[{"id":"9614","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 S3E1, Podcasting Literary Sound: Revisiting ‘The Agony and the Ecstasy of Elizabeth Smart’, 4 October 2021, Bloom"],"item_title_source":["SpokenWeb Podcast web page."],"item_title_note":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/podcasting-literary-sound-revisiting-the-agony-and-the-ecstasy-of-elizabeth-smart/"],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Podcast"],"item_series_title":["The SpokenWeb Podcast"],"item_series_description":["Series of podcasts by the SpokenWeb network."],"item_subseries_title":["The SpokenWeb Podcast Season 3"],"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, Non-Commercial, ShareAlike (BY-NC-SA)"],"rights_license":["Creative Commons Attribution, Non-Commercial, ShareAlike (BY-NC-SA)"],"access":["Streaming and download"],"creator_names":["Myra Bloom"],"creator_names_search":["Myra Bloom"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/79174225341311352865\",\"name\":\"Myra Bloom\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Producer\"]}]"],"contributors":["[]"],"Publication_Date":[2021],"material_description":["[]"],"digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://cdn.simplecast.com/audio/28a9da1f-8cca-410c-b5d7-8165a73f9394/episodes/373cabca-0ad8-4c98-a73d-97905d0a3b23/audio/4f64fdd9-c42b-40c8-ac20-6eff2555de43/default_tc.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"swp-s3e1-revisitingelizabethsmart.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"44.1 kHz\",\"duration\":\"00:47:09\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"45,340,674 bytes\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"MP3 audio\",\"title\":\"swp-s3e1-revisitingelizabethsmart\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/podcasting-literary-sound-revisiting-the-agony-and-the-ecstasy-of-elizabeth-smart/\"}]"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"2021-10-04\",\"type\":\"Publication Date\",\"notes\":\"\",\"source\":\"\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/23334883\",\"venue\":\"York University Glendon Campus\",\"notes\":\"\",\"address\":\"2275 Bayview Avenue, North York, ON, M4N 3M6\",\"latitude\":\"43.72824305\",\"longitude\":\"-79.37750288670469\"}]"],"Address":["2275 Bayview Avenue, North York, ON, M4N 3M6"],"Venue":["York University Glendon Campus"],"Note":["[]"],"Related_works":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"Warwick Archive (2019, Nov). Elizabeth Smart – English Writers at Warwick Archive. https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/english/writingprog/archive/writers/smartelizabeth/280182.\\n\\nMUN Archive Video Collection. (pre 1994). Elizabeth Smart: Canadian Writer. http://collections.mun.ca/cdm/ref/collection/extension/id/2981.\"}]"],"_version_":1853670549699428352,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:54.290Z","contents":["Today, we are welcoming you to Season 3 by reintroducing and replaying an episode that exemplifies what our podcast is all about. In January 2020, we released the episode “The Agony and the Ecstasy of Elizabeth Smart” created by researcher and producer Myra Bloom. To kick off this season, Hannah and Myra sat down for a new introductory conversation that puts Myra’s past episode in the context of the SpokenWeb project’s values and Myra’s forthcoming podcast series. Then, we invite you to listen to the voice of Elizabeth Smart again, or for the first time, and consider what caring for and sharing the sounds of literary archives means to you. \n\nOver the years, Elizabeth Smart’s 1945 novel By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept has risen from obscurity to cult classic. The book, which details an ill-fated love affair between an unnamed narrator and her married lover, is celebrated for its lyricism, passionate intensity, and its basis in Elizabeth’s real-life relationship with the poet George Barker. After publishing By Grand Central Station, Smart lapsed into a thirty-year creative silence during which time she worked as an advertising copywriter and single-parented four children. In this poetic reflection, Myra Bloom weaves together archival audio with first-person narration and interviews to examine both the great passion that fueled By Grand Central Station and the obstacles that prevented Elizabeth from recreating its brilliance.\n\nFeatured in this episode are Sina Queyras, a poet and teacher currently working on an academic project about Elizabeth; Maya Gallus, a celebrated documentarian whose first film, On the Side of the Angels, was about Elizabeth; Kim Echlin, author of Elizabeth Smart: A Fugue Essay on Women and Creativity; and Rosemary Sullivan, Elizabeth’s biographer. This episode also features archival audio of Elizabeth in conversation at Memorial University (1983) and reading at Warwick University in England (1982).\n\n00:18\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\n00:18\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. [End Music: SpokenWeb Podcast Theme Music.]\n \n\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.\n \n\n00:50\tHannah McGregor:\tWelcome to Season Three of the SpokenWeb Podcast. We are so excited to bring you another season of the podcast, featuring the research and ideas of the SpokenWeb community and a few special guests. We hope this podcast is a source of joy, inspiration, and learning for you. It certainly is for us.\n \n\n01:09\tHannah McGregor:\tWe want to open Season Three with an invitation to collectively reflect on the sounds we’ve been listening to. And the questions we’ve been exploring – beginning with a conversation about sonic literary research with episode producer Myra Bloom, followed by a replaying of Myra’s Season One episode: “The Agony and the Ecstasy of Elizabeth Smart”. Myra and I go back to her episode to ask: how does listening to archival audio shift our relationship to the authors we’re studying or reading?\n \n\n01:40\tHannah McGregor:\tThis question is at the heart of the SpokenWeb project, which is dedicated to the discovery and preservation of recordings that have captured the literary events of the past. Writers and artists have been avidly documenting their performances of literary works, events, and conversations since portable tape recording technologies became available in the 1960s. Yet, most of these audio archives remain inaccessible or in danger of imminent decay. Even those that are digitized are often hard to discover, siloed on different institutional websites. Our goal is to help researchers and the public engage with these sonic literary artifacts today. [Start Music: Instrumental Jazz] Now you might be asking, why should we care about decaying old recordings? In the very first episode of our podcast, ShortCuts producer Katherine McLeod interviewed SpokenWeb researchers about how they got interested in literary sound and the SpokenWeb project. [Sound Effect: Tape Being Put in a Recorder. Beep of Recording Starting]\n \n\n02:41\tAudio Recording, S1E1 “Stories of SpokenWeb”, Michael O’Driscoll:\tArchives are how we build community, archives are aspirational. They –we only put things in boxes and save them because we imagine a future for them.\n \n\n02:51\tAudio Recording, S1E1 “Stories of SpokenWeb”, Annie Murray:\tWhat we were really interested in was how a lot of these poets were going on reading tours [Audio Recording: Overlapping Voices Performing Poetry]. We were imagining these sort of traveling poets leaving behind a trail of recordings. Where [Audio Recording: Audience Applause] did all these readings end up and could we ever access them in all the places poets would have read?\n \n\n03:11\tAudio Recording,  S1E1 “Stories of SpokenWeb”, Jason Camlot:\tI 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. And he played to this class a barely audible recording of Tennyson receiting “The Charge of the Light Brigade.” [Audio Clip: Muffled Recording of Tennyson receiting “The Charge of the Light Brigade]\n \n\n03:37\tHannah McGregor:\tWe’ve discovered that once we make old tapes listenable again, the results are powerful –\n \n\n03:43\tAudio Recording, S2E6 “Mavis Gallant reads ‘Grippes and Poche’ at SFU”,  Mavis Gallant:\tThis is a story called Grippes and Poche.\n \n\n03:45\tHannah McGregor:\t[Audio Recording of Mavis Gallant continues] –like the voice of Mavis Gallant, inspiring producers, Kate, Kandice, and Michelle, to ask new research questions about her life and literary work.\n \n\n03:55\tAudio Recording, S2E69 “Mavis Gallant Part 2”, Michelle Levy:\t[Sound Effect: Beep of Recording Starting] Why did Gallant select this story to read to her SFU audience in 1984?\n04:00\tAudio Recording, S2E69 “Mavis Gallant Part 2”, Kate Moffat:\tWe wondered how our reception of it might’ve differed, or not, from that of the individuals attending the event.\n \n\n04:05\tAudio Recording, S2E69 “Mavis Gallant Part 2”, Kandice Sharren:\tIt was actually an edited copy of what had most likely been a reel-to-reel recording.\n \n\n04:11\tAudio Recording, S2E69 “Mavis Gallant Part 2”, Michelle Levy:\tIt’s like, where is this voice coming from? It did seem really unusual.\n \n\n04:17\tHannah McGregor:\t[Sound Effect: Tape Stopping] Actually hearing an author reminds us that literary works can have a presence beyond the page. Like this moment that Katherine McLeod documents in a series of ShortCuts minisodes about Muriel Rukeyser – [Audio Recording of Muriel Rukeyser Begins] a moment of author and audience sharing a literary experience.\n \n\n04:36\tAudio Recording, ShortCuts S2E4 “You Are Here”, Muriel Rukeyser:\tYou know, this part of the story.\n \n\n04:38\tAudio Recording, ShortCuts S2E4 “You Are Here”, Katherine McLeod:\tI 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.\n \n\n04:52\tHannah McGregor:\t[Sound Effect: Tape Stopping] The sounds of literature are embodied and emotional – they resonate within us. As the SpokenWeb Podcast begins its third season, we’re continuing to reflect on our mission asking ourselves questions like: how do we ethically manage and share old recordings with care? What can literary scholars learn from studies? What is present and absent from the sonic archive? And how does gathering sounds of the past change the way literary research happens in the present?\n \n\n05:27\tHannah McGregor:\tNow that I’ve set the scene, I’m delighted to bring Myra Bloom into the conversation. Myra is an assistant professor of English at York University, and was the producer of our Season One episode, “The Agony and the Ecstasy of Elizabeth Smart”. In this episode, Myra used archival audio, her own narrative reflections, and interviews to examine the great passion behind Smart’s famous work By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept – and the obstacles that impacted Smart’s literary career.\n \n\n05:56\tHannah McGregor:\tCould you start off by telling us a little bit about what the process was like for you of making this episode originally?\n \n\n06:03\tMyra Bloom:\tSo I –as anyone who knows me knows, I love Elizabeth Smart and I love By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept, and I had been thinking for a while about doing some kind of project about it. I’ve written about it before, I wanted to do a critical edition of that book, but for issues of obtaining the rights, I was a bit thwarted from that project. But I still had it in my mind that I wanted to do a lot of kind of archival research and primary research. I had done a lot actually. And I talked to some of the people already who were important players in Smarts, kind of afterlife, her biographers. I’d talked to Kim Echlin, I talked to Rosemary Sullivan, and I wanted –I loved the way that they spoke about her. And so I knew in my mind as I was conceiving of the piece that I wanted to bring in other voices, other women in particular, who had been inspired by Elizabeth Smart. And then it suddenly occurred to me that even though I’d spent some time in the archives looking at various documents, I’d actually never heard her voice. And so I decided – I looked around and tried to find if there were any archives of her actually reading. And I found two pieces that I ended up including in the episode, one of which was a video that I harvested the audio from, the other of which was an audio recording of a reading. And that’s kind of where the piece began to take shape for me.\n \n\n07:32\tHannah McGregor:\tSo what was it like for you hearing her voice for the first time? How did that shift your relationship to the work?