing each of Tanya’s words, fittingly conjures up an image in my mind of the poet reciting her work alone at the center of a vast empty room. Even though I know she’s speaking to a crowd from the small stage at Casa del Popolo in Montreal. Though, the recording left me longing for what felt like a lost form of solitude, I have also come to hear it as a calming and quiet reminder to try to find peace amongst the chaos, to reach out to community and loved ones however we can, and to be patient with yourself, as you learn to adapt to a new normal.\n \n\n08:21\tKatherine McLeod:\tYou wrote that about a year ago, was it?\n \n\n08:24\tAli Barillaro:\tYeah it’s been a while.\n \n\n08:24\tKatherine McLeod:\t– Yeah, July, 2020. What does it feel like for you to hear yourself reflect on Tanya Davis’s recording in that way?\n \n\n08:35\tAli Barillaro:\tIt was kind of an interesting experience actually, because I think I do feel differently now. Like I’m not at that same point that I was when I wrote that and when I was experiencing those emotions. With vaccines coming out, getting my first dose, having an appointment for my second dose, having seen quite a lot more people outdoors… I do still have some lingering sense of that strangeness of this new concept of alone and what that means to be alone while we’re still in the midst of a pandemic, even though circumstances have changed.\n \n\n09:11\tKatherine McLeod:\tIt struck me with listening to it, how they’re actually very public ways of being alone, like the sitting on the bus. And he says the phrase like “alone is a freedom” and just that very statement is much more complicated when alone –that doesn’t feel like a freedom. [Laughs] So, yeah.\n \n\n09:35\tAli Barillaro:\tIt’s actually made me reflect back on something – I used to not really like the phrase “alone together”, but I think that has been –anyone who’s been living through this pandemic and lockdowns and isolation but that lives with a partner, a roommate, someone else that has really [Laughs] – that sentiment, that phrase has really become a reality for a lot of people, and how to navigate that differently when you might have lived together beforehand, but things are different because it’s really most of the time just going to be you and maybe this one other person and how that changes the dynamic of your own relationship, but also of your own personal activities, whether that be work, or hobbies, or just relaxing. Things are now different. So at first, around the time, especially when I was writing this piece for the blog, I think I was feeling a little bit boxed in and in my own apartment. Because, my partner works from home.\n10:39\tAli Barillaro:\tAnd we do have an office space, which we do use as well. He’s also a musician and we use that space normally for music, for recording things or just working on things. But that has had to change during the day, the regular nine to five. I don’t have access to that space. So that is one limitation that I had to deal with. But then in addition to that, what was really frustrating as well on top of that is yes, I have access to the rest of my apartment, but it’s not– I don’t live in a giant apartment. And if I was going to be making a lot of noise that comes with either just practicing or wanting to write or record something, I can’t do that either during those time periods. So that was a block that I felt that I had.\n11:28\tAli Barillaro:\tAnd it was a little bit de-motivating for quite a long time. I’ll also say additionally that even though my partner and I both do music, we really do things or we did tend to do things quite separately where he has his endeavors and I have mine. And I’m also someone who’s very private about music, even though I like to share things when they’re like – when I’m happy with them when they’re finalized. But there is a huge amount of vulnerability that comes with even if it’s not your own original music and even if you’re just working on a cover song, like I’m very –I get very nervous even around this person who is so close to me. So finding times when this person is around to just like practice and maybe make mistakes and things like that was a little hard for me at first.\n12:26\tAli Barillaro:\tBut more recently, just in maybe like the last couple of months even, I have started to say like, “Hey, you know, well, we can try to, we both like this song why don’t we try to work on this together on the weekends when you’re not having to work and be in that space.” And it’s actually been really great. So I’ve tried to [Laughs] – I guess also with this change in mindset that I’ve had in terms of the pandemic in general and aloneness in general, how things have sort of changed that relation to music and performance with this particular person who I’ve been alone together with has also transformed, which has been really lovely. And we did a acoustic cover of a song called “Digging My Own Grave” which is quite an emotional song actually. [Laughs] [Start Music: “Digging My Own Grave”]\n13:31\tAli Barillaro:\t[Music Continues in the Background: “Digging My Own Grave”] It really interesting experience as well, because I was doing primarily the lead vocals on it. And he’s done quite a few covers of their songs prior, just on his own. So it was kind of a nice change as well – and dynamic of that he would be there to be playing the music, but also to be doing the backup vocals and that I would be taking the lead on it. And we had to do some transposing to get that to work for both of us to get that range to be okay on both ends and that we both sound good [Laughs] making this. So yeah, we recorded that in the office slash music space, filmed it just a very basic video and put that together and up on my YouTube channel [Music Continues as Full Interlude: “Digging My Own Grave”].\n14:15\tAli Barillaro:\t[End Music: “Digging My Own Grave”] And people –friends and family were really enjoying it, they were like, “Oh, it’s really nice finally, that we get to hear the two of you together. And not just one of you, like it’s, it’s nice. It’s a nice change.”\n \n\n14:57\tKatherine McLeod:\tThat is beautiful. And thinking that it’s yeah, the collaboration, the coming together also is that –it almost is representative of the energy that like, okay, we’re slowly being able to see people that we hadn’t seen in a long time. So it feels like it’s part of that energy and part of that slow coming back to being together. One thing I wanted to ask you was about, if you could tell us how you found the Tanya Davis recording in your work for SpokenWeb and the Words & Music archive.\n \n\n15:28\tAli Barillaro:\tSure! One thing I’ll say is it’s been actually probably the best part of my SpokenWeb experience is getting to listen to these collections that we have access to. Because even though I’ve lived in Montreal my whole life, and that I think that I’m involved in the entertainment and the arts scenes and things like that, I didn’t know about the Words & Music Show, even though it’s been around for 20 years. So getting introduced to that and then fully diving into, I was responsible for about half of that. So about 10 years worth of recordings of these shows was really amazing. And essentially with that work, beyond just researching things, I did have to sit and listen. We weren’t creating full transcripts of things, but to an extent we were doing some transcription work which required full listen throughs, if you will.\n16:26\tAli Barillaro:\tSo I became familiar with quite a few different people who I didn’t know about and became very quickly interested in. So sometimes something would catch you, for whatever reason for maybe the types of work they’re doing with sound, especially some of the poets that are more invested in sound poetry, which again is something I wasn’t familiar with. Some of the music that I had never heard from people, either from Montreal, from other parts of Canada, and this particular recording, I don’t know if it was the– I think it was honestly the quality of the sound that really brought my attention to it and made me remember it. It was that echo to everything and how still it was, because often on those recordings, you can hear quite a bit of shuffling around in the audience. You can hear some noise from the bar of people, their glasses moving around or hushed sort of conversations. There’s a lot of extra sort of background noise in many of those recordings. And this was really as if everybody was like holding their breath and just listening. So I think that’s really what made it stand out beyond obviously the content and me being like, oh, wow, this is [Laughs] relatable, but also not quite relatable right now. But yeah, it was that particular sound of her voice and the way it was amplified that really got my attention, I think, when I was doing this kind of work every day.\n \n\n18:01\tKatherine McLeod:\tAs I talked with Allie, I started thinking about how she is an archival listener who has actually attended, in her own way, almost all of the Words & Music shows. No, she wasn’t standing in a crowd at Casa del Popolo, but she was listening to them and she was hearing the communities forming through performances. She was hearing how artists were invited back often, artists were trying out new work, artists perhaps performing the same piece, but many years later and with a different introduction and in a different context of other performers. Her listening was showing how an archive can document communities forming through sound. [Music Interlude: Strings]\n18:41\tKatherine McLeod:\t[Start Music: Piano Overlaid With Distorted Beat] You’ve been listening to ShortCuts. Head to SpokenWeb.ca to find out more about the sounds of this episode. Check the show notes for this one to find bonus content, or rather Tanya Davis also revisiting “How To Be Alone” over this past year. Plus find links to more of Ali Barillaro’s music. ShortCuts is a monthly series as part of the SpokenWeb Podcast. It is hosted by Hannah McGregor, mixed and mastered by Judith Burr, and produced by me, Katherine McLeod. Thank you for listening. [End Music Piano Overlaid With Distorted Beat]"],"score":2.7048998},{"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":2.7048998},{"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. 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Season Three of ShortCuts begins with a listening exercise. We attune our ears to what it sounds like and feels like to hear archival clips ‘cut’ out of context. Join ShortCuts producer Katherine McLeod in this exploration of the sonic and affective place-making of ShortCuts as podcast. What kind of creative and critical work can these archival sounds do? On their own, or together as an archival remix? \n\n00:09\tShortCuts Theme Music:\t[Piano Overlaid With Distorted Beat]\n \n\n00:10\tHannah McGregor:\tWelcome to a new season of 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.\n \n\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? We are delighted to have you with us this season as Katherine brings us more voices from the archives, more conversations, and more thoughtful reactions from her practice of close archival listening.\n \n\n00:56\tHannah McGregor:\tShortCuts is an extension of the ShortCuts blog posts on SpokenWeb blog. So if you love what you hear, make sure to head over to spokenweb.ca [Sound Effect: Wind Chime] for more.\n \n\n01:06\tHannah McGregor:\tIf you’re a researcher with the SpokenWeb Project, think about joining Katherine on ShortCuts to discuss an archival clip that has impacted your work. Pitch Katherine your ShortCuts minisode idea by emailing spokenwebpodcast@gmail.com. [End Music: Instrumental Electronic].\n \n\n01:21\tHannah McGregor:\tNow, here is Katherine McLeod with SpokenWeb ShortCuts: mini stories about how literature sounds. [SpokenWeb Podcast Theme Music: Instrumental Overlapped with Feminine Voice]\n \n\n01:34\tKatherine McLeod:\tHere we are in season three of ShortCuts. We’re ready to take more deep dives into the archives, through listening closely and carefully to short cuts [Sound Effect: Scissors] of audio. My name is Katherine McLeod. And, over these past seasons, I’ve come to understand ShortCuts as an archival and affective place made through sound where we can talk, listen, feel, question, and think together about archival sound and the world it makes and unmakes. Welcome. This season begins with a warm-up. It’s a listening exercise to get us ready and attuned to archival listening. The short cuts will be from past ShortCuts episodes. Yes, we’re getting meta here by diving into the archives of ShortCuts. We’re doing this in order to hear what ShortCuts sounds like, what kind of place it has made so far, and to hear what it does creatively and critically with its sound. It’s an exercise in a podcast listening to itself in order to grow. All of the sounds will be clips from the ShortCuts archives, and that includes my voiceover. From now on, all of the sounds that you will hear will be found sounds, sounds, sounds… [Katherine’s voice overlapping] And I say that while holding out my arms gesturing as though I’m attempting to hold the sound.\n \n\n03:09\tMusical Interlude:\tShortCuts Theme Music:\n \n\n03:10\tTanya Davis, Audio from ShortCuts 2.10:\tIf you are at first lonely, be patient. If you’ve not been alone much, or if you weren’t okay with it, just wait.\n \n\n03:19\tAli Barillaro, Audio from ShortCuts 2.10:\tI originally came across this recording of Tanya Davis performing “How to be Alone” a few months ago while feeling thoroughly uncertain [Music: Feminine Voice from SpokenWeb Podcast Theme Music] about life in the midst of a pandemic.\n \n\n03:30\tKatherine McLeod:\tHow can you hear time?\n \n\n03:33\tMuriel Rukeyser, Audio from ShortCuts 2.5:\t[Reading poem] Every elegy is the present.\n \n\n03:35\tKatherine McLeod, Audio from ShortCuts 2.5:\tShe has never read it like this before she cuts it up.\n \n\n03:40\tMuriel Rukeyser, Audio from ShortCuts 2.5:\tIt’s called “An Elegy in Joy,” and it’s just the beginning piece. I wanted to do it tonight this way. I’ve never cut it up. Cut it up.\n \n\n03:49\tKatherine McLeod, Audio from ShortCuts 2.5:\t[Reading poem] Every elegy is the present, freedom eating our hearts. Death and explosion and the world un-begun.\n \n\n03:56\tMuriel Rukeyser, Audio from ShortCuts 2.5:\t[Voice of Muriel Rukeyser overlapping with same words] Death, and explosion, and the world un-begun.\n \n\n04:03\tMuriel Rukeyser, Audio from ShortCuts 2.5:\tI thought of that very much at the beginning of this month in Mexico.\n \n\n04:08\tKatherine McLeod, Audio from ShortCuts 2.3:\tWhen listening to a recording, can you be listening for time? Can we hear the spring thaw in an archival recording of poetry?\n \n\n04:19\tMargaret Avison, Audio from ShortCuts 2.6:\tThis is one of the very cold days, I guess about 10 below, cold enough. It’s inside the pane of glass separating inside from outside, comes into a certain kind of sky that goes with that, which is like glass. Again…\n \n\n04:43\tKatherine McLeod, Audio from ShortCuts 2.9:\tSomething I’ve been thinking about while preparing this ShortCuts is: What kind of a framework does audio clipped out of context need to feel supported? And I say that while holding out my arms gesturing as though I’m attempting to hold the sound…\n \n\n04:59\tStephanie Bolster, Audio from ShortCuts 2.6:\tI guess I’ll say that I kept wishing I could seize everything and you know, slow it down and take in the details. Just like the density and the abundance of details. I was scribbling things down and couldn’t keep up. And in that sense, it really felt, you know, the same sense I would have had in a live reading.\n \n\n05:15\tMuriel Rukeyser, Audio from ShortCuts 2.2:\tAs 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? Why do people come and listen to poems? And listen to poems?\n \n\n05:27\tKatherine McLeod, Audio from ShortCuts 2.5:\tI listen again, and again.\n \n\n05:30\tMathieu Aubin, Audio from ShortCuts 2.6:\tWhen I was listening to it, the first and second time – because I re-listened to it immediately –it’s different with you obviously because we’re actually responding, and we’re both in on it – like this is about to happen – and you could feel it generations later. That awkwardness. And you’d be like, everyone’s like ‘eee’…\n \n\n05:49\tKatherine McLeod, Audio from ShortCuts 2.6:\tIt’s also interesting that the whole, sort of, joke or pun is about paper and a letter. And then – this – if she does like slam the book down, or – if she, you know – the presence of the weight of the page – [recording of Margaret Avison overlaps] and you read it and you cry, you crumple it up, you throw it down and there are so many emotions happening in this moment…\n \n\n06:13\tMargaret Avison, Audio from ShortCuts 2.6:\tNow I’ll read it again.\n \n\n06:14\tBarbara Nickel, Audio from ShortCuts 2.6:\tI have from years of reading her I have a certain voice in my mind – the voice of the page – and then to hear her voice for the first time…\n \n\n06:25\tKatherine McLeod, Audio from ShortCuts 2.4:\tListen to the breath that the poem creates. Listen with your body. As the poem breaths – in and out – it is breathing…\n \n\n06:36\tDionne Brand, Audio from ShortCuts 2.9:\t[Reading poem] I will not take any evidence of me, even that carved in the sky by the fingerprints of clouds, every day, even those that do not hold a wind’s impression… Okay that’s enough. [Applause]\n \n\n06:49\tKatherine McLeod, Audio from ShortCuts 2.9:\tThe recording of the reading was broadcast on the radio. On radiofreerainforest… [Sound of the intro music from the radio program and the words “radio free rain forest” are repeated.] radiofreerainforest was a program that aired on Vancouver’s Co-op Radio in the 1980s into the 1990s. [“Words and the sound” are words repeated as part of the intro music from the radio program.]\n \n\n07:09\tKatherine McLeod, Audio from ShortCuts 2.5:\t[Audible sound of background noise ongoing.] The recording doesn’t stop. Nobody presses the button. It continues recording. Now this is the sound of the room. This is the sound of the audience. This is the sound of what it felt like to be there. This recording of the social interactions, even as muffled as they are, conveys the sound of that reading in its time, which is even more interesting to us during our current time of the pandemic when we long for attending an in-person event…\n \n\n07:43\tAlexei Perry Cox, Audio from ShortCuts 2.8:\t[Reading poem] The samba played in the past and rings the ears presently. The sun would set so high and stings the eyes now. A lullaby operates on its own terms and does its own time…\n \n\n07:59\tKatherine McLeod, Audio from ShortCuts 2.8:\t[Alexei’s reading continues in the background.] We’re listening to the audio of Alexei Perry Cox reading by video at The Words and Music Show online on March 29th, 2020. [Audible sounds of Alexei’s daughter Isla.] She’s reading from Finding Places to Make Places, and she’s accompanied by the voice of Isla, her then 18-month old daughter.\n \n\n08:23\tKatherine McLeod, Audio from ShortCuts 2.8:\tWhen I heard Alexei read at The Words and Music Show, I was so moved by her reading. The interweaving voices. What improvisation at a poetry reading.\n \n\n08:34\tMuriel Rukeyser, Audio from ShortCuts 2.2:\t…What is that breathing behind? What is that heartbeat? The breathing goes against the heartbeat and these rhythms are 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.\n \n\n09:10\tPhyllis Webb, Audio from ShortCuts 2.7:\t[Reading poem] You brought me clarity, gift after gift, I wear… poems naked in the sunlight on the floor.\n \n\n09:27\tKatherine McLeod, Audio from ShortCuts 2.7:\tIn that reading, we hear the space of the poem and we feel the presence of that space. We see the sunbeam shining through the air. We see the blouse sitting on the floor of the room. We feel the air thick with arrows, between objects, between people, between the poet and subject. What would it be like to hear this in the room in 1966? This expression of female desire to be contained within the archives of this reading series…\n \n\n10:01\tPhyllis Webb, Audio from ShortCuts 2.7:\t[Reading poem] While you were away, I held you like this in my mind.\n \n\n10:06\tKatherine McLeod,  Audio from ShortCuts 2.7:\tWe hear this holding the quietness of each page.\n \n\n10:11\tPhyllis Webb, Audio from ShortCuts 2.7:\t[Reading poem]. In the room. We knew.\n \n\n10:15\tKatherine McLeod, Audio from ShortCuts 2.7:\tWe hear the turning of the page, the room…\n \n\n10:19\tPhyllis Webb, Audio from ShortCuts 2.7:\t[Reading poem] The room that held you… is still here.\n \n\n10:23\tKatherine McLeod, Audio from ShortCuts 2.7:\tWe are listening to desire in the making. Every time we press play on this recording as though we were returning to the same room, the room of the poem…\n \n\n10:32\tMuriel Rukeyser, Audio from ShortCuts 2.2:\tYou get some marvelous summer night. Why do people come and listen to poems?\n \n\n10:36\tKatherine McLeod, Audio from ShortCuts 2.5:\tLet’s hear all of that again.\n \n\n10:39\tMuriel Rukeyser, Audio from ShortCuts 2.5:\t[Reading poem] Who will speak these days. If not, if not you?\n \n\n10:46\tPhyllis Webb, Audio from ShortCuts 2.7:\t[Reading poem]. Poems naked in the sunlight on the floor.\n \n\n10:57\tKatherine McLeod, Audio from ShortCuts 2.7:\tThe room that held you is still here.\n \n\n11:08\tMusic Interlude:\t[Piano Overlaid With Distorted Beat]\n \n\n11:09\tKatherine McLeod:\tShortcuts is mixed and mastered by Judith Burr, hosted by Hannah McGregor and produced by me, Katherine McLeod. Head to SpokenWeb.ca to find out more about the sounds in this minisode and to learn more about SpokenWeb and The SpokenWeb Podcast. Thanks for listening. [End Music: Piano Overlaid With Distorted Beat]\n "],"score":2.7048998},{"id":"9978","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 3.2, What the Archive Remembers, 22 November 2021, McLeod "],"item_title_source":["SpokenWeb Podcast web page."],"item_title_note":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/what-the-archive-remembers/"],"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":[2021],"material_description":["[]"],"digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://cdn.simplecast.com/audio/28a9da1f-8cca-410c-b5d7-8165a73f9394/episodes/ff53ab4f-79e1-483d-90f4-6eb9312b14de/audio/32603c04-9629-4f27-ae76-99d905b58fde/default_tc.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"shortcuts-3-2-what-the-archive-remembers.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"44.1 kHz\",\"duration\":\"00:12:36\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"12,172,687 bytes\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"MP3 audio\",\"title\":\"Shortcuts 3.2 What the Archive Remembers\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/what-the-archive-remembers/\"}]"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"2021-11-22\",\"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\":\"SHOW NOTES\\n\\nBowering, George. “bpNichol: 1944-1988.” The Long Poem / Remembering bp Nichol. Spec. issue of Canadian Literature 122-123 (Autumn/Winter 1989): 294-297.\\n\\nMcGregor, Hannah. “The Voice Is Intact: Finding Gwendolyn MacEwen in the Archive.” The SpokenWeb Podcast, 6 April 2020.\\n\\nPolyck-O’Neill, Julia. “Lisa Robertson and the Feminist Archive.” The SpokenWeb Podcast. 1 November 2021.\\n\\nPound, Scott. “Sounding out the Difference: Orality and Repetition in bpNichol.” Open Letter: bp + 10 (Fall 1998) 50-58.\\n\\nSingh, Julietta. No Archive Will Restore You. Punctum Books, 2018.\\n\\nAUDIO CLIPS\\n\\nAudio for this ShortCuts is clipped from a recording of Ear Rational: Sound Poems 1966-1980 available on PennSound, a partner affiliate of the SpokenWeb research network, and from a recording of bpNichol and Lionel Kearns from the Sir George Williams Poetry Series audio collection.\\n\\nNichol, bp. “Pome Poem.” PennSound. A link to the same recording is also available on the official bpNichol archive. \\n\\n“I wanted to forget you.” bpNichol reading with Lionel Kearns. Sir George Williams Poetry Series. Montreal, 22 November 1968. https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/bpnichol-and-lionel-kearns-at-sgwu-1968/#1\"}]"],"_version_":1853670549808480257,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:54.290Z","contents":["In this episode, ShortCuts explores one of the methods of listening from the previous episode of The SpokenWeb Podcast. That episode, produced by Julia Polyck-O’Neill, listens to the emotional weight of archives. Julia’s conversations with poet Lisa Robertson uncover the ways in which archives record the relationships between memory, affect, and mortality. In this ShortCuts, producer Katherine McLeod listens to the emotional weight of archives through a recording of bpNichol, reading with Lionel Kearns in Montreal on November 22, 1968. How does the archive record loss? What can the archive never record? And what do we remember as listeners?\n\n00:00\tShortCuts Theme Music:\t[Piano Overlaid With Distorted Beat]\n \n\n00:10\tHannah McGregor:\tWelcome to a new season of 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. We’ll share with you, especially 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 on spoken web blog, 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. [End Music: Piano Overlaid With Distorted Beat] Without further ado, here is Katherine McLeod with SpokenWeb ShortCuts, mini-stories about how literature sounds. [SpokenWeb Podcast Theme Music: Instrumental Overlapped with Feminine Voice]\n \n\n01:18\tKatherine McLeod:\tWelcome to ShortCuts, [Start Music: ShortCuts Theme Music] a place where we listen closely and carefully to short ‘cuts’ [Sound Effect: Scissors] from the audio collections of SpokenWeb. In this episode, we’ll be using the last full episode of The Spoken Web Podcast to inspire our listening. The last episode was “Lisa Robertson and the Feminist Archive”. The recordings that we’ll be listening to in this ShortCuts are of the poet bpNichol. We’ll mostly be listening to a recording of a reading that bpNichol gave on November 22nd, 1968, as part of the Sir George Williams Poetry Series. Now you might be wondering what does bpNichol have to do with “Lisa Robertson and the Feminist Archive”; well, I’m not here to make a case for what they have in common though, if I wanted to start somewhere, I’d start with Coach House Books. What I do want to draw upon from that episode on Robertson and the feminist archive is how producer Julia Polyck-O’Neill talks about archives as having an emotional weight. That emotional weight in the case of that episode was rooted in hearing a recording of someone’s voice, who is no longer here. Yes, this episode touches upon themes of loss, and please do what you need to do to take care while listening. [End Music: ShortCuts Theme Music]. BpNichol was a poet whose poetry was always aware of presence and absence through its linguistic play, concrete forms and embodied sound. Let’s hear how recordings of his voice invite us to think through and to feel the emotional weight of archives.\n \n\n03:16\tArchival Recording, bpNichol, November 1968:\t[Reading and singing a poem] What is a poem is inside of your body, body, body, body. What is a poem is inside of your head, inside your head, inside your head, inside your head. Oh…\n \n\n03:34\tKatherine McLeod:\tThat was bpNichol reading, reciting, performing “Pome Poem.” It is a poem that I played years ago, over 10 years ago, in fact, as a graduate student, while presenting on a panel and a grand room at the University of Toronto. I had been discussing a dance adaptation of bpNichol’s poetry, and indeed a dance adaptation of his group, The Four Horsemen’s poetry and well, the performance is a story in and of itself. But to get to the point here, I was talking about how they had ended the performance with “Pome Poem,” and the sounds of the words breathing faded out as the theatre lights went down. I let the recording fade out at the end of my presentation.\n \n\n04:20\tArchival Recording, bpNichol, November 1968:\t[Reading/singing a poem] Inside of your, breathing, breathing, breathing, breathing, breathing, breathing, breathing, breathing, breathing, breathing [Fades out]…\n \n\n04:32\tKatherine McLeod:\tAfterwards, one of my co-panelists told me that he was very moved. He hadn’t expected to suddenly hear Nichol’s voice. It was as though he was there. This was years after the passing of Nichol and, with many recordings existing of Nichol’s voice, it didn’t seem strange for me to hear it. But here was someone who was not a Nichol scholar, he wasn’t listening to the audio recordings in the archives, but rather here, he was someone in the midst of a very public event who had just heard the voice of a dear friend. We can have such visceral reactions to hearing a voice in the archives, even if we don’t know that voice personally. I think of the reactions to Gwendolyn MacEwen’s voice – here’s Hannah McGregor and Jen Sookfong Lee reacting to MacEwen’s voice on a previous episode of The Spoken Web Podcast.\n \n\n05:29\tAudio Recording, Hannah McGregor:\tHave you ever heard her read?\n \n\n05:30\tAudio Recording, Jen Sookfong Lee:\tNo. I’ve never heard her voice.\n \n\n05:31\tAudio Recording, Hannah McGregor:\tDo you want to?\n \n\n05:31\tAudio Recording, Jen Sookfong Lee:\tYeah!\n \n\n05:32\tArchival Recording, Gwendolywn MacEwen:\t[Reading a poem] A fugitive from all those truths, which are two true, the great clawing ones and the fire breathers –\n \n\n05:40\tAudio Recording, Jen Sookfong Lee:\t[Audible Gasp]\n \n\n05:41\tArchival Recording, Gwendolywn MacEwen:\t– the ones that rake the flesh like piranhas and those that crush the bones to chalk and those that bare their red teeth in the night –\n \n\n05:51\tAudio Recording, Hannah McGregor:\t[Overlaps with MacEwen’s reading] So melodious her voice! I’ve never used the word melodious.\n \n\n05:55\tArchival Recording, Gwendolywn MacEwen:\t– My mind, emulates dragon, fish and snake and shoots fire to melt the Arctic night\n \n\n06:00\tKatherine McLeod:\tMelodious. Yes. So melodious her voice. And to be in awe of her voice has been a common response ever since MacEwen started reading poems in the 1960s.\n06:12\tKatherine McLeod:\tHearing MacEwen’s voice in the archives is somewhat similar to hearing bpNichol’s in that we’re hearing a poet who has been remembered as one who died too soon. BpNichol in 1988 at age 44 and Gwendolyn MacEwen one year earlier in 1987 at age 47. I think of George Bowering’s memorial for bpNichol in which he writes, quote: “as the years go by, scores of young and other writers and editors will develop the gifts bpNichol passed freely to them, and in that way, his life will go on. We will still bitterly resent the absence of his late life poems.”\n06:57\tKatherine McLeod:\tI think of that too, for MacEwen. Her last book was called Afterworlds, but who is mourning the archival afterlife of MacEwen that we will never know – that we will never hear. There are many unheard archival afterlives that probably will come to mind as I say this. At the same time, Nichol and MacEwen were relatively well-known as poets in Canada, which makes you think about the voices that were never archived. And what about the voices who are recorded in the archives? But those recordings only capture certain periods of their lives and their work? Which versions of themselves are remembered in sound?\n \n\n07:49\tArchival Recording, bpNichol, November 1968:\t[Reading a poem] I wanted to forget you, so I tried to erase your name. I wanted to erase you, I forgot you, your name. I wanted you, I forgot you, I erased your name. You forgot me, I wanted you, you erased my name. I tried you, I forgot you, I erased your name. Wanting you, I forgot you. You erased my name. Erasing you, the wanting forgot, I tried your name.\n \n\n08:31\tKatherine McLeod:\tThat was the last poem that bpNichol read in Montreal at the Sir George Williams Poetry Series on November 22nd, 1968, or at least we think that it was the last poem that he read. Nichol’s reading cuts in and out before we can hear the applause or any final remarks. And so we can only assume that it is the end. Plus the poem, as far as I can tell, is one that Nicol read out loud, but never published in print. And so we don’t know if this was “the end” of the poem. Though, if we listen closely, it does seem like it resolves and is even a bit reminiscent of his poem “Evening Ritual”, which evolves through a similar cycle of actions relating to writing. When the poem ends, at least as it ends on the tape, we don’t hear applause, but we can hear sound on the tape. The recording overlaps with a recording of the same recording. The recording somehow gets recorded over itself. And so there are times like this at the end, when you are listening to Nichol and then you hear the faint sound of Nichol in the background at a different point in the same reading.\n \n\n09:49\tArchival Recording, bpNichol, November 1968:\t[Reading a poem] Erasing you, the wanting forgot, I tried your name. [Static]\n \n\n09:55\tKatherine McLeod:\tHere’s another example of what I mean about the recording over itself, and this time we hear the tape rewind and then repeat something that we’d heard before.\n \n\n10:06\tArchival Recording, bpNichol, November 1968:\t[Voice sounds sped up] I’m going to read a poem I wrote last night. That’s waking [Tape noise of rewinding]…\n \n\n10:14\tArchival Recording, Lionel Kearns, November 1968:\t[Reading a poem] The imagination explodes. They grow old, quick and die. What’s left. Sometimes there’s something left. [Gentle laughter from audience]\n \n\n10:35\tArchival Recording, bpNichol, November 1968:\tI’m going to do that dangerous thing and read a poem I wrote last night, thus waking Lionel up at 7:30 this morning, which he didn’t quite forgive me for. It starts off with a quote from a poem by Bobby Hogg. And well, yesterday we were up in Carlton doing a reading there…\n \n\n10:54\tKatherine McLeod:\tThis ShortCuts is being released right around the time when this reading took place. We can try to re-enact what it would have been like to gather on this November day in downtown Montreal for this reading with bpNichol and Lionel Kearns. What would it have been like to be in that room? What is the archive unable to record? By staging this ShortCuts in November with a November recording, we are participating in a kind of reenactment. To what extent are we trying, trying to remember or trying to erase a memory that may not be ours in the first place –\n \n\n11:43\tArchival Recording, bpNichol, November 1968:\t[Reading a poem] I wanted to forget you, so I tried to erase your name.\n \n\n11:49\tKatherine McLeod:\t–And yet having heard it, that memory can never be forgotten. The feeling of having heard it is still there.\n \n\n11:58\tShortCuts Theme Music:\t[Piano Overlaid With Distorted Beat]\n \n\n12:05\tKatherine McLeod:\tShortCuts is mixed and mastered by Judith Burr, hosted by Hannah McGregor and produced by me, Katherine McLeod. Head to SpokenWeb.ca to find out more about the sounds in this minisode and to learn more about SpokenWeb and The SpokenWeb Podcast. Thanks for listening. [End Music: Piano Overlaid With Distorted Beat]\n"],"score":2.7048998},{"id":"9979","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 3.3, Communal Memories, 20 December 2021, McLeod "],"item_title_source":["SpokenWeb Podcast web page."],"item_title_note":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/communal-memories/"],"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":[2021],"material_description":["[]"],"digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://cdn.simplecast.com/audio/28a9da1f-8cca-410c-b5d7-8165a73f9394/episodes/4fbf6de0-126c-4630-8919-4d8fac60e816/audio/088e183d-1d3a-421d-ade5-5e1c94090fcf/default_tc.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"shortcuts-3-3-communal-listening.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"44.1 kHz\",\"duration\":\"00:12:16\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"11,851,695 bytes\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"MP3 audio\",\"title\":\"ShortCuts 3.3 Communal Listening\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/communal-memories/\"}]"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"2021-12-20\",\"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":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"AUDIO CLIPS\\n\\nAll audio in this episode is from the Gerry Gilbert radiofreerainforest Collection, held at Simon Fraser University and part of SFU’s Digitized Collections.\\n\\nRESOURCES\\n\\nMaracle, Lee.\\nI Am Woman: A Native Perspective on Sociology and Feminism\\n. Vancouver: Press Gang, 1996.\\n\\nMaracle, Lee.\\nMemory Serves: Oratories\\n. Ed. Smaro Kamboureli. NeWest Press, 2015.\\n\\n“radiofreerainforest 3 & 28 July and 7 August, 1988.”\\nGerry Gilbert radiofreerainforest Collection.\\nSFU Digitized Collections.\\nhttps://digital.lib.sfu.ca/radiofreerainforest-357/radiofreerainforest-3-28-july-and-7-august-1988\\n\\n“ShortCuts 2.9: Situating Sound.”\\nThe SpokenWeb Podcast\\n, 21 June 2020.\\nhttps://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/situating-sound/\\n\\nTaylor, Diana.\\nThe Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas\\n. Durham, N.C: Duke UP, 2003.\\n\\nWilson, Michelle. “Forced Migration.”\\nThe SpokenWeb Podcast\\n, 6 December 2021.\\nhttps://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/forced-migration/\"}]"],"_version_":1853670549809528832,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:54.290Z","contents":["As part two of ShortCuts 2.9 Situating Sound—and as one of the many remembrances of Stó:lō writer and activist Lee Maracle—this ShortCuts explores how the archive remembers and who these memories serve. The audio recording for this episode is a 1988 recording of Lee Maracle and Dionne Brand, recorded for broadcast on Gerry Gilbert’s radio program “radiofreerainforest” (Vancouver Coop Radio; SFU Digitized Collections). Building towards Maracle’s reading of the poem “Perseverance,” producer Katherine McLeod selects audio clips from this recording in which we can hear feminist placemaking in action. \n\n00:00\tShortCuts Theme:\t[Piano Overlaid With Distorted Beat]\n \n\n00:09\tHannah McGregor:\tWelcome to 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. We’ll share with you, especially 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 on spoken web blog, 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. [End Music: Piano Overlaid With Distorted Beat] Without further ado, here is Katherine McLeod with SpokenWeb ShortCuts, mini-stories about how literature sounds. [SpokenWeb Podcast Theme Music: Instrumental Overlapped with Feminine Voice]\n \n\n01:17\tKatherine McLeod:\tWelcome to ShortCuts. Last time on ShortCuts, we were listening to recordings that made us think about and feel the emotional weight of archives. We were thinking about how archival recordings produce memories that can almost stand in for the lived memory itself. How does the archive remember? Is the archive, the archive as in the colonial archive, or is the archive something more attuned to embodied practice? And that understanding very much resonates with the most recent episode of the SpokenWeb Podcast, “Forced Migration.” That episode asks how stories are passed along in the case of bison migration. Artist and researcher Michelle Wilson mines colonial archives in order to create alternative stories of the human relations with the bison of Turtle Island. What do we call the collection of these stories, an archive, a community, and who do these memories serve? That is the question that will take us into the sounds of this ShortCuts, who do these memories serve.\n \n\n02:34\tKatherine McLeod:\tAnd here I’m thinking about Stó:lō writer and activist Lee Maracle’s book Memory Serves. On November 11th, 2021 Lee Maracle passed away… And I heard the news after finishing up the last ShortCuts and thinking about archival afterlives. I listened to all the tributes pouring in for Maracle across various media outlets and media platforms. We’re still listening to those tributes and remembrances. Recordings of Maracle’s voice are in SpokenWeb audio collections. For example, if you recall the episode in season two of ShortCuts on Dionne Brand’s reading from 1988, you’ll recall that Lee Maracle had read with her that night. I had planned on a part two of that ShortCuts to listen to Maracle in that recording. And now is the time to listen. At the same time, like in the last episode, I encourage you to take care while listening…\n \n\n03:35\tAudio Recording, Lee Maracle, 1988 Reading:\tTomorrow there’s a celebration of South Africa Women’s Day. And I was asked almost a year ago now, I think to do a poem for the boycott the shipments of sulphur from Vancouver harbour to South Africa. And I’m gonna read that one first.\n \n\n03:59\tKatherine McLeod:\tIt is a reading that was broadcast on the radio program, radiofreerainforest. And that’s how we end up with this recording. That is the archive. But the experience of being there is archived in the sound in the cadence of voice, in the noise, in the background, in the laughter in knowing that the recording cannot remember it all. We won’t listen to the entire recording, but we will listen to enough clips that you get a sense of it. And if you’d like to return to it, you’ll know that it is there. The audio clips that we will hear are ones that convey the sound of the room, what it would’ve felt like to be there, how we can hear kinship, how we can hear the relation between bodies in the room. Like in this moment, when Maracle explains that she is going to read an epigram for Dionne Brand…\n \n\n04:56\tAudio Recording, Lee Maracle, 1988 Reading:\tThis is for Dionne. [Laughter] She wrote this book called Winter Epigrams. You should all buy it if you get a chance [Laughter], it’s a great book of poems. But as you know, about 95% of Canada in the winter is covered in snow. So I answered her epigrams about the cold in this fashion. At that time, I hadn’t met Dionne, but I was supposed to read with her and, it never came to pass [Laughter]. Tonight is the first— [inaudible comment from Brand] [Laughter from Brand and Maracle] — and I wouldn’t these, but [Inaudible] [Shared Laughter]… This one’s called “Flowers for Dionne.” I hope I get it right!\n \n\n05:46\tKatherine McLeod:\tIt feels as though we’re listening to a private moment that has found its way into a more formal archive. There are jokes about how they had planned to read together didn’t and now here they are — and that continues later, when in her reading Brand replies to Maracle with an unfinished epigram in response.\n \n\n06:08\tAudio Recording, Dionne Brand, 1988 Reading:\tLee read the epigram back to me in Montreal. And I was very honoured too, that she had written it back to me and I’ve been trying to write her back an epigram. We might make a book [Audience Laughter]. So I haven’t got very far with the epigram except to say: “Write me out of this epigram, Lee, you are so much water. You are too much water, too much rock, so much eagle. Write me out of this epigram, Lee. I am so much bush, so much ocean, so much rage…” And that’s just the beginning. [Laughter] It’s not finished. [Clapping] It’s supposed to go and like “write us out of this goddamn epigram.” [Audience Laughter]. I want to read a couple poems about South Africa.\n \n\n07:21\tKatherine McLeod:\tBrand starts her reading after Maracle with a poem for South Africa. And that is exactly how Maracle had started hers. I am taking all of these audio clips out of their contexts, out of their linear order in which they would’ve been heard in the reading, but, in doing so, I’m trying to bring to the forefront, the connections that are embedded within it and the conversation happening between poets in the reading itself. Knowing the exchange that unfolds between Brand and Maracle about the epigrams, it becomes even more meaningful to hear what precedes it. And this is why I’ve taken all of that out of context, to build up to hearing this poem, a poem that Maracle introduces by saying that she wrote it for herself. Let’s now listen to Lee Maracle reading “Perseverance”…\n \n\n08:16\tAudio Recording, Lee Maracle, 1988 Reading:\tI once said that poetry is never a self-portrait, you know, poets are famous for writing for so and so and for so and so and for so and so… Well, I was feeling very narcissistic one day, and I decided this was for me. It’s called “Perseverance.”\n \n\n08:34\tAudio Recording, Lee Maracle, 1988 Reading:\t[Reading poem] There’s a dandelion on the roadside in Toronto, it’s leaves a dishevelled mix of green and brown. A dandelion straggling and limping along. There’s a flower beside a concrete stump on Bay Street in Toronto, perpetually rebelling against spiked heels and blue surge suits. The monetary March passed by five o’clock Bay Street, deaf to the cries of this thin ageing lion’s sneer. Chicken, yellow flower. My leaves, my face, my skin. I feel like my skin is being ripped off of me. There is a flower in Toronto on the roadside. It takes jack hammers and brutish machines to rip the concrete from the sidewalks in Toronto to beautify the city of blue suede suits. But for this dandy lion, it takes, but a seed, a little acid rain, a whole lot of fight, and a black desire to limp along and scraggle, forward. There is a flower. [Audience Laughter]\n \n\n09:41\tAudio Recording, Lee Maracle, 1988 Reading:\tThis is for Dionne.\n \n\n09:42\tKatherine McLeod:\tThat poem ends with the words, “There is a flower.” We can hear that those words are almost covered by the response from the audience — and, well, no, they’re not covered. It’s more that they’re supported by the sound. The sound holds them up. And that’s the moment that Maracle says, “This is for Dionne.” Listening again, I rushed to check a published version of the poem in I Am Woman to see that it ends with “There is a flower” because it really sounds like she says, “Here is a flower.” On the page, it says “There is a flower,” but I listen to it again. And it does sound like “here.” And thinking about it more, I thought, well, how beautiful would it have been? If she had said, “Here is a flower,” because she had said that this poem is for herself. To say, “here is a flower” is like saying a version of: “Here I am.” And that would make even more sense with how her audience responds. It’s as though she’s reached out her arms while saying it, and as though we can hear the warmth of the smiles and nods around her saying, yes, here she is. Let’s listen to that ending again…\n \n\n10:52\tAudio Recording, Lee Maracle, 1988 Reading:\t“…black desire to limp along and scraggle, forward. There is a flower. [Audience Laughter] This is for Dionne. [Lee Laughs] She wrote this called book called Winter Epigrams. You should all buy it if you get a chance. It’s a great book…\n \n\n11:11\tKatherine McLeod:\tThat was Lee Maracle reading with Dionne Brand in 1988. The recording is part of the radiofreerainforest collection, which is part of SpokenWeb’s audio collections held at Simon Fraser University. If you are a SpokenWeb researcher with an audio clip for shortcuts, do get in touch at spokenwebpodcast@gmail.com. If you are listening and you were at one of the readings played here on ShortCuts, please do get in touch at the same email spokenwebpodcast@gmail.com. [Start Music: ShortCuts Theme Music]\n \n\n11:42\tKatherine McLeod:\tShortcuts is mixed and mastered by Judith Burr, hosted by Hannah McGregor, transcribed by Kelly Cubbon, and produced by me, Katherine McLeod. Thanks for listening.\n \n"],"score":2.7048998},{"id":"9984","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 3.4, Sonic Passages, 17 January 2022, McLeod"],"item_title_source":["SpokenWeb Podcast web page."],"item_title_note":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/sonic-passages/"],"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":[2022],"material_description":["[]"],"digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://cdn.simplecast.com/audio/28a9da1f-8cca-410c-b5d7-8165a73f9394/episodes/db88c6e3-2a5c-41d6-a316-c3e74f9165c7/audio/aabfa4af-a82c-4737-b0b4-e3c8388c83f3/default_tc.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"shortcuts-3-4-sonic-passages.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"44.1 kHz\",\"duration\":\"00:11:18\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"10,928,423 bytes\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"MP3 audio\",\"title\":\"Full Episode_Shortcuts 3.4\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/sonic-passages/\"}]"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"2022-01-17\",\"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":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"AUDIO\\n\\nAudio in this episode is from a 1970 recording of Daphne Marlatt reading in Montreal at the Sir George Williams Poetry Series, and from a 2019 interview with Marlatt conducted by Karis Shearer and Megan Butchart and that aired on The SpokenWeb Podcast’s sister podcast, Soundbox Signals, and re-aired on The SpokenWeb Podcast. \\n\\nListen to the full recording of Daphne Marlatt reading in Montreal (1970): https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/daphne-marlatt-at-sgwu-1970/.\\n\\nListen to the previous episode of The SpokenWeb Podcast, “SoundBox Signals presents Performing the Archive”: https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/soundbox-signals-presents-performing-the-archive/.\\n\\nListen to the previous ShortCuts on Marlatt, “Then and Now” mentioned in this episode: https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/audio-of-the-month-then-and-now/.\\n\\nRESOURCES\\n\\n“Daphne Marlatt & Diane Wakoski: Performing the SpokenWeb Archive.” SpokenWeb. Concordia University, 21 November 2014,  https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/oral-literary-history/daphne-marlatt-diane-wakoski-performing-the-spokenweb-archive/.\\n\\nMarlatt, Daphne. “Afterword: Immediacies of Writing.” Rivering: The Poetry of Daphne Marlatt. Ed. Susan Knutson. Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2014. \\n\\n— “Bird of Passage.” Origin, vol. 3, no. 16, Cid Corman, Jan. 1970, pp. 1–68, https://jstor.org/stable/community.28042112.\\n\\nMcLeod, Katherine. “Daphne Marlatt reading ‘Lagoon’.” SPOKENWEBLOG, 28 November, 2019, https://spokenweb.ca/daphne-marlatt-reading-lagoon/.\\n\\nShearer, Karis. “Performing the Archive: Daphne Marlatt, leaf leaf/s, then and now.” The AMP Lab. UBC-Okanagan, 17 November 2019, https://amplab.ok.ubc.ca/index.php/2019/11/17/performing-the-archive-daphne-marlatt-leaf-leaf-s-then-and-now/.\\n\\n\"}]"],"_version_":1853670549809528833,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:54.290Z","contents":["This ShortCuts episode responds to poet Daphne Marlatt’s conversation with Karis Shearer and Megan Butchart in the recent SpokenWeb Podcast episode “SoundBox Signals presents Performing the Archive.” By listening to audio from Marlatt’s previous archival performances, ShortCuts producer Katherine McLeod considers how we remember feelings attached to reading a poem out loud. What does it feel like to hear a recording of your own voice? Are you reminded of how you were feeling while speaking, and can the archive ever hold the memory of those feelings?\n\n*\n\n“Sometimes, unknowingly, one writes a few lines that continue to\nreverberate as some kind of pointer for future years of writing.”\n— Daphne Marlatt, “Afterword” (Rivering)\n\n00:09\tShortCuts Theme:\t[Piano Overlaid With Distorted Beat]\n \n\n00:09\tHannah McGregor:\tWelcome to 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. We’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 on Spoken Web blog, 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. [End Music: Piano Overlaid With Distorted Beat] Without further ado, here is Katherine McLeod with SpokenWeb ShortCuts, mini-stories about how literature sounds. [SpokenWeb Podcast Theme Music: Instrumental Overlapped with Feminine Voice]\n \n\n01:17\tKatherine McLeod:\tWelcome to SpokenWeb’s ShortCuts. In this ShortCuts, our listening will be inspired by the previous full episode of The SpokenWeb Podcast. That means we’ll be drawing our inspiration from Daphne Marlatt’s conversation with Karis Shearer and Megan Butchart in the recent episode “SoundBox Signals presents Performing the Archive.” They talk with Marlatt about poetry readings and about her performance with the archive in a poetry reading that had taken place the night before the interview — in 2019. In that reading, Marlatt had read alongside recordings of her past self — a recording from 1969.\n \n\n02:02\tKatherine McLeod:\tThis ShortCuts is inspired by the question of what it feels like to hear a recording of your past self – and asks: how can an archive contain traces of what the self – the body – behind the voice was feeling? In the case of Marlatt, she is a poet who has graciously accepted the invitation by SpokenWeb to listen to recordings of her past self and past voice more than once. I was there in the audience at a previous one. That was a reading that Marlatt gave in 2014 in Montreal. She read along with a recording of her reading in Montreal in 1970. What strikes me in listening back to that 1970 recording after hearing Marlatt’s conversation with Shearer and Butchart on the podcast is the extent to which a recording captures a person in a moment in time in their body. I’m thinking here of the difference between what she thought her voice sounded like in that recording and what she could remember feeling. I had listened to that 1970 recording for a previous ShortCuts with my listening attuned to place — check the show notes for Then and Now — but this time I was listening to that 1970 recording with my attention attuned to where the body was present in this recording. I noticed how she introduces the poem “Bird of Passage.” What she says before reading “Bird of Passage” is quite short but it contains so much, both said and unsaid.\n \n\n03:41\tKatherine McLeod:\tShe says, this is a poem that I wrote.\n \n\n03:44\tAudio recording, Daphne Marlatt, 1970:\tThis is a poem that I wrote when I was about… oh I don’t know, seven or eight months pregnant… [Pause] …Bird of Passage. I wrote it in Vancouver… spring time again…. Bird of Passage.\n \n\n04:03\tKatherine McLeod:\tHere, was Marlatt in 1970 saying that she had written this poem ‘Bird of Passage’ while she was pregnant. That is significant in and of itself when thinking of the body but now I was hearing it with the full resonance of her recent conversation with Shearer and Buchart from the podcast and what Marlatt says when the date of the recording, July 1969, is mentioned…\n \n\n04:30\tAudio Recording, Daphne Marlatt, “SoundBox Signals presents Performing the Archive”, 2019:\tInteresting that date, because I had given birth to my son at the beginning of May. So, I was a young mother, my body had gone through a major experience. That was not the experience that I’d had when I wrote those poems. What was interesting to me hearing last night at the reading – there was so much – my voice was so much more present in those poems than I had remembered my voice being, and I think it’s because of the giving birth experience…\n \n\n05:09\tKatherine McLeod:\tHer comment is about a memory of how the body had felt when she was writing those poems. And her comment is also about how she remembers feeling in her body when she was reading those poems out loud. I wonder, then, how would it have felt to read “Bird of Passage” out loud to an audience in 1970. Only she will know that. The archive cannot answer that question. But what we can hear in the archive is the sound of the poem and how it resonates now in relation to Marlatt’s writing. Listen to the sound of passage vibrating in this poem, “Bird of Passage,” not only in the title but in phrases like this one:\n \n\n05:56\tAudio recording, Daphne Marlatt, 1970:\t[Reading “Bird of Passage”] “…eave swallows cliff, passerine, which I thought meant passing as passenger sails, through an isthmus, time does not constrict…”\n \n\n06:05\tKatherine McLeod:\tIt is as though the poem is moving towards what passage comes to mean in Marlatt’s poems — passage, passing, a moving towards, language as the medium of passage, a passage between…\n \n\n06:19\tAudio recording, Daphne Marlatt, 1970:\tI cannot grasp your sound, breath, stone, you turn dumb, and will not speak, of what sticks at, feathers, uneasy nest, unease, a restlessness, tonight, drips in, passing in return, perhaps light airs, we begin again…\n \n\n06:43\tKatherine McLeod:\tThat is how she ends the poem, and we’re about to listen to it from the beginning in its entirety together, but I’ve played these clips from it in advance to attune ourselves to the poem. It is a poem that one could pass over while listening to the reading, but her brief introductory words made it stand out especially because I was listening with the question of: how can we hear feelings of embodiment in the recording of this reading? Recently, in the afterward to Rivering, Marlatt has written this observation — quote: “Sometimes, unknowingly, one writes a few lines that continue to reverberate as some kind of pointer for future years of writing.” Here is Marlatt reading “Bird of Passage” in 1970. I invite you to hear the resonances of moving forward, the sound of her voice as passage, surging towards her future poems, her “future years of writing” …\n \n\n07:50\tAudio recording, Daphne Marlatt, 1970:\tThis is a poem that I wrote when I was about – I don’t know –seven or eight months pregnant. “Bird of Passage” I wrote it in Vancouver, springtime again. Bird of Passage. [Reading poem, transcribed as heard – see Show Notes for a link to the poem as published.] Thaw begins tonight, Eaves drip incessant strain rings, wind bell spring brought forward out of time. This bird, dive bird, nestle, why stop nested under the eave of flesh or strong wet bird’s wings. Turned as I am against your anonymous hip, in sleep some cliff must be negotiated. Swallow. Eave swallows cliff passerine, which I thought meant passing as passenger sails through an isthmus, time does not constrict. Helpless, constriction in my throat seeing the picture of oil slick bird, will die. Fixed, its feathers mark coming out of yoke, this black stuff. Fix of its own birth. So a month’s accumulation of tears into icicles, vesicles, leaves, roots. Incessant release can be nothing more than alone, urine past, warm, squat by the window’s cold. Only to lie, quote, alone. Not ceasing its skim in serous medium light as air to us gravity-bound. Head over heels or wing bones supplied to test its limit extent, passage, passing, passenger. Temporary nest high in the air. Hirundinidae, hirondelle in graceful flight and regular migration. Fathered by a bird too sought definition for its passage, bird of sea, bird of passage or, quote, a rolling stone. Jumps in the  womb for joy. A recognition, cognition, knowing whence sound came a rhythm per-vades rocking waves under the face of his, fight to be over the din. We are all born in risk, mute, cliff. I cannot grasp your sound, breath, stone. You turn dumb and will not speak of what sticks at feathering. An uneasy nest, unease, a restless. Tonight, drips in passing in return, perhaps light airs. We begin, again.\n \n\n10:57\tKatherine McLeod:\t[Start Music: ShortCuts Theme Song] ShortCuts is mixed and mastered by Judith Burr, hosted by Hannah McGregor, transcribed by Kelly Cubbon, and produced by me, Katherine McLeod. Check SpokenWeb.ca to find out more about the sounds of these recordings. Thank you for listening. [End Music: ShortCuts Theme Song]\n "],"score":2.7048998},{"id":"9985","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 3.5, The Voice That Is The Poem, ft. Kaie Kellough, 21 February 2022, McLeod"],"item_title_source":["SpokenWeb Podcast web page."],"item_title_note":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/the-voice-that-is-the-poem-ft-kaie-kellough/"],"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":[2022],"material_description":["[]"],"digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://cdn.simplecast.com/audio/28a9da1f-8cca-410c-b5d7-8165a73f9394/episodes/84e938cc-2b23-4f14-b878-f316ed90368b/audio/a1afdd87-27b6-41a9-b7c9-3b8355079a60/default_tc.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"shortcuts-3-5.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"44.1 kHz\",\"duration\":\"00:20:06\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"19,369,108 bytes\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"MP3 audio\",\"title\":\"ShortCuts 3.5\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/the-voice-that-is-the-poem-ft-kaie-kellough/\"}]"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"2022-02-21\",\"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\":\"Archival audio in this episode is excerpted from a recording of The Words and Music Show on November 20, 2016 (Casa del Popolo, Montreal). \\n\\nThe performers that night were Eve Nixen, Kaie Kellough, Tawhida Tanya Evanson’s Zenship [Tawhaida Tanya Evanson (voice); Mark Haynes (bass); Ziya Tabassian (percussion); Caulder Nash (keyboards), with guest performance by Nina Segalowitz (Inuit throat singing)], Paul Dutton, and pianist Stefan Christoff.\\n\\nSHOW NOTES\\n\\nKellough, Kaie.\\nMagnetic Equator\\n. McClelland and Stewart, 2020. \\n\\n—“Rough Craft: Notes on the creation of the audio / visual / textual work Small Stones.”\\nSPOKENWEBLOG,\\n22 May, 2021,\\nhttps://spokenweb.ca/rough-craft-notes-on-the-creation-of-the-audio-visual-textual-work-small-stones/\\n.\\n\\n“The Show Goes On.” Producer Jason Camlot.\\nThe SpokenWeb Podcast\\n, 7 Feb 2022.\\nhttps://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/the-show-goes-on-words-and-music-in-a-pandemic/\"}]"],"_version_":1853670549810577408,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:54.290Z","contents":["On ShortCuts this month, producer Katherine McLeod talks with poet, novelist, and sound performer Kaie Kellough about a memorable recording from The Words & Music Show.  \n\nWhat are we listening to? Kellough unpacks what we are listening to — which turns out to be a highly technical, performative, and polyphonic sonic object, along with it being an early version of a passage from his Griffin Prize-winning book of poetry,\nMagnetic Equator\n. \n\nListen to this ShortCuts for the story behind one archival recording, and what this story reveals about how we remember the feelings infused within live performance. \n\n00:09\tShortCuts Theme Music:\t[Piano Overlaid With Distorted Beat]\n \n\n00:09\tHannah McGregor:\tWelcome to SpokenWeb ShortCuts. Each month on alternate fortnights (that’s every second week following the monthly SpokenWeb Podcast episode) you can join me, Hannah McGregor, and our minisode host and curator, Katherine McLeod, for SpokenWeb’s ShortCuts mini-series. We’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? ShortCuts is an extension of the ShortCuts blog posts on SpokenWeb blog [Sound Effect: Wind Chime]. So if you love what you hear, make sure to head over to spokenweb.ca for more. If you’re a researcher with the SpokenWeb Project, think about joining Katherine on ShortCuts to discuss an archival clip that has impacted your work. Especially if you are a student who has been digitizing and cataloguing recordings and there is a sound that stands out to you after all those hours of listening — let Katherine know! Pitch Katherine your audio by emailing spokenwebpodcast@gmail.com. [End Music: ShortCuts Theme Music] Now, here is Katherine McLeod with SpokenWeb ShortCuts: mini stories about how literature sounds. [SpokenWeb Podcast Theme Music: Instrumental Overlapped with Feminine Voice]\n \n\n01:29\tKatherine McLeod:\tWelcome to ShortCuts, where we listen closely and carefully to a shortcut [Sound Effect: Scissors] from SpokenWeb’s audio collections. On this episode, we’ll be listening to an audio clip from a performance by Griffin poetry prize-winning poet, Kaie Kellough. It’s a recording of him reading at The Words & Music Show in Montreal, back in November, 2016. You may even remember this clip. It was featured previously on ShortCuts. It’s a memorable recording in which Kellough’s introduction to a poem becomes the poem. I thought I’d return to this clip, partly as a response to the most recent full episode of The SpokenWeb Podcast — and do check that out if you haven’t already — and also because I’ve always wanted to ask Kellough about that performance. What are we listening to? And what does it feel like for him to listen to that recording? So let’s travel back in time to the Words & Music Show at Casa Del Popolo in 2016. Kaie Kellough is on stage and he is thanking host Ian Ferrier for the introduction and he’s about to start his set. We’ll hear a recording of that first. And then we’ll jump into my recent conversation on Zoom with Kaie Kellough. We started that conversation by listening to the same recording. Or, as I said to him, I’ll play this very short clip and we’ll listen to it together…\n \n\n02:59\tKatherine McLeod, Zoom recording:\tWe we’ll play the very short clip and we can listen to it together.\n \n\n03:02\tKaie Kellough, Zoom recording:\tSounds good.\n \n\n03:03\tKatherine McLeod, Zoom recording:\tAnd so let me just share this.