\n \n\n07:37\tMyra Bloom:\tIt was very jarring, to be honest with you. Many of us have this image in our minds of Elizabeth Smart as this passionate young, beautiful, intense, almost tragic heroine figure. At least that was sort of the image that I always carried with me. I think that book is so powerful and transcendent and youthful and it’s spirit and language. It’s very accomplished, but it’s the passionate intensity of a young person. And as I say in the piece, those are feelings I really had related to as a 19- 20 year old encountering it for the first time, full of that kind of passionate intensity. But the thing about Smart that’s kind of interesting for Canadians is that we only really encountered her later in life. She came to Canada as a writer in residence in 1982 and she died in 1986.\n \n\n08:29\tHannah McGregor:\tWow.\n \n\n08:30\tMyra Bloom:\tSo, yeah. And so that’s really kind of the Elizabeth Smart that Canadians knew. And it was this feeling of belatedness – a lot of people spoke about this at the time that we kind of discovered her too late. And that was really the feeling that I had almost listening to the audio, not just that it was too late, but sort of the poignancy of the fact that Smart as an older woman was sort of reanimating this work from her earlier life. But the texture of her voice – this is a woman who drank a lot and smoked a lot and led a pretty Bohemian life. And you can hear that in the grain of her voice. So hearing her read that audio, I was really connecting with the older Smart, as opposed to the younger Smart I thought I had set out to encounter.\n \n\n09:20\tHannah McGregor:\tYeah. Which really sort of contextualizes the whole sense of what that book means differently.\n \n\n09:26\tMyra Bloom:\tAbsolutely. And you know, she’s a fascinating figure as well because that book is such a magnum opus and it presages such amazing things. And then she sort of had lifelong writer’s block, a lot of the works that came after The Assumption of the Roads and the Rascals –her other novella – is good, but it’s not the same level of good. And her poetry in my mind is not quite as accomplished as the novellas. And so, there’s a way in which she sort of lived on the laurels of that work and was kind of forced to re-encounter it again and again.\n \n\n10:04\tMyra Bloom:\tAnd there’s always this sort of element of, I don’t know, maybe regret or a feeling of not having achieved what she could have achieved potentially. So the disappointment –there’s a sense of disappointment I always hear in the reading. In fact, in some of those archives, she reads a poem twice because she starts out reading it at the beginning of the reading and then it gets a good reception. And then she says, I think I’m just going to read that one again. And you can really feel her kind of like soaking up the attention, which was, which was really denied to her for so much of her life when she was raising her children and kind of wallowing and obscurity [Laughs] – not obscurity that’s the wrong way to put it because she was a very successful copywriter. She just was never heralded as the great modernist that she really was.\n \n\n10:48\tHannah McGregor:\tThat’s remarkable to be able to hear that in the recording too, the sense that your encounter with this voice in the archive is also a sort of re-encounter that what you are hearing is a sort of much later articulation of a relationship to this work. And it is this reminder of the way that author’s own relationships to their work transforms over time. And often you can only hear that in the audio record.\n \n\n11:15\tMyra Bloom:\tAbsolutely. And I think, if she had gone on to write consistently throughout her career, maybe she would offer something in her late style and then throw in a hit or two from her juvenilia, which By Grand Central Station would have been at that point. But because she never – she was kind of a one hit wonder – not exactly, and again, as I say, I don’t mean to diminish the rest of her output, which was considerable. I read somewhere that she was the first person to use sexy in an ad, the word sexy, although I have to independently verify that fact, because if that’s true, it’s amazing.\n \n\n11:47\tHannah McGregor:\tAmazing.\n \n\n11:47\tMyra Bloom:\tYeah, it’s amazing. But yeah, but she kind of had to figure out what work was going to mean to her for the entire rest of her life over and over after the George Barker of that work.\n \n\n11:59\tMyra Bloom:\tI mean, not again – my interests are very much in severing biographical readings of texts from the text itself. I think that’s too facile a conflation, but certainly George Barker, her lover, was a kind of animating inspiration for the love affair we see depicted in that book. And by the time she’s reading in Canada – their relationship, they had produced four children, it had completely fallen apart. They were friends and then they were frenemies and then they weren’t speaking. And this is like having to summon the passion of a relationship that has – is decades exhausted. So it’s interesting in that sense too.\n \n\n12:37\tHannah McGregor:\tYeah, that is really interesting. So to follow up on that, your interest in severing the biographical tie in particularly women’s writing. We know this is something that haunts women writers in particular that while male writers are generally allowed to be making art, women are always read as operating in the autobiographical mode. This is like the great Sylvia Plath conundrum. How is that relationship complicated by encountering this work read, but in the authors’ voices?\n \n\n13:12\tMyra Bloom:\tElizabeth Smart was really canny about how she herself framed this work. So when it originally came out, sometimes she and George Barker would appear at readings together and sort of play up the biographical elements of the work. Sometimes she would say, “Oh, this is, this is about a great love affair.” She would really emphasize that aspect. Other times she would lie about its composition. She would say, “Oh, I sat down for two hours crying and writing this book”, which is not true. It evolved over a number of years. So she would make it sound like it was an outpouring, but the moment that kind of biographical reading would get applied to her, like when they tried to do an adaptation for, I think for film ,where the characters were named George and Elizabeth, she totally freaked out and completely recanted that biographical conflation.\n \n\n14:03\tMyra Bloom:\tAnd so I think that– I was aware going into it that she herself had played in that gray zone between the biography and the art. I think for me hearing it read in the voice of an older woman, it was no longer about George Barker and Elizabeth Smart. It was much more about an older woman’s relationship to her younger self. And to me that’s so fascinating because what draws many of us to this book is the sort of cult of youth and beauty and passion and all these transcendent emotions. But, anyone who’s heard this piece or will hear this piece that I ended up producing knows that it’s really much more about a kind of – it’s a more reflective piece. It has a more – I tried to take a more reflective tone and just to kind of open it up to a broader rumination on art making and the things that impede women from art making. I opted for a more sober, reflective tone to the piece, ultimately.\n \n\n15:02\tHannah McGregor:\tAnd so, I know that you have recently gotten funding to do a whole podcast series. Can you talk to us a little bit about sort of what inspired you to propose that in the first place and what that series is going to take up?\n \n\n15:17\tMyra Bloom:\tYeah. Thanks for the opportunity to talk about it. I am currently writing a book whose provisional title is Evasive Maneuvers. And the book is all about the ways that certain contemporary Canadian writers subversively inhabit the confessional mode, which historically has always been a powerful mode for women. It’s – we wrote in letters and diaries and journals before we could access the publishing sphere and certainly confessional poetry and the United States and the 60s was a very powerful mode. And I should say that obviously persists to this day where confession is a very popular internet, social media, these kinds of first person narrative mode for women. But historically at every moment, the confession has also held out a kind of trap or a snare for women in that the moment you use it, you get accused of being overly effusive, of being not a serious writer, of being kind of compelled by your hysterical passions, right?\n \n\n16:16\tMyra Bloom:\tFeeding into these stereotypes of who women are and what forces they’re animated by. And in the internet, a lot of women try to use first person writing as a way to become published and then kind of immediately had those doors slammed on them when they were subsequently perceived as non-serious writers, precisely because they were writing about “I found a hair ball in my vagina” or something like that. Anyways. So keeping in mind all of this, this backdrop, I was interested in how women find ways to negotiate these confessional aporias or confessional problems in their work. And I’m really interested in kind of auto fiction or hybrid genre works, or the insertion of autobiographical content into poetry, or all these unexpected venues where the confessional kind of wells up in this ambiguous subversive way. So I’m working on the book, but I also realized it would be so powerful and interesting to hear women talking about these things in their own voice and to have the chance to actually do some interviews.\n \n\n17:16\tMyra Bloom:\tI was thinking today about how within the discourse of CanLit, social media and the internet has come to play such an important role and identity politics are really triangulating a number of these issues in a very, very personal way. So I thought, oh, well, maybe I could talk to some of the people who have tweeted very personal things about their experience that have gone on to factor prominently in the so-called CanLit dumpster fire. So I just realized there’s a lot of possibilities for talking to people that open up when you do something in a forum, like a podcast, rather than a book and different modes of scholarship, modes of engagement, modes of approaching an issue. And I am a huge, huge podcast listener. I have a very active podcast listening practice, and this was my first experience producing a podcast myself, for SpokenWeb. And I enjoyed the experience so much, I thought, okay, now I’m ready to really take on something at a larger scale. So yeah, so ultimately the SSHRC insight development project that I’m doing is going to be this multi episode engagement with this question of how contemporary Canadian writers and maybe even scholars are using confessional modes.\n \n\n18:21\tHannah McGregor:\tThat’s very exciting. Okay. One last question. And that is, if anybody who is listening right now is an academic who wants to dip their toe into the world of podcasting, but is hesitant to do so, do you have any advice as somebody who went from a first time podcaster to now a passionate podcaster?\n \n\n18:42\tMyra Bloom:\tAbsolutely. Yeah. So my advice is the same advice that I would give to anyone who wants to be a writer or wants to practice any skill. The first thing you have to do, if you want to be a writer, is be a reader. And the first thing you have to do, if you want to be a broadcaster, is listen to podcasts. Just start listening to the medium and get a sense of what you want to do and what you like, and then just try it. It’s great. It’s very rewarding.\n \n\n19:03\tHannah McGregor:\tThanks again for joining us. Myra. Now here is Myra Bloom in our January, 2020 episode [Start Music: SpokenWeb Podcast Theme Music] “The Agony and Ecstasy of Elizabeth Smart.” [End Music: SpokenWeb Podcast Theme Music].\n \n\n19:19\tMusic:\t[Jazz Instrumental Interlude]\n \n\n19:31\tAudio Recording, Elizabeth Smart:\tI thought, if it’s agreeable with you, that I’d read a chapter book I wrote called By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept. And this is about a couple of people, in case you haven’t read it. Well, I fall in love and they’re dashing away across America, madly in love.