\n \n\n03:06\tAudio Recording, Kaie Kellough, Words & Music Show, 2016:\tHello, thanks Ian, for that introduction. And… thanks to all of the other artists tonight… It’s been a very nice night. I’mmmmm going to present something to you, for you, that is… somewhat narrative, I guess… but it isn’t related to my novel. It’s some other narratives and… the narratives are related to adolescence… which is a peculiar time in life…. and I think that they’re relevant nowadays because [Recorded speech begins overlapping, legible words will appear in square brackets] they’re related to adolescence in a particular place in time…in Alberta behind in the [I want to forget] 1980s [high school fever forever] in the moment of [black hair, teens from the] heavy evangelical who drank themselves to activity extreme conservatism [trying to prove themselves that they exist] that they, some of the challenge is that arise growing up [I want to forget my stupid conviction] and trying to live oneself in a climate like that, which seems to be a climate that had to reemerging in spite of that [amber alcohol, all of the DNA] all of the [seeped down centuries of slavery] all of the appearances to the contrary that had appeared [in a far flung] in the past [suburb of empire]. The idea [that slum above] born yesterday was finished [or that born yesterday] was finished [or a bubble] or [a burden was seat and, and done suddenly a wave [a froth that was archived by teenage brains] a wave of [autobiography of conservatism] of conservatism has, has has [crashed] crashed [Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme, the jaws of life rend and pry it open] suddenly a wa— [like a tuna can] suddenly a [everybody is unconscious] suddenly a wave [is bleeding] has crashed…\n \n\n05:22\tKatherine McLeod, Zoom recording:\tThat was recorded at The Words and Music Show back in 2016. And I’m wondering, what, what are we listening to there? What are we hearing?\n \n\n05:34\tKaie Kellough, Zoom recording:\tWow. 2016! I didn’t realize it was that long ago. Actually, what you’re listening to is a passage from the manuscript of Magnetic Equator. I mean, that was a very, very, very early iteration of that. And it was – one of the themes that became a sort of major thread in the book, which was writing about adolescence in Western Canada in the 80s and 90s. But what I was trying to do in the performance was – you know, in live vocal performance one of the things that is a huge concern is that you only have one voice at a time, right. So how do you multiply that? How do you get to have maybe two voices or three voices at a time, or half a voice? How does that work? So you can multiply or divide voice. And that instantly makes, I think, the sonic field and the vocal field a little bit richer. And then if you can overlap them or layer them, or have them speak across one another — and sometimes sync-up and sometimes diverge — then it becomes not just multiple voices but it becomes an interplay among multiple voices, a sort of directed movement. So one problem was, how do you get around having just one voice in performance? And then what happens when you have multiple voices? What do you do with them? Then another other concern is that, sometimes in live oral performance, the poet, or the presenter plays these dual roles and sort of toggles between them. There’s the role of the poet — the, how can I put this? The MC, the master of ceremonies where you, you say, “okay, so now this next poem that I’m going to present is about”….and, and it’s you, right? The human being. You crack a couple of jokes, you present the poem, or you say something important about it, and then you present the poem. But when you read the poem, you shift into another persona. That’s the performer. That kind of movement back and forth — I’ve always liked to kind of try to subvert that and not to emphasize that too much, or find ways of blending it. So the introduction becomes the poem, or the introduction, in this case, winds up entering into dialogue with the poem. The voice that was the poem was recorded into a Zoom recorder. And then that Zoom was — so I had a bunch of electronics in front of me at the time. So there’s a visual part of the performance that can’t be seen in that intro clip.\n \n\n08:15\tKaie Kellough, Zoom recording:\tAnd so it’s sort of the playing up the part of sort of the befuddled button, electronic button tweaker, right? Trying to say something, meanwhile, being distracted by the machine and your voice gets overtaken by the machine, but also –so there’s my voice going through a clean microphone. And then there’s a second voice which been recorded into a Zoom and that’s being played through — actually, no, there are three voices. So there’s my voice, introducing the poem. There’s a second voice that’s going through a mixer and out to the house, and that’s a recorded voice. And then there’s a third recorded voice that’s going back into an effects pedal and then out. So there can always – from the recording there can always be a clean channel and a channel that is run through effects. And I was running it through this really the interesting analog delay pedal that doesn’t sound like your usual delay, but it sort of breaks up and fragments the source sound.[Recorded audio of fragmented sound effect plays in the background] So eventually the voice started to – it would sound like tape delay, like scribing and fragmenting and breaking. [Fragmented Voice: “Wandering out of time / This ship built by oil money / this fort for raw tobacco]\n \n\n09:42\tKaie Kellough, Zoom recording:\tSo potentially the voice would start to sound like tape delay, like squiggling and fragmenting and breaking up. But yeah, so there could potentially be three voices, mine, the clean recorded, and the broken.\n \n\n09:48\tKatherine McLeod, Zoom recording:\tAnd I guess the fact that Ian Ferrier recorded every Words and Music Show, then we have this version, all three voices are captured in Ian’s recording in an interesting way that then –.\n \n\n10:03\tKaie Kellough, Zoom recording:\tYes.\n \n\n10:03\tKatherine McLeod, Zoom recording:\t– it’s like we have one iteration of it, but it would never have been performed the same way twice.\n \n\n10:10\tKaie Kellough, Zoom recording:\tThere was another thing — I remember this performance and what I was thinking about was — was also having the introduction to the poem, be sort of halting and… failing to progress fluidly. I wanted to have the work come up under that. So to give the impression that I didn’t know exactly what I might be doing and then have the poem take over in a moment of uncertainty. But yeah, thanks to Ian for recording that stuff, because it was an experiment. I’d been playing with it at home and we decided — I got the chance to experiment— I think that might have been a bill that Paul Dutton was on too.\n \n\n10:52\tKatherine McLeod, Zoom recording:\tTo imagine then hearing that alongside one of Paul Dutton’s performances too. That adds even more. I think too thinking about when – what you talked about the, almost like the hesitant introduction, it felt like that worked so well too with the poem, because it felt like of thinking back —ok back to adolescence, and hesitating kind of feeling like do I wanna go back or do, and so it sort of felt like that hesitancy was also connected to a bit of the emotional distance from that time too, and really, really hearing that process. It really, yeah – it feels like we’re listening to a process unfolding in the way that the introduction moves into the poem. It feels like a very important part of the process of how the poem evolved eventually to become what it is on the page.\n \n\n11:47\tKaie Kellough, Zoom recording:\tYeah. No, the poem changed a lot between that iteration into 2016, and what was later, what was the edited version that was wound up being published. The one that was performed in 2016 — I can definitely say that the poem had probably been written within weeks of that performance. I was trying to — I was trying to, trying to play with the idea that…the sense that maybe the person who was presenting the poems was not fully competent. Their confidence was wavering. And those are not things that you’re supposed to perform, right. Once you get up in the moment of performance, it’s supposed to be pure expertise and excellence. And difficulty, hesitancy — those things are not supposed to be there. Those are supposed to be –you’re supposed to gloss those over with a sense of know-how and knowing what to do in the moment. And so how do you approach a performance and get around the need for constant expertise throughout? Because those other experiences are part of the experience of performing. Even if you don’t perform them, you feel them while you’re performing. You feel hesitant, your brain is racing. You’re not sure what to say next. You don’t necessarily always feel totally capable when you go up there to perform. So how do you emphasize that in a way that works within the context of the performance?\n \n\n13:35\tKatherine McLeod, Zoom recording:\tHearing this now in the archive, how does this recording sit for you in time?\n \n\n13:40\tKaie Kellough, Zoom recording:\tYeah, it’s interesting because it does sit – I mean, it does sit as something that is — it’s like a board tap from a live event. So there’s a raw quality to it. If this were made in a studio, it would’ve been a different piece because it would’ve been created for audio. Right. It would’ve been created exclusively as an audio piece and there would’ve been really limited emphasis on the visual aspect of performance and that communication and with an audience. It would’ve been elaborate in a different way as a sonic object. So, I mean, that does cross my mind, and that’s not necessarily a negative thing. What I mean by that is that just kind of establishes the further context for what it was.\n \n\n14:29\tKaie Kellough, Zoom recording:\tAnd that was one of the nice things about, about Wired on Words. If you wanted, you could accept Ian’s invitation to go to the show and you could repeat the same work that you repeated two months before that. And three months before that and six months before that. I accepted a lot of Ian’s invitations, and I always tried to take them as opportunities to attempt something slightly different. And so, I might have repeated myself sometimes, but I was really, really trying to move away from that. And that helped me because there was a thought that I could consistently develop new work and it didn’t have to be perfect and flawless to go out to be presented to the public, but it could be developed and developing towards something, and, in the moment of performance, if I could communicate that well enough people would grasp that. That was also — it also felt like it was the context of the show. There was a looseness to it that kind of allowed for that. It was –I mean, it was a show. So you were presenting somewhat finished works to the public, but the thing about it was that there’s something very casual about it too.\n \n\n15:59\tKatherine McLeod, Zoom recording:\tI feel that The Words and Music Show still feels that way, and it’s amazing to continue having that spirit through — such a long — through over 20 years of having the show.\n \n\n16:11\tKaie Kellough, Zoom recording:\tYeah, especially thinking about it now. I mean we’re in the fourth or fifth wave the pandemic and everything shut down again. The literary world has, and the world of literature and performance has kind of migrated online, with varying degrees of success. I don’t think — like the world of performance — I mean, it’s difficult to feel any inspiration toward performance when you’re sitting in your living room — right? [Laugher] It just seems so ridiculous. And, so to think back on the freedom to just roll out to a venue close by home and to be able to perform and to benefit from what you were talking about earlier about — I mean, that’s what we don’t benefit from with online events, the being able to mill about and talk with people after the event. Like when with an online event, you’re there for the event.\n \n\n17:14\tKatherine McLeod, Zoom recording:\tYeah.\n \n\n17:15\tKaie Kellough, Zoom recording:\tAnd there may be some back and forth in the comments or in the chat, but generally you’re there for the event and with live events, you were partly there for the event, but then there was all of the other stuff that went on in between. In between, in between performances, in between sets, like if I would bring a bunch of gear there, like pedals and synths and stuff like that, other musicians would come up on stage and we would chat about the equipment and about the gear. And, “Oh, what can this panel in your synth do? How did you use this pedal? Oh, I have one that does this” And so on. And so there would also be some casual, impromptu learning that would take place. Someone might ask you if you’ve ever used one of your pieces of equipment in such and such a way, and might show you how to do something with it. So that possibility too was really very much a part of those, those. Or, how did you get that sound, you know? And then you could share information about that. And that learning was a big part of those events too\n \n\n18:22\tKatherine McLeod, Zoom recording:\tHmm. Yeah, we’re definitely missing it. [Sigh] Well, I think that’s a beautiful note to end on. I want to thank you. Thank you so much, Kaie, for joining me and talking about this clip from Words and Music Show and what we’re listening to.\n \n\n18:40\tKaie Kellough, Zoom recording:\tOh, thanks. Thanks for having me. And thanks for asking me and reminding me of the clip. You asked me [Start Music: ShortCuts Theme Music] what it was like, what I thought about when hearing it and it’s strange to hear that kind of reflection of yourself and to – I didn’t realize it was as far back as 2016, because it feels a lot sooner. I remember what I was thinking about. I remember what my poetry, my poetic preoccupations were at the time. I remember how far that poem came because it was young and sentimental when I wrote it, and then it was not like that by the time it was published. It took on a different sort of personality by the time it was published. But yeah, I remember everything that I was thinking about. I remember how excited I was about it. Yeah. It’s just a — so thank you.\n \n\n19:34\tKatherine McLeod, Zoom recording:\tThank you so much.\n \n\n19:39\tKatherine McLeod:\tYou’ve been listening to ShortCuts. My guest this month was poet Kaie Kellough. ShortCuts is mixed and mastered by Judith Burr, hosted by Hannah McGregor, transcribed by Kelly Cubbon, and produced by me, Katherine McLeod. Thanks for listening. [End Music: ShortCuts Theme Music]"],"score":2.7048998},{"id":"9987","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 3.7, Moving, Still, 18 April 2022, McLeod "],"item_title_source":["SpokenWeb Podcast web page."],"item_title_note":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/moving-still/"],"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":[2022],"material_description":["[]"],"digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://cdn.simplecast.com/audio/28a9da1f-8cca-410c-b5d7-8165a73f9394/episodes/023b5797-abed-48ca-ba69-1868d7cacb3c/audio/0fb8f4d8-ae79-48dd-b220-44cfbb8e03b1/default_tc.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"shortcuts-3-7.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"44.1 kHz\",\"duration\":\"00:17:17\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"16,663,659 bytes\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"MP3 audio\",\"title\":\"ShortCuts 3.7\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/moving-still/\"}]"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"2022-04-18\",\"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":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"ARCHIVAL AUDIO\\n\\nPhyllis Webb reading (with Gwendolyn MacEwen) in Montreal on November 18, 1966, https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/phyllis-webb-at-sgwu-1966-roy-kiyooka.\\n\\nShortCuts 2.7: Moving, 19 April 2021, https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/moving.\\n\\nRESOURCES\\n\\nCollis, Stephen. Almost Islands: Phyllis Webb and the Pursuit of the Unwritten. Talonbooks, 2018.\\n\\nMcLeod, Katherine. “Listening to the Archives of Phyllis Webb.” In Moving Archives. Ed. Linda Morra. Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2020. 113-131.\\n\\nWebb, Phyllis. Naked Poems. Periwinkle Press, 1965.\\n\\nWebb, Phyllis. Peacock Blue: The Collected Poems. Ed. John Hulcoop. Talonbooks, 2014.\\n\"}]"],"_version_":1853670549814771712,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:54.290Z","contents":["In this episode, ShortCuts returns to a recording of Phyllis Webb in order to re-listen through this season’s question of how the archive remembers. What is held in the ‘room’ of the recording, and how does that differ from the room where reading took place? Or from the room of personal memory? What exceeds those rooms? And what does it feel like to hear their contours? Join producer Katherine McLeod as she reflects upon these questions while listening to a 1966 recording of Phyllis Webb reading from Naked Poems.\n\n00:09\nShortCuts Theme Music:\n[Piano Overlaid with Distorted Beat]\n\n00:10\nHannah McGregor:\nWelcome to SpokenWeb ShortCuts. Each month on alternate fortnights (that’s every second week following the monthly\nSpokenWeb Podcast\nepisode) you can join me, Hannah McGregor and our minisode host and curator, Katherine McLeod for SpokenWeb’s ShortCuts mini-series. We’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? ShortCuts is an extension of the ShortCuts blog posts on Spoken Web blog, so if you love what you hear make sure to head over to spokenweb.ca for more. If you’re a researcher with the Spoken Web Project, think about joining Katherine on shortcuts to discuss an archival clip that has impacted your work. Especially if you’re a student who has been digitizing and cataloging recordings, and there’s a sound that stands out to you after all those hours of listening, let Katherine know! Pitch Katherine, your audio by emailing SpokenWebPodcast@gmail.com. Now here is Katherine McLeod with SpokenWeb ShortCuts, mini-stories about how literature sounds. [\nSpokenWeb Podcast\nTheme Music: Instrumental Overlapped with Feminine Voice]\n\n01:28\nKatherine McLeod:\nWelcome to ShortCuts, a monthly minisode in which we listen closely and carefully to a shortcut [Sound Effect: Scissors] from the Spoken Web archives. This month it is April, the month of poetry. The audio that we’ll be listening to is a poem by Canadian poet, Phyllis Webb. It is in fact, a series of poems from\nNaked Poems\n, poems that open up space and leave room for the listener to listen, to listen quietly, or to fill up that space with their listening. The space is audible in her reading of the poems, and it is visible on the page, as Webb comments on when she introduces\nNaked Poems\nto her Montreal audience in 1966.\n\n02:15\nArchival Audio, Phyllis Webb, 1966:\nI want to move on now to my latest book, which is called Naked Poems, in which one of your local critics – or at least he wrote for the\nMontreal Star\nthis particular point – exclaimed of the price because there are so few words in the book. [Audience Laughter] It’s $2.25. [Audience Laughter] These poems are very small and therefore very expensive [Audience Laughter] and – came at a bitter price, I may say. To me. They came quite as a surprise and I didn’t know what I was doing when I wrote them the first 14 or so. I thought, my goodness, what are these little things doing here? And I couldn’t quite take them seriously. And then I began to see the order that really was intrinsic in them and realized that here was something almost a new form for me to work on. And it’s very bare, naked, undecorated. And I wanted to get rid of all my affectations. And so I decided to to write, oh a couple hundred of them. And I wrote about a hundred and then got hung up on a technical problem and finally reduced them to, I dunno, 40 or so that are in this book. So this is a distillation, let’s say. [Pages Turning] I’m going to read the first 14, which comprised a total poem. In the sense the whole book is a poem. And then I’ll read a few more, as long as my voice and your patience will hold out.\n\n04:31\nKatherine McLeod:\nIn listening to how Phyllis Webb tells her audience about Naked Poems we hear what it would’ve been like to be there in the room. We hear the audience and their laughter. The feeling as though she is holding the pages of Naked Poems in her hands, as she is telling us about them. We can almost feel the touch of the page, the small distilled poems, how they came to her at a bitter price. What does she mean by that? Now, if all of this is sounding somewhat familiar it’s because the clips that I’m playing are from recordings of Webb reading Naked Poems that were the focus of April’s ShortCuts last season. We are returning to this recording for a number of reasons, but most of all as a remembrance of Webb. Last year in April, I created the ShortCuts based on the Webb recording as a gift for her. April was her birthday month and I imagined it reaching her ears on the West Coast. In November 2021 Webb passed away at a glorious old age and even with such a full long life, it still felt like such a loss. This season of ShortCuts, there has been an ongoing theme of listening to remember. And if you listen back through each episode, you’ll hear it developing. I produce each episode in the month it is released. And so that development was not planned at the outset. Each episode has been a way to dive deeper and deeper into one of the stories told in that first episode, “What the Archive Remembers”. In that, I talk about an interaction at a conference in which someone told me that they’d really felt the weight and impact of hearing bp nichol’s voice in a recording that I had played. What strikes me now is that we are in a position in which we have vast amounts of recorded materials of poets, and that those recordings are perhaps more accessible then they have ever been before. That’s thanks to the internet, but also thanks to large scale audio digitization projects such as SpokenWeb, among others. What I’m getting at here is that we’ve had recordings of poets voices for a long time now, but have we ever had them so readily available and with a record of their voice from throughout their career, throughout their lives? It is with this in mind that I invite all of us to return back to that recording of Phyllis Webb, reading in Montreal in 1966. And you’ll hear my voice from last year, commenting on that audio followed by my voice now at the end.\n\n07:22\nArchival Audio, Phyllis Webb, 1966:\nAnd then I’ll read a few more, as long as my voice [Pages Flipping] and your patience were hold out.\n\n07:29\nKatherine McLeod, ShortCuts 2.7:\nThe reading was recorded in 1966 in Montreal at Sir George Williams University, now Concordia. At that reading, the second reader was Gwendolyn MacEwen. Imagine hearing Phyllis Webb and Gwendolyn McEwen reading in person on the same night. MacEwen would’ve been sitting in the audience, listening to Webb read. Here is Webb reading “Suite I” and “Suite II” from Naked Poems.\n07:58\nArchival Audio, Phyllis Webb, 1966:\n[Webb Reading] “Suite I” Moving to establish distance between our houses. It seems I welcome you in. Your mouth blesses me all over. There is room. And here. And here. And here. And over. And over. Your. Mouth. Tonight, quietness in me and the room. I am enclosed by a thought and some walls. The bruise. Again, you have left your mark. All we have. Skin shuttered secretly. [Page Turning] Flies. Tonight in this room, two flies on the ceiling are making love quietly or so it seems down here. [Audience Laughter]. Your blouse. I people this room with things, a chair, a lamp, a fly. Two books by Mary Ann Moore. I have thrown my gloves on the floor. Was it only last night? You took with so much gentleness, my dark. Sweet tooth. While you were away, I held you like this in my mind. It is a good mind that can embody perfection with exactitude. The sun comes through plum curtains. I said, the sun is gold in your eyes. It isn’t the sun. You said. [Page Turning] On the floor, your blouse. The plum light falls more golden, going down. Tonight, quietness in the room. We knew. [Page Turning] Then you must go. I sat cross-legged on the bed. There is no room for self pity, I said. I lied. In the gold darkening light you dressed. I hid my face in my hair. The room that held you is still here. [Page Turning] You brought me clarity. Gift after gift I wear. Poems naked. In the sunlight. On the floor. [Page Turning]\n\n11:31\nKatherine McLeod, ShortCuts 2.7:\nIn that reading, we hear the space of the poem and we feel the presence of that space. We see the sun beam shining through the air. We see the blouse sitting on the floor of the room. We feel the air thick with eros, between objects, between people, between the poet and subject. What would it be like to hear this in the room in 1966? This expression of female desire to be contained within the archives of this reading series?\n\n12:04\nArchival Audio, Phyllis Webb, 1966:\nWhile you were away. I held you like this in my mind.\n12:10\nKatherine McLeod, ShortCuts 2.7:\nWe hear this holding. The quietness of each page.\n12:14\nArchival Audio, Phyllis Webb, 1966:\nQuietness in the room. We knew. [Page Turning].\n12:19\nKatherine McLeod, ShortCuts 2.7:\nWe hear the turning of the page. The room.\n12:23\nArchival Audio, Phyllis Webb, 1966:\nThe room that held you is still here.\n12:27\nKatherine McLeod, ShortCuts 2.7:\nWe are listening to desire in the making every time we press play on this recording, as though we were returning to the same room, the room of the poem, the room of the reading, the voice moving –\n\n12:41\nArchival Audio, Phyllis Webb, 1966:\n[Ambient Room Sounds].\n12:41\nKatherine McLeod:\n– I hear how in last year’s ShortCuts, I was so interested in that space of the room and what it could hold. I hear that now as speaking to what I was exploring of ShortCuts, as a method of feminist placemaking. A room, an audible place in which to hear women’s voices from the archives. For them to take up sonic space and for us to hear what feelings are made through those sounds. I was interested in and how that related to my role as producer curating this space. How much does one hold up voices by framing them or does one simply press play? One tries (or rather I try) to strike the right balance between supporting the voice with care in how it is introduced, why that voice has been pulled out of the archives, and then letting the listener and the voice embark on their own dance. That is how last year I was hearing the line…\n\n13:53\nArchival Audio, Phyllis Webb, 1966:\nThe room that held you is still here.\n13:57\nKatherine McLeod:\nThis year, I still hear it that way but I also hear the room as a precursor to the room that was far from Webb in 1966, but would be the room in which I met her when I visited her on Salt Spring Island in 2017. I think of that room because I wish I could have visited her once more again. And yet I’m also grateful for that time in which I was there. That room in a senior’s care facility was her room. It was her home. In that room of her own we talked about the 1960s. We sat amid her paintings. Her art was holding us in that room, along with the warmth of her smile and generosity. I thought to myself, this is a woman who knows how to live. I say that in the present tense, because it feels like she is still living. The room that held you is still here. And it is still here. We are still listening. What a word still. It implies a pause in motion, and yet at the same time, it implies a persistence. Still moving. Moving. That is what I called ShortCuts last year. Phyllis Webb is still moving. I say that thinking of these words that I wrote at the end of a chapter about Webb in [the book]\nMoving Archives\n, and they feel like some of the only words that can wrap up, that can hold together an episode that does not want to end.\n\n15:42\nKatherine McLeod\n[Start Music: ShortCuts Theme Music] [Reading out loud from the book\nMoving Archives\n] Only Phyllis Webb inhabits the place where her voice dwells. A reminder of this appeared to me by chance while typing these lines. When I noticed that Stephen Collis had posted a photo to Twitter with the caption “Phyllis Webb’s hands”. The camera looks down at an angle at Webb holding her entire body of poetic work\nPeacock Blue: The Collected Poems\n. The book lies open, the table of contents on her lap, a tray of olives and brie sit next to her, ready to be consumed throughout what promises to be a long conversation with Collis about poetry. [Music Pauses] Webbs right hand is held up, long fingers spread wide and flexed as though she is about to turn the page. Quietly, she is moving. [Music Restarts] You’ve been listening to ShortCuts. It was recorded in the city of Montreal or what is known as Tiohtià:ke in the language of the Kanien’kehá:ka nation. ShortCuts is hosted by Hannah McGregor transcribed by Kelly Cubbon, mixed and mastered by Judith Burr and Kate Moffatt and produced by me, Katherine McLeod. Thanks for listening. 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Diving into a recording that concluded last year’s symposium, producer Katherine McLeod plays excerpts from Oana Avasilichioaei’s live performance of “Chambersonic (IV)” and Klara du Plessis’s reading of “Post-Mortem of the Event.” What is the sound of this event? Listening to the recording now invites reflections on what this event sounds like: how do we hear its affect, its traces, and how it shifts in time?\n\n00:10\nHannah McGregor:\n[Start Music: ShortCuts Theme Music] Welcome to SpokenWeb ShortCuts each month on alternate fortnights (that’s every second week) following the monthly\nSpokenWeb Podcast\nepisode, you can join me, Hannah McGregor and our minisode host and curator, Katherine McLeod for SpokenWeb’s ShortCuts mini series. We’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? ShortCuts is an extension of the ShortCuts blog posts on Spoken Web blog. So if you love what you hear, make sure to head over to SpokenWeb.ca for more. If you’re a researcher with the SpokenWeb Project, think about joining Katherine on ShortCuts to discuss an archival clip that has impacted your work. Especially if you’re a student who has been digitizing and cataloguing recordings, and there’s a sound that stands out to you after all those hours of listening, let Katherine know pitch Katherine, your audio by emailing SpokenWebPodcast@gmail.com. [End Music: ShortCuts Theme Music] Now here is Katherine McLeod with SpokenWeb ShortCuts, mini stories about how literature sounds. [Music Interlude:\nSpokenWeb Podcast\nTheme Music] \n01:27\nKatherine McLeod:\nWelcome to ShortCuts. When this ShortCuts comes out, it will be in the same week of this year’s SpokenWeb Symposium and Sound Institute. At the end of last year’s symposium called “Listening, Sound, Agency” there was an online Words & Music Show. Here is SpokenWeb’s Jason Camlot, welcoming those tuning in and explaining the relationship between this event and the symposium week that was coming to an end.\n01:58\nAudio Recording, Jason Camlot, Words & Music Show, 2021:\nWell, we’re gonna get things started. I just, I wanted to say a few words before I turn things over to the host of the evening and of all Words and Music Shows – Ian Ferrier – who you just saw. I’m Jason Camlot. I’m a co-host of this show. I’ve actually been co-hosting these, or background hosting them with Ian, since March 2020, when pandemic forced us onto Zoom, out of the Casa del Popolo, which you see in the background of my screen, my fake background. This event was imagined as a celebration of that symposium, and as a way of bringing the local community in touch with some of the participants in the symposium. For me, it’s a really fun way to finish what’s been an amazing week of activity and thinking and sharing.\n02:48\nKatherine McLeod:\nAlong with SpokenWeb and Symposium poets – Kevin McNeilly, Cole Mash, Erin Scott, and Klara du Plessis who performed that night – the special guest for that show was poet and intermedia artist Oana Avasilichioaei. Oana had performed live at the 2019 SpokenWeb Symposium in Vancouver, along with participating in various SpokenWeb events in Montreal. In 2021, her book\nEight Track\nhad just received great acclaim and was nominated for the Governor General’s Award for poetry. Featuring her on that night was part of a way of making a connection between the symposium and local Montreal poets. At the symposium, I had, in fact, presented a paper with Dr. Emily Murphy about Oana’s poetry as notation. For that presentation we had been working with a recording of\nChambersonic\nthat is published digitally in visual and audio formats on the\nCapilano Review\n. But Oana’s performance of a version of\nChambersonic\non that night of the online Words & Music Show was its own version. It was performed live. And, after listening, again, to this performance by Oana, I was struck by what Klara du Plessis chooses to read, following Oana’s performance. In listening to the recording, we are hearing a listening taking place within the event. And so in this ShortCuts we’ll be listening to Oana – and then we’ll be listening to Klara – as a listening to the event. What the event sounds like, what it feels like. What are its traces left behind, and its shifts in time? Here’s Ian Ferrier introducing Oana Avasilichioaei.\n04:37\nAudio Recording, Ian Ferrier, Words & Music, 2021:\n…our star performer of the evening. Her work interweaves poetry, sound, photography, and translation to explore an expanded idea of language, polyphonic structures and borders of listening. Her six collections of poetry and poetry-hybrids include\nEight Track\nfrom Talonbooks, which is the finalist for the Klein prize for poetry and the Governor General’s Award, and\nLiminal\nfrom Talonbooks in 2015. She’s created many performance and sound works, written a libretto for a one act opera called\nCells of Wind\nin 2020, and translated 10 books of poetry and prose from French and Romanian, most recently Bertrand Laverdure’s\nThe Neptune Room\nwhich is also a finalist for the Governor General’s literary award for translation. She’s performed a number of times in our show and each time has brought amazing work. So please welcome Oana tonight. Yeah.\n05:33\nAudio Recording, Oana Avasilichioaei, Words & Music, 2021:\nThank you, thank you so much, Ian. Thank you so much for having me and I’m super happy to be here. So I’m going to share two pieces. The first piece is a video piece that I made last fall, which I call a filmpoem. It’s called “Tracking Animal (an extemporization)”, and it uses some text from the long work in this – in a track called “Tracking Animal.” And in fact, it will take us back outside. I’m just going to share my screen here and play it for you.\n06:14\nKatherine McLeod:\nWhen Oana said those words, she did take us back outside. The visuals then showed her standing and walking in recognizable local Montreal spaces. She had recorded this video alone during the early times of the pandemic. You could see and feel that aloneness. The tracking of the self. It’s also quite moving that the spaces that she recorded in are spaces that many Montrealers have used to create art on their own during the pandemic — and that those spaces will soon, once again, be vibrant with arts events happening in them this summer outside. It is a beautiful piece, this video, and you can find a link to it in the show notes. The fact that she took us outside resonated with me as a listener, because I remember that when I was tuning into this show, I was listening on my balcony. I took a photo that night of my listening with my computer and Oana and the moon shining above. I sent that photo to her the next day as a form of thanks. And I look at it again now to remind myself that it was live. I stress the word live because the next piece she performed and the one that we’ll listen to was a version of\nChambersonic\n, and it was performed live.\n07:45\nAudio Recording, Oana Avasilichioaei, Words & Music, 2021:\nThe second piece I’m going to do is actually going to be a live work. It’s new, it’s from a new body of work that I’m working on called\nChambersonic\n— the larger project. And each piece I’m doing is numbered. So this is “Chambersonic (IV)”, and it’s based on a score, “Chambersonic (I)”, that looks like this [Shows Page to Audience] , and it was a version of both the score and the sound piece that was published in\nThe Capilano Review\nin their fall issue. So, I’m going to need to change some audio settings. And then I’m going to start the piece… [Oana Performing, Voice Effect Reverberates, Sounds Play in Background] This, this is a lecture on phonetics. This is a setting on music. This is a sounding of silence. This is a manifest of now, this is a variant of being, this is a lecture on phonetics. This is a setting on music. This is a sounding of silence. This is a manifest of now. This is a variant of being… Let form be oral. A foundation…. [Singing] Sonority… An impossible lone sound… —netic … Recording… [Whispered] The ghost of sound. Let form be oral. A foundation… [Voices overlap] Corporeal, phonetic, fragments, re-assemblages. [Whispered] The ghost of sound…\n10:45\nKatherine McLeod:\nThis, this is a setting on music. This is. What is this? It is as though she is asking us to consider what is this this-ness — of sonority? Of an impossible lone sound? Of the ghost of sound? It is as though she is saying, I am performing now. This is the performance. This. We hear this even while knowing that there is an accompanying score. Is that too a this? She conveys an assertion of presence in the performance itself, which is why it feels so powerful to remember that it is happening live. As you are listening to this recording. How does listening now differ from me listening on my balcony under the moon to the live-stream? Where is the event now? [Audio of Oana’s Performance Begins] Let’s re-enter the sound and we’ll hear Ian Ferrier take us from Oana’s performance into Klara du Plessis’s reading that follows, and you’ll hear why I let the tape play and where Klara’s reading takes us…\n11:56\nAudio Recording, Oana Avasilichioaei, Words & Music, 2021:\n[Oana Performing, Voice Effect Reverberates, Sounds Play in Background] Voice… Of timbre… The voice. Fills the void. The activity of sound, quieter, and louder, longer, and shorter… [Overlapping voice] The activity of sound — and quieter. Higher, and lower. Longer, and short. The activity of sound, louder and quieter, higher and lower… where silence differentiates.\n13:36\nAudio Recording, Ian Ferrier, Words & Music, 2021:\nOh, that was lovely. Yeah. So nice to hear. And I love the sung voice and the talking voice and the whisper voice and the industrial sound beneath it. That’s really just a beautiful piece. Thank you so much.\n13:51\nAudio Recording, Oana Avasilichioaei, Words & Music, 2021:\nThank you. Thank you. Took me a moment to get back. [Laughs]\n13:57\nAudio Recording, Ian Ferrier, Words & Music, 2021:\nYeah, it took me a moment too. I’m still [Sings] louder [Laughs] right. So thank you so much for that.\n14:07\nAudio Recording, Oana Avasilichioaei, Words & Music, 2021:\nThanks so much for having me again.\n14:09\nAudio Recording, Ian Ferrier, Words & Music, 2021:\nYeah. Nice to see you. Yeah, yeah. And next up we have a person who’s been working quite a bit through the symposium as well. Her name is Klara du Plessis. She’s a poet, a critic, a literary curator too. And she resides in Montreal. She’s the winner of the 2019 Pat Lowther Memorial award for her debut collection\nEkke\n, which was published with Palimpsest Press. Her second book, which was released in the fall of 2020 is\nHell Light Flesh\n, and Klara is currently a PhD candidate at Concordia University researching the recent, contemporary, and experimental curation of poetry readings. Please welcome Klara du Plessis.\n14:54\nAudio Recording, Klara du Plessis, Words & Music, 2021:\nThank you so much for that really generous introduction, Ian. I’m still astounded by Oana’s performance and everything that came before. And so I feel like I’m still in a transitional phase, trying to get my bearings. It’s also the end of an incredible symposium week that’s been running since Tuesday night, and maybe as a result of that, I made a couple of decisions. One of them is to read new work. I’ve decided to try out some works that are in what I would call a draft and a half [Laugh]. So they’ve been lying around for a while they’re maybe six months or eight months old. But I only really edited them very lightly. I’m reading it because I feel like I kind of trust the people here and feel comfortable with a kind of tradition that Words & Music seems to have for people to try things. But the second reason that I am I’ve decided to read from this work is because I feel like it emanates from the research I’ve been doing at Concordia. And very much is a result of me reading works on archives and doing work in audio, audio and digital, both analog and digital archives. And, it’s a short, long poem. The kind of character in the poem is the event. But while I was writing it, because I was kind of thinking of postmortem and anatomy and so on, I did at some point look at that famous old Rembrandt painting of the anatomy table, which has the kind of famous, strange hand, like the hand, if you look at that painting, it’s got a hand that’s supposed to be the right hand, but it’s actually a left hand or a reverse. Um, and that kind of made its way into this poem also. So it’s called “Post-mortem of the event.” [Klara reading poem] The event lies on the table with its left hand and frontal arm dissected, sinuses and muscles, and maybe one disposable bone strumming like lines from a poem, pink inner exposeé, rationalizes the soul from vessel to enlightenment the latter so mystical, who knows how the verse becomes a multidimensional grid. Logic of the luminous skin of the other hand, intact pale rams brawn of the Cartesian Caucasian corpse. The event opened undocumented archive over the table, displayed, displayed, played, and atomically laid out to rest resist laboratory pages white as coats. Only thing is that the left hand is not the left, but the right, but not the right hand, but a second right hand, multifarious body mirroring itself in hands in hand rippling along its definitions of progress, usage and control. On the one hand, and on the other hand as wingspan on the one hand and on the one hand or on the other hand, and on the other hand, the archive of hands fans out fingers replicating selves, look, really look at this artwork. So strange armoured in mourning like the night…\n18:49\nKatherine McLeod:\nThe poem that Klara is reading from will be part of a forthcoming book in 2024.\nPost-mortem of the Event\nis, in fact, the working title of that collection. Oana’s performance that night is also a work-in-progress. It’s one version of “Chambersonic (IV)” of\nChambersonic\nand the written textual material traces of that project will be coming out as a book also in 2024 under the title,\nChambersonic\n. Let’s hear how Klara’s poem ends, and then we’ll hear Ian’s voice again, asking what comes next?\n19:25\nAudio Recording, Klara du Plessis, Words & Music, 2021:\n[Klara reading poem] …with eight men and an extra dead struck still in time in the instant before darkness hits before bodies speed up moving the event, rapid fire and risqué rinsing themselves in light and a handshake with air. Thank you.\n19:48\nAudio Recording, Ian Ferrier, Words & Music, 2021:\nWhat a great piece. And that’s in progress?\n19:53\nAudio Recording, Klara du Plessis, Words & Music, 2021:\nYeah, this is new stuff. [Laughs]\n19:55\nAudio Recording, Ian Ferrier, Words & Music, 2021:\n[Laughs] Yeah, it’s really great. It’s really, really, really stunning all the different parts connecting around the event. So thank you very much for that. And thank you for your work on this conference and to Jason and to Ali as well. It’s been an amazing journey, which I guess you get to relax from tomorrow. Or do you do a post-mortem, or what happens at the end of all this?\n20:22\nKatherine McLeod:\nWhen Ian asks Klara about the post-mortem of the event, it’s quite funny to hear that now because our symposium committee for listening sound agency has gone on to produce many collaborative outputs. The event has not ended. There’s an art book called\nQuotes\nedited by Klara and Emma Telaro about to be at this year’s symposium; also to be launched is a vinyl record with sounds from symposium participants, compiled by Deanna Fong, Angus Tarnowsky and Jason Camlot; a podcast episode has been released about the symposium and it was produced by Mathieu Aubin and Stephanie Ricci. And there will be a forthcoming issue of English Studies in Canada called “New Sonic Approaches to Literary Studies” edited by Jason Camlot and me, Katherine McLeod. So when you hear the end of this event, know that it is not the end, just like the poems that we have listened to continue to be in progress. This, this too is the event. [Start Music: ShortCuts Theme Music]\n21:32\nAudio Recording, Ian Ferrier, Words & Music, 2021:\nSo nice to see everybody tonight. Thanks for your performances to Klara, to Cole, to Erin, to Oana, to Kevin. It’s been a really fun ride tonight. So thank you.\n21:43\nAudio Recording, Klara du Plessis, Words & Music, 2021:\nThank you. Thank you both.\n21:46\nAudio Recording, Kevin McNeilly, Words & Music, 2021:\nThanks so much. It’s terrific.\n21:49\nAudio Recording, Ian Ferrier, Words & Music, 2021:\nGoodnight, everyone. Thanks for sharing. Thanks for coming.\n21:51\nAudio Recording, Jason Camlot, Words & Music, 2021:\nWe’ll see you all soon.\n21:58\nKatherine McLeod:\nYou’ve been listening to ShortCuts. If you want to learn more about where the sounds you’ve heard have come from head to SpokenWeb.ca and check the show notes for ShortCuts. If you’re listening to this on the release day, and you want to tune-in to SpokenWeb’s Symposium this year, head to spoken web.ca and click on “Symposia.” Plus you can find the podcast episode based on last year’s symposium by checking previous episodes of The SpokenWeb Podcast. You’ll find “Listening, Sound, Agency: a retrospective listening to the 2021 SpokenWeb Symposium” as the March, 2022 episode. ShortCuts is hosted by Hannah McGregor transcribed by Kelly Cubbon mixed and mastered by Judith Burr, Kate Moffatt, and Miranda Eastwood, and produced by me, Katherine McLeod. Thanks for listening. 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Chronicles: Early Works. Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2011.\\n\\nCamlot, Jason and Katherine McLeod. “Unarchiving the Literary Event.” CanLit Across Media: Unarchiving the Literary Event. Eds. Jason Camlot and Katherine McLeod. McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2019. 3-31.\\n\\n“Gerry Gilbert radiofreerainforest Collection.” SFU Digitized Collections, https://digital.lib.sfu.ca/gerry-gilbert-radiofreerainforest-collection.\\n\\nKinesis. Periodicals. Vancouver : Vancouver Status of Women, 1 Sept. 1988. https://open.library.ubc.ca/collections/kinesis/items/1.0045699.\\n\\nOur Lives. Toronto: Black Women’s Collective. Volume 2 5.6 (Summer/Fall 1988), https://riseupfeministarchive.ca/publications/our-lives-canadas-first-black-womens-newspaper/ourlives-02-0506-summer-fall-1988/.\\n\\n“radiofreerainforest 3 & 28 July and 7 August, 1988.” Gerry Gilbert radiofreerainforest Collection: SFU Digitized Collections,  https://digital.lib.sfu.ca/radiofreerainforest-357/radiofreerainforest-3-28-july-and-7-august-1988.\\n\\n“radiofreerainforest 7, 25 August, 1988 and 30 October, 1988.” Gerry Gilbert radiofreerainforest Collection: SFU Digitized Collections, https://digital.lib.sfu.ca/radiofreerainforest-90/radiofreerainforest-7-25-august-1988-and-30-october-1988.\\n\\n“ShortCuts 2.9: Situating Sound.” Produced by Katherine McLeod. The SpokenWeb Podcast. 21 June 2021. https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/situating-sound/.\\n\\n“Talking Transcription: Accessibility, Collaboration, and Creativity.” Produced by Kelly Cubbon and Katherine McLeod. The SpokenWeb Podcast. 6 June 2022. https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/talking-transcription-accessibility-collaboration-and-creativity/.\"}]"],"_version_":1853670549815820289,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:54.290Z","contents":["In the making of ShortCuts, series producer Katherine McLeod often talks about how recorded sound is held not only within archives but also by the work of contextualizing whenever one selects an archival audio clip and presses play. Returning to an audio recording of Dionne Brand played in ShortCuts 2.9 “Situating Sound” (June 2021), Katherine reminds us that the process of unarchiving sound is an embodied one. We listen as bodies to the archive. Moreover, how we choose to contextualize sound impacts any listening to it, and written transcripts too frame our understanding of the audio content. Building upon the most recent episode of The SpokenWeb, “Talking Transcription: Accessibility, Collaboration, and Creativity,” this episode of ShortCuts explores the transcript as another version of holding the sound, while, at the same time, invites a listening to that which exceeds that holding.\n\n“…even those that do not hold a wind’s impression”\n– Dionne Brand from Primitive Offensive\n\n00:09\tShortCuts Theme Music:\t[Piano Overlaid With Distorted Beat]\n \n\n00:09\tHannah McGregor:\tWelcome to 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. We’ll share with you, especially 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? ShortCuts is an extension of the ShortCuts blog posts on SPOKENWEBLOG, so if you love what you hear, make sure to head over to SpokenWeb.ca for more. If you’re a researcher with the SpokenWeb Project, think about joining Katherine on ShortCuts to discuss an archival clip that has impacted your work, especially if you’re a student that has been digitizing and cataloguing recordings that there’s a sound that stands out to you after all those hours of listening. Let Katherine know! Pitch Katherine your audio by emailing SpokenWebPodcast@gmail.com [End Music: Piano Overlaid With Distorted Beat] Now here is Katherine McLeod with SpokenWeb ShortCuts, mini-stories about how literature sounds.\n \n\n00:58\tSpokenWeb Podcast Theme Music:\n \n\n[Instrumental Overlapped with Feminine Voice]\n01:27\tKatherine McLeod:\tWelcome to ShortCuts. Last month we immersed in the world of the SpokenWeb symposium. The ShortCuts episode called “The Event” included audio that resonates with both this year’s and last year’s symposium and institute. And if you were at the symposium you’ll know that I was recording ShortCuts Live! A new type of ShortCuts episode recorded live on site with various researchers within the SpokenWeb network. Stay tuned for ShortCuts Live! in the next season. This month, we continue the season’s theme of how the archives remembers. We’ll be listening to a clip from a past ShortCuts – one from last June, exactly one year ago – and we’ll listen to it again in the context of the transcription episode on The SpokenWeb Podcast released at the start of this month. In that episode, Kelly Cubbon and I talk about transcription as a process that is rooted in conversation and collaboration. Do check it out – Episode 9 “Talking Transcription: Accessibility, Collaboration, and Creativity”. After making that episode, I thought I’d take a look back at some of the transcripts for ShortCuts. When Kelly transcribes the audio, it is usually quite straightforward but when there are questions they’re often questions related to providing further context as to where the sound is coming from, or if we should put a cue for the reader as to where that voice is from, or where it was recorded, right in the transcript. To quote Kelly herself making one of my favourite points in our episode…\n \n\n03:08\tKelly Cubbon, S3E9, SpokenWeb Podcast:\tThe overlapping sound is one thing, but I think also overlapping context for lack of a better word has been something I’ve I think we’ve been working to indicate such as if someone appears in an episode in a Zoom interview and then in an archival recording of them, and that archival recording includes them speaking to the audience as an aside and then performing poetry. And then maybe they’re in kind of a more formal voiceover audio. There might be four instances of slightly different context to indicate.\n \n\n03:42\tKatherine McLeod:\tKelly and I have talked so much about how these questions are not transcription problems but rather generative transcription challenges and situations to learn from. Another challenge that can emerge in ShortCuts is how to transcribe words from a poem read out loud. What we have gone with is an approach that transcribes the words as spoken out loud (though including in brackets that the speaker is reading a poem since often the tone of the voice has changed.) That way the transcript is not attempting to reproduce the poem on the page as it is published – rather, the transcript aims to represent the sounds heard in the podcast and to make them more accessible. Those examples of what can come up in the process of transcription speak to what I’ve described in past ShortCuts as a figuring out, a navigating of how much to frame the archival audio clips that I play for you here. How much do I explain their context? Or do I simply press play? A phrase that captures this balancing act (at least for me!) is one that emerged out of the partial replay that we’ll be hearing in this ShortCuts. [Sound Effect: Tape Rewinding and Stopping] … is what kind of a framework does audio clipped out of context need to feel supported? And I say that while holding out my arms, gesturing as if I’m attempting to hold the sound. [Sound Effect: Tape Rewinding and Stopping] I’ve returned to this image and to this phrase and to this act in many moments in these episodes when thinking about as place held, supported, with my arms outstretched, as an embodied experience – an audible place created as a feminist placemaking. Holding with arms outstretched conveys that the work of framing is my intervention in it – I am not neutral in how I frame the sound even if I am also offering it to you to do what you wish with it, letting you know that the sound is there ready to be listening to. I Am holding the sound carefully, knowing how difficult it can be to take a recorded voice, with all of its situated affect attached to it, out of the archives. To unarchive carefully. That got me thinking, a transcript is also an attempt to hold the sound – it attempts to hold the sound in such a way that increases accessibility to the content while also recognizing that the transcript is, in some way, mediating the experience. With all of this in mind, let’s return to the episode aptly titled “Situating Sound” and hear it again in this moment in time. It is an episode that could be situated in the context of “Communal Memories” which I produced afterwards in December 2021, and that is based on the second part of this recording with the voice of late Stolo writer Lee Maracle. Hearing “Situating Sound” now makes me feel there’s no episode that necessarily comes before or after, but that these episodes continue to cycle around each other. With that let’s dive into “Situating Sound” from June 2021. [Sound Effect: Tape Fast Forwarding] And you’ll hear a recording of Dionne Brand reading in 1988. I invite you to think of how the transcript holds the sound, how the information I provide holds the sound, [Sound Effect: Tape Stops, Presses Play]. And how my voice holds the sound in that I am telling you about what you are going to hear, and to listen for moments when sound exceeds this holding… [Start Music: Piano Instrumental]\n \n\n07:39\tKatherine McLeod, S2E9, ShortCuts:\t…and she had also written about this solidarity in a 1988 issue of the Black women’s newspaper Our Lives that Brand had helped to edit. These pieces of context are only the beginning of unpacking the significance of these two women reading together. And unravelling this history all started by wanting to know more about one archival recording. [End Music: Piano Instrumental]So as we listen to this reading, what would it be like to be there in that room with Dionne Brand and Lee Maracle in 1988? Now in June, 2021, what does it feel like when you hear this recording wherever you might be listening from? How do we understand this recording in relation to the archive that holds it? I am recording this a week after Brand read from The Blue Clerk at an annual meeting of the Association of Canadian Archivists. How does Brand hear time? When she introduces what she reads from Primitive Offensive in the recording we’re about to hear she says that the poetry is made out of the pieces of history, a history that as she says, if you are Black in the Americas, you have to dig for it. How does that resonate with the lines where she chooses to end?\n \n\n08:57\tArchival Audio, Dionne Brand, 1988:\t… [Ambient Background Noise] [Reading Poetry] I won’t take any evidence of me, even that carved in the sky by the fingerprints of clouds every day. Even those that do not hold a wind’s impression. [Aside to Audience] Okay, that’s it. [Audience applause].\n \n\n09:14\tKatherine McLeod, S2E9, ShortCuts:\tAs we could hear in that recording, there are noises in the background. We’ll be hearing what sound like cars passing outside, we’ll hear some voices and might wonder if those are people talking outside the bookstore window, or perhaps this recording has been recorded over another one and we’re actually hearing the voices of another time bleeding through the tape. Here is Dionne Brand reading from her book, Primitive Offensive in a recording that was broadcast on radiofreerainforest on August 7th, 1988, and now that recording is held by and shapes an archive.\n \n\n10:00\tArchival Audio, Dionne Brand, 1988:\t[Static and various background noises throughout] I’m going to read a poem for my grandmother, a poem for my ancestors, really. I wrote this book Primitive Offensive because, for whatever history has left you, if you were Black in the Americas, you have to dig and dig and dig and memorize and memorize and learn and learn it and redo it and recover it and re– you know, because it isn’t anywhere else. And so this was my history book. Sometimes you arrive and find what seems to be nothing, and you have to dig for it. And this is a call to my ancestors about this history. And I looked for my ancestors and I found what there was. And so – and sometimes you find nothing and you make it anyway. [Laughs] You know, you find a piece of cloth, a bit of this, whatever, but you make it human. So –[Start of reading] Ancestor dirt/ ancestor snake/ ancestor lice / ancestor whip/ ancestor fish/ ancestor slime/ ancestor sea/ ancestor stick/ ancestor iron/ ancestor bush/ ancestor ship/ ancestor old woman, old bead/ let me feel your skin, old muscle, old stick/ where are my bells?/ my rattles/ my condiments, my things to fill houses and minutes/ The fat is starting, where are my things?/ My mixtures, my bones, my decorations/ old bread, old tamarind switch./ Will you bathe me in oils?/ Will you tie me in white cloth?/ Call me by my praise name/ Sing me Oshun song./ Oya against this clamour [Background Noise Rises; Inaudible Voices] / Ancestor old woman/ Send my things after me./ One moment, old lady more questions./ What happened to the ship in your leap? The boatswain, did he scan the passage’s terrible wet face/ The navigator, did he blink?/ Or steer that ship through your screaming night?/ The captain did he lash two slaves to the rigging, for example?/ Lady! My things/ Water leaden, my maps, my compass/ After all, what is the political position of stars? Drop your crusted cough, where you want./ My hands make precious things out of phlegm./ Ancestor wood/ Ancestor dog/ Ancestor ancestor, old man, dry stick, mustache, skin, and bone./ Why didn’t you remember? /Why didn’t you remember the name of our tribe?/Why didn’t you tell me before you died?/ Old horse, you made the white man ride you/ You shot off your leg for him./ Old man, the name of our tribe is all I wanted./ Instead, you went to the swamps and bush and rice paddies for the trading company and they buried you in water/ Crocodile, tears. /It would have been better to remember the name of our tribe./ Now, mosquitoes dance a ballet over your grave and the old woman buried with you wants to leave./ One thing for sure, dismembered woman, when you decide you are alone/ When you decide you are alone, /when you dance, it’s your own broken face. When you eat your own plate of stones/ For damn sure you are alone./ Where do you think you are going dismembered woman?/ Limbs chopped off at the ankles./ When you decide, believe me, you are alone./ Sleep, sleep, tangential phase, sleep,/ Sleeping, or waking/ Understand you are alone./ Diamonds pour from your vagina,/ and your breasts drip healing copper/ But listen, women, dismembered continent/ You are alone./See crying fool,/ You want to talk in gold/ You will cry in iron./ You want to dig up stones./ You will bury flesh./ You think you don’t need oils and amulets compelling powder and rely on smoke./ You want to throw people in cesspits./ Understand dismembered one, ululant /You are alone./ When waterfalls work, land surfaces./ I was sent to this cave./ I went out one day like a fool to find this cave, to find clay, to dig up metals to decorate my bare and painful breasts./ Water and clay for a poultice for this gash to find a map an imprint of me anywhere would have kept me calm./ Anywhere with description./ Instead, I found a piece of this/ A tooth, a bit of food hung on. /A metatarsal, which resembled mine./ Something else like a note. Musical. /ting ting, but of so little pitch so little lasting perhaps it was my voice./ And this too, a suggestion and insinuation so slight, it may be untrue./ Something moving over the brow as with eyes close to black/ a sensate pull/ Phantom! Knocks the forehead back in the middle of a dance. /No, I can’t say dance. It exaggerates./ Phantom. A bit of image./ A motion close to sound, a sound imaged on the retina resembling sound/ A sound seen out of the corner of my eye./ Emotion heard on my inner ear./ I poured over these like a paleontologist./ I dusted them off like an archeologist/ A swatch of cloth./ Skin, atlas, coarse utility, but enough./ Still only a bit of paint, of dye on the stone./ I can not say crude, but a crude thing./ A hair, a marking. That a fingernail to rock an ancient wounded scratch./ I handle these like a papyrologist contours/ A desert sprung here./ Migrations, suggestions, lies./ Phantom. A table and jotting up artful covert mud./ I noted these like a geopolitical scientist./ I will take any evidence of me even that carved in the sky by the fingerprints of clouds every day. Even those that do not hold a wind’s impression. [End of reading] [Aside to audience] Ok. That’s it. [Audience Applause]\n \n\n16:09\tKatherine McLeod, S2E9, ShortCuts:\tThat was the Dionne Brand reading from her book, Primitive Offensive. The recording was played on Vancouver’s co-op radio on August 7th, 1988 and the recording is held by the archives of radiofree rainforest. Now part of SFU library’s digital collections. [Start Music: ShortCuts Theme Music].\n \n\n16:33\tKatherine McLeod:\tYou’ve been listening to ShortCuts. It was recorded in Montreal or what is known as Tiohtià:ke in the language of the Kanien’kehá:ka nation. ShortCuts is hosted by Hannah McGregor, transcribed by Kelly Cubbon, mixed and mastered by Miranda Eastwood, and produced by me, Katherine McLeod. Thanks for listening. [End Music: ShortCuts Theme Music]\n "],"score":2.7048998},{"id":"9990","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 3.10, [Replay] Moving, Still, 18 July 2022, McLeod"],"item_title_source":["SpokenWeb Podcast web page."],"item_title_note":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/replay-moving-still/"],"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":[2022],"material_description":["[]"],"digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://cdn.simplecast.com/audio/28a9da1f-8cca-410c-b5d7-8165a73f9394/episodes/d939009b-0129-4515-85b9-34a39f7b18fd/audio/25ff9391-8f6a-4558-b9e0-9ca82e415aa9/default_tc.mp3?nocache\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"shortcuts-3-10-mp3.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"44.1 kHz\",\"duration\":\"00:18:49\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"18,073,435 bytes\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"MP3 audio\",\"title\":\"shortcuts-3-10-mp3\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/replay-moving-still/\"}]"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"2022-07-18\",\"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"],"content_notes":["*Transcript In Progress*"],"contents":["This month, ShortCuts is replaying a past episode as a response to this month’s full episode of The SpokenWeb Podcast. That episode – “starry and full of glory”: Phyllis Webb, in Memoriam (produced by Stephen Collis) – is a moving commemoration of the life and work of Canadian poet Phyllis Webb. Along with archival clips, the episode features conversations with two poets – Isabella Wang and Fred Wah – in which they talk about an unpublished poem of Webb’s. Listen to this replay of ShortCuts Ep. 3.7 “Moving, Still” and then, listen to Collis’s episode about Webb as a collective listening. What does the archive remember?"],"Note":["[]"],"Related_works":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"ARCHIVAL AUDIO\\n\\nPhyllis Webb reading (with Gwendolyn MacEwen) in Montreal on November 18, 1966, https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/phyllis-webb-at-sgwu-1966-roy-kiyooka.