\n \n\n19:55\tMyra Bloom:\tI first encountered the writer Elizabeth Smart in a time of great passion. I was 19 and reading her masterpiece By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept for an undergraduate class. Her description of a transcendent, debilitating obsession captured what I was going through at the time: the beautiful harrowing torment of first love. By Grand Central Station details a love affair that comes to an end as hyperbolically as it began. As the title implies, it ends with the narrator pregnant, bereft, and crying out to her lover who by this point has returned to his wife. I would soon come to relate to these darker feelings too, as my own relationship combusted, albeit under less salacious circumstances. I’m pretty sure there’s a direct line between my feelings about this novel and my decision to teach literature for a living. I wanted to talk to other women who had been similarly affected by the novel. I sought out writers and filmmakers who had written or made films about Elizabeth, or were planning to do so to ask them what drew them to her. I expected that their stories would sound similar to mine, that they would tell me tales of great loves, loved and lost. I was planning an anthropological study of female passion, but those weren’t the stories they told me.\n \n\n21:28\tSina Queyras:\tIt was on Vancouver Island and I was living in the rainforest and they had a cabin and I could see through the walls and it would just rain and rain and rain and rain. [End Music: Jazz Instrumental]\n \n\n21:36\tMyra Bloom:\tThis is poet and professor Sina Queyras.\n \n\n21:40\tSina Queyras:\tAnd I was sitting there reading this – somebody sent it to me, my friend Rita whos a fellow from creative writing, sent me this book and that had been, I mean the reason she sent it to me was I loved Marguerite Duras’ A Lover and they’re sister books, right? They’re totally sister books. But the surprising thing about the Smart was that there’s just no Canadian voice that’s anywhere near the depth of feeling and just the intellectual precariousness, like she’s so present but also vulnerable and self propelled. There’s just nothing –I mean, I guess Margaret Lawrence, but that’s not ecstatic like By Grand Central Station is just so ecstatic. So I know that going forward it was like, it’s like Sappho, it’s like Sappho wrote a novel.\n \n\n22:57\tMusic\t[Jazz Instrumental Interlude]\n \n\n22:58\tKim Echlin:\tMy name is Kim Echlin. I’m the author of Elizabeth Smart: A Fuge Essay on Women and Creativity, and I was drawn to Elizabeth Smart first because of her great passionate love affair with George Barker. But then that quickly led me down to a much more complex story and it is the story of her as exile in England, as writer, as mother, and as a single woman earning a living. Romantic love is by definition irrational. It means sexual passion, the love of beauty, the potential for destruction, the taste of immortality. It is obsessive. Sometimes it flickers briefly, deliciously. [End Music: Jazz Instrumental] Sometimes it lasts a lifetime. Its destructiveness evident even to the lovers themselves. Yet, lovers are loath to give up romantic love. Lovers believe they are most alive and it’s embrace. With strange pleasure we watch ill-matched lovers devour each other. They believe that their love is their very life force.\n \n\n24:01\tKim Echlin:\tI think about passionate, romantic love when I consider Bluebird’s Castle or some of John Donne’s poetry or Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde or such novels as Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, or García Márquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera. I think of a different kind of love, one that still has no name, when I think of some of Samuel Beckett’s characters and of Rosalind in Shakespeare’s As You Like It. Rosalind ironically and wittily says to the object of her desire, “love is merely a madness and, I tell you, deserves as well a dark house and a whip as mad man do, and the reason why there are not so punished and cured is the lunacy is so ordinary that the whippers are in love too.” Elizabeth wrote this ordinary lunacy in By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept, but her telling is extraordinary. Just as Rosalind tells love in a fresh way from a woman’s point of view disguised as a boy, the narrator of By Grand Central Station tells love in a fresh way from the point of view of an unmarried pregnant woman. But before Elizabeth wrote it, she had to live it. [Start Music: Jazz Instrumental]\n \n\n25:17\tAudio Recording, Elizabeth Smart:\tBy Grand Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept. I will not be placated by the mechanical motions of existence, nor find consolation in the solicitude of waiters who notice my devastated face. Sleep tries to seduce me by promising a more reasonable tomorrow, but I will not be betrayed by such a Judas of fallacy: it betrays everyone, It leads them into death. Everyone acquiesces, everyone compromises. They say, as we grow older, we embrace resignation, but oh, they totter into it blind and unprotesting and from their sin, the sin of accepting such a pimp to death, there’s no redemption. It’s the sin of damnation. What except morphine can weave bearable nets around the tiger shark that tears my mind to shreds, seeking escape on every impossible side. The senses deliver the unbearable into sleep. And it ceases, except that it appears gruesomely at the edges of my dreams making ghastly signs, which wear away peace, but which I cannot understand. The pain was unbearable, but I did not want it to end, it had operatic grandeur. It lit up Grand Central Station, like a Judgment Day. It was more iron muscle than Samson in his moment of revelation. It might’ve shown me all Dante’s dream, but there was no way to endure.\n \n\n26:53\tMyra Bloom:\tAnd what did it mean for you for Elizabeth Smart to be the subject of your first film? Is that important to you?\n \n\n27:00\tMaya Gallus:\tIt was important to me. My mother was an artist and I saw her struggle as an artist and a mother, also a single parent. [End Music: Instrumental Jazz]\n \n\n27:10\tMyra Bloom:\tDocumentary filmmaker, Maya Gallus.\n \n\n27:13\tMaya Gallus:\tSo I think that Elizabeth represented some of those elements for me as well, because I was trying to figure out how to be a woman and an artist in the world. And it seemed to me that women of my mother’s generation and previously of Elizabeth’s generation really had this conflict and dilemma about being able to stake their claim in what is largely a male dominated world. And also then the additional challenges of being a mother. So I was kind of figuring all of that out and Elizabeth’s writings really spoke to me because she really went into the nub of that in a lot of her work and her poems. A poem like “The Muse: His and Hers”, I still find is a very relevant, in many ways. I mean, we still are living in a male dominated world and people are speaking about it a little more openly now than before. And perhaps people are more willing to listen to what women have to say and recognize that actually women have something important to say about life and art and love. [Start Music: Jazz Instrumental]\n \n\n28:33\tAudio Recording, Elizabeth Smart:\tNow, I would like to read you a little poem that most amazingly I wrote last week. It just sort of popped out and lo and behold, it’s a feminist poem. I hope this won’t give any offense. [Audience Member: Why worry?] I’m not worried. Anyhow, it’s called “The Muse: His and Hers”. His pampered Muse / Knew no veto. / Hers lived / In a female ghetto. / When his Muse cried / He replied / Loud and clear / Yes! Yes! I’m waiting here. / Her Muse screamed / But children louder. / Then which strength / Made her prouder? / Neither. Either / Pushed and shoved / With the strength of the loved / and the, unloved, / Clashed rebuked. / All was wrong. / (Can you put opposites / into the song?) / Kettles boiling! /Cobwebs coiling! / Doorbells ringing! / Needs haranguing! / Her Muse called / In her crowded ear / She heard but had / Her dirty house to clear. / Guilt drove him on. / Guilt held her down. / (She hadn’t a wife / to lean upon.) The dichotomy was killing me.\n \n\n29:58\tAudio Recording, Elizabeth Smart:\tShe said till old age came to assuage. /Now Muse, now you can have your way. Now, what was it I want him to say? /And used, abused and not amused. The mind’s gone blank./ Is it life you have to thank?/ Stevie, the Emily’s, Mrs. Woolf bypass the womb and kept the self/ But she said, try and see if it’s true and without cheating. My muse can do./ Can women do? Can women make? /When the womb rests animus awake./ Pale at my space starved and thin, /like hibernating bear too weak to begin./ To roar with authority, poems in the spring./ So late in the autumn of their suffering./ Those gaps. It’s decades of lying low./ Earthquakes, deep frozen mind askew./ Is it too late at 68?/ Oh fragile, fresh reanimate./ Oh flabby, teetering, body concentrate./ Astute, true woman, any late profligacy squandered on the loving of people and other irrelevancy/ useful in the dark in articulacy./ But drop it like poison now if you want poetry./ Let the doorbell ring, let the fireman put out the fire or light it up again./ Sheepish and shamefaced at 9:00 AM/ till the Muse commands her ritual hymn./ See lucky man, get off his knee./ And here now his roar of authority./ This test case woman could also be,/ just in time for a small cacophony/ A meaningful scream between folded womb and grave./ A brief, respite from the enclave.\n \n\n32:09\tRosemary Sullivan:\tI remember one wonderful moment when Elizabeth and I went to this reading.\n \n\n32:15\tMyra Bloom:\tThis is Rosemary Sullivan, Elizabeth Smart’s biographer.\n \n\n32:21\tRosemary Sullivan:\tAnd it was by Mavis Gallant, who of course one admires deeply. And it was amusing to see how jealous Elizabeth was [Laughs] because, she’d written a great book when she was in her late twenties, and then she didn’t write again for 30 years. She used to say, when asked her who she was, she’d say, I’m my son Sebastian, the poet’s mother. And when we talked about this in detail, she did say, and this is quote that she felt that the maestro of the masculine was sitting on her shoulder telling her she could never be good enough. So she had sought out George Barker because he wrote the kind of poetry she wanted to write. And then George, being a poet of his era in the tradition of not T.S Elliot, but Dylan Thomas, kind of knocked her down.\n \n\n33:17\tRosemary Sullivan:\tAnd she said that she needed to be knocked down because she came from this wonderfully arrogant position of a debutante in Ottawa, put forward by her mother hobnobbing with the prime minister’s set, and so on. She said, “I needed to be knocked down a little bit, but not nearly as much as George knocked me down.” Then of course you asked her, well, why did you keep – what was it about George that was so seductive? And she said, “oh God, he had such a sense of humor.” [Laughs] So.. I did meet George.\n \n\n33:55\tMyra Bloom:\tWhat was he like?\n \n\n33:57\tRosemary Sullivan:\tExactly what she said. He was with his last wife, Elsbeth, you know that he had – this could not happen now. He had five wives, two of them legal, 15 children. And then they all adored him, because the creative male was given a kind of permission that he can’t be given today. But here I was at Elsbeth’s and she was lovely. There was a point at which she had tried to get Elizabeth to take George back, she was so fed up with him, but it didn’t work. And she was teaching, she was a Latin teacher, even though she had at one point aspired to be a poet. But again, that was part of the time you –if you wanted to be creative, you were creative vicariously through a man, right?\n \n\n34:44\tAudio Recording, Rosemary Sullivan:\t[Start Music: Jazz Instrumental] Yes. You – in another of your poems you talk about – this is the trying to write one, that you read last night. You talk about it being unfeminine to write.\n \n\n35:00\tAudio Recording, Elizabeth Smart:\tYes, yes. And somebody asked me last night too, about why I said that love was parallel. You see, I do feel that I’ve always been thinking about that you really have to be ruthless to write. And it isn’t– so it isn’t a loving thing. And of course we all want to be good, perhaps, but they do conflict. If you’re good, you’re not ruthless. You always think somebody else, they want to come in and tell you about their troubles. You’re writing. You don’t say “No, off. I’m busy.” You say, “come in.” And I listen to them.