\\n\\nShortCuts 2.7: Moving, 19 April 2021, https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/moving.\\n\\nRESOURCES\\n\\nCollis, Stephen. Almost Islands: Phyllis Webb and the Pursuit of the Unwritten. Talonbooks, 2018.\\n\\nMcLeod, Katherine. “Listening to the Archives of Phyllis Webb.” In Moving Archives. Ed. Linda Morra. Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2020. 113-131.\\n\\nWebb, Phyllis. Naked Poems. Periwinkle Press, 1965.\\n\\nWebb, Phyllis. Peacock Blue: The Collected Poems. Ed. John Hulcoop. Talonbooks, 2014.\"}]"],"_version_":1853670549816868864,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:54.290Z","score":2.7048998},{"id":"9991","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 5.1, Introducing ShortCuts, Live!, 16 October 2023, McLeod"],"item_title_source":["SpokenWeb Podcast web page."],"item_title_note":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/introducing-shortcuts-live/"],"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":[2023],"material_description":["[]"],"digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://cdn.simplecast.com/audio/28a9da1f-8cca-410c-b5d7-8165a73f9394/episodes/cf9825d7-2330-4377-a62d-caa50ba79c7b/audio/33a2eb71-61fd-4394-a32d-9dfd116279a2/default_tc.mp3?nocache\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"shortcuts-master-1.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"44.1 kHz\",\"duration\":\"00:08:24\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"8,078,777 bytes\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"MP3 audio\",\"title\":\"shortcuts-master-1\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/introducing-shortcuts-live/\"}]"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"2023-10-16\",\"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":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"Archival audio sampled in this episode is from these past episodes: \\n\\nShortCuts 4.2 “ShortCuts Live! Talking with Sarah Cipes about Feminist Audio Editing,” produced by Katherine McLeod,\\nThe SpokenWeb Podcast\\n,\\n21 Nov 2022\\n\\nhttps://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/shortcuts-live-talking-with-sarah-cipes-about-feminist-audio-editing/\\n\\n \\n\\nShortCuts 4.3 “ShortCuts Live! Talking with Faith Paré about the Atwater Poetry Project Archives,” produced by Katherine McLeod,\\nThe SpokenWeb Podcast\\n, 20 February 2023\\nhttps://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/shortcuts-live-talking-with-faith-pare-about-the-atwater-poetry-project-archives/\\n\\n \\n\\nShortCuts 4.4 “ShortCuts Live! Talking with Ariel Kroon, Nick Beauchesne, and Chelsea Miya,” produced by Katherine McLeod,\\nThe SpokenWeb Podcast\\n, 20 March 2023\\n\\nhttps://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/shortcuts-live-talking-with-ariel-kroon-nick-beauchesne-and-chelsea-miya/\\n\\n \\n\\nShortCuts 4.5 “ShortCuts Live! Talking with Annie Murray,” produced by Katherine McLeod,\\nThe SpokenWeb Podcast\\n, 17 April 2023\\n\\nhttps://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/shortcuts-live-talking-with-annie-murray/\\n\\n \\n\\nShortCuts 4.6 “What’s that noise? Listening Queerly to the Ultimatum Festival Archives,” produced by Ella Jando-Saul,\\nThe SpokenWeb Podcast, \\n\\nhttps://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/whats-that-noise-listening-queerly-to-the-ultimatum-festival-archives/\\n\\n \"}]"],"_version_":1853670549818966016,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:54.290Z","contents":["Welcome to Season 5 of ShortCuts. \n\nShortCuts started out on the podcast feed as a ‘minisode’ during our first season and it soon took on a life of its own. ShortCuts host and producer Katherine McLeod would take you on a deep dive into the SpokenWeb archives through a short ‘cut’ of audio. What did it feel like to hear archival audio? And how could we carefully unarchive its sound? These questions evolved into conversations, and thus emerged ShortCuts, Live! Last season featured Katherine’s conversations with Sarah Cipes, Faith Paré, Chelsea Miya, Nick Beaschesne, Ariel Kroon, and Annie Murray, along with a special episode produced by Ella Jando-Saul. And, this season, ShortCuts Live continues. It will be even more ‘live’ and in-person season than ever before, but before we go there, we do what we always do to start a new season. We perform what\nShortCuts\nsounds like\nin sound.\nListen to this episode, listen to past episodes, and then stay tuned for our new season on\nThe SpokenWeb Podcast\nfeed. \n\n(0:00) \nShortCuts\nTheme Music\n[Soft piano music interspersed with electronic sound begins]\n(00:01)\nKatherine McLeod\nWelcome to\nShortCuts\n. On\nShortCuts\n. We listen closely and carefully to a short ‘cut’ [scissor sound] or ‘cuts’ [scissor sound] from the archives.\nShortCuts\nbegan in season one of the\nSpokenWeb\npodcast. It started out as what we called a minisode,  a short episode to engage with interesting clips from the audio archives that caught my attention as a producer and curator. \n\nBut this soon evolved. Episodes became a way to really dwell in the sound, to listen again – and again ­– to audio clips from the archives, as a place to practice a feminist listening in the archives and think about what we are listening to, how we are listening to it, and what it feels like to listen.\nShortCuts\nhas evolved onto the page. I’ve written about the first seasons of\nShortCuts\nas feminist placemaking through podcasting in a forthcoming chapter, co-written with Hannah McGregor and Stacey Copeland. Last year’s trailer ended up transforming into a short forum contribution to English Studies in Canada, published earlier this year. That piece is called “Archival Listening.”\n\nTalking about what it feels like to listen to audio from the archives evolved into wanting to talk with other people about what it feels like to hear these sounds. \n\n[\nShortCuts\ntheme music fades] Thus\nShortCuts\nevolved into what was last season, ShortCuts Live! Conversations with\nSpokenWeb\nresearchers about a short ‘cut’ of audio from the archives. This season, we continue\nShortCuts\nLive and aim to be even more live and on-site than\nShortCuts\nhas ever been before. But first, I want to do what we always do to start a new season of\nShortCuts\n, and that is to dive into its own archives of last season. \n\n[\nShortCuts\ntheme music swells]\n\nBecause me telling you the story of\nShortCuts\nevolving is one way of explaining what it does. But what if we ask, what does\nShortCuts\ndo in sound? In the following mix, you’ll hear the voices of Sarah Sipes, Faith Pare, Chelsea Mia, Nick Beauchesne, Ariel Kroon, and Annie Murray, along with Ella Jando-Saul from the special episode Ella made with Mathieu Aubin, Misha Solman, Sophia Magglioca, and Rowan Nancarrow. And of course, check the show notes after for the full story of all the archival sounds. [Theme music ends]\n(02:33)\nKatherine McLeod, archival audio from ShortCuts 4.4\n…[fades in] do the same thing that I have done for the other ones that I did this week, which was – is – actually going to podcast voice to do the opening [Katherine laughs]. It feels like somehow you need headphones to go into podcast voice [Katherine laughs].\n(02:47)\nAriel Kroon, archival audio from ShortCuts 4.4\nYeah, put it on. It’s – part of the – part of the suit!\n(02:49)\nKatherine McLeod, archival audio from ShortCuts 4.4\nExactly. [Katherine laughs]\n(02:51)\nAnnie Murray, archival audio from ShortCuts 4.5 \nSo what do you wanna talk about?\n(2:53)\nKatherine McLeod, archival audio from ShortCuts 4.5\nWell, [Katherine and Annie laugh] first, I’ll say, welcome to\nShortCuts\n.\n(03:00)\nKatherine McLeod, archival audio from ShortCuts 4.3\n[\nShortCuts\ntheme music plays] Welcome to\nShortCuts\n. Welcome to\nShortCuts\n, this month on\nShortCuts\n, we’re here live on Zoom with the Atwater Poetry Project curator Faith Pare. Faith joins me for this conversation…[Theme music ends]\n(03:16)\nKatherine McLeod, archival audio from ShortCuts 4.2 \n…We’re recording this\nShortCuts\nLive in 4th Space at Concordia University during the\nSpokenWeb\nSound Institute. I’m here with Sarah Cipes. Thanks so much for joining me, Sarah.\n(03:26)\nSarah Cipes, archival audio from ShortCuts 4.2\nThanks so much for having me.\n(03:30)\nKatherine McLeod, archival audio from ShortCuts 4.3 \nThis really is a\nShortCuts\nLive by the fact that my three-month-old daughter is also here with me, and for long time\nShortCuts\nlisteners you’ll remember that back in season two, the voice of a poet’s young daughter has already been heard on\nShortCuts\n.\n(03:41)\nAnnie Murray, archival audio from ShortCuts 4.5 \nKatherine has just handed me a tape called “Over 60 Minutes with Luba.” Luba is on the front. It was issued by Capital Records and EMI Canada 1987.\n(03:56)\nKatherine McLeod, archival audio from ShortCuts 4.5\nYou’ve been immersed in the EMI Collection at University of Calgary. What are you, what are you noticing? How does this speak to you as an, as an archival object?\n(04:05)\nAnnie Murray, archival audio from ShortCuts 4.5 \nWell, what’s interesting about this tape…\n(04:07)\nKatherine McLeod, archival audio from ShortCuts 4.4 \nCould you tell me and listeners what we’re listening to?\n(04:12)\nChelsea Miya, archival audio from ShortCuts 4.4\nSo we’re, that was a clip from the Voiceprint episode, “Room and a Voice of One’s Own.”\n(04:17)\nFaith Paré, archival audio from ShortCuts 4.3 \nThe APP archives are interesting, I think for me as a former SpokenWeb RA, in that they’re all digital. The series started to be regularly recorded in 2010. This was also really firmly embraced by the library too, and thinking about the Atwater Library and Computer Center’s mandate…\n(04:38)\nElla Jando-Saul, archival audio from ShortCuts 4.5 \n[Sound effect of heart beat plays and fades] In 1985, Allan Lorde with help from a team of close friends, organized ultimatum, a literary festival that took […]\n(04:46)\nSophia Magglioca, archival audio from ShortCuts 4.5\nYeah, the weird heartbeat noise is really interesting to me because I can’t tell if it’s intentional or not, and it’s doing really interesting things with the poet’s voice.\n(04:59)\nAriel Kroon, archival audio from ShortCuts 4.5 \nThat was a clip from Joanne Coombs, and she came on as a guest. Uh, she was working as an editor for academic papers. I think maybe an academic journal at the time. And so she was really talking about her practice of feminist editing at the time, and we were so fascinated by what she had to say, because it struck us as very resonant and relevant to discussions that are all around us.\n(05:25)\nSarah Cipes, archival audio from ShortCuts 4.2 \nAnd so bringing that into audio was a really interesting idea for me because redaction, restriction, and censorship and all of these things that have a lot of negative feelings around them for researchers can actually be turned into positive things, I think, particularly within audio, that actually allow users to listen to tapes that they might otherwise be totally barred from, and so my desire was to create sound edits that allow the listener to hear the vast majority of, of the tape…\n(06:05)\nKatherine McLeod, archival audio from ShortCuts 4.2\nMm-hmm.\n(06:06)\nSarah Cipes, archival audio from ShortCuts 4.2 \n– while also protecting the privacy of those on the tape. Or even in this case, someone who’s mentioned who’s not there. \n(06:15)\nKatherine McLeod, archival audio from ShortCuts 4.2 \nMm-hmm. Mm-hmm.\n(06:16)\nSarah Cipes, archival audio from ShortCuts 4.2 \nBut really a feminist edit could also be about amplifying voices that are not usually central to the microphone –\n(06:30)\nMisha Solomon, archival audio from ShortCuts 4.6 \n[Sound effect of heartbeat plays and ends] What I find really interesting about the mystery of the sound is that it’s a reminder of the missing information on these tapes. That these tapes are representative of performances that involved some visual aspect, and that aspect is missing entirely. And so when the sound changes, or disappears, one could imagine someone in an outrageous outfit playing a percussion instrument in the corner and producing that sound…\n(07:00)\nKatherine McLeod, archival audio from ShortCuts 4.5\n… and one particular song, that that song perhaps could, you know, appear at some point, or audibly in this –  \n(07:10)\nAnnie Murray, archival audio from ShortCuts 4.5\nOr a clip.\n(07:11)\nKatherine McLeod, archival audio from ShortCuts 4.5\nA clip. Exactly. It would just a, just little-\n(07:13)\nAnnie Murray, archival audio from ShortCuts 4.5\nMaybe the most dramatic part.\n(07:15)\n[Music builds to the chorus of “Everytime I See Your Picture I Cry”]\nSinger sings: \n\nEvery time I see your picture I cry \n\nAnd I learn to get over you\n\nOne more time because…\n(7:33)\nKatherine McLeod, archival audio from ShortCuts 4.5\nExactly. [Katherine laughs]. So, um, I think that’s, you know, a perfect note to, to end on. And I, I want to thank Annie Murray for joining me here on\nShortCuts\nLive in 4th SPACE at Concordia University. Thank you so much, Annie.\n(07:46)\nKatherine McLeod \n[ShortCuts\nmusic begins to play] You’ve been listening to\nShortCuts\n.\nShortCuts\nis released monthly as part of the\nSpokenWeb\npodcast. Feed. The\nSpokenWeb\nPodcast team is made up of supervising producer Maia Harris, sound designer, James Healy, transcriber Zoe Mix and co-host Hannah McGregor and me, Katherine McLeod. \nFind out more about the sounds that you heard on this month’s episode by checking the show notes or heading to spokenweb.ca and click on podcast. This episode of\nShortCuts\nwas produced by me, Katherine McLeod. Thanks for listening. [Theme music ends]\n \n\n"],"score":2.7048998},{"id":"9994","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 5.2, ShortCuts Live! A Magical Audio Tour with Jennifer Waits, 20 November 2023, McLeod"],"item_title_source":["SpokenWeb Podcast web page."],"item_title_note":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/shortcuts-live-a-magical-audio-tour-with-jennifer-waits/"],"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":[2023],"material_description":["[]"],"digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://cdn.simplecast.com/audio/28a9da1f-8cca-410c-b5d7-8165a73f9394/episodes/569ffe3e-7643-47e3-8dca-6e676f7bd9a3/audio/5ced2478-171e-40d6-b2b0-e59df3b49fba/default_tc.mp3?nocache\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"shortcuts-5-2-master.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"44.1 kHz\",\"duration\":\"00:18:20\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"17,602,395 bytes\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"MP3 audio\",\"title\":\"shortcuts-5-2-master\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/shortcuts-live-a-magical-audio-tour-with-jennifer-waits/\"}]"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"2023-11-20\",\"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":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"ARCHIVAL AUDIO\\n\\nArchival audio excerpted from this episode of Radio Survivor:\\n\\nhttps://www.radiosurvivor.com/2015/11/podcast-22-were-all-moving-to-the-fm-dial-now/\\n\\nBlog post with photographs from Jennifer Waits’s tour of Radio K:\\n\\nhttps://www.radiosurvivor.com/2015/10/my-grand-tour-of-college-radio-station-radio-k/\\n\\nA past Radio Survivor episode featuring SpokenWeb:\\n\\nhttps://www.radiosurvivor.com/2021/02/podcast-284-spokenweb-and-literary-sound/\\n\\n\"}]"],"_version_":1853670549820014592,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:54.290Z","contents":["This ShortCuts presents the first of many conversations recorded at the University of Alberta as part of the 2023 SpokenWeb Symposium. Recorded on site by SpokenWeb’s Kate Moffatt and Miranda Eastwood, the conversations often took place in spaces where the sonic environment of the symposium is audibly present. As always on ShortCuts, we begin with an audio clip from the archives, but this time the interviewees are the ones bringing an archival sound to the table. What will we hear? And where will these sounds take us? Join us for this ShortCuts Live in which a conversation with Jennifer Waits that takes us on a magical audio tour into the sounds of campus radio stations.\n\n(0:00)\tShortCuts Theme Music\t[Soft piano music interspersed with electronic sound begins]\n(0:04)\tKatherine McLeod\tWelcome to ShortCuts. This month we’re back with another ShortCuts Live! Talking with researchers in person and starting those conversations with a short ‘cut’ of audio. Many of these conversations were recorded on site at the 2023 SpokenWeb Symposium held at the University of Alberta. So, what will we hear and who will we talk with? Stay tuned for this season – and, to start us off, this episode is a conversation with Jennifer Waits. Yes, that is the Jennifer Waits of Radio Survivor, the podcast that explores the future of community radio and college radio, low-power FM and public access TV, along with podcasting and internet radio – and she often explores that future by diving into the past, and in fact the clip that Jennifer plays for us is from one of her tours of a college radio station.\nLet’s listen in as SpokenWeb Podcast’s Kate Moffatt and Miranda Eastwood talk with Jennifer in a recording booth at the University of Alberta. Here is Shortcuts Live. [Theme music fades]\n(1:19)\tKate Moffat\tPerfect. And it’s recording. Okay. I’m just gonna move this a little closer so I’m not ….Alright, so, hello and welcome to Shortcuts Live, recorded at the 2023 SpokenWeb Symposium at the University of Alberta. I am sitting here, my name is Kate Moffatt and I am the supervising producer for the SpokenWeb Podcast, stepping in for our usual intrepid host, Katherine McLeod, and I’m sitting here with Jennifer Waits, who we are so excited to talk to today. Jennifer, would you mind just introducing yourself for us?\n(1:50)\tJennifer Waits\tYeah, thanks so much for having me. I am Jennifer Waits and I’m one of the co-founders of Radio Survivor, which is a website and podcast and syndicated radio show about the culture of radio, audio, sound. Um, so I’ve written pieces there as well as these audio productions. And, um, I’m also a long time college radio DJ, write about radio culture and other spaces besides radio survivor and obsessively tour radio stations. [Kate laughs]\n(2:23)\tKate Moffat\tThat’s fantastic. We’re so excited to chat today, so we’re gonna listen to something together and I don’t know, would you like to say something about it before we start?\n(2:34)\tJennifer Waits\tYeah. So, I decided to bring– it’s an excerpt of the Radio Survivor show. I think at this point it was just a podcast and not a syndicated radio show. It’s from October, 2015. And in part of this episode I shared one of my radio station tours where I had recorded some audio. So, um, I just thought that would be fun to share.\nAt this point I have written up tours to just over 170 radio stations. So, I mean, really an obsession. I started in 2008 and I don’t always make audio, but when we started doing the Radio Survivor podcast, I started recording some audio and occasionally use that on the show.\n[Sound effect of old tape player starting]\nWe’re gonna hear an excerpt from my tour of Radio K at University of Minnesota, KUOM. And this was recorded in October, 2015.\n[Sound effect of tape player stopping and starting]\n(3:40)\tArchival audio of Jennifer Waits from Radio Survivor\t[fade in]…tour guide. He’s a junior named Paul Benson, and he had all the time in the world on a Friday afternoon to show me around the station. So, for me, that’s like my dream tour because I could stay at a radio station for hours on end and he didn’t have anywhere to go and he enjoyed exploring things at the station he’d never seen before with me. So it was an incredible tour, super fun. I saw every nook and cranny.\nI saw places that aren’t normally on tours when they tour people around. The station itself occupies pretty much a whole floor of this building on campus called the Rerig Center. And I was kind of blown away by how massive their space is. They’ve got lots of different studios. All the different spaces seem to be behind these closed doors, so you don’t really know what there is until you open the door. And then there’s something magical behind it. Either it’s a studio or a production room. They’ve got a large live studio where they have live bands play.\nIt’s pretty much like a professional recording studio. And it even had an area sectioned off to put drums, which I’ve never seen before at a radio station where, you know, they’re even thinking about putting drums in a separate space so you don’t have sounds spilling over. [Soft piano music fades in] Um, and that room also had a disco ball that was cool. And a piano too. [Piano music fades out] And then one of my favorites, they had all these hidden closets that were full of music. So.\n(5:20)\tArchival audio of Jennifer Waits from Radio Survivor\tSo what exactly is this room that we’re in?\n(5:23)\tArchival audio of Paul Benson from Radio Survivor \tThis is just –\nIt looks like just a dilapidated vinyl. Edgar Winter. I’m finding all of the vinyl of songs that we’re playing for our Halloween show and marching band.\n(5:37)\tArchival audio of Jennifer Waits from Radio Survivor \tSo do you come in here and, you know, poke around?\n(5:40)\tArchival audio of Paul Benson from Radio Survivor \tThis is one of the first times I’ve actually been in here just because I don’t, I can’t steal any of them or upload them to my computer. So I just like, I guess I just haven’t explored all the weird vinyl that we have.\n(5:55)\tArchival audio of Jennifer Waits from Radio Survivor\tAre you guys able to play 78’s? Do you have a 78 needle?\n(5:59)\tArchival audio of Paul Benson from Radio Survivor\tOh God. You know, I don’t, I don’t know.\n(6:03)\tArchival audio of Jennifer Waits from Radio Survivor\tBecause look, this is probably a 78, super fragile.\n(6:06)\tArchival audio of Paul Benson from Radio Survivor\tHow do we know? It’s just sound effects. Oh my God. This is airplanes, continuous airplanes.\n(6:15)\tArchival audio of Jennifer Waits from Radio Survivor\tThis is 13 army planes in formation.\n(6:19)\tArchival audio of Paul Benson from Radio Survivor \tThis is, we’re out of formation. It sounds different.\n(6:22)\tArchival audio of Jennifer Waits from Radio Survivor\tAnd then, in that same closet there were a bunch of 1970s, like very mainstream K Tel records. So these collections of mainstream hits from the seventies and a Jimmy Swaggart record and then like some really cool punk seven inches, like all in the same closet.\n[Sound effect of tape stopping]\n(6:40)\tKate Moffatt\tThank you so much. That was a very joyful thing to listen to, somehow. [Kate laughs] I feel like I was trying really hard not to laugh throughout it. That was, that was so great. Please. Yeah. What were we just listening to?\n(6:53)\tJennifer Waits\tIt is for me too. So, we’re touring Radio K at the University of Minnesota. And this student, Paul Benson, you know, like I mentioned at the beginning, I was in the station with him for about three hours on I think a Friday night, and you know, often I’m staying like longer than people want me [Kate and Jennifer laugh].\nBut he was so down, and I have such fond memories of this and I’m so glad I have this audio record of it because, yeah, every time… I was excited to play it again because it brings back that joyful feeling that I had and is also just, you know, it’s sort of an artistic representation of what these tours are like for me.\nLike the tours serve a lot of different purposes.  You know, I’m trying to document college radio culture. I feel like I’m preserving these stories and what stations are like at a particular point in time. And now this is essentially history, you know, ’cause this was 2015 and my mind is traveling to places. Like I wonder if —like, there were some really old—the records we were talking about, the sound effect records of planes in formation. There were a ton of ’em. And, and these were in these sort of, if I remember correctly, they were in green envelopes, you know, kind of like they were military. And, and so I, at the time I wondered where these came from and, you know, now I wonder if they’re still there. And Radio K has a very, or radio at University of Minnesota has a very long history going back to the twenties.\nSo, you know, they could have records that have just been in that library for a very long time. So I was pretty excited. I think it was the same tour where we also saw some vapor wave cassettes. So it was all over the map. And that was my tour guide playing the piano in that live room that we heard.\n(8:52)\tKate Moffatt\tOh wow. I thought it was cool that there was almost this parallel between the way that you guys were interacting with the boxes and the way that you described the shape of the radio station itself, where you were like, there’s all these doors sub in boxes. You’re like, every time you open it, you don’t know what’s gonna be in there, sub in boxes. Right? Like, you know, and then you open it and there’s something magical. Like it was cool that I, that there was like an echo there almost of the two.\n(9:19)\tJennifer Waits\tYeah. And there were even cages in one part. It was for what sort of a storage room. So there were some of these metal cages that had things behind it and there was a Radio K costume, and he put it on. Yeah, and he put it on for me it was almost like it had matching gloves. It was sort of a stuffed [Jennifer laughs] like a, not a stuffy, but, yeah, I mean it’s a trip and in the room with the cages that there was some really historic material in that room too.\nI mean it’s, yeah, it’s like a fever dream actually this whole tour. And it’s in this sort of brutalist building and it’s unbelievable. I can’t believe how much space they have in the first place. And then the fact that they have all this interesting material there and that he was excited, you know, to go on this journey was, was pretty amazing.\n(10:17)\tKate Moffatt\tTo get to spend that much time in there and, and looking at it. I kind of have two questions here. And one is like, I’d love for you to tell us more about like if this audio kind of also, I don’t know, relates to or informs your research that you do kind of more generally. And also maybe in a connected sort of way, the role of listening in your research as well.\n(10:38)\tJennifer Waits\tYeah. So I just started visiting stations again after, you know, the pandemic. So, you know, starting in fall 2022, I started visiting again, and I felt so rusty I’d kind of forgotten about all the things I’m trying to capture. And, and on this recording you can hear my camera snapping so-\n(10:58)\tKate Moffatt\tWhich I loved, by the way.\n(10:59)\tJennifer Waits\tYeah! So, it’s, you know, I take a ton of photos and then occasionally I’m recording audio. Sometimes I sit down and record a more formal interview. But sometimes like this time, you know, the microphone is kind of in the middle somewhere so you can hear me sort of in the distance at times because we’re not mic’d like we’re doing a, you know, professional recording. [Kate laughs]\nAnd so it’s a struggle for me because I’m trying to listen to and capture so much I’m trying to capture, you know, all the things I’m seeing visually. And then as you can tell from this, there was so much in the ambient, you know, environment of this place that was interesting. Like the spontaneous piano playing on the tour. And, I don’t think I captured this with audio, but at one point some other, I was at a college radio conference and there was an official tour of Radio K and at one point that official tour came into the record library where we were.\nAnd so it’s like we intersected for a moment. [Kate laughs] But I was on my own private, you know – magical tour. So, yeah, it’s a challenge actually for me to capture everything and, um, and I’m trying to figure out if there’s a better structure. So I think on these tours that I’ve been taking just in this past academic year, I’m trying to set aside like a space where, alright, why don’t we do an interview first where we’re seated and I’m not stressing about taking photos, and then, and then walk around a little bit.\n(12:37)\tKate Moffatt\tI’m so interested too. And you being like, kind of hyper aware of what you’re missing, even as you’re trying to capture it all. Like it’s, it’s really the impossibility of capturing everything, right? It’s kind of part of why the archives are still sitting there the way that they are. Right? That’s just the wealth of material.\n(12:55)\tJennifer Waits\tI’m missing so much. And then I’m, you know, I fear that when I get home and I’m sitting down to write my story that I haven’t taken the photo that I want to illustrate it, and I use a lot of photos, but, you know, sometimes I come back, I’m like, oh, I wish I’d taken this particular photo.\nOr more of this ’cause this one isn’t quite right. And I try to take photos of the people that I’m interviewing too. You know, ’cause a lot of, a lot of what college radio is about is the community and the people. And you know, I’ve started enjoying doing these portraits of people in the studio – like maybe grab your favorite record or a weird record or, you know, where do you wanna stand? And so I try to also compose some of these photos to capture the personalities.\n(13:47)\tKate Moffatt\tIt’s so, I feel like everything you’re saying is really making me think about the different ways, both literally and metaphorically that we listen to the archive.\nI think as like, a final question, but like, sort of like to kind of turn us in a bit of a, we’re obviously this is live, we’re at the conference and we just actually listened to the last, the last plenary panel of the symposium. I’d love to know what you’re listening to now. Either, you know, either in your research or just kind of like more generally, would love to hear, you know, what, what have you, what you’ve been listening to.\n(14:20)\tJennifer Waits\tOh, I mean, it’s interesting. My teenage my teenage child, you know, listens to music all the time and talks about how, you know, he doesn’t notice me listening to music, you know, and I think increasingly I’m listening to the world around me rather than musical sounds. Although I do college radio, so for me, like that’s the time when I’m actively doing my music listening is during my radio show every week. And it’s incredibly healing. [Jennifer laughs]\nYou know, I love that immersion. And so for me it’s that college radio space is when I’m immersing in those sounds. And, I’ve been doing college radio for a really long time and what I listen to changes from year to year and, you know, I’ve gotten increasingly into more experimental sounds. I guess, you know, also things like sound art and transmission arts. So, you know, there’ve been talks at the conference and also installations at the conference that touch on this, like the intersection between, you know, things that are intermedia that involve visual components as well as audio components. So, you know, things that are, maybe challenging and harder to understand that things like that are kind of capturing my ears  more so than maybe the familiar [Jennifer laughs] The familiar music that we hear.\n(15:54)\tKate Moffatt\tYeah, wonderful. Oh, that’s fantastic. I think this has been such a neat way to think about —I agree, I’ve been listening to this experimental stuff that we’ve been listening to this week has just been so interesting, especially in that I feel like I’m kind of physically, I keep describing it as bathing. I feel like I’m bathing in the sound and it’s because it feels very embodied somehow, which is just making me think back to that clip you played and how embodied that that sounded and the fact that I could, I could hear you moving through the space. I could hear him moving through the space. I could hear you opening boxes, taking pictures.\n(16:20)\tJennifer Waits\tYeah. I mean, it’s all about the space. And I think that’s what was challenging for a lot of people during the pandemic, you know, who work in college radio or community radio, that we weren’t in our spaces and a lot of us were, you know, trying to figure out how to do radio from home. And, I think this academic year, people are trying to get back to that sense of community and being back in our spaces and connecting on that level too, because that’s where a lot of the creativity happens is going through the stacks and, you know, finding the records that you don’t know about or –– or finding unexpected things, rather than, I mean, this is the thing about looking for music online. You kind of find what you’re looking for rather than being surprised a lot of the time.