\n \n\n35:31\tAudio Recording, Elisabeth Smart:\tThis is called “Trying To Write”. Why am I so frightened to say I’m me / And publicly acknowledge my small mastery? / Waited for sixty years till the people take out the horses / And draw me to the theatre with triumphant voices? / I know this won’t happen until it’s too late / And the deed done (or not done) so I prevaricate, / Egging them on, and keeping Roads open (just in case) / Go on! Go on and do it in my place! / Giving love to get it (The only way to behave). / But hated and naked could I stand up and say / Fuck off! or, be my slave? / To be in a very unfeminine very unloving state / Is the desperate need / Of anyone trying to write.\n \n\n36:32\tAudio Recording, Elisabeth Smart:\tAnd so in fact, goodness and art are parallel and can never meet. That was my theory.\n \n\n36:39\tAudio Recording, Rosemary Sullivan:\tThat it’s egocentric to write.\n \n\n36:42\tAudio Recording, Elisabeth Smart:\tYeah you really have to have a large ego. I felt the mind been rather squashed so that I feel I have to get it back a bit.\n \n\n36:50\tAudio Recording, Rosemary Sullivan:\tAnd do you think this is a particularly female problem? That it’s a problem of the woman writer?\n \n\n36:53\tAudio Recording, Elisabeth Smart:\tWell I do because whatever people say, I do think that women are – perhaps it’s a training, I don’t know, but they do want to be more loving and kind and helpful, don’t they? Maybe that’s because they’re in that position.\n \n\n37:10\tAudio Recording, Ann Hart:\tWhen you speak about – it is necessary for a writer to be ruthless. I mean, it does remind me of Virginia Woolf and her, her essay on the angel of the house.\n \n\n37:18\tAudio Recording, Elizabeth Smart:\tThe angel of the house.\n \n\n37:21\tAudio Recording, Ann Hart:\tYes, that a woman to write successfully had to kill the angel of the house.\n \n\n37:25\tAudio Recording, Elizabeth Smart:\n \n\nWell that’s it, that’s the same thing.\n \n\n37:26\tAudio Recording, Ann Hart:\tShe could not, no longer be if she was going to write, she couldn’t be responsible in this way or recognize or wait for family in her house or else she would never find time to write.\n \n\n37:35\tAudio Recording, Elizabeth Smart:\tAnd then most with children and the house, I mean, you’re always, you’re fragmented your mind. You think, “Oh dear, we’re out of Vim”. Or “the soap flakes are down” you can’t, you know, these sort of things that are in your mind.\n \n\n37:47\tAudio Recording, Ann Hart:\tYes.\n \n\n37:47\tAudio Recording, Elizabeth Smart:\tAnd you’ve got to remember to go and get this. Well the men, well they are doing it more now, but there was never any question: they wouldn’t notice if you’d run out of lavatory paper or something.\n \n\n37:57\tAudio Recording, Ann Hart:\tYes. Yeah.\n \n\n37:59\tAudio Recording, Elizabeth Smart:\tIn fact, George would just tear out a sheet of a book. [Laughs]\n \n\n38:04\tAudio Recording, Ann Hart:\tReally?\n \n\n38:04\tAudio Recording, Elizabeth Smart:\tYeah. No respect for literature.\n \n\n38:11\tAudio Recording, Rosemary Sullivan:\tNot his own books?\n \n\n38:11\tAudio Recording, Elizabeth Smart:\tYes! Yes, his own ones. He wouldn’t care.\n \n\n38:13\tAudio Recording, Ann Hart:\tAnd yet, By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept, I know you’ve written so much more recently and that is all sort of new developments and further thoughts and you may be tired at times of hearing people hark back to the book you wrote many years ago –\n \n\n38:29\tAudio Recording, Elizabeth Smart:\tOh no, I’m delighted to have a little attention so late in the evening.\n \n\n38:31\tAudio Recording, Ann Hart:\tYes. Well, so many people, particularly I think women, do identify with it. It is a love story, which must’ve been very unique, still is unique. But when it was published in 1945, a very moving, very explicit, very passionate description of a love affair. And I think at that time, it must’ve been thought, well this is a bizarre thing. I mean, I think it would be men that had been writing about this sort of thing. I mean, did you get that sort of reaction?\n \n\n39:07\tAudio Recording, Elizabeth Smart:\tYes. I think I mentioned last night that they said “a trivial subject”. Women’s feelings are trivial subjects. And nobody said how shocking to say it’s a trivial subject, they just took that.\n \n\n39:20\tAudio Recording, Rosemary Sullivan:\tWell, does it make you angry when they said that?\n \n\n39:24\tAudio Recording, Elizabeth Smart:\tI didn’t know. One just thinks, that’s the way things are. I don’t really make any judgment. [Start Music: Xylophone Instrumental]\n \n\n39:34\tMyra Bloom:\tDo you really feel that Elizabeth writer’s block was attributable to the fact that she felt overshadowed by George? You don’t necessarily attribute it to the material circumstances of having to raise four children? [End Music: Xylophone Instrumental]\n \n\n39:47\tRosemary Sullivan:\tYou know, I know people who’ve raised four children and continued to write, Judith Thompson is one. So in fact, what’s so interesting is when you look at Elizabeth’s work, she was writing Grand Central before she met George. So he was simply the embodiment of it. After that, I do think that she lost her ego as a writer and it’s easy to – writing is such a fragile activity. I mean, I haven’t written poems for quite a while because I think I need that vertical sledgehammer into time before I can write. Everything’s going horizontally. There’s every reason not to write. And so, it became a habit, not writing. But also Elizabeth would – she had her youngest daughter Rose in a private school, so those children were off during the week and sometimes on the weekend they’d have these crazy so-called uncles taking care of them. So in fact it was – she had a professional life. But some people had managed a professional life with writing at night. But I think Elizabeth lost her nerve. [Start Music: Jazz Instrumental]\n \n\n41:12\tAudio Recording, Elizabeth Smart:\tA warning. This old woman waddles toward love, becomes human, but the Muse does not approve. This going flesh is loved and is forgiven by the generous. But houses the demon. Hello my dear, sit down. I’ll soothe your pain. I’ve known what you’ve known, but won’t again. Though passion is not gone. Merely contracted into a last ditch weapon. A deed, not dead. A mine unexploded and not safe to have near the playground of innocent life. Keep clear of this frail old, harmless person. 50 years fuel of aimed frustration could shatter the calm and scald the soul. And love falls like napalm, over the school.\n \n\n42:13\tMusic:\t[Jazz Instrumental Interlude]\n \n\n42:15\tMaya Gallus:\tOh, I think Elizabeth Smart should always be read. I think she brings an enormous amount of wisdom and life experience to the later work and an enormous amount of passion and literary innovation to the early work. And also some of her poems are really powerful as well. Her poem, “A Bonus” is one that I always think of whenever I finish writing something because she captures so beautifully that feeling of being in a bubble. And as she says, “feeling dirty and roughly dressed” and getting through this difficult thing of finishing something, and then that beautiful feeling of completion.\n \n\n43:06\tMyra Bloom:\t[Reciting Poem] “A Bonus”. That day I finished/ A small piece/ For an obscure magazine/ I popped it in the box // And such a starry elation/ Came over me/ That I got whistled at in the street/ For the first time in a long time// I was dirty and roughly dressed/ And had circles under my eyes/ And far, far from flirtation/ But so full of completion/ Of a deed duly done/ An act of consummation// That the freedom and force it engendered/ Shone and spun/ Out of my old raincoat.// It must’ve looked like love/ Or a fabulous free holiday/ To the young men sauntering/ Down Berwick Street./ I still think this is most mysterious/ For while I was writing it/ It was gritty it felt like self-abuse/ Constipation, desperately unsocial/ But done, done, done/ Everything in the world /Flowed back/ Like a huge bonus.\n \n\n44:20\tMaya Gallus:\tI can’t think of another poem that captures that moment and that feeling as beautifully as that does. So I think Elizabeth is relevant now and we’ll continue to be relevant for continuing generations.\n \n\n44:35\tMyra Bloom:\tI hope so. Okay. Thank you.\n \n\n44:39\tMaya Gallus:\tYou’re welcome.\n \n\n44:46\tAudio Recording, Elizabeth Smart:\tGood morning boss. A cup of coffee and two fried eggs. Look at the idiot boy begot with that knife. He’s all the world that is left. He is American better than love. He is civilization’s heir oh you mob whose actions brought him into bed. He is happier than you, sweetheart. But will he do to fill in these coming thousand years? Well, it’s too late now to complain, my honeydove. Yes. It’s all over. No regrets. No postmortems. You must adjust yourself to conditions as they are. That’s all. You have to learn to be adaptable. I myself prefer Boulder Dam to Chartres Cathedral. I prefer dogs to children. I before in corn cobs to the genitals of the male, everything’s hotsy-totsy, dandy, everything’s OK. It’s in the bag. It can’t miss. My dear, my darling, do you hear me when you sleep? [Audience Applause]\n \n\n45:56\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. The episode we replayed for you today. “The Agony and the Ecstasy of Elizabeth Smart” was originally released on January 6th, 2020 and was produced by Myra Bloom. The new introduction to this episode was produced by Judith Burr and me ,Hannah McGregor, with special thanks to Myra Bloom for coming back to discuss her episode again with us. Our podcast project manager and supervising producer is Judith Burr and our transcriptions are created 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. Stay tuned to your podcast feed later this month for ShortCuts with Katherine McLeod, mini stories about how literature sounds. [End Music: SpokenWeb Podcast Theme Music]"],"score":3.062659},{"id":"9615","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 S3E2, Lisa Robertson and the Feminist Archive, 1 November 2021, Polyck-O’Neill"],"item_title_source":["SpokenWeb Podcast web page."],"item_title_note":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/lisa-robertson-and-the-feminist-archive/"],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Podcast"],"item_series_title":["The SpokenWeb Podcast"],"item_series_description":["Series of podcasts by the SpokenWeb network."],"item_subseries_title":["The SpokenWeb Podcast Season 3"],"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":["Julia Polyck-O’Neill"],"creator_names_search":["Julia Polyck-O’Neill"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"name\":\"Julia Polyck-O’Neill\",\"dates\":\"\",\"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/3d1f947d-a26e-415a-9002-caeecdb1698e/audio/9aee09d9-16e3-4499-b25f-e666c04ae3a4/default_tc.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"s3e2-lisa-robertson-and-the-feminist-archive.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"44.1 kHz\",\"duration\":\"00:47:38\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"45,801,683 bytes\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"MP3 audio\",\"title\":\"s3e2-lisa-robertson-and-the-feminist-archive\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/lisa-robertson-and-the-feminist-archive/\"}]"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"2021-11-01\",\"type\":\"Publication Date\",\"notes\":\"\",\"source\":\"\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/15396822\",\"venue\":\"York University Keele Campus\",\"notes\":\"\",\"address\":\"4700 Keele Street Toronto, ON, M3J 1P3 \",\"latitude\":\"43.77417545\",\"longitude\":\"-79.50474900961275\"}]"],"Address":["4700 Keele Street Toronto, ON, M3J 1P3 "],"Venue":["York University Keele Campus"],"City":["Toronto, Ontario"],"Note":["[]"],"Related_works":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"Cvetkovich, Ann. An Archive of Feelings. Duke University Press, 2003.\\n\\nFong, Deanna and Karis Shearer. “Gender, Affective Labour, and Community-Building Through Literary Audio Artifacts.” No More Potlucks, 2018, http://nomorepotlucks.org/site/gender-affective-labour-and-community-building-through-literary-audio-artifacts-deanna-fong-and-karis-shearer/. Accessed 1 Dec. 2019. \\n\\nMorra, Linda. Unarrested Archives: Case Studies in Twentieth-Century Women’s Authorship. University of Toronto Press, 2014.\\n\\nRobertson, Lisa. “At the Kootenay School of Writing, Vancouver, 1994: Launch of XEclogue on January 8, 1994.” PennSound, n.d., https://media.sas.upenn.edu/pennsound/authors/Robertson/Robertson-Lisa_Reading_Kootenay-School_Vancouver_01-%2008-1994.mp3. Accessed 1 Sept. 2021.\\n\\nSingh, Julietta. No Archive Will Restore You. Punctum, 2018.\\n\\nTaylor, Diana. The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas. Duke University Press, 2003.\"}]"],"_version_":1853670549701525504,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:54.290Z","contents":["In this episode, SpokenWeb contributor Julia Polyck-O’Neill shares an archived recording of Canadian poet Lisa Robertson with us and talks us through two interviews she recorded with Robertson. Polyck-O’Neill invites us to consider the significance of Robertson’s intimate archival collections in light of the relationships between archives, memory, affect, and mortality. In examining these conceptual, material and immaterial dimensions of the archive within Robertson’s personal narrative history of the Kootenay School of Writing, Polyck-O’Neill points to how creative and feminist approaches to the archive and to archival practice are exist within Robertson’s practice. Polyck-O’Neill shares with us how Robertson’s archives are influencing her research and the ways she approaches the topic of archives and intimacy in her work and her life more broadly.\n\nAddendum: Listening Notes\n\nNancy Shaw (1962-2007), a celebrated curator, poet, writer, and organizer, at times collaborated with Lisa Robertson and also wrote work in dialogue with Robertson’s poetry. Robertson wishes to mention how greatly the absence of her good friends Shaw, Stacy Doris (d. 2012), and Peter Culley (d. 2015) has affected her. Additionally,  XEclogue was, in fact, Robertson’s first book, although she published chapbooks prior; additionally, she does not think of her books as collections, as they are written as single, cohesive works. The new edition of R’s Boat is titled Boat and is being published by Coach House in Spring 2022.\n\n00:03\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\n00:18\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. [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. Creating an archive of literary lives and events can be a daunting task. Think about an author you admire – if you want to preserve their legacy in a box of materials, how would you do it? What would you save? How would these materials communicate the realities of the present to those living decades in the future? And how do sound recordings fit into – or even enhance -an archive? Archival collections or fragments of memory – a curated set of materials that has been gathered and preserved to encapsulate a moment, community, or person. Archives preserved at universities, museums, and other places contain all kinds of materials from mundane lists and notes to photographs, to sound recordings – our speciality here at Spoken Web.\n01:33\tHannah McGregor:\tIt might feel counterintuitive to think about the need for archiving today when so much of our lives are ceaselessly recorded. There are many digital outlets that people can use to collect and share moments from our lives and our literary present. But this abundance of material is also a call for curation and intentionality around what to protect and pass on. We can’t save everything and we probably don’t want to. So what should we choose to save? Today, our episode producer Julia Polyck-O’Neill leads us into one archival project: the archive of Canadian poet Lisa Robertson. Julia is caring for and studying part of Robertson’s archive as part of her postdoctoral work on the complexity of archiving the lives and works of interdisciplinary artists. In this episode, Julia shares a recording of Robertson from the archive and plays clips of Robertson discussing the challenges of forming her own archive. Julia uses these clips to reflect on creative and feminist approaches to archiving and on her personal connection to Robertson’s life and work. This episode is a fascinating and moving glimpse into the power of sonic archival material and the weight of memory, mortality, and trust in the archival process. Here is Julia Polyck-O’Neil with season three, episode two of the SpokenWeb Podcast, [Start Music: SpokenWeb Podcast Theme Music] Lisa Robertson and the Feminist Archive. [End Music: SpokenWeb Podcast Theme Music]\n \n\n03:18\tJulia Polyck-O’Neill:\t[Start Music: Strings Instrumental] Hello, thanks for listening. My name is Julia Polyck-O’Neill and I’m a post-doctoral researcher, theorizing interdisciplinary artists archives, according to feminist and digital epistemologies. This podcast episode, on which I’ve been working for quite some time has recently been re-imagined according to my private emotional responses to two long and surprisingly intimate conversations I recorded with Canadian poet Lisa Robertson, a feminist writer who was a member of the Kootney School of Writing in Vancouver in the 1990s and early 2000s.\n03:55\tJulia Polyck-O’Neill:\tI’m considering Robertson’s archive as part of my post-doctoral project. [End Music: Strings Instrumental] My conversations with Robertson and meditations on the connections between her body of work, biography, and her archive form the bridge between my recently completed dissertation work on Vancouver’s critical conceptualism in art and writing and my work re-examining and analyzing the complexity of the archival collections of interdisciplinary artists. Robertson’s work has figured into both projects in a formal way, but now, I wish to consider how her archives, and our collective thinking about her archives, is influencing my research and the ways I approach the topic of archives and intimacy in my work and my life more broadly. [Start Music: Strings Instrumental] Listening to our conversation months later invokes all kinds of feelings related to the relationship between archives, memory, affect, and mortality. Archives have an emotional weight – a kind of affective tenor that is challenging to describe accurately with language; objects begin to stand in for complex lives and relationships.\n05:05\tJulia Polyck-O’Neill:\tIn this episode, I’m going to introduce you to Robertson’s poetry and my research. First, I will share a recording of Robertson reading in 1994. Then, I’ll share clips from an interview I conducted with Robertson earlier this year on Friday, April 16th, 2021, over Zoom with Robertson at home in France and me at my desk in downtown Toronto, months before Robertson’s 60th birthday (in July) and just before the announcement of the shortlist for the 2021 Governor General’s Award in fiction (for which her first novel, The Baudelaire Fractal would be nominated on 4 May). Throughout this episode, I will be putting these recordings into the context of my thinking and research on her work.\n05:49\tJulia Polyck-O’Neill:\tI consider the significance of Robertson’s intimate archival collections and the reflections she shared with me in light of a creative, conceptualist interest in the archive. I also propose these as aesthetic strategies related to histories of feminist material analysis that reconsider archival practices according to feminist ethical and effective methods, including feminist and affective approaches to audio recordings and the material (and immaterial) histories, they impart as Deanna Fong and Karen Scherer argue in their 2018 essay, “Gender, Affective Labour, and Community-Building Through Literary Audio Artifacts.” [End Music: Strings Instrumental]\n06:29\tJulia Polyck-O’Neill:\tI want to start this episode by listening together to this 20 minute recording of “Eclogue Eight ” at the January 8th, 1994 launch of Robertson’s book, XEclogue, which exemplifies important characteristics of her writing and her work with the Kootenay School of Writing. In this recording from the PennSound archive, you can hear the sounds of community participation. So central to the ethos of the Kootenay School. Of course, we might primarily focus on the poet’s own powerful voice, but I’m also drawn to the other voices we hear: the voices of other members acting as the “Roaring Boys,” an amateurish chorus, and the contributions of poet, artist, and organizer Nancy Shaw. But in this recording, in light of my interviews with Robertson, I’m most drawn to what we overhear in the background, the voices of audience members laughing and reacting in a way that suggests a deep, warm familiarity with the readers. [Start Music: Strings Instrumental] The sounds of community. Part of an archive of community sounds. After we listen, I’ll talk about how this connects with my research, and I’ll share excerpts from my interviews with Robertson. [End Music: Strings Instrumental].\n \n\n07:46\tAudio Recording, Lisa Robertson, XEclogue Launch, 1994:\tEclogue Eight: Romance. The Roaring Boys fan back.[Footsteps] [Audience Laughter] [Audience Chatter]\n08:01\tAudio Recording, Lisa Robertson, XEclogue Launch, 1994:\tThe March trees torch the prophetligate sky because I say so. [Audience Member Laughs] A tiny flopping boy with sullen fits drifts like a sheet of golden lust. In this empire of no-tense he bullies the dust. He lends the block street, a gleaming arch. He flaunts his hidden rope burn like defeat. So what about his consummate latinady? He has been moving in the pale night with the urgent authority of a meaning. The flicked fringe of his anger flatters mangled angels. And he weeps like a twin in the heat. The Greenwood never wanted him nor the puckered gully he calls thought. A seabird rises like an angel in the night and shrieks it’s brackish laughter at his dream. The Swains of justice pinch out the lights. A pronoun’s snout is gentle torture dressed in the dust of the jejune Northern sky. He scissored to that pilgrim’s grief. His marble whippets snap at piety; they’re pearly lust encrypted as confession. Under the empires, arches swooning flower chasers confuse scripted infamy with paradise.\n09:25\tAudio Recording, Lisa Robertson, XEclogue Launch, 1994:\tThey blindly submit to the loutish bonus of roaring boys’ dreams. As if the Greenwood were the room of philosophs. As if their yearning arms were half tree. They had been moving all this time towards a rose of dust in the street, calling it golden, calling it the sodden issue of their belief. They clasp their girlish secrets like tiny, glowing wreaths. In the tender platinum sky, a pronoun gallops, a pronoun shifts, a pronoun shifts. Hey, Venus kick in paradise, revolve outside March trees of piety. Gently the golden whippet snouts of gorgeousness lust in the tragic streets, touch supine forms of girlish hooligans. A bud will clasp its profligate secret rather than submit to gold stiff piety. And the pale jejune week unfolds through the lattice of confusion. Who is not a Pilgrim carrying grief like an image through the Northern sky? Already dressed as a boy, his dream of justice fucked.\n10:41\tAudio Recording, Lisa Robertson, XEclogue Launch, 1994:\tHe had been moving through this adult and gentle world of gentle laughter. Softly he flicks out his wings on the marble steps, the quiet of philosophs peaks in their rooms. Hey Nancy, what’s that colour falling in the heat, like a twin? Like a tiny flapping soft scissor and mistake. The fringe of his wings licks the dust like pearly fingers. Hey, Venus, get dressed in a better latinaty. Wear that salted harness beyond the need for abnegation. He quotes a crumbling dream and dares not say so. These boys are vicious as a burnt lip tongued [Audience Laughter]. The sleek swing of a silk fringe rewrites their project as a failure. One begins to sing. It is an anthem sprung with a quality of flung bits, withdrawn or chastened as rustling tongues and fluent scandal. Reigned with the amusing cruelty of Cupid birched. Caressed by an accent has rubbed for murmurs to the sneaking night sulking as a flipped skirt, cradled in the precise euphoria of a method held in reserve. Dirty per se.