\n(17:09)\tKate Moffatt\tLike browsing the stacks in the library versus buying an ebook.\n(17:12)\tJennifer Waits\tExactly. Yeah.\nKate Moffatt\tI think that’s a beautiful place to stop if you’re, if you’re happy to, if you’re happy to stop there. Thank you so much, Jennifer, for joining us.\n[ShortCuts Theme music fades in]\nThis has been so much fun. That just, I’m still thinking about that camera click and the piano music that was played in there. It’s just, that was just fantastic. Thank you so much for bringing that along.\n(17:32)\tJennifer Waits\tOh, thank you. I’m glad that you enjoyed it.\n(17:38)\tKatherine McLeod\tYou’ve been listening to ShortCuts. That was a ShortCuts Live conversation with Jennifer Waits recorded in May 2023 at the SpokenWeb Symposium at the University of Alberta. Thanks to Kate Moffatt and Miranda Eastwood for making that interview happen. And thanks to our current supervising producer Maia Harris for the help in re-listening to that interview together. The SpokenWeb Podcast’s sound designer is James Healey and transcription is done by Zoe Mix. My name is Katherine McLeod and, as always, thanks for listening.\n[Theme music ends]\n \n"],"score":2.7048998},{"id":"9995","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 5.3, ShortCuts Live! 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Music in Range: The Culture of Canadian Campus Radio. Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2015.\\n\\ndeWaard, Andrew, Fauteux, Brian, and Selman, Brianne. “Independent Canadian Music in the Streaming Age: The Sound from above (Critical Political Economy) and below (Ethnography of Musicians).” Popular Music and Society 45.3 (2022): 251 – 278. [open access]\\n\\n\"}]"],"_version_":1853670549821063168,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:54.290Z","contents":["This ShortCuts presents one of the ShortCuts Live! conversations recorded at the University of Alberta as part of the 2023 SpokenWeb Symposium. Recorded on site by SpokenWeb’s Kate Moffatt and Miranda Eastwood, the conversations often took place in spaces where the sonic environment of the symposium is audibly present. As always on ShortCuts, we begin with an audio clip from the archives, but this time the interviewees are the ones bringing an archival sound to the table. What will we hear? And where will these sounds take us?\n\n(00:03)\tShortCuts Theme Music\t[Soft piano music interspersed with electronic sound begins]\n(00:16)\tMiranda Eastwood (Recording)\tI’m like, maybe I should get sound effects from [overlap]\nThis is fun. Like maybe footsteps or something. Get whatever the name of this building is and like where we are located since we will be hearing the space and people will naturally –\n(00:17)\tKate Moffatt\tIs it the old arts building?\n(00:23)\tBrian Fauteux\tYeah, that’s kind of the Arts and Convocation Hall. But because we have a fine arts building, a lot of people call this the old arts building.\n(00:27)\tKate Moffatt\tOkay. [laughs] I might let you say that, actually. [laughs]\n(00:46)\tKatherine McLeod\t[Voiceover] Welcome to Shortcuts. This month, we’re back with another shortcut live, talking with researchers in person and starting those conversations with a short-cut of audio. Many of these conversations were recorded on-site at the 2023 SpokenWeb Symposium held at the University of Alberta.\n(01:08)\tKate Moffatt\t[Back to audio recorded on-site.] Uh, hello and welcome to Shortcuts Live. We are live at the 2023 SpokenWeb Symposium at the University of Alberta. My name is Kate Moffitt, and I am the supervising producer for the SpokenWeb Podcast. Stepping in for our usual host and producer, Katherine McLeod. I’m sitting here with Brian Fauteux today.\n(01:16)\tBrian Fauteux\tYeah. My name is Brian Fauteux. I’m an associate professor of Popular Music and Media Studies here at the University of Alberta, and I work in this building.\n(01:24)\tKate Moffatt\tAmazing. Yeah. That echo that the listeners, that you’re hearing right now. It is because we are sitting in the arts and convocation hall building –\n(01:49)\tBrian Fauteux\tIn the lobby, just outside Convocation Hall where we have a big old pipe organ, and we have music that takes place and sometimes I teach, back in the day, I used to teach, not that long ago, [Kate laughs], a couple years ago, I would teach big intro to popular music classes there before the upper balcony was deemed unsafe. So I’ve been moved elsewhere, and I think they want to renovate it and make it a little bit more “state of the art” in there. It’s very beautiful.\n(01:56)\tKate Moffatt\tInteresting. It is. It’s absolutely stunning. Okay, amazing. Well, we’re gonna listen to something. Do you wanna play that for us?\n(01:57)\tBrian Fauteux\tSure. Let’s play.\n(03:11)\tAudio Recording\t[Distorted Audio Of Paul Mccartney’s mid-nineties radio show called “Oobu Joobu” plays in the background.]\n(03:12)\tBrian Fauteux\t[Audio ends.] That’s probably enough.\n(03:23)\tKate Moffatt\tIncredible [Brian laughs]. Thank you so much. Yeah. Miranda is also here, and we’re both sitting here and our heads just started [laughs].\nPlease tell us what we just listened to.\n(04:25)\tBrian Fauteux\tThis is a radio program that Paul McCartney did in the mid-nineties called “Oobu Joobu.” That was kind of a weird sort of experimental radio program that, I think aired on an American network for about 15 shows. And it’s a collection of, as you heard, different songs, audio clips.\nI think he was sort of playing around on a guitar there as well as he introduced it. And I think in 97 parts of this, 1997, parts of this was packaged with his “Flaming Pie” CD release. I think it mainly circulates as sort of bootlegs now or as this recorded version that was kind of sold at Best Buy. It was like a compendium of some of the shows, but I don’t know if the full complete package has ever resurfaced. But what I find interesting about it is it sometimes airs on the Beatles channel on Sirius XM Radio, which is sort of subscriber-based radio.\n(05:16)\tBrian Fauteux\tAnd it’s something I’ve been researching for the last little while, and I’m writing a book on now, and I’ve kind of been drawn to these places where celebrity clash with kind of weirdness and experimentation, but in a very kind of gated commercial subscription setting.\nSo it’s like people kind of paying for access to a radio service that kind of digs around and finds these oddities and packages them on these channels that are all about bands like “The Beatles” or “Tom Petty” or “Bruce Springsteen.” I also like in this clip, and the reason I chose this one, it was probably hard to hear from the laptop into the recorder, but early on, it emphasizes that it’s widescreen radio. And I think that the development of satellite radio kind of piggybacks on satellite television.\n(05:18)\tKate Moffatt\tI was gonna ask, widescreen TVs [laughs].\n(05:25)\tBrian Fauteux\tExactly. So it’s this idea of, we aren’t just your, you know, grandpa’s old radio. This is sort of –\n(05:25)\tKate Moffatt\tOh wow [laughs].\n(05:51)\tBrian Fauteux\tYou know what I mean? It’s like; it’s trying to introduce radio as being new, even though it’s still embedded in longermhistories of institutions like commercial radio broadcasting has used satellites for long periods of time. So it gives it a sheen of newness. Some things are kind of new about it, but I think it’s an interesting way of thinking or complicating ideas around new media, particularly around the turn of the millennium.\n(06:30)\tKate Moffatt\tWell, I’m really fascinated by how, I would love to talk about the listening, like the actual sound, sound of what we just listened to, ’cause that was so delightful.\nThe first thing I thought was mid-nineties television that I grew up with. It was kind of like the sound that I got from that.\nBut I’m really, I have to ask, as like a book historian myself, about the materiality that you’re kind of engaging with as you’re following its trajectory and thinking about how people are engaging with it.\nI don’t know. Can you speak to that at all? Thinking about the ways in which it’s becoming available, or how, I guess literally, the material of the media is informing it.\nIsn’t there a famous quote about that? The media is the –\n(06:30)\tBrian Fauteux\tMessage.\n(06:33)\tKate Moffatt\tYeah. That’s the one [laughs].\n(07:53)\tBrian Fauteux\tI mean, to even talk about McLuhan a little bit too, I think, thinking through about finding these oddities or these sonic traces of satellite broadcasting from the earlier days and this isn’t being played earlier. The Beatles channel comes in, I think, around 2015, if I’m not mistaken, but it’s very limited when something airs. Some of it is archived, some of it is kept online for maybe four weeks.\nYou can access it on demand, but then it goes away, or it’s kept in this place, this company, this publicly traded, massive media conglomerate now SiriusXM is owned by Liberty Media, which has stakes in like Live Nation and Ticketmaster and all these things. So researching that is different from some of my work on campus radio history where you can track stuff down. It’s still kind of scattered, but people are willing to give it to you. And now they’re not.\nSo, McLuhan also writes a bit about acoustic space and cyberspace coming together and how it’s like all around and you sort of dig around and look for these things. So that’s kind of where I end up finding a lot of this stuff is through spending time on the internet and seeing who’s put something somewhere online that you can listen to.\n(08:26)\tKate Moffatt\tRight. I was gonna ask next about listening. The role of listening in both, I guess, how you were finding it and listening to it, but also how you see this kind of… not elite, that’s not the right word.\nExclusive, exclusivity that’s applied to something that was experimental and odd. Yeah, I don’t know. Something about the, yeah I guess just a bigger kind of broader question about the role of listening in the work that you’re doing and what that, how that interacts with what you, what you do and how you do it.\n(09:36)\tBrian Fauteux\tThat’s a good question because part of what I’m looking at is the reasons why media institutions develop in the ways they do. And you can read annual reports and a lot of it is going through tons of trade press stuff over the years and seeing who’s talking about these companies as they develop. But then you wanna find stuff to listen to as well. And it’s not all perfectly available.\nEven most research paths people take, that’s never the case. But part of it ends up being, like listening a lot of the time to different satellite stations, satellite radio stations, or channels.\nThere’s only one station now I guess, but they have a variety of channels. And then trying to find things like this and thinking about is this available elsewhere? And in the cases where it’s maybe the work of a major celebrity, like I’ve written a bit on Bob Dylan’s theme time radio hour, which is kind of like this, where it’s, you know, somebody using their time on the radio who has like the star power but wants to use that time to showcase all these old quote unquote forgotten songs or songs that haven’t really entered the canon, so to speak, but have been massively influential.\n(10:16)\tBrian Fauteux\tThat’s a big part of what that radio, that radio show is doing. When you have people like that, you do have hardcore fans, too, who have recorded all of this and put it online. So stuff like that you can find. And then when you find that, I just listen to as much of it as I can. So there were about a hundred and so a hundred plus episodes of theme time, radio hour, and for, you know, a month or so, I just listened to every single episode to see what is not only what is he playing but how is he talking about it? What’s he introducing, what’s it like, and how does his voice seem to connect with these subscription radio listeners? And, you know, really spending time with the stuff I can find.\n(10:35)\tKate Moffatt\tAnd do you almost get a sense of his listening?\nIn terms of thinking about what they’re finding and putting together, and there’s a curatorial aspect to it.\nDo you kind of start to get a sense you can start to become familiar with yourself?\nOh, I bet so and so, put this one together.\n(11:18)\tBrian Fauteux\tYou also, I mean, you kind of become like held captive slash hostage to this sort of weird way of doing radio. Like, especially with the Dylan voice, and I’m gonna play a bit of it on the Friday morning radio panel that we’re doing as part of the SpokenWeb Institute.\nBut you do get a sense of his own relationship to these songs. But then, through digging a little bit as well, you find that he’s crafted as the curator or the person who has all these shows. It turns out it was a major TV producer responsible for massive commercial television productions. Oh, wow. Over the years, that has the music collection that Dylan’s kind of borrowing from. So you have these other connections –\n(11:21)\tKate Moffatt\tThere’s layers of curations.\n(12:07)\tBrian Fauteux\tYeah, there’s layers, totally.\nThat they’re working in. And he makes it sound like he’s, you know, he constructs this whole world where he is broadcasting out of this historical Abernathy building, but really he does a lot of it on tour and from his house and, you know, it creates this radio world, but it is kind of an entryway into a different side of these massive celebrities and their personalities that people will pay for.\nAnd these satellite radio companies kind of know that. So, you know, know, part of what I’m interested in is before we even get to your Spotifys and Apple musics, this radio company was kind of setting the stage for that idea of exclusivity or, you know, giving big name performers, big talent contracts to then entice subscribers to say, I’m gonna pay like $16 or $20 a month to have access to this stuff –\n(12:12)\tKate Moffatt\tWhich we’re now so familiar with. Like, it’s just so all the time that’s everything.\n(12:15)\tBrian Fauteux\tEverything’s a subscription.\n(12:33)\tKate Moffatt\tWow. Yeah. Wild. Okay. Well I think one last question which is, I’d love to know what you’re listening to now. Like you know, either in your research currently, like maybe something like this, but anything else that’s fun or even just more generally, like what are you listening to right now that really excites you?\n(13:10)\tBrian Fauteux\tSure. I am listening to a lot of music from around the early two thousands when Sirius XM came out for the purpose of this research, but also kind of unrelated but also sort of related to this.\nA colleague of mine and myself just started a campus radio show here. So every week we’re kind of listening a lot to a radio show based on a theme or a topic each week. So I’m kind of constantly thinking about what would be good to put on this week’s show. And a lot of that is Canadian. We have, you know, Canadian content regulations and these sorts of things. So that’s been a lot of fun and that, I know that’s not really answering anything specific, but –\n(13:11)\tKate Moffatt\tNo, I think that’s great actually [laughs].\n(13:41)\tBrian Fauteux\tAnd then, at the same time I’m among the jury for the Polaris Music Prize here in Canada. And the long list voting for that just opened. So I’m just listening to a ton of Canadian music right now that’s been recommended on Google Group listserv. Things that I haven’t listened to. A new album that I quite like a lot out of Edmonton is by a band called Home Front, and that’s been an album I’ve been playing a lot to give sort of one precise thing.\n(13:52)\tKate Moffatt\tI’m actually really curious, you were talking about the campus radio stuff that you’re doing. Do you feel like a little bit like you’re kind of doing the stuff that you research? Like are you Yeah, for sure. You’re taking that curatorial role almost –\n(14:16)\tBrian Fauteux\tA little bit like that, but also before this I wrote a book on campus radio and stepped back from, like when I was an undergrad, I did a little bit of, of campus radio production work, but then when I was researching it, I stepped back and wanted to have more of an arm’s length relationship to it. And I’ve been meeting since I’ve, I moved here and came here to get back into it.\nAnd I kind of just took, you know, another person to be here too and be like, let’s do it together. And that it makes it more social and more fun. And it has been a lot of fun.\n(14:26)\tKate Moffatt\tFantastic connection to the conversation we just had with Jennifer. Waits. Jennifer was talking about how important community is to campus radio, that it’s so inherent to kind of getting it going and keeping it going–\n(14:34)\tBrian Fauteux\tYeah. We were both just on a panel in Washington DC a few days ago talking about campus college radio. Incredible. So we, we have a lot of overlaps in what we are interested in.\n(14:34)\tMusic\t[Music begins playing in the background].\n(14:40)\tKate Moffatt\tThat’s so fantastic. Okay. Was there anything else that you wanted to share? Should we call it there?\n(14:41)\tBrian Fauteux\tThat sounds good.\n(14:50)\tKate Moffatt\tOkay. Thank you so much for sitting down and chatting with us at the end of a very long day and a very long couple of days.\nBut this was just such a fun way for us to wrap this day up.\n(14:50)\tBrian Fauteux\tThat’s great. Thank you for having me.\n(14:52)\tKate Moffatt\tAmazing. Thanks.\n(14:52)\tMusic\t[Music ends]."],"score":2.7048998},{"id":"9996","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 5.4, Re-Listening to Improvisation in the Archives, 24 April 2024, McLeod"],"item_title_source":["SpokenWeb Podcast web page."],"item_title_note":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/re-listening-to-improvisation-in-the-archives/"],"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":[2024],"material_description":["[]"],"digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://cdn.simplecast.com/audio/28a9da1f-8cca-410c-b5d7-8165a73f9394/episodes/3507e689-cef7-4ff3-9c42-9593e0987fdd/audio/cf7c9da1-1404-41d3-9a60-11b4f653287d/default_tc.mp3?nocache\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"master-v1-shortcuts-april-23.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"44.1 kHz\",\"duration\":\"00:07:02\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"6,753,010 bytes\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"MP3 audio\",\"title\":\"master-v1-shortcuts-april-23\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/re-listening-to-improvisation-in-the-archives/\"}]"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"2024-04-24\",\"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_":1853670549822111744,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:54.290Z","contents":["As April is the month of poetry, we’ve taken a pause in this year’s ShortCuts Live conversations to listen back to one of the first episodes of ShortCuts, “ShortCuts 1.2 / Audio of the Month: Improvising at a Poetry Reading.”\n\nIn the archival clip played in this episode, we hear Maxine Gadd pausing during a reading with Andreas Schroeder. She asks the host Richard Sommer if he would like to improvise with her for the poem, “Shore Animals.”\n\nListening now, we can ask: what does it feel like for archival listeners to encounter a moment of improvisation? It is a truly memorable moment of listening and worth returning to now in this fifth season of ShortCuts.\n\n00:00\tKatherine McLeod\tWelcome to ShortCuts.\n00:04\tTheme music\t[Electronic music plays]\n00:07\tKatherine McLeod\tThis month, it is April, the month of poetry, and I thought that we’d take a pause in this season’s ShortCuts Live conversations to listen back to an early episode of ShortCuts – to hear an early version of ShortCuts: thinking about what means to be an archival listener.\n00:28\tKatherine McLeod\tBy the way, this episode is such an early episode of ShortCuts that I hadn’t even come up with the name “ShortCuts” yet.\nYou’ll hear me refer to it at one point as “Audio of the Month,” that was what I was calling it in that first season.\n00:43\tTheme music\t[Theme music continues]\n00:45\tKatherine McLeod\tWhat was the archival clip of this episode? Well, you’ll hear Maxine Gadd pausing during a reading with Andreas Schroeder to ask–\n00:55\tMaxine Gadd, Audio Recording\tDo you want to try improvising?–\n00:58\tKatherine McLeod\tAfter reading for about 45 minutes, Maxine Gad invited the host of the evening, Richard Sommer, to improvise on the flute.\n01:05\tRecording\tI gotta find it first –\n01:09\tKatherine McLeod\tListening now, we can ask, what does it feel like for archival listeners to encounter a moment of improvisation? Improvisation is so rooted in the experience of being there. So, what does it feel like to hear improvisation again? To hear it in the archives and even in this replaying?\n01:31\tKatherine McLeod\tWell, considering these questions, we can also listen to the extent to which we can hear the audience’s excitement for this spontaneous moment amid the reading and Gadd’s invitation for the flute to listen.\n01:45\tSound Effect\t[Sound of pressing play on a tape player]\n01:50\tKatherine McLeod\tLet’s listen now together to Shortcuts 1.2,\nAudio of the Month: “Improvising at a poetry reading.”\n02:05\tMaxine Gadd, Audio Recording\tYeah. It’s just going to be some sounds [inaudible].\n02:10\tKatherine McLeod [from ShortCuts 1.2]\tIn this “Audio of the Month,” we’re travelling back to February 1972, when poets Maxine Gad and Andreas Schroeder read in Montreal. They read at Sir George Williams University, or what is now Concordia.\nThey read on February 18th in the Hall Building in room H651. The reading started at 9 pm.\nYes, readings started late and went on for a long time. After reading for about 45 minutes, Maxine Gad 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 Gad and Sommer about what to read and how to perform together. A process that is its own audible improvisation.\n03:02\tMaxine Gadd, Audio Recording\tOh, here it is.\nNow, how it goes, you have to keep quiet until…\n[Random Flute Notes]\nSee now,  [laughs] he’s never done this one before.\n03:15\tRichard Sommer, Audio Recording\tWhat, what, yeah, what do you want me to do then?\n03:18\tMaxine Gadd, Audio Recording\tOkay, this is called “Shore Animals.”\nIt’s a speech piece with a flute, and the flute has to listen. And it can speak, too.\n03:30\tKatherine McLeod [from ShortCuts 1.2]\tThe 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. At the same time, this recording reminds listeners that the audience is always present, ready to improvise, interject, and even interrupt. And that the audience is also what we are listening to as archival listeners.\n04:03\tMaxine Gadd, Audio Recording\tThe flute, I think it’s over there.\nFor fun.\nThe same message?\nI’m asking; Richard’s going to make some noise with my flute.\n04:19\tRichard Sommer, Audio Recording\tI’ll make some noise if you give me a microphone.\n04:21\tMaxine Gadd, Audio Recording\tOkay. Which one you want? Let’s share it. Is–\n04:25\tRichard Sommer, Audio Recording\tIt doesn’t make any difference.\n04:26\tMaxine Gadd, Audio Recording\tIt goes with the poem [inaudible].\n04:28\tRichard Sommer, Audio Recording\tHow’d you do that?\n04:29\tMaxine Gadd, Audio Recording\tWhat?\n04:31\tRichard Sommer, Audio Recording\tThis, this knot.\n04:32\tMaxine Gadd, Audio Recording\tI’ve tied myself in there.\n04:32\tRichard Sommer, Audio Recording\tHere we go.\n04:33\tMaxine Gadd, Audio Recording\tI don’t know where I can find it—[Long pause] pieces, pieces. Oh, here it is.\nNow, how it goes. You have to keep quiet until… [Random Flute Notes] See, now… [Laugh] He’s never done this one before.\n05:04\tRichard Sommer, Audio Recording\tWhat, what, yeah, what do you want me to do then?\n05:06\tMaxine Gadd, Audio Recording\tOkay, this is called “Shore Animals,” and it says, “speech feas—piece with flute,” and the flute has to listen.\nAnd it can pl–, it can speak, too. You have to listen to it. Yeah, you never heard it before.\n05:21\tRichard Sommer, Audio Recording\tI think it’s learning how to speak.\n05:26\tMaxine Gadd, Audio Recording\tIt’s called “Shore Animals,” a speech piece with a flute.\n[Maxine begins to recite, Richard plays the flute]\n“So hearing where the poppy stopped me,\nsmall chance to star spiel, all you have told me,\ngone, false and beautiful gods and groves.\nPeople truth. Put it into song when the traffic is gone, gone, gone.\nI’ll fling it in the air—my debt to your tongue, Saturn.\nIn your minds, I’ve split a spleen, lust my lust.\nCome along, fawn. Oh! So, I have to whistle to you.”\n[Audience laughs] [Whistling]\n06:23\tKatherine McLeod [from ShortCuts 1.2]\tThat was Maxine Gadd reading “Shore Animals” with Richard Sommer improvising the flute at a reading that took place in Montreal on February 18, 1972.\n06:34\tTheme music\t[Theme music fades in]\n06:38\tKatherine McLeod\tHead to SpokenWeb.ca to find out more about the audio of the month and how to listen to the entire recording. My name is Katherine McLeod. Tune in next month for another deep dive into the sounds of the SpokenWeb archives.\n07:00\tTheme music\t[Theme music ends]\n \n\n"],"score":2.7048998},{"id":"9997","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 5.5, ShortCuts Live! Turning Our Bodies Toward Sound with Xiaoxuan Huang, 20 May 2024"],"item_title_source":["SpokenWeb Podcast web page."],"item_title_note":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/shortcuts-live-hybrid-poetics/"],"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":[2024],"material_description":["[]"],"digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://cdn.simplecast.com/audio/28a9da1f-8cca-410c-b5d7-8165a73f9394/episodes/7870778a-a9bf-49d8-a85e-431dd4a12705/audio/b6cd0426-b37e-451f-8416-8453d559a884/default_tc.mp3?nocache\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"shortcuts-may-17-mix-v1.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"44.1 kHz\",\"duration\":\"00:25:58\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"24,935,487 bytes\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"MP3 audio\",\"title\":\"shortcuts-may-17-mix-v1\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/shortcuts-live-hybrid-poetics/\"}]"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"2024-05-20\",\"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":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"AUDIO\\n\\nHuang, Xiaoxuan.  “the way we hold our hands with nothing in them.”\\n\\nSinister Flower, the radio show curated by Lucía Meliá and what Xiaoxuan talks about listening to recently.\\n\\n*\\n\\nRESOURCES\\n\\nRead “Vibrate in Sympathy,” a poetic reflection on the 2022 SpokenWeb Symposium written by Xiaoxuan Huang,\\n\\n\"}]"],"_version_":1853670549822111745,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:54.290Z","contents":["This month, we’re back with another Shortcuts Live, talking with researchers in person and starting those conversations with a short ‘cut’ of audio. These ShortCuts Live conversations were recorded on-site at the 2023 SpokenWeb Symposium held at the University of Alberta.\n\nIn this conversation, Xiaoxuan Huang talks about hybrid poetics (and more) with then-supervising producer Kate Moffatt. The audio that informs this conversation is a clip from an audio-visual poetry collage by Huang called “the way we hold our hands with nothing in them.”  The audio of this collage beautifully sets the sonic environment for this conversation. Listen, and find yourself turning towards the sound.\n\n\n00:00\tKate Moffatt:\tKatherine will write a little host, or she has a little host intro that goes in. I don’t know if she writes new ones for each one. Sometimes, she does, but we can also introduce it a little.\n00:08\tMiranda Eastwood:\tShe does. No, she will do it, especially for the live Shortcuts. She does. It’s just to be like, “That’s what’s going on,” because they’re special.\nRight.\n00:13\tKate Moffatt:\tThe live ones are the best ones.\n00:14\tMiranda Eastwood:\tThey’re very good.\n00:16\tXiaoxuan Wong:\tLive things tend to be–\n00:18\tKate Moffatt:\t[Kate and Miranda laugh] Yeah. Yeah. They’re very good. And is it recording right now already?\n00:21\tMiranda Eastwood:\tIt is recording right now.\n00:22\tKate Moffatt:\tI love this little behind-the-scenes, where it’s like [Laughter] “What the heck are we doing?”\nThat’s so perfect. Did we decide how we wanted to start the episode?\n00:29\tXiaoxuan Wong:\tCould I have a […] I mean, I’m just gonna drink some water. [Laughter]\n00:31\tKate Moffatt:\tPlease go for it. Yeah. Yeah.\n00:34\tMiranda Eastwood:\tNope, we can do whatever we want. We can just go for it. Whatever feels right. Okay. [Laughter]\n00:39\tKate Moffatt:\tUm, I will wait until you’re done with your water bottle.\n00:41\tMiranda Eastwood:\tYou can say, “This is Shortcuts with Kate Moffatt.”\n00:44\tKate Moffatt:\t“Welcome to Shortcuts Live.”\nDo I need to introduce myself? No.\n00:46\tMiranda Eastwood:\tYou should. It would–\n00:47\tKate Moffatt:\tDoes Katherine introduce herself?\n00:49\tMiranda Eastwood:\tWell, no, but she’s the producer. We–\n00:51\tKate Moffatt:\tShe’s always the person who does it. Oh my gosh. Okay.\n00:54\tMiranda Eastwood:\tBut she does say, “I’m Katherine.”\nShe does say, “I am Katherine McLeod.” I think. Now my brain’s just zoning it out ’cause I’m like, “Oh, I know, I know. It’s Katherine McLeod” [Laughs]\n01:03\tXiaoxuan Wong:\tI think it’s always nice as a listener, [overlap: “to know who you’re listening to.”] even if you’re a long-time listener.\n01:07\tKate Moffatt:\tWorst case, we can cut it out.\n01:11\tKatherine McLeod:\t[SpokenWeb Shortcuts Theme Song Starts Playing]\nWelcome to Shortcuts. My name is Katherine McLeod, and I’m the producer for this Shortcut series on the podcast. Yes, they were right, I am introducing myself and telling you about what you’re going to hear.\nThis month, we’re back with another Shortcuts Live, talking with researchers in person and starting those conversations with a shortcut of audio. These Shortcuts Live conversations were recorded on-site at the 2023 SpokenWeb Symposium held at the University of Alberta. For this conversation, we’re sitting down with Xiaoxuan Wong to talk about sound, language, video, poetry, voice, making room for the indeterminate, and more, like playlist recommendations – listen to the end for that.\n02:01\tKatherine McLeod:\tThe conversation is led by Kate Moffatt, and you’ll occasionally hear Miranda Eastwood recording in the background and adding a few comments, including an enthusiastic applause that I have left in at the end. I love that applause because it really emphasizes that this was recorded live. Let’s jump back into that onsite conversation and let the conversation speak for itself.\n[Music fades]\n02:30\tKate Moffatt:\tHello and welcome to Shortcuts Live. My name is Kate Moffatt. I am the supervising producer for the SpokenWeb podcast, and I’m hopping in for Katherine McLeod on this particular episode of Shortcuts. We are so excited to sit down with Xiaoxuan Wong today, and actually, yeah. Xiaoxuan, would you mind introducing yourself?\n02:55\tXiaoxuan Wong:\tOf course. I am so happy to be here. Thank you, Kate, for sitting down with me. Yeah. My name is Xiaoxuan Wong. I also go by just Xiao and sometimes publish under Sherry as well, Sherry Huang. But yeah, I am a poet, first and foremost. But I feel most at home, kind of playing around with different mediums and voicings and spaces. So, I kind of describe myself as working in “hybrid poetics.”\nThe piece that we’re gonna be maybe talking about and hearing a little bit from will sort of be a good example of how my practice converges a few different\nmediums.\n03:48\tKate Moffatt:\tWonderful. And I think we are, we’re gonna just start by\nlistening to this. Is that right? Okay. Let me pull it up. And here we go.\n03:58\tXiaoxuan Wong, Audio of Xiaoxuan Reading “The Way We Hold Our Hands With Nothing in Them” \t[Audio From A Video Poem Played. Ambient Music Plays And A Voice Reads The Words As A Poem.]\nI don’t know the names of trees, but I can tell what time it is from the way their shadows lean. It might feel sometimes like we are here just to run out of time. I want you to know, it hurts me, too. One day, we will drive through the mountains. The weather will be unusually hot. Actually, it will be your birthday again. You will pull over on the side of the road and say, “come here. I wanna show you something.” And it will be the tops of trees. I go to a lot of parties, hoping I’ll see you there. Often, what I remember the next day is all the people outside smoking. The air flares up in turns, like a circle of lightning bugs. Someone offers me a drag, I refuse, or no one does. And I ask for one, forgetting I was supposed to be leaving just like in previous years. This summer, too, is likely to leave us with its heat mixed into us. The trees are thinking of what I’m thinking of – your face next to mine in the absenting light due to atmosphere. Due to all the time we don’t have.