\n \n\n12:09\tAudio Recording, The Roaring Boys, XEclogue Launch, 1994:\t[Multiple Voices of the Roaring Boys Reciting Together] [Intermittent Audience Laughter] Rear all you face and wave to the enormous night. Since love’s pure need lures [inaudible] credit through hungers creamy trap well suss a petty sight. Pass floral delight and sip at feeble kisses. Permit us a sip from that gaze quiet tremor. [inaudible] or crop that tricky verb. We’ll either sap or wet Nancy’s sultry transit. Sufficient ardor to us. [inaudible] This time of filming will quote Cupid’s vulgar luck to taste her silly statement. [Laughter and Applause]\n \n\n13:10\tAudio Recording, Lisa Robertson, XEclogue Launch, 1994:\tBut pathetic lays all that’s left of freedom in the cloistered night. Like a lock of Helen and the dangerous summer having bloomed from the silvered style of an anxious wrist who’s blunt syntax lackers opacity with greed. Yet crushing nothing more than the dampness that moves across the nyloned air with rancid gusts in an age of tawdry indolence that breeds such smear doubles for a calling, for a bruised structure, for a dupe sincerity that flaunts escape. The next pretty boy emerges like a rape from his crisis to find the concept does not need him. A slick whisper weaves across the commodities. Are you looking for fragrance? There is no sea and no forest and no boats passing. It’s eight o’clock. The glass world curves into history, leaving a bear pronoun to bask on the roof of a promise. Read them, audacity’s slim wrists cuffed in elegance, wandering fingers clipped to the pulsing sky by those bannal enchantments of antiquity and authority and consent.\n14:24\tAudio Recording, Lisa Robertson, XEclogue Launch, 1994:\tRead them as mere exitation, pooling products of neglect. Nancy straps the audible sulk of a method to her hips and presses bitter lips against an image. Let’s go down to the water’s edge. Who fished the ineffable from this slick tissue of an absence dripping it’s regret. She spends the loose coins from a lisped purse on important grammar that opens that goes on sheer, a girl-boy’d mirror, a compact Nancy pins them to the glass. Roaring Boy Number One is skinny and pure as the bitter white heel of a petal. Spent lupins could describe his sense of his mind as a great dusty silky mass. Yet a feeling of being followed had taken his will away. In an age of repudiation he would exude sullen indolence and reveal his lace. He could be said to profoundly resent his inability to control his desire for an impenitent extrovert.\n15:38\tAudio Recording, Lisa Robertson, XEclogue Launch, 1994:\tWhen he closes his eyes, he asks, “shall I be sold up? Am I to become a beggar? Shall I take to flight?” He is skinny and pure as a calling. Roaring Boy Number Two ,boy with the volute heart of a girl names, the faithless toss of an abandoned guest’s exactitude. He gives his thought with the sinews rigor of a cut silk garment. Lives looking at the sky, waiting for the specificity of a pleasure whose deferral is underwritten by a constriction of memory. The violent stammering of a repressed structure. The plains of his face point to the exquisitely even surface of a late antique life. He has begun by setting aside holy dread. Deferral is his darling. Roaring Boy Number Three, rather than submitting to the trial of action, wants deeply to possess an opinion [Audience Laughter] than having to possess, to distribute it with maximum efficiency. Since the spectacle of luxury pleases him and others, he embarks on a gradual, to the point of imperceptibility, inflation of his own verbal style and a concurrent almost compensatory deflation of his person. He is both febrile and duckerish – decorish [Laughs]. [Audience Laughter] A foolish hooligan of sardonic emphasis.\n17:29\tAudio Recording, Lisa Robertson, XEclogue Launch, 1994:\tEclogue Nine: History: Knowing memory only bruises the past, Lady M scans the face of a faint document whose ardent stammer she has already echoed than languidly rejected.\n \n\n17:47\tAudio Recording, Nancy Shaw, XEclogue Launch, 1994:\tWe cannot think tranquility a throne, yet time exceeds is barely tolerable pleasure.\n \n\n17:53\tAudio Recording, Lisa Robertson, XEclogue Launch, 1994:\tIt is a crumb in our syntax.\n \n\n17:55\tAudio Recording, Nancy Shaw, XEclogue Launch, 1994:\tWe need not innure ourself to peace and luxury, but our privilege lies in understanding how the senses detect what is not servitude.\n \n\n18:03\tAudio Recording, Lisa Robertson, XEclogue Launch, 1994:\n \n\nWho then would write the biography of their desires?\n \n\n18:07\tAudio Recording, Nancy Shaw, XEclogue Launch, 1994:\n \n\nWe ourselves will claim the requisite authority.\n \n\n18:10\tAudio Recording, Lisa Robertson, XEclogue Launch, 1994:\tThey wished for lips of red thread, like so many spies. They received through the veil of expression, a heart moved only by etiquette. They wished to experience thought as we would be compelled to remember it. It became a language impossibility. Their heart was lodged in an audible sentence. They wore nervousness on their spine and wrists. Their small soft edgy world was an intoxicant. The superb crumbling of the afternoon, so secret and so intense identified itself as history. The ground shelved gently to the water side, flowing from the flushed pulse of vulnerability under full, soft, hot light. It was a challenged mesh from which our presence had been washed.\n \n\n19:04\tAudio Recording, Nancy Shaw, XEclogue Launch, 1994:\tIf we were to imagine that contradiction as a landscape overwritten with vast exhausted melancholy quenched in mauvis tasseled wind, we would only perpetrate the vain in position of a hoax.\n \n\n19:17\tAudio Recording, Lisa Robertson, XEclogue Launch, 1994:\tYet the sea’s novice rhythm seems to reek of freeze. The Roaring Boys drift aimlessly, believing their thoughts imperius. A background ground of shimmering woods fetters our weary gaze. The black brow of a rock parches the trees. Sister of a lynx gert with quiver steps, cunningly and cheats the light. Recall the echoing crags a shore’s lip keeps happiness for itself. The woods breast is pierced with sight. Why may we not clasp the revolving night? The dusky grove bleeds virtue. For we saw two maids clashing with men whom the black storm had scattered. We saw one bear knee break the ghastly dark. We saw a strong hand raise the bow to slash the weird decrepitude time had wrought. Undone by our vision we began to move tirelessly among the wending dwindling paths. Though they appeared with grace, then faded into cruelity without apparent motivation. Slowly, we came to understand how the forest was fraught or thatched with use. Capital had tagged or lurid route. We asked ourselves, will this delicate world of deliquescent charms compel a future? Then answered ,the ground breeds sentiment, but what else is there to walk on? Sullenly we raised our glance, the coy foliage swung open to reveal this Moston scription.\n \n\n20:56\tAudio Recording, The Roaring Boys, XEclogue Launch, 1994:\t[Multiple Voices of the Roaring Boys Reciting Together] Shirk off the moderate little grace of vain Cupid and grease the silver and lascivious age as livid qualms dope our cool arrival. Rich poems sag like great nuns, arch cheeks, tongues, martyrs.\n \n\n21:14\tAudio Recording, Lisa Robertson, XEclogue Launch, 1994:\tFrom the lip of slavish shade, the guilty land reclines swollen in a thousand livid tents. All around us everything’s humming. In the low valley our futures writ on winking leaves. Texture Brit brushes, drenched texture in a glamorous frizane of wit. The cushioning ground urges us to remeasure our impatience. May we muster sufficient elegance to court this pangs mobility? Sunken moss we dream of the lustrous pitch of a truculent tissue. It means we are traders for we do not accept the idea of the present. We dream we are treading the sloping orthodox street etched with a scammed pride of hunger. It means memory has been defaced, implicated by the effects of poverty. We dream that their desires have become transparent to us so that we may suavely recite. What does Lady M want? To bask in unfathomably strange beauties. Political beauty, liberties, beauty, undeniably gorgeous beauty of a girl’s mind. A wrist’s quivering beauty. Beauty of the skin of boys’ backs. Beauty of burnished hoaxes deepen a clamoring taxi cabs. Appalled beauty of a scholar’s nervous heart. Cleft beauty invaded by splendid lucidity. We dreamed the night as far spent. Inexorable, thick lacquered, private. It means we have mistaken an invitation for permission. Yet still we feign this new erudition. Inappropriate and demeaning. With a movement of tearing we wake and cry out, we are not our own! Then find this freight’s scrap pinned to our sleeve.\n \n\n23:06\tAudio Recording, The Roaring Boys, XEclogue Launch, 1994:\tLopsided interpolations following a wrinkled blind eye. Oops.\n \n\n23:13\tAudio Recording, Lisa Robertson, XEclogue Launch, 1994:\tThe crooning leaves shut around a mercurial ankle. The stir and toss of the stroking breeze begs belief. Through the screen of grief, we glimpse an ear’s profane frill, luminous and insulting. These two have transformed us into what we are: green laurels that lose no leaf. What we call thought is cleft and afternoons olden freeze is cracked and lacking only verisimilitude. We wish to seize the real as a tissue. Leave the milieu of the curious and enter that radiantly tortured grove. Yet we are history’s minions. so again, we draw on the opulent glove of sleep. We dream. We have the will to think with the points of tiny scissors. It means luxury teaches us to dream of luxury. We dream of a barren, unbroken hunger blazing up in wild proportions that we taxi through a wet night on thrumming streets. That a city’s sumptuous edifice wanes like so many abandoned ghosts. That the shock of recognition twists like a blurred salvage, like a roped horizon, like a girl waiting in a car. We see the cradling flowers as taunting apostrophes. Through thick glass, the granular light slats among fronts, the shining mud sucks at thought, the leaves reek of rust. Girls whose memories caused the clamoring see in all names of ease. Quit tossing us such shoddy dreams. We dream we are dilations of banality. It means we are the willing captives of their metaphor. [Pause]\n24:58\tAudio Recording, Lisa Robertson, XEclogue Launch, 1994:\t[Aside to Audience] And I’ll just finish by reading the epilogue. [Returns to reading] I’m afraid I’ll be misunderstood. Asleep and sleeping in the clear, magnificent, misunderstood morning like a dahlia or some other flower with the strong odor of clothing. I am reminded of my conceit by a row of pale scars on the ceiling whose shy origin I shouldn’t identify. Speech bites into my walls. Maybe for that I will never forget the bus. In my dream of an intersection we eat and hear as we relax. We felt this as the cabinet swung open, we felt a strong burst of vitality. [Audience Applause]\n \n\n25:59\tMusic Interlude:\t[String Instrumental]\n \n\n26:08\tJulia Polyck-O’Neill:\t[Music Continues: String Instrumental] XEclogue was not Robertson’s first collection, but it is among her earliest published books and signals a formative moment, both for her and for the Kootenay School of Writing. The recording we just listened to captures aspects of her writing practice [End Music: String Instrumental] as it developed as a member of the Kooteny School of Writing in Vancouver: the sense of the formation of a feminist subject, and the development of a feminist ethics of care and leadership within the membership and community, which seems to come out in the ways Robertson includes community participation in her reading.\n26:43\tJulia Polyck-O’Neill:\tWhen approaching the corpus of Robertson’s writing in relation to her archive, including these sound recordings, it might be useful to observe that although her writing career began in and was situated in Vancouver when she was in her early thirties, the writing she completed during her moves around North America and relocation to France still bear a solid connection to the physical and emotional site of these beginnings. Importantly, while Robertson’s environment and community in Vancouver influenced her engagement with and conception of the archive, her practice also demonstrates and maintains a personal engagement with feminist, conceptualist thought. Her poetic and artistic networks in the city framed archival practice as a form of creative and political institutional intervention, as well as a method for feminist self-realization and reflection. More pragmatically, the connections between cities and selves are maintained by her generative engagement with her own archive, both as an idea, premised in affective self-reflection, and as a studious method for a form of intuitive, meditative writing.\n27:51\tJulia Polyck-O’Neill:\tIn many ways, Robertson takes an ongoing reflexive, relational approach to the institutional concept of the archive in her own fonds. She does so by means of the maintenance of different archives for different purposes: and official archive in Special Collections and Rare Books at Simon Fraser University; and two personal, unofficial, or what literary scholar Linda Morra has named “unarrested” archives. Robertson’s divided fonds demonstrate how her poetics actively engage with the theoretical-ideological, feminist legacies of the KSW and its institutional contexts, while also maintaining a certain emotional engagement not immediately present in the content of her formal writings as they’re published.\n28:38\tJulia Polyck-O’Neill:\tRobertson’s methods enact another manifestation of her relational approach to the archive, in the ways she implicates her archive in her work itself. She does so by incorporating regular readings of her personal archival collection, kept with her in her home in France. Doubles of some of these materials are held in her official fonds at SFU, while other more recent items she actively retains, mostly journals, as future contributions that aren’t currently too important to her ongoing work to send away. Yet another small collection is currently under my care – that which I have named her “maternal archive” –which she shared with me after our first interview in 2017 to help me with my early dissertation work. With her consent, I published an article in 2018 titled “Lisa Robertson’s Archive: The Feminist Archive, Singular and Collective,” in the academic journal, English Studies in Canada.\n29:37\tJulia Polyck-O’Neill:\tThese archives – that which is housed at SFU, her own, and that which was accumulated by her mother Lynette Mullen, and then passed along temporarily to me – demonstrate how archives, particularly when imagined holistically and beyond the conventional structures of the institution, are anything but static and are inherently distributed and dynamic, expanding and contracting across space and time.\n30:10\tJulia Polyck-O’Neill:\t“It is a slightly weird thing when one thread of your life becomes an institutional topic,” Robertson said during our conversation in April, reflecting on how her lived and embodied experience differs from published narratives. The recent interview was noticeably more intimate than the first, probably because so much has happened since 2017, and possibly because we communicate from twin spaces of isolation during a global pandemic that unites everyone in indescribable melancholy. It has also possibly because I unwittingly have pulled Robertson into an exercise of thinking through her life by means of archival materials in different ways. When she read my article before submission, she commented on how important her mother’s collection of objects now seemed –admitting that she had felt uncomfortable passing along such an unwieldy unremarkable accumulation, which she may have referred to lightheartedly as “junk”.\n31:09\tJulia Polyck-O’Neill:\tIt is a global pandemic. For the first time, I realize, in a material way, that archives, “the archive,” is a concept entangled with notions of death and dying, and, intrinsic to these extremes survival and trauma. This is an essential, material component of the archive: birth, marriage, and death records, or vital statistics form the basis of national public archival collections. The immaterial memorial aspects of archives have been theorized in several different ways. Feminist theorist Ann Cvetkovich writes about the idea of an archive of feelings as “an exploration of cultural texts as repositories of feelings and emotions, which are included not only in the content of the texts themselves but in the practices that surround their production and reception”.\n32:06\tJulia Polyck-O’Neill:\tThe archive, imagined broadly, brings to the fore not only recorded events, but also the lived experience, the rolling background of the lives that contain them. Critical of conventional archives, scholar Diana Taylor, in her book, The Archive and the Repertoire from 2003, explains that in arguing for the repertoire as an expansion beyond the archive, she “tried to put limit events into conversation with the daily noneventful enactments of embodied practice” in her study, foregrounding the importance of context within memory structures.\n32:46\tJulia Polyck-O’Neill:\tThe feelings and emotions invoked by an archive, by one’s own archive, can be hard to isolate and express, much like an event might be challenging to extract from its lived contexts. In scholar, Julietta Singh, No Archive Will Restore You, her 2018 book of creative nonfiction, the narrator’s desire to archive what she describes as sensing “what [movement philosopher] Erin Manning calls the “anarchive,” that strange and stunning “something that catches us in our own becoming”. The narrator goes on to explain the ineffable quality of this realization: “This is the future archive. The archive of alterity. And like yours and mine, this is a body that has gone up in flame. A body that is an excess, that is another world and also this one.” For Taylor, the body is incompatible with the archive, and for Singh, it is inseparable from it.\n33:48\tJulia Polyck-O’Neill:\tFor Robertson, the tensions between texts and embodied experience are embedded in her archive. In our conversation, we meander between themes in a way that draws out these relations Robertson. And I talk about the late Nancy Shaw, one of the original members of the collective in Vancouver who we heard in the previous recording, and Robertson begins to reflect on how so many of her formative relationships are contained in her archival collections, although they likely remain inaccessible, relegated to footnotes or snapshots. In so doing she meditates on the limits of narrative to capture lived reality and how key figures in her memory are omitted from many representations of her life. She observes how this is a fact of habit, of “how we receive and reiterate narratives.” Histories that are intertwined are separated, and textures are smoothed over, she explains, noting how patriarchal structures are internalized. “Feminist, queer, and Marxist working class circulations through KSW were extremely complex from the get go,” she says, and encourages me (again) to look more closely at Shaw in my research. “She was fucking brilliant…and she stood her own at the bar,” she emphasizes.\n35:14\tJulia Polyck-O’Neill:\t[Start Music: String Instrumental] We talk about an envelope of photos from parties she recently sent to SFU, and how objects get imbued with new relational significance over time. Listen to Robertson describe her changing relationship to ephemera and her archive in our conversation last April.\n \n\n35:35\tAudio Recording, Julia Polyck-O’Neill and Lisa Robertson, April 2021:\t[Interview transcript not available]\n \n\n39:14\tJulia Polyck-O’Neill:\tRevisiting the archive can be integral to Robertson’s writing practice. She is currently revisiting and writing a companion piece for her 2010 book, R’s Boat, a book that evolved from her 2004 chapbook Rousseau’s Boat, and which will eventually be republished as a new edition by Coach House Press in Toronto. We discuss how she has been using her archives as a starting point for writing or rewriting this work, as what she calls “a programmatic method,” and she remarks that she finds it useful to track how the psychological experience and the emotional experience of gathering material is “putting pressure in a certain way on what is a very avant-garde, constraint driven composing technique without actually entering the poems as content.” For Robertson, this process shapes the poem. Now I’ll play a clip of my interview with Robertson where you’ll hear her describe her process in her own words.\n \n\n40:15\tAudio Recording, Julia Polyck-O’Neill and Lisa Roberston, April 2021:\t[Interview transcript not available]\n44:10\tJulia Polyck-O’Neill:\tNoting her upcoming birthday Robertson observes how the process of reworking the material from her archives [End Music: String Instrumental] has a distinct relationship to reaching a certain point in her life. She explains, ” Language is emotional […] Subjectivity is linguistic. For me, you don’t need to directly refer to emotional content in order for it to be present.”\n44:36\tJulia Polyck-O’Neill:\tAt first, I interpret these words at face value, thinking about the corpus of Robertson’s writing, but then I step back and apply it to the broader context of her archive. I think about the interconnections between her archival collections and her shifting relationship with these objects and records, and how these – the relationships, the objects, the records – are imbued with emotions: hers, and those of many others. I reflect on how these emotional resonances, whether foregrounded in conversation or completely silent in the background, are what have always drawn me to want to spend time wading into the archives as a site of lived history. [Start Music: String Instrumental]\n45:22\tJulia Polyck-O’Neill:\tTo close this episode, I would like to consider how Julietta Singh opens No Archive Will Restore You with a passage that captures the tenor of my last conversation with Robertson and my ongoing relationship to her archives (especially now during the distressing and ongoing quietude of the pandemic). Singh describes the beginning of her graduate studies and her entry into the ambiguous, precarious, but intimidating environment of archival studies. She writes, “We were scrambling toward the archive. We knew it was crucial, but I suspect that few of us know what it meant, or where it was, or what to do with it.” But in contrast with the picture of the grasping desperate graduate students Singh presents in this chapter to give context to her eventual revelations, that archives are much more than the cold, institutional entities whe first encounters, I see the instability of this kind of mystery or unknowing as an invitation for engagement that tests the boundaries between academic and emotional selves. In the context of my conversations with Lisa Robertson, I can now better understand how relationships to the archive, and the collections that constitute archives themselves, can shift and evolve over time and across space. An archive that is in a constant state of transformation is a proposition for new kinds of thinking about relations between methods and modes of representation and lived, embodied experience. [End Music: String Instrumental]\n \n\n47:15\tHannah McGregor:\t[Start Music: SpokenWeb Podcast Theme Music] SpokenWeb is a monthly podcast produced by the spoken web team as part of distributing the audio collected from and created using Canadian literary archival recordings found at universities across Canada. Our producer this month is SpokenWeb contributor, Julia Polyck-O’Neill. Our podcast project manager and supervising producer is Judith Burr. 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. And don’t forget to rate us and leave a comment on Apple Podcasts, or say hi on our social media @SpokenWeb Canada. Stay tuned to your podcast feed later this month for ShortCuts with Katherine McLeod:mini stories about how literature sounds. [End Music: SpokenWeb Podcast Theme Music]\n"],"score":3.062659},{"id":"9616","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 S3E3, Forced Migration, 6 December 2021, Wilson"],"item_title_source":["SpokenWeb Podcast web page."],"item_title_note":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/forced-migration/"],"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 3"],"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":["Michelle Wilson"],"creator_names_search":["Michelle Wilson"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"name\":\"Michelle Wilson\",\"dates\":\"\",\"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/90aa09d2-eddd-4ff8-8ef9-b401cde0a6c6/audio/0eab67ed-3d02-4825-a7f7-3c1d6483e027/default_tc.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"final-swp-s3e3-forced-migration.