\n06:07\tKate Moffatt:\tOkay. Amazing. Xiao, can you please–\n06:11\tXiaoxuan Wong:\tThank you–\n06:12\tKate Moffatt:\tTell me what we were just listening to.\n06:15\tXiaoxuan Wong:\tYeah. So, we’re recording this at the SpokenWeb Symposium hosted at U of A. And this piece was sort of, you know, made with existing […] the text was pre-existing, and the ambient guitar that you hear was improvised.\nBut this iteration of this project was made in response to the call of this year’s symposium “Reverb Echo.” So yeah, this piece is like around six minutes. It’s an audio-visual piece as well as a poetry collage of, I guess, fragments that I took from a longer project, which was my master’s thesis called “All the Time.”\nBut, this iteration of this project, the six-minute audio-visual poetry collage, is called “The Way We Hold Our Hands With Nothing in Them,” which itself is a fragment from “All the Time.” So, I think what I said before about multiple mediums and practices kind of informing me, my mode of practicing “hybrid poetics,” this is one version of how it sometimes shows up. Generally, I think about sound and musical sound and ambient sound or ambient musical sound, I guess, as a part of the voicings of my poem. But, it’s not necessarily the most authoritative one. I love my poems dearly when they’re just on the page as well. And also just, you know, read.\nAnd so there’s these multiple registers of voicings that I’m really interested in playing with. And kind of sensing through how certain ways of displaying the poem could, on some levels, create a different type of room that we can all enter together and that feels different from the room that is made through just a stanza, which itself also means room.\n08:55\tXiaoxuan Wong:\tYeah. [Laughter] It’s been one of those concepts that have long haunted me, and I’m sure long haunted many other thinkers and poets, as well. But, it feels really appropriate to me ’cause I think that’s part of what I wanna do with language, is to create an atmosphere as well as tell a story. I know that my relationship to language and poetic language has always been something I am gonna continue to grapple with. But I think I was having a conversation, earlier where I said that these remediations of poetry and poetic text through music and performance and video and image components as well. I’ve done some screen printing, as well, of my poetry.\n10:00\tKate Moffatt:\tThat’s so cool. [Laughs]\n10:02\tXiaoxuan Wong:\tAnd, yeah, these are all kind of ways to push back against languages, urge to close in on itself and signify too quickly, or kind of seal itself off from the indeterminate.\n10:22\tKate Moffatt:\tTo be contained–\n10:23\tXiaoxuan Wong:\tYeah, yeah.\n10:24\tKate Moffatt:\tWhich has some interesting kind of echoes of the idea of like the room that you were talking about, an atmosphere for, to resist that containment that a word has kind of inherently.\n10:34\tXiaoxuan Wong:\tPrecisely. And I think I wanna give the room – and also language itself like room – to come and go and alter. And I think that’s the kind of, when language is employed like that, it gets me really excited. And it sort of lives in my body differently. It lingers. It has longer staying power when there’s a kernel of indeterminacy to it. Because I find that it sort of becomes more rich with wider application–\n11:20\tKate Moffatt:\tThe possibility that comes with almost like the embodiment of it.\n11:24\tXiaoxuan Wong:\tAbsolutely. Yeah. And, so in this video piece what I guess our listeners can’t see is there are sort of bad subtitles on screen. So\nthe visual is just actually like an iPhone footage. One long shot of, I think a blood moon from last year that I took.\nAnd, the image of the moon has kind of accompanied my short, relatively short career as an artist. I’m only 30, so yeah. And, I’m sure it’ll stay with me. But, on top of the video are these like yellow kind of traditional, like yellow font?\n12:21\tKate Moffatt:\tI noticed that sometimes, there’s like the square brackets where there’s words missing or bits and pieces, and not everything is subtitled. Right?\n12:29\tXiaoxuan Wong:\tYeah. And that was kind of a decision that I made on a fly. And I think that aesthetically evoking this, the way I play with space on the page too, when it’s a textual, like a purely textual piece I use a lot, I consider a lot about the space on the page. I don’t really use traditional punctuation. I forgo conventional capitalization and punctuation for spacing. And I think spacing itself is like one of the main ways that I write with.\n13:09\tKate Moffatt:\tYeah. Our listeners aren’t gonna know this, and maybe you don’t either, but I absolutely had goosebumps while I was reading the sort of yet partial subtitles unfinished in a way. But, yeah, that very intentional kind of creating of space in the subtitles itself was, yeah. Anyways, I got goosebumps. So that’s kind of fun. [Laughs]\n13:29\tXiaoxuan Wong:\tThat’s beautiful. Thank you for telling me that. Thanks, Kate.\n13:34\tKate Moffatt:\tNo, of course. It was, it was stunning. I can’t wait to watch the whole thing. Actually. I feel like, I wish we could just have played the whole thing. It was so lovely. Those first couple of minutes.\n13:45\tXiaoxuan Wong:\tThank you. Yeah. The square brackets felt important to me over parenthetical, like curve brackets. There’s something about the square brackets aesthetically that I feel have less associations with an “aside” or, you know, a kind of “lower register of signification.” I didn’t necessarily want those connotations of like this is an “aside” or what is being redacted, totally being redacted is less important. Or rather, that what is unsaid is less important. I think that with the square brackets, my hope is to kind of invite in room for kind of, again, the indeterminate what is unsaid, what can’t be said, and what even sometimes the square brackets are on screen when the, the voice in the audio is actually completing the line.\nSo also, you know, putting those two intentions, like the visual of the square brackets, the text being withheld on screen while the voice is kind of speaking in utterance.\n15:10\tKate Moffatt:\tWhy is it something that can be voiced but not written down?\n[Overlapping: Right. Right.] What makes you kind of question the gap that’s maybe occurring?\n15:18\tXiaoxuan Wong:\tThat’s such an interesting reading of that. Yeah. I love that. And, I think one of the best parts of my conference experience, especially with SpokenWeb, is the conversations that I get to have with everyone else who loves thinking about sound and exalting the unspoken and silence and the fullness and the capability of silence, potentiality of silence.\n15:47\tKate Moffatt:\tI’d love to, if you don’t mind, just hop back quickly to[…]you were saying that you do get this kind of like multiple registers of voicing in the poem and thinking about different ways of engaging with like the room or the containment. And I’m just[…]you bringing up the conference and kind of what we’ve been discussing over the past couple of days. We’ve often brought up, you know, these ideas of echoes, particularly the ways that echoes are created or the way that reverberations sound in rooms, spaces, or architecture. And I just wanted to ask if to bring this around a little bit to listening and the role that maybe thinking about those spaces and how sound is created in those spaces, or how you think about creating sound in things like a room. If there’s a particular role that listening plays, if there are multiple registers of listening because you’ve got multiple registers of voicing, and how the space that this is happening in, or the space that you’re creating for it, how that impacts that.\nI don’t know. That’s a big, long, twisty question. Feel free to take anything from there that feels like it speaks to you.\n16:53\tXiaoxuan Wong:\tI love it when questions twist, ’cause then that allows my answers to twist.\n16:57\tKate Moffatt:\tWonderful. Give us a twisty answer.\n16:59\tXiaoxuan Wong:\tSo one part of this video that we didn’t get to hear later, the voice says, “some ways of listening, turn the whole body into an ear”–\n17:15\tKate Moffatt:\tOh, wow.\n17:16\tXiaoxuan Wong:\tAnd I –\n17:18\tKate Moffatt:\tI got more goosebumps. [Laughter]\n17:21\tXiaoxuan Wong:\tI mean, think in a way that[…]talk about a twisting, right? Like the body itself in turning becomes an apostrophe. Like, apostrophe is, means, to turn. And, I –\n17:40\tKate Moffatt:\tStunning. That’s so stunning. Sorry, I need a second. [Laughter]\nThat’s so lovely.\n17:45\tXiaoxuan Wong:\tYeah. I love that question because I think that[…]and I love that we’re recording this in a sound booth, which in a way is attempting to like erase the space or the contours. [Overlap: Oh, yeah.]\nI think with that line, the way I’m feeling it now in conversation with your question is like, I’m thinking about turning’s relationship to listening and like what it does to turn a body to face a certain way. And so, now I’m thinking about orientation, what we choose to focus on. And we all know that listening is as much about attention and focus as it is about volume. So, I think that ultimately, listening is an orientation that we get to choose. I mean, to a certain extent.\n18:46\tKate Moffatt:\tRight? No, but I know exactly what you mean. Yeah. That there is, that we should not feel like it’s something passive that’s only happening passively. There is so much intentionality, and that intentionality can shape that entirely.\n18:57\tXiaoxuan Wong:\tYeah. Yes. Yeah. [Laughter]. Yes. Yes. That’s it. [Laughter].\n19:02\tKate Moffatt:\tOh, that’s such a wonderful answer. And I feel like even as you were saying that about us being in the booth too that we have kind of prioritized, we are choosing to forgo the space, the larger space that we’re in. For the sake of like a clear voicing. In technical terms, like a clear particular voicing of our conversation.\n19:28\tXiaoxuan Wong:\tUhhuh [Affirmative]\n19:28\tKate Moffatt:\tAnd like, yeah.\n19:30\tXiaoxuan Wong:\tYeah. Um, like I love analog technology because of its grit. And it’s like the grain, like Barthes talks about, like the grain of the voice. And I just, um, yeah. Like incredible.\nMy friends make fun of me. This is off-topic now, but my friends – I love it – make fun of me for all my playlists. Like, my music taste is like boys who can’t sing and sad indie girls. And, um, [Laughs]–\n20:02\tKate Moffatt:\tI love it. I love it. You’re really selling your playlist, actually. I love it.\n20:07\tXiaoxuan Wong:\tAnd I like, I don’t know, there’s something about hearing flaws\nand, um, hearing texture when things aren’t super smoothed out and polished, that is so compelling to me. And so, when I take that as like a, um, I think that’s informed by like my, the way I grew up in small-town Ontario, music scenes and, um, Kingston, Ontario – shout out to Kingston [Laughs] – um, such a rich music scene for its like per capita in terms of its–\n20:47\tKate Moffatt:\tI love that–\n20:48\tXiaoxuan Wong:\tIt’s population. I think there are so many wonderful things, like collectives working together to bring and sustain God. We know, we all know how hard it is to sustain a scene; takes all of us. And yeah, like I think my embracing of the grittiness and not erasing certain contours or not blurring, I guess like cleaning up things too much is informed by experimentation and just doing it. Not being interested in being, I don’t know, an apprentice in [Laughs] for too long before actually picking up a guitar or picking up some drumsticks.\n21:41\tKate Moffatt:\tBut that imperfection is actually part of the, it’s part of the magic that’s happening in the first place.\n21:46\tXiaoxuan Wong:\tYeah. And it allows for you to put on a show then…Like, I don’t know why I love that–\n21:53\tKate Moffatt:\tThat’s more important than making it perfect first, right?\n21:56\tXiaoxuan Wong:\tYeah. Yeah.\n21:57\tKate Moffatt:\tOr making it perfect at all. Amazing.\nOkay. Well, I’d like to finish with one last quick question, which is: What are you listening to lately? Like in your research or at the conference–\n22:08\tXiaoxuan Wong:\tOh, gosh.\n22:09\tKate Moffatt:\tOr even just generally. This is kind of hopping off of that lovely little playlist tangent you sent us on. But we can end with this one, but yeah. What are you listening to?\n22:19\tXiaoxuan Wong:\tI, okay, so I am listening to…I love radio. I love the intimacy of radio, especially community radio, campus radio, you know, hearing myself being addressed. One-on-one. So it feels like, to me I’ve had, I’ve written about it. I’ve kind of, that’s a relationship to another’s voice that feels really special.\n22:57\tKate Moffatt:\tThat’s such a gorgeous way to think about it.\n23:00\tXiaoxuan Wong:\tThanks. So, I guess like radio shows, I don’t know. I workout to like\nNTS’s “Infinite” mixtape, [Laughs] that they have on there, and make some cool discoveries there. And yeah, I think I’ve, the internet has introduced me to a lot of connections too, like Lucía Meliáwho is based out of Mexico City. She is, yeah, she is a radio…she has a radio show called “Sinister Flowers.” That great name, right?\n23:42\tKate Moffatt:\tGreat name. [Laughs]\n23:43\tXiaoxuan Wong:\tThat is a, I think the most ideal. It’s everything I want in a radio show. It has critical theory. It has music and like field recordings. Poetry works its way in there. And Lucía’s taste is just like, right on. So I, yeah. And right now I’m listening to “Sinister Flowers.”\n24:13\tKate Moffatt:\tI’m gonna have to write that down. Well, I think we’ll stop there. Thank you so much. It was so lovely. It was so, words are not capturing this properly. It wasn’t lovely. It was so much more than lovely, but it was lovely. So thank you so much, so much for joining us and\n24:27\tXiaoxuan Wong:\tSee you at the conference.\n24:28\tKate Moffatt:\tSee you at the rest of the conference, yeah.\n24:29\tXiaoxuan Wong:\tThere’s a cabaret tonight.\n24:31\tKate Moffatt:\tThere’s a cabaret. We’re gonna go listen together at the cabaret.\n24:35\tXiaoxuan Wong:\tThank you so much, Kate.\n24:36\tKate Moffatt:\tThank you.\n24:36\tMiranda Eastwood:\tYay! [Miranda cheers]\n24:39\tMusic:\t[SpokenWeb theme song starts playing]\n24:42\tKatherine McLeod:\tYou’ve been listening to Shortcuts.\n24:46\tKatherine McLeod:\tThanks to Xiaoxuan Wong for talking with us in this episode. And a big thanks to Kate Moffatt and Miranda Eastwood for conducting and recording the conversation.\nShortcuts is part of the SpokenWeb podcast.\nThe SpokenWeb podcast is made up of supervising producer Maia Harris, sound designer, James Healy, transcriber, Yara Ajeeb, and co-host Hannah McGregor, and myself, Katherine McLeod. Like all of these Shortcuts live\nconversations from last year’s symposium, there really is a sense of being there. And, I thought that this conversation in particular was such a great way of thinking back to the feeling of being there last year and looking ahead to this year’s symposium. In fact, we’ll be rolling out the last of these Shortcuts Live conversations as a full episode in the very same week as this year’s SpokenWeb symposium takes place. Stay tuned for that in the first week of June, right here on the podcast feed. And, for now, thanks for listening."],"score":2.7048998},{"id":"9998","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 5.6, Open Door Listening, with Brandon LaBelle at Errant Bodies Press, 29 July 2024, McLeod"],"item_title_source":["SpokenWeb Podcast web page."],"item_title_note":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/open-door-listening-with-brandon-labelle-at-errant-bodies-press/"],"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":[2024],"material_description":["[]"],"digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://cdn.simplecast.com/audio/28a9da1f-8cca-410c-b5d7-8165a73f9394/episodes/291d921e-f868-4021-87cf-786ea58df875/audio/50ec4344-8b6b-4319-8f76-062ea1d7b47c/default_tc.mp3?nocache\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"audio-sample-shortcuts-errant-bodies-press.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"44.1 kHz\",\"duration\":\"00:21:34\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"20,770,108 bytes\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"MP3 audio\",\"title\":\"ShortCuts - Errant Bodies Press\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/open-door-listening-with-brandon-labelle-at-errant-bodies-press/\"}]"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"2024-07-29\",\"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\":\"REFERENCES\\n\\nCopeland, Stacey, Hannah McGregor and Katherine McLeod. “The Kitchen Table is Always Where We Are: Podcasting as Feminist Self-Reflexive Practice.” Podcast Studies: Theory into Practice, eds. Dario Linares and Lori Beckstead, Wilfrid Laurier UP, forthcoming in December 2024.\\n\\nLaBelle, Brandon. “Poetics of Listening.” ESC: English Studies in Canada, vol. 46 no. 2, 2020, p. 273-277. Project MUSE, https://doi.org/10.1353/esc.2020.a903562.\\n\\nMcLeod, Katherine. “Archival Listening.” ESC: English Studies in Canada, vol. 46 no. 2, 2020, p. 325-331. Project MUSE, https://doi.org/10.1353/esc.2020.a903565.\"}]"],"_version_":1853670549825257472,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:54.290Z","contents":["ShortCuts as a series on The SpokenWeb Podcast feed is coming to an end.\n\nFor the past five seasons, ShortCuts producer Katherine McLeod has been bringing you deep dives into the archives. Through this process, ShortCuts has asked the question of what it means to listen closely and carefully to short ‘cuts’ of audio. ShortCuts has become a sonic space to practice feminist listening and that listening has informed and continues to inform audio-based research, performances (including performances based on ShortCuts audio), and print publications (such as “Archival Listening” and “The Kitchen Table is Always Where We Are: Podcasting as Feminist Self-Reflexive Practice”).\n\nFor this final ShortCuts, we listen to a conversation with Brandon LaBelle recorded on-site at Errant Bodies Press in Berlin. Listen to hear a reading from LaBelle’s “Poetics of Listening” (as published in ESC “New Sonic Approaches in Literary Studies”), to hear about Errant Bodies Press and what it sounds like to be there, and to hear the open door as a way of listening. That open door listening will continue even after ShortCuts ends.\n\nStay tuned for what is next!\n\n[Sound of walking down stairs and door opening] (00:00)\n\nKatherine McLeod (00:22):\n\nWelcome to Shortcuts. \n\n[Door closes and theme music begins]\n\nKatherine McLeod:\n\nThis ShortCuts is recorded in Berlin. It is a conversation with Brandon LaBelle at Errant Bodies Press. The episode explores the sound of Errant Bodies Press as a space of listening. It just so happened that where I was staying in Berlin was within walking distance. We laughed about that when I arrived.\n\nMy conversation with Brandon LaBelle took place after his piece “Poetics of Listening” was published in the special issue of English studies in Canada that I edited with Jason Camlot. The special issue is called “New Sonic Approaches in Literary Studies.” And when I sat down with Brandon LaBelle at Errant Body’s Press, there was the journal issue on the table. It had made it to Berlin and it was ready to make itself heard in this space of listening.\n\n \nBrandon LaBelle (01:56):\n\nWould you like some tea, or water?\n\n \n[Music]\n\n \nKatherine McLeod:\nThis is such a, a beautiful space. I was –\n\n \nBrandon LaBelle (02:10):\n\nYeah. Yeah. No, we really enjoyed it. I’ve had it for a couple years now, and yeah. I’ve been kind of working here as a studio and, and then like having a home for the press. Yeah. And lately it’s become more, I’ve started to invite some friends to join me, so now we’re kind of creating a little bit of a collective more like a kind of a study group. \n\n \nKatherine McLeod\n\nMm-Hmm. <Affirmative> \n\n \nBrandon Labelle:\n\nWe’re all like focusing around listening and planetary. So yeah. We’re having kind of study sessions and making workshops and small events, so the space really is conducive to that. \n\n \nKatherine McLeod (02:53):\n\n‘Cause I was so interested in how the space is both a press and also a space of practice and developing methods and collaboration together. And so this combination of space adds again, the, both like the physical presence of books, but also a space of real performance and enactment that that clearly takes place in it too. So that’s, it’s a really fascinating combination. Even just as I look around, I see the books are so present, and yet it feels like at these tables, action takes place and listening takes place. So it feels like the kind of space that invites both.\n\n \nBrandon LaBelle (03:34):\n\nYeah.\n\n \nKatherine McLeod (03:35):\n\nYeah. And the Listening Biennal, does that take place here? Or is that,\n\n \nBrandon LaBelle (03:40):\n\nYes\n\n \nKatherine McLeod\n\nI mean, I see the poster.\n\n \nBrandon LaBelle (03:42):\n\nYeah. Yeah. This is actually our new poster. Oh, that was from last\n\n \nKatherine: \n\nYear. Oh, thank you. \n\n \nBrandon LaBelle (03:47):\n\nTwo years ago. Yeah. And yeah, so what we’re planning now is to actually Yeah. Install the biennial here. Okay. To make a listening lounge. So we’ll kind of get rid of the tables and just have some carpets and pillows and oh, nice. Yeah. And sort of have, be open on the weekend and, and sort of diffuse the audio works and yeah. Create a kind of cozy environment for people to be here and listen together. So that’s kind of the plan. Next week we have the Listening Academy, which is focusing on the somatic. And then we’ll have a performance on Saturday with Sixth Dancers that we’ve been developing called The Open Body.\n\nKatherine McLeod:\n\nOkay.\n\n \nBrandon LaBelle (04:32):\n\nWhich really takes listening as the basis for movement Right. And developing different strategies around that. So yeah. We’re, yeah, I’ve been rehearsing that the last month. \n\n \nKatherine: \n\nHave you been part of that as well? \n\n \nBrandon LaBelle (04:45):\n\nI’m sort of conceptualizing the project. \n\n \n\nKatherine: \n\nAmazing. \n\n \n\nBrandon LaBelle (04:48):\n\nAnd then yeah. Working with different performers. Yeah. But it’s coming along, and should be interesting to stage it. \n\n \n\nKatherine:\n\nWhere will that take place?\n\n \n\nBrandon LaBelle (04:58):\n\nIt’s at a performance venue just in the neighborhood here. It’s an old ballroom Oh, wow. With former East Berlin, and yeah. It’s been running as a venue for probably 20 years now, so it’s a wonderful space. \n\n \n\nKatherine:\n\nYeah. Yeah. I was reading a bit about the old ballrooms that are, maybe it’s even that same one that is in this neighborhood that oh, that sounds fantastic. Yeah. Yeah. And then the space can kind of become part of the Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative> the performance.\n\n \n\nBrandon LaBelle:\n\nYeah. It’s a wonderful environment. They have a, it’s sort of set in a park, which is partly a cemetery.\n\nThey have these large, very large windows in the space that we’re gonna uncover and just look out into the, into the trees, use the sunlight and the, the evening twilight as the, the lighting. Oh, beautiful.\n\n \n\nKatherine: \n\nBeautiful. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, that’s, oh – \n\n \n\nBrandon LaBelle (05:46):\n\nThat’s nice. She should be lovely.\n\n \n\nKatherine (05:48):\n\nYeah. Sounds beautiful. Yeah. And then thinking of what I, what I do in shortcuts is almost like a, like, I call it like a deep dive into archival sound and where we can, you know, really listen to one clip or one sound. So I was thinking about this space itself that we’re in and thinking of almost like if this is a shortcuts episode, almost like a deep dive into the sound of err bodies press <laugh>, and a close listening to it. So I thought maybe if I ask you a sort of a more formal question of what are we listening to now?\n\n \n\nBrandon LaBelle (06:25):\n\nMm-Hmm. <Affirmative>  Well, let’s, let’s take a moment. Yeah. I mean, I guess for myself, what has always been really essential that I’ve tried to kind of find ways of developing is maybe what we could think of as the open door. \n\n \n\nKatherine: \n\nMm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. \n\n \n\nBrandon:\n\nSo, and maybe Berlin particularly sort of offers this opportunity for artists or for, as my friend always says idealists, to sort of really manifest the imagination. To find space for really playing out. Sort of ideas and imaginaries and creative explorations. And so I think being in Berlin for me has, you know, I really embraced that and really sort of feel like I thrive in that kind of cultural environment. And so having a space like this and locating oneself and, and in, in such a manner, which is like about a certain kind of privacy. But at the same time, having this relationship to the street. \n\n \n\nKatherine:\n\nMm-Hmm. <Affirmative> \n\n \n\nBrandon: \n\n– and having an address where others can enter. And so I think this open door, and this kind of threshold, public and private, is really also something I try to integrate or learn from through my practice. So maybe we are hearing that open door. \n\n \n\nKatherine McLeod:\n\nYeah. I’m very aware of both the sounds of our voices in the space. Like if I slightly move my foot, feeling like the texture of the floor and the sounds like going up to the high ceilings, but also, but I’m so aware in this sort of beautiful kind of echo of the space, the sounds from of outside coming in, that sound of the bird or the cars passing and voices. And so yeah, I think that the, the door is where we are listening to the door <laugh>, and and it’s doing something very powerful right there, a car is passing. And there’s also something too about even seeing, looking around and seeing the, the books now seeing CDs as well the books from the press behind you, it feels like we’re, we’re kind of listening to that too as well in simply sort of by their presence here.\n\n \n\nBrandon LaBelle (09:02):\n\nYeah, that’s true. I know that often people enter and also really enjoy that material – being sort of enveloped in that kind of material of books and, and documents and media. That becomes very immediately enticing, and evocative. And so I kind of also appreciate that as a, yeah. As also a creative expression in itself. So for instance, these binders over here are a set of, they came out of a, a project I developed called The Other Citizen, and they were part of like, almost like an archival installation I made at Transmediale a few years ago. And they’re really designed, they’re like, each one is referencing a certain discursive framework. But they try to kind of be quite creative with how you sort of house or categorize knowledge. So they’re intentionally quite enticing as well, you know, in terms of what they suggest. And they’re kind of topics that come out of my own readings and my own activities, but also picking up from what is present around us in, in sort of current, current discussions or issues. So they’re, they’re inherently stray from a particular disciplinary structure and try to be more transversal and playful. \n\n \n\nKatherine:\n\n<Affirmative>.\n\n \n\nBrandon LaBelle (10:41):\n\nSo I think this also is part of what is present in the room. Mm-Hmm.\n\nSpeaker 4 (10:46):\n\n<Affirmative>. Yeah.\n\nBrandon LaBelle (10:47):\n\nThis relationship to knowledge and discourse is also sort of enlivening\n\nKatherine: \n\nYeah.\n\nBrandon LaBelle (10:54):\n\nSuggestive. Imaginative.\n\n \n\nKatherine: \n\nYeah, that just made me think when you said that of sort of dis – in thinking of disciplinary listening you know… it is a space that it’s hard to say, oh, this, you couldn’t say, you could look say on one shelf and be like, oh, okay, I see the discipline. Maybe, you know, sound studies. I’ve seen some titles there. But then as soon as you move to the next shelf, there’s another sort of disciplinary approach that’s very present. But also thinking again, of what this space is, where we are, where we are at the table what kind of disciplinary listening takes place here, which would feel quite different than on the shelf. \n\n \n\nBrandon LaBelle (11:38):\n\nYeah. This is the top shelf. Is the CDs.\n\n \n\nKatherine:\n\nYeah, yeah.\n\nBrandon LaBelle (11:44):\n\nA sort of particular format we came up with. Yeah. Which, which sort of takes the shape of the book more. Oh, may. Okay. Yeah. And they always kind of have this Yeah. Like an elaborated booklet inside. \n\nSo it was very much about keeping the idea of, of sound and sonic practice close to kind of discursive reflection. Right. Or textual Right. Matter as well. So that one would kind of read and listen or listen and read. So these things, bringing them close together, it’s quite important in that series. ’cause Sometimes, yeah. I mean, I guess there’s, there’s some, on some level there’s a kind of often a sort of idea that, you know, you have like a kind of community of practitioners often coming from an experimental music sort of arena that, you know, doesn’t necessarily relate itself to more academic informed investigations. And I always, I try to make this sort disregard this separation Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>. And so practice in theory being very integrated feels really, you know, part of the room.\n\n \n\nSpeaker 4 (12:55):\n\nRight. Yeah. Yeah. yeah. Yeah. Do you see that as, say the, the word, the words like research creation that get sort of talked about a lot these days? Is that something that you, you, do you think of research creation as a framework that you work in? Or is that, is it sort of maybe something that you do but don’t think of it in that way…\n\n \n\nBrandon LaBelle (13:19):\n\nNo, it’s, it’s a good question. I mean, the other day we were having a meeting sort of study session, and everyone around the table really, we kind of realized at a certain moment that we all occupy this kind of artistic research framework and that feel quite comfortable in that, or sort of supported by that term. And I think there is something to that. And, and even though I don’t necessarily really forefront that as defining of my work I think it’s somehow in the background Yeah. It’s around. And I’m sure that I’m, I’m very much participating in those communities. More and more, of course, as they get more alive and present, and maybe as you also suggested, how these separations are also becoming more or less important or less clear between sort of art and academic, or between the book and the cd. \n\n \n\nKatherine McLeod:\n\nAnd certainly that’s, it’s been something that I’ve thought more about what research creation does in that the way in which SpokenWeb as a research network it has been attempting to sort of like activate archival materials or like, make, make things with them as whether in the case of the, the sort of the listening and making that I was talking about, or other kinds of, of sort of performative kind of curations that make things with archival materials. And so I think about how research creation is so important as academic work, and that it is indeed like it’s, it’s getting recognized as valid scholarship. Or even the podcast, it’s kind of a form of research creation in some way that you’re, you are you’re making something new and you’re making something that is often more creative that might not necessarily be following the same pathways as whatever the academic pathway, which often somehow gets defined as uncreative, which at the same time, it is creative too.\n\n \n\nSo it’s it’s almost a, a false, a false separation there between the, the research and creation to begin with. But, but it does feel like the there’s more support for that kind of work than, than there had been, or even, so even these, some of these formal categories help with that in some way, but yeah, that’s true. Yeah. But yeah, the just looking at the <laugh>, the collection here I was thinking that it would be beautiful to hear you read the opening to your piece, if you would be open to that. Sure. Because Sure. It is thinking as poetics a poetics of listening. It is a very poetic opening. And I thought, oh, to, to actually hear how you would voice that would be, would be a real a gift to use a word that is over there on the archival boxes. Let me turn, turn to it here – \n\n \n\nBrandon LaBelle:\n\nOkay… [Begins reading]  It has already begun… the time … the time-space… of… speaking… of speaking that moves itself… toward knowing nothing… something you… the use that arrives from the particularities… as the basis for a giving… enacting a rhythmic… of breath… breathing toward… away\n\n \n\n[Pause – music begins]\n\n \n\nKatherine McLeod (17:28):\n\nYou’ve been listening to ShortCuts. ShortCuts has been a monthly feature on the SpokenWeb podcast. It is now in its fifth season, and this may be the end of shortcuts, but who knows, there may still be shortcuts inspired Mini sos as short bonus content on the podcast feed. It is fitting that this is or could be the last episode of shortcuts. Shortcuts started as me alone recording short audio pieces as close and careful listenings to audio cut from spoken webs, archival collections. The first three seasons were quite solitary listenings, though they did make some long lasting connections with their listeners. The fourth and fifth seasons have been more and more social and live featuring conversations with spoken web researchers about archival clips of their choice and about their sound-based research. So it seemed like it could not be more fitting to conclude with a conversation with Brandon LaBelle as an expert listener, and within a space like Err Bodies press as a space of listening and a making. And to be far from the closet where I recorded so many episodes of shortcuts to be in Berlin.\n\n \n\nI edit this conversation back home in Montreal, and I record this voiceover from SpokenWeb’s podcast studio at Concordia. And as I think back over what shortcuts has made and the conversations it has sparked, I can’t help but be moved to do something that I love doing so much in shortcuts to listen again and again, and to let the sound speak for itself. And so with that, let’s listen once more to LaBelle’s reading from “A Poetics of Listening.” As I edited the audio of him reading, I noticed how he makes audible, the pauses in the text, the dot, dot dot, the ellipses. And I thought about how he rendered them in such a way that they invite a response in between the pauses. What if we listen to it like this?\n\n \n\n[Music ends]\n\n \n\nBrandon LaBelle (19:55):\n\n[Audio replays of LaBelle reading with voice overlaping – transcribed as heard] It has already begun. It has already – the time begun. The time-space, the time of the time space of speaking, that speaking moves itself, itself. Speaking that moves. Knowing nothing toward something, knowing nothing. You something. The uses that arrive from the, use the particularities as the basis particularities. A giving as the basis for a giving a rhythm, enacting breath, a rhythm, breathing toward breath away, breathing toward, away.\n\n \n\nKatherine McLeod (20:43):\n\nYou’ve been listening to ShortCuts. Thanks to Brandon for talking with me, amid the books and sounds of errant bodies. Press check the show notes for links to the press and to the Listening Biennal. ShortCuts is part of the SpokenWeb podcast. The podcast team is made up of supervising producer Maia Harris, sound designer, James Healy transcriber, Yara Ajeeb podcast co-hosts Hannah McGregor and me, Katherine McLeod. ShortCuts has been designed and produced by me, Katherine McLeod, and thanks to all who have joined me on it along the way. As always, thanks to you for listening.\n\n "],"score":2.7048998},{"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":2.7048998},{"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":2.7048998},{"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":2.7048998},{"id":"10027","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 Events AV, Virtual Book Launch for CanLit Across Media: Unarchiving the Literary Event, 12 November 2020"],"item_title_source":["https://spokenweb.ca/events/virtual-book-launch-for-canlit-across-media-unarchiving-the-literary-event/"],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Internet recording"],"item_series_title":["SpokenWeb Events"],"item_identifiers":["[]"],"rights":["Creative Commons Attribution (BY)"],"rights_license":["Creative Commons Attribution (BY)"],"access":["Closed"],"creator_names":["Jason Camlot","Katherine McLeod"],"creator_names_search":["Jason Camlot","Katherine McLeod"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/90740324\",\"name\":\"Jason Camlot\",\"dates\":\"1967-\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Presenter\"]},{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/44156495389117561605\",\"name\":\"Katherine McLeod\",\"dates\":\"1981-\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Presenter\"]}]"],"contributors":["[]"],"Production_Date":[2020],"material_description":["[]"],"digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/folders/1OuJPlv2IO5zQ_wUO5LY2SRfrVcdVlY-k\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"camlot-jason-and-mcleod-katherine_canlit-across-media-launch_zoom_cu_2020-11-12.mp4\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"01:21:42\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"585,009,402 bytes\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"MP4 video\",\"title\":\"camlot-jason-and-mcleod-katherine_canlit-across-media-launch_zoom_cu_2020-11-12\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Video Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"}]"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"2020-11-12\",\"type\":\"Production Date\",\"notes\":\"\",\"source\":\"\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/22080572\",\"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"],"contents":["CanLit Across Media: Unarchiving the Literary Event is an innovative collection that evaluates diverse methods of recording, archiving, and remediating literature and literary culture in Canada.\n\n\nEditors Jason Camlot and Katherine McLeod managed to hold one in-person launch for CanLit Across Media: Unarchiving the Literary Event before the COVID lockdown, but they were not able to launch the book with the contributors themselves.\n\n\nOn Thursday November 12, 7pm ET (4pm PT), join nearly all contributors to CanLit Across Media in a virtual conversation that promises to be one of liveliest and \"live\" book launches (on Zoom) you may ever attend!\n\n\nRSVP for the Zoom link here.\n\n\nFind out more about the book and how to order it from MQUP here.\n\n\nContributors:\n\nJordan Abel (University of Alberta)\n\nAndrea Beverley (Mount Allison University)\n\nClint Burnham (Simon Fraser University)\n\nJason Camlot (Concordia University)\n\nJoel Deshaye (Memorial University of Newfoundland)\n\nDeanna Fong (Simon Fraser University)\n\nCatherine Hobbs (Library and Archives Canada)\n\nDean Irvine (Agile Humanities)\n\nKarl Jirgens (University of Windsor)\n\nMarcelle Kosman (University of Alberta)\n\nJessi MacEachern (Concordia University)\n\nKatherine McLeod (Concordia University)\n\nLinda Morra (Bishop's University)\n\nKaris Shearer (University of British Columbia, Okanagan)\n\nFelicity Tayler (University of Ottawa)\n\nDarren Wershler (Concordia University)"],"Note":["[]"],"Related_works":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.mqup.ca/canlit-across-media-products-9780773558663.php\",\"citation\":\"Camlot, Jason, and Katherine McLeod, editors. CanLit Across Media: Unarchiving the Literary Event. McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2019. \"}]"],"_version_":1853670549829451776,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:54.290Z","score":2.7048998},{"id":"10029","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 Events AV, All Team Meeting Zoom Concordia, 18 December 2020"],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Internet recording"],"item_series_title":["SpokenWeb Events"],"item_identifiers":["[]"],"creator_names":["Jason Camlot","Katherine McLeod"],"creator_names_search":["Jason Camlot","Katherine McLeod"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/90740324\",\"name\":\"Jason Camlot\",\"dates\":\"1967-\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Speaker\"]},{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/44156495389117561605\",\"name\":\"Katherine McLeod\",\"dates\":\"1981-\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Speaker\"]}]"],"contributors":["[]"],"Production_Date":[2020],"material_description":["[]"],"digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1KHEHb7xFqYoqIvot6dcOdstUFlltN6SP\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"all-team-meeting_zoom_concordia_2020-12-18_zoom_0.mp4\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"44.1kHz\",\"duration\":\"01:52:38\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"1,312,136,429 bytes\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"MP4 video\",\"title\":\"all-team-meeting_zoom_concordia_2020-12-18_zoom_0\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Video Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"}]"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"2020-12-18\",\"type\":\"Production 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"],"contents":["Jason Camlot opened the meeting and introduced Ben Hymes who took over the\nCheck-ins: \nJason Camlot for Concordia University: Nearly done processing Words Music Collection, Allan Lord Collection\nRedescribing Sir Goerge William's Collection so that it works in Swallow\nHosted a number of events like Listening Practices, workshops, performances. Working on managing fellowships for curators and artists in residence.\nFelicity of University of Ottawa: were unable to do collection processing because archives are closed due to pandemic. Focused on event activities.\nBrian: working on automatic methods to diarize recordings.\nYin: Black Writers Out Loud in collaboration with SpokenWeb. Launching poetry on screens.\nMike, University of Alberta: Developing web portal and translating wire frames into design principles; collection processing, completed time stamping and metadata for a new collection from University of Alberta archives; \nInitiating the front end of Swallow\n"],"Note":["[]"],"Related_works":["[]"],"_version_":1853670549829451778,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:54.290Z","score":2.7048998},{"id":"10047","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 Events AV, Deep Curation II, 14 February 2019"],"item_title_source":["https://spokenweb.ca/events/deep-curation-2/"],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Classroom recording"],"item_series_title":["SpokenWeb Events"],"item_identifiers":["[]"],"creator_names":["Jason Camlot","Klara du Plessis","Deanna Fong","Katherine McLeod"],"creator_names_search":["Jason Camlot","Klara du Plessis","Deanna Fong","Katherine McLeod"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/90740324\",\"name\":\"Jason Camlot\",\"dates\":\"1967-\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Reader\"]},{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/124151352052252602758\",\"name\":\"Klara du Plessis\",\"dates\":\"1988-\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Reader\"]},{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/102855198\",\"name\":\"Deanna Fong\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Reader\"]},{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/44156495389117561605\",\"name\":\"Katherine McLeod\",\"dates\":\"1981-\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Reader\"]}]"],"contributors":["[]"],"Production_Date":[2019],"material_description":["[]"],"digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"2019-02-14 Deep Curation II February 14, 2019.mp4\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"00:52:23\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"940,869,124 bytes\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"MP4 video\",\"title\":\"2019-02-14 Deep Curation II February 14, 2019\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Video Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"}]"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"2019-02-14\",\"type\":\"Production Date\",\"notes\":\"\",\"source\":\"\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/22080572\",\"venue\":\"Concordia University McConnell Building\",\"notes\":\"\",\"address\":\"1400 Boulevard de Maisonneuve O, Montreal, QC, H3G 1M8\",\"latitude\":\"45.4968036\",\"longitude\":\"-73.57792786\"}]"],"Address":["1400 Boulevard de Maisonneuve O, Montreal, QC, H3G 1M8"],"Venue":["Concordia University McConnell Building"],"City":["Montreal, Quebec"],"contents":["Join us for a Deep Curation poetry reading, an experimental approach to literary event organization, the curator selecting the works to be read, as well as the thematic arc of the works' placement and progression in relation to one another.\nThis reading will synthesize poetry and scholarship by members of the SpokenWeb team to form a vibrant, challenging, and cross-genre listening experience. SpokenWeb is a research initiative based at Concordia University's English Department.\n\nReaders: Jason Camlot, Klara du Plessis, Deanna Fong, Katherine McLeod\nCurator: Klara du Plessis"],"Note":["[{\"note\":\"On \\\"amplab storage 2\\\"\",\"type\":\"Cataloguer\"}]"],"Related_works":["[]"],"_version_":1853670549986738177,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:54.597Z","score":2.7048998},{"id":"10049","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 Events AV, Sounding New Sonic Approaches, 12 February 2024"],"item_title_source":["https://spokenweb.ca/events/sounding-new-sonic-approaches/"],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Classroom recording"],"item_series_title":["SpokenWeb Events"],"item_identifiers":["[]"],"creator_names":["Jason Camlot","Katherine McLeod","Annie Murray","Klara du Plessis","Mathieu Aubin","Julia Polyck-O’Neill","Jason Wiens","Kelly Baron","Nina Sun Eidsheim","Juliette Bellocq","Daniel Martin","Kristen Smith","Gascia Ouzounian","Ellen Waterman","Katharina Fürholzer","Kristin Moriah","Mara Mills","Andy Slater"],"creator_names_search":["Jason Camlot","Katherine McLeod","Annie Murray","Klara du Plessis","Mathieu Aubin","Julia Polyck-O’Neill","Jason Wiens","Kelly Baron","Nina Sun Eidsheim","Juliette Bellocq","Daniel Martin","Kristen Smith","Gascia Ouzounian","Ellen Waterman","Katharina Fürholzer","Kristin Moriah","Mara Mills","Andy Slater"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/90740324\",\"name\":\"Jason Camlot\",\"dates\":\"1967-\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Speaker\"]},{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/44156495389117561605\",\"name\":\"Katherine McLeod\",\"dates\":\"1981-\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Speaker\"]},{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/31170924535890151440\",\"name\":\"Annie Murray\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Reader\"]},{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/124151352052252602758\",\"name\":\"Klara du Plessis\",\"dates\":\"1988-\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Reader\"]},{\"url\":\"\",\"name\":\"Mathieu Aubin\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Reader\"]},{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/43152682594823312099\",\"name\":\"Julia Polyck-O’Neill\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Reader\"]},{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/106059085\",\"name\":\"Jason Wiens\",\"dates\":\"1973-\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Reader\"]},{\"url\":\"\",\"name\":\"Kelly Baron\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Reader\"]},{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/316557652\",\"name\":\"Nina Sun Eidsheim\",\"dates\":\"1975-\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Reader\"]},{\"url\":\"\",\"name\":\"Juliette Bellocq\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Reader\"]},{\"url\":\"\",\"name\":\"Daniel Martin\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Reader\"]},{\"url\":\"\",\"name\":\"Kristen Smith\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Reader\"]},{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/15149233544176512036\",\"name\":\"Gascia Ouzounian\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Reader\"]},{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/106069023\",\"name\":\"Ellen Waterman\",\"dates\":\"1963-\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Reader\"]},{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/244144647692026868411\",\"name\":\"Katharina Fürholzer\",\"dates\":\"1984-\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Reader\"]},{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/305268048\",\"name\":\"Kristin Moriah\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Reader\"]},{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/1340148523891920970006\",\"name\":\"Mara Mills\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Reader\"]},{\"url\":\"\",\"name\":\"Andy Slater\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Reader\"]}]"],"contributors":["[]"],"Production_Date":[2024],"material_description":["[]"],"digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"4SPHDR__2402121559_0001.mp4\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"01:03:54\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"19,485,292,484 bytes\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"MP4 video\",\"title\":\"4SPHDR__2402121559_0001\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Video Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"}]"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"2024-02-12\",\"type\":\"Production Date\",\"notes\":\"\",\"source\":\"\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/22080572\",\"venue\":\"Concordia University McConnell Building\",\"notes\":\"\",\"address\":\"1400 Boulevard de Maisonneuve O, Montreal, QC, H3G 1M8\",\"latitude\":\"45.4968036\",\"longitude\":\"-73.57792786\"}]"],"Address":["1400 Boulevard de Maisonneuve O, Montreal, QC, H3G 1M8"],"Venue":["Concordia University McConnell Building"],"City":["Montreal, Quebec"],"contents":["In May 2023 a triple-issue of English Studies in Canada (ESC) was published on the topic of “New Sonic Approaches in Literary Studies.” Edited by Concordia’s Jason Camlot and Katherine McLeod, the issue, designed to explore the ways in which sound, literature, and critical methodologies intersect, included thirteen scholarly articles, and an interdisciplinary forum on the place of listening as a methodology in a wide range of scholarly and artistic fields. The issue is substantial in its contributions to imagining new ways of combining literary studies and sound studies, and it warrants a public celebration.\n\nAs the editors considered what kind of “launch” would be best suited to this issue, they felt it should build on the printed scholarship, but also take it further – respond to it, sound it, and perform it. What is the sound of “New Sonic Approaches”? What would this journal issue sound like as a chorus or collage of voices? This event will enact the idea of sounding and performing a scholarly collection as a kind of poetic reading of criticism. Each contributor has been invited to select an excerpt to perform, and the performances will unfold in sequence as a long collaborative work that speaks to questions of literary expression, performance, sounding, and listening.\n\nJoin us for the unfolding of this performance, a live recording session of a future scholarly soundwork, to listen, and at times, to add to the sounds of the event as it unfolds."],"Note":["[]"],"Related_works":["[]"],"_version_":1853670549987786753,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:54.597Z","score":2.7048998},{"id":"10053","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 Events AV, How Are We Listening, Now? A SpokenWeb Podcast Conversation, 18 June 2020"],"item_title_source":["SpokenWeb web page"],"item_title_note":["https://spokenweb.ca/events/how-are-we-listening-now-a-spokenweb-podcast-conversation/"],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Internet recording"],"item_series_title":["SpokenWeb Events"],"item_identifiers":["[]"],"creator_names":["Jason Camlot","Katherine McLeod","Aphrodite Salas"],"creator_names_search":["Jason Camlot","Katherine McLeod","Aphrodite Salas"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/90740324\",\"name\":\"Jason Camlot\",\"dates\":\"1967-\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Producer\"]},{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/44156495389117561605\",\"name\":\"Katherine McLeod\",\"dates\":\"1981-\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Producer\"]},{\"url\":\"\",\"name\":\"Aphrodite Salas\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Producer\"]}]"],"contributors_names":["Oana Avasilichioaei","Stacey Copeland","Klara du Plessis","Alvaro Echánove","Marlene Oeffinger"],"contributors_names_search":["Oana Avasilichioaei","Stacey Copeland","Klara du Plessis","Alvaro Echánove","Marlene Oeffinger"],"contributors":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/3614174516024815930000\",\"name\":\"Oana Avasilichioaei\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Speaker\"]},{\"url\":\"\",\"name\":\"Stacey Copeland\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Speaker\"]},{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/124151352052252602758\",\"name\":\"Klara du Plessis\",\"dates\":\"1988-\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Speaker\"]},{\"url\":\"\",\"name\":\"Alvaro Echánove\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Speaker\"]},{\"url\":\"\",\"name\":\"Marlene Oeffinger\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Speaker\"]}]"],"Speaker_name":["Oana Avasilichioaei","Stacey Copeland","Klara du Plessis","Alvaro Echánove","Marlene Oeffinger"],"Performance_Date":[2020],"material_description":["[]"],"digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"SpokenWeb_EDIT.mp4\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"01:07:04\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"2,698,913,056 bytes\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"MP4 video\",\"title\":\"SpokenWeb_EDIT\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Video Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"}]"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"2020-06-18\",\"type\":\"Performance Date\",\"notes\":\"\",\"source\":\"\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/22080572\",\"venue\":\"Concordia University McConnell Building\",\"notes\":\"\",\"address\":\"1400 Boulevard de Maisonneuve O, Montreal, QC, H3G 1M8\",\"latitude\":\"45.4968036\",\"longitude\":\"-73.57792786\"}]"],"Address":["1400 Boulevard de Maisonneuve O, Montreal, QC, H3G 1M8"],"Venue":["Concordia University McConnell Building"],"City":["Montreal, Quebec"],"contents":["In the first weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic, Concordia researchers Jason Camlot and Katherine McLeod co-produced “How are we listening, now? Signal, Noise, Silence” for The SpokenWeb Podcast series in order to document our reactions to the changes in our sonic environments during this time of social distancing and self-isolation. Listen to the full episode or tune in to the re-broadcast on the 4TH SPACE Reruns Series on Tuesday June 9 (12noon). Then, on Thursday June 18, 12-noon ET, join Jason Camlot, Katherine McLeod, and special guests from the podcast - Oana Avasilichioaei, Stacey Copeland, Klara du Plessis, Alvaro Echánove, Marlene Oeffinger, and more - for a virtual conversation via Zoom. Moderated by Aphrodite Salas (Assistant Professor, Journalism, Concordia) and hosted by Concordia’s 4TH SPACE, this virtual conversation will be a lively and interactive opportunity to revisit the question at the heart of this podcast: How are we listening, now?"],"Note":["[]"],"Related_works":["[]"],"_version_":1853670549988835328,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:54.597Z","score":2.7048998},{"id":"10055","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 Events AV, Sounding Signs and Broadcasting Temporalities and Sounding Together, SpokenWeb Symposium 2022: The Sound of Literature in Time, 16 May 2022"],"item_title_source":["SpokenWeb web page "],"item_title_note":["https://spokenweb.ca/symposia/#/spokenweb-symposium-2022"],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Documentary recording"],"item_series_title":["SpokenWeb Events"],"item_identifiers":["[]"],"rights":["Creative Commons Attribution, Non-Commercial, ShareAlike (BY-NC-SA)"],"rights_license":["Creative Commons Attribution, Non-Commercial, ShareAlike (BY-NC-SA)"],"access":["Closed"],"creator_names":["Jason Camlot","Katherine McLeod","Michelle Levy"],"creator_names_search":["Jason Camlot","Katherine McLeod","Michelle Levy"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/90740324\",\"name\":\"Jason Camlot\",\"dates\":\"1967-\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Producer\"]},{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/44156495389117561605\",\"name\":\"Katherine McLeod\",\"dates\":\"1981-\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Producer\"]},{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/20010042\",\"name\":\"Michelle Levy\",\"dates\":\"1968-\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Presenter\"]}]"],"contributors_names":["Aubrey Grant","Kristen Smith","Kiera Obbard","Joseph Shea-Carter","Nick Beauchesne","Chelsea Miya","Ariel Kroon","Carlos Pittella","Lee Gilboa","Kristin Franseen"],"contributors_names_search":["Aubrey Grant","Kristen Smith","Kiera Obbard","Joseph Shea-Carter","Nick Beauchesne","Chelsea Miya","Ariel Kroon","Carlos Pittella","Lee Gilboa","Kristin Franseen"],"contributors":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"name\":\"Aubrey Grant\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Speaker\"]},{\"url\":\"\",\"name\":\"Kristen Smith\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Speaker\"]},{\"url\":\"\",\"name\":\"Kiera Obbard\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Speaker\"]},{\"url\":\"\",\"name\":\"Joseph Shea-Carter \",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Speaker\"]},{\"url\":\"\",\"name\":\"Nick Beauchesne\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Speaker\"]},{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/9162060349751401864\",\"name\":\"Chelsea Miya\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Speaker\"]},{\"url\":\"\",\"name\":\"Ariel Kroon\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Speaker\"]},{\"url\":\"\",\"name\":\"Carlos Pittella\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Speaker\"]},{\"url\":\"\",\"name\":\"Lee Gilboa\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Speaker\"]},{\"url\":\"\",\"name\":\"Kristin Franseen\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Speaker\"]}]"],"Speaker_name":["Aubrey Grant","Kristen Smith","Kiera Obbard","Joseph Shea-Carter ","Nick Beauchesne","Chelsea Miya","Ariel Kroon","Carlos Pittella","Lee Gilboa","Kristin Franseen"],"Performance_Date":[2022],"material_description":["[]"],"digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"2022-05-16 SpokenWeb Symposium 2022 - Day One.mp4\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"03:57:39\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"1,269,521,511 bytes\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"MP4 video\",\"title\":\"2022-05-16 SpokenWeb Symposium 2022 - Day One\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Video Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"}]"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"2022-05-16\",\"type\":\"Performance Date\",\"notes\":\"\",\"source\":\"\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/22080572\",\"venue\":\"Concordia University McConnell Building\",\"notes\":\"\",\"address\":\"1400 Boulevard de Maisonneuve O, Montreal, QC, H3G 1M8\",\"latitude\":\"45.4968036\",\"longitude\":\"-73.57792786\"}]"],"Address":["1400 Boulevard de Maisonneuve O, Montreal, QC, H3G 1M8"],"Venue":["Concordia University McConnell Building"],"City":["Montreal, Quebec"],"Note":["[]"],"Related_works":["[]"],"_version_":1853670549988835329,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:54.597Z","contents":["The SpokenWeb Research Network (www.spokenweb.ca) is excited to host an in-person and virtual graduate student symposium (academic conference) at Concordia University in Montreal, 16-17 May 2022, on the theme of “The Sound of Literature in Time.”\n\nIntroduction to Theme:  The concepts of sound, time and literature evoke a wide range of research questions when considered in relation to each other. Together, they may suggest questions about how sound has been represented in literary works from different historical periods, how time has structured the way literary works sound (as with poetic metre), how readings and recitations sound literature across a span of time, and how time is sounded in different literary cultures and communities. Explorations of non-Western temporal frameworks, as in Mark Rifkin’s Beyond Settler Time, and a recent special issue on Black Temporality in Times of Crisis edited by Badia Ahad and Habiba Ibrahim, for example, reveal diverse meanings of temporality across cultures. As a concept, sound is always moving through time, and so, descriptions of sound involve the description of time in motion. Even a piece of sound (a sound ‘bite’) must be in motion to be audibly perceptible. As Don Ihde, in his explorations of sound phenomenology observes, “[i]insofar as all sounds are also ‘events,’ all the sounds are within the first approximation, likely to be considered as ‘moving.’” Without motion, sound is rendered silent. This is especially evident in sounds that have been recorded on time-based audio recording media which suggest the possibility of capturing real historical time in mediated form. Media theorists have noticed how the real-time quality of recorded sound, that it puts us into time that has already passed and opens a tunnel connection with the past, triggers what Wolfgang Ernst has called “the drama of time critical media.” An encounter with a recorded sound develops as an experience of real time processing.  It gives the listener the sense that the temporal process one hears is living in the present, replicating the live sonic event, of which it is apparently a real-time reproduction.  Sound recording works on human perception itself, and on our perception of time.  Other sound scholars have noted how the temporal qualities of sound immediately raise questions of historical context. For example, Pierre Schaeffer describes a “sound object” as “something that occurs in a certain place during a particular interval of time” for which questions of “context” apply. Friedrich Kittler’s work on literature and media has insisted that sound recording technology has had a transformative impact upon our relationship to the past. Time itself becomes a variable to be manipulated with technological media (you can speed up, slow down, reverse the direction of the record) suggesting that our capacity to manipulate the media artifact not only enables us to process historical “real time” so that it is experienced as a temporal event in the present, but to transform historical “real time” into events of alternate temporal orders, as well.  Most recently, Mara Mills and Jonathan Sterne have explored the history of listening to literature at accelerated speeds by blind audiobook readers, and the technological history of time shifting in speech-oriented sound media. When we are talking about sound, time, and literature, we are considering the intervolved relationship of something we identify as a literary artifact as a kind of event that suggests possibilities of playing, replaying and creating history. \n\nSounding Signs\n\nChair: Jason Camlot\n\nAubrey Grant [IP] (Concordia), “Resounding the Hollow: Repetition and Onomatopoeia in Poe’s ‘The Bells’”\n\nKristen Smith [IP] (York), “Diagrammatic  Codes, Lines, Crosshatchings: Finding Sound in Non-Linguistic Poetry”\n\nKiera Obbard [IP] (U of Guelph), “Close Reading the Sonic Topology of Instagram Poetry with Poemage”\n\nBroadcasting Temporalities\n\nChair: Katherine McLeod\n\nJoseph Shea-Carter [IP] (U of Guelph), “(Re)sounding Text: Time is Away and Sonic Re-Presentations of Literature”\n\nNick Beauchesne [IP], Ariel Kroon [IP], and Chelsea Miya [IP] (U of Alberta), “‘’A Voice of One’s Own’: Making (Air)Waves about Gendered Language in 1980s Campus Radio”\n\nSounding Together\n\nChair: Michelle Levy\n\nCarlos Pittella [IP] (Concordia), “’We’ the People: Collective Lyric Self in 21st-Century Poetry”\n\nLee Gilboa [V] (Brown), “Sound Together: The Chorus as a Possible Framework for Collectivity”\n\nKristin Franseen [IP] (Concordia), “Gossip, Musical Meaning, and (Im)possible Queer Pasts in Edward Prime-Stevenson’s Short Fiction”\n\n"],"score":2.7048998}]