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"44.1 kHz\",\"duration\":\"00:48:21\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"46,487,554 bytes\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"MP3 audio\",\"title\":\"final-swp-s3e3-forced-migration\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/forced-migration/\"}]"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"2021-12-06\",\"type\":\"Publication Date\",\"notes\":\"\",\"source\":\"\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/161607238\",\"venue\":\"Western University Ontario\",\"notes\":\"\",\"address\":\"1151 Richmond Street, London, ON, N6A 3K7\",\"latitude\":\"43.00937\",\"longitude\":\"-81.2618335\"}]"],"Address":["1151 Richmond Street, London, ON, N6A 3K7"],"Venue":["Western University Ontario"],"City":["London, Ontario"],"Note":["[]"],"Related_works":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"In the Spirit of Atatice:\\nhttps://csktribes.org/more/videos/in-the-spirit-of-atatice/in-the-spirit-of-atatice\\n\\nTo Wood Buffalo, With Love, by Chloe Dragon-Smith and Robert Grandjambe:\\nhttps://briarpatchmagazine.com/articles/view/to-wood-buffalo-national-park-with-love\\n\\nForced Migration:\\nhttps://scalar.usc.edu/works/remnants-wallows-and-outlaws-a-multidisciplinary-exploration-of-bison/forced-migration\\n\\nGardenShip and State at Museum London:\\nhttps://www.gardenship.ca/exhibition\\n\\nBuffalo Treaty:\\nhttps://www.buffalotreaty.com/\"}]"],"_version_":1853670549706768384,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:54.290Z","contents":["Forced Migration: Bison stories and what they can tell settlers about a past, present, and future on stolen land\n\nAs uninvited guests on Indigenous land, we are continually told that national parks, and our conservation system in general, are a benevolent inheritance from our settler ancestors. The creators of parks and conservation societies crafted archives in the form of magazines and biographies to document the salvation of charismatic species like the bison. In this episode, artist and researcher Michelle Wilson mines these archives to create alternative stories of the bison’s path to conservation. These audio essays reveal how ideologies around capitalism, human exceptionalism, and white supremacy have influenced settler relations to the more-than-human world.\n\nIn this episode, we will hear from poet Síle Englert who helped distill Michelle’s more extended essays into these shorter, affective pieces of prose, and musician and composer Angus Cruikshank whose score enriches Michelle’s audio storytelling.\n\nMichelle’s project seeks to extract narratives from a white supremacist, patriarchal written tradition and play with the immediate and affective possibilities of audio performance and sound design.\n\nThe audio artworks featured in this episode were originally created as part of Michelle’s interactive textile map “Forced Migration”. It is on view at Museum London as part of the GardenShip and State exhibition until January 23rd, 2022.\n\n00:18\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\n00:19\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\n00:35\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.\n \n\n00:49\tHannah McGregor:\tThere are sounds in the archive, and there are also silences. Here on the podcast, our producers engage closely with what we can hear in archived recordings, but also ask hard questions about the stories behind and around the sounds. When and why was the recording made? Who created this old record, and what story were they trying to tell? How does power function in the archive to uplift some beings and stories, erase others? For everything that we can hear or read in an archive, there are just as many questions about what has not been included, and who has been left out.\n \n\n01:29\tHannah McGregor:\tThe episode we bring you today takes a creative and critical approach to archival records to present a collection of stories about bison, violence, and the history of Canadian conservation. Artist and researcher Michelle Wilson uses archival records to trace what happened to the bison whose descendants ended up on the land now designated as Wood Buffalo National Park in Northern Alberta and in most other conservation herds across Turtle Island. Almost all the plains bison in the North American conservation system are descendants from the herds Michelle investigates in her research. With the help of sound designer, Angus Cruickshank and poet Síle Englert, Wilson brings us a collage of critically interpreted and creatively imagined stories. These stories strive to grapple with the impacts of colonialism and to give voice to the more-than-human characters at the heart of the research. Michelle and her collaborators on this episode are special guests from beyond the SpokenWeb network. Their work builds on conversations we have had on this podcast about critically engaging with archival artifacts, the practice of research creation and audio work as a form of scholarship. In addition to appearing here on the podcast, the sound works in this episode are also part of an exhibition called “GardenShip and State” on display at Museum London until late January, 2022. We are delighted to bring you producer Michelle Wilson with Season 3 Episode 3 [Start Music: SpokenWeb Podcast Theme Music] of the SpokenWeb Podcast: Forced Migration. [End Music: SpokenWeb Podcast Theme Music]\n \n\n03:06\tMichelle Wilson:\tHi, my name is Michelle Wilson. I’m an artist, mother and researcher.\n \n\n03:12\tMichelle Wilson:\tBack in 2016, I was lucky enough to be invited to do an artist residency at Riding Mountain National Park. I intended to listen to, record, and learn from bison communication and speak to the people who work with them. It was a thrill to find the bison each day and to sit and watch and listen. I learned so much from those who shared their knowledge about these bison, but just as instructive was what was left unsaid about how they came to be corralled for display at a national park. I have been tracing the story of these bison’s ancestors ever since.\n \n\n03:50\tMichelle Wilson:\tThe audio artworks I’d like to share with you today come together to tell this story; the forced migration of a lineage of bison. I will take you from so-called Saskatchewan to Manitoba, Kansas and Texas, Montana, then Alberta, and finally to Wood Buffalo National Park, which straddles Alberta and the Northwest Territories. This story spans centuries and zooms in and out from microbes on a blade of grass tickling a bisons nose to national policies.\n \n\n04:24\tMichelle Wilson:\tThese short vignettes emerged from a collaboration with poet Síle Englert, who took my 8 to 10-page essays, found their essence, and remixed them into short affective pieces of prose, and Angus Cruickshank, who created layered soundscapes that in a way, bring their own parallel narratives to the pieces. We will hear more from them later.\n \n\n04:47\tMichelle Wilson:\tA note before we listen to these works; I identify as a woman of settler descent, so it was vital for me to tell the story of what settlers did to the bison and their kin. It seemed fitting for me to draw my research from the colonial archive, infuriating as it often was. What I have created here, however, is not a recitation of facts. It is an alternative archive that centers specific and bodied perspectives.\n \n\n05:16\tMichelle Wilson:\tI have found in my research that citing practices did not prevent the transmission of false information and faulty worldviews, so I am taking these stories out of a written tradition. I’m not using the trappings of the academy to give myself authority. My voice as the narrator is never softened by the need to appear objective. On the contrary, it is impassioned and personal. Sometimes I even take on the perspective of a bison. This recentering of the inherited “facts” changes stories of salvation and domination into stories of connection, empathy, and survival.\n \n\n05:56\tMichelle Wilson:\tOur first story takes us to the banks of the north Saskatchewan river in 1873, where the circuitous route to colonial conservation starts.\n \n\n06:08\tMichelle Wilson + Voice Actor:\t[Michelle and a low, gravely voice recite simultaneously] Charles Alloway tried to hold onto a bison bull, to place to anchor them post. But the bull dragged the man, and the rope lacerated his hands, cutting to the bone.\n \n\n06:21\tMichelle Wilson:\t[Start Music: Low-pitched String Instrumental] Until his dying day, Alloway controlled the myth of how he “saved the buffalo.” His story: the white hero, the repentant slaughterer. His words are the ones that survive in the colonial record.\n \n\n06:33\tMichelle Wilson:\tOne word – half-breed –tried to obscure the body of the Honourable James McKay, Scottish and Cree, trader and guide with the piercing grey eyes.\n \n\n06:45\tMichelle Wilson:\tTogether, McKay and Alloway drove their oxcart down the rutted mud streets and out of Winnipeg to meet a convoy of Métis hunters. Searching for bison to slaughter for hides and pemmican.\n \n\n06:56\tMichelle Wilson:\tA matriarchal band of cows and calves moved through meadows, just emerging from winter’s grip. Grandmothers, aunties, mothers. The bison and must’ve stampeded as the first round of bodies fell. Brown-headed cowbirds took to the sky, their liquid chirps and trills drowned out by hooves and bellows as they abandoned their posts on the bison’s backs.\n \n\n07:22\tMichelle Wilson:\tEncamped at a distance, the women and children heard what they couldn’t see: “a sound deep and moving like a train moving over a bridge… acontinuous deep, steady roar that seems to reach the clouds.”\n \n\n07:36\tMichelle Wilson:\tClose to the carnage, McKay and Alloway felt the guttural calls of anguished mothers resonating in the cavities of their chests. The hunter’s sought cows, their flesh more palatable than the bulls’. Which meant the next generation were in their bellies when they fell.\n \n\n07:54\tMichelle Wilson:\tWomen were brought in to butcher and process the bodies. Calves lingered near their fallen mothers, watching.\n \n\n08:05\tMichelle Wilson + Voice Actor:\t[Michelle and a low, gravely voice recite simultaneously] These “pitiful creatures” were run down or lassoed at McKay’s and Alloway’s command. The partners recognized that the current rate of slaughter could not be maintained.\n \n\n08:16\tMichelle Wilson:\tFive freeborn bison calves were captured, survived, and reproduced, forcibly adopted by domestic cows. But their relationship to the land died.\n \n\n08:28\tMichelle Wilson:\tOn the establishment of Buffalo National Park, Alloway said:\n \n\n08:33\tMichelle Wilson + Voice Actor:\t[Michelle and a low, gravely voice recite simultaneously] “The animals will increased under natural conditions of peace contentment. Everyone of them came from my original group three heifers and two bulls.”\n \n\n08:43\tMichelle Wilson:\tWhen the last Canadian bison were being slaughtered in 1878, Alloway sent out a hunter who brought him back 30 bison hides –\n \n\n08:52\tMichelle Wilson + Voice Actor:\t[Michelle and a low, gravely voice recite simultaneously] “We cannot see distant things from the all absorbing present sometimes,”\n \n\n08:56\tMichelle Wilson:\t–he lamented. In trying to anchor the bison bull, Charles Alloway was left with scars on his hands that he carried –\n \n\n09:04\tMichelle Wilson + Voice Actor:\t[Michelle and a low, gravely voice recite simultaneously] –to his grave. [End Music: Low-pitched String Instrumental]\n \n\n \n\n09:08\tAngus Cruikshank:\tHi, my name is Angus Cruikshank. I’m a musician and composer. I’m Michelle’s partner as well. I did the score for “Bedson” and all the other tracks to this project and I also did a bit of editing and some of the mixing.\n \n\n09:23\tMichelle Wilson:\tHey Angus, thanks so much for talking to us about your process. Can you speak to the track we’re about to hear, “Bedson” and tell us a bit about what the story means to you and how you approached composing a score for it?\n \n\n09:38\tAngus Cruikshank:\tI think “Bedson” is my favourite track because it’s a very –I don’t know – moving story that has so many different parts to it, and it just comes together so well. And so, I think when I approach the track and listen back to Michelle’s performance of the reading, it’s like this very bittersweet tale of the bison and obviously their relationship to Bedson Stoney Mountain, and the plains in general. And so, I didn’t want to necessarily create like a doom and gloom type sound to it or composition to it, I wanted there to be almost like a pensive reflective type sound where you’re – it is kind of in a minor chord but there are like major chords in it that maybe convey some sort of, not hope but empathy to the story?\n \n\n10:39\tMichelle Wilson:\tI do like how you haven’t made it just a simple minor score because there are moments of lightheartedness in this piece and so I was wondering if you could talk to us about what you were doing with those upper register notes.\n \n\n10:54\tAngus Cruikshank:\tUpper register notes that are just really kind of holding down a beat and so it kind of gives this it – it kind of gives the piece sort of like a galloping feel to it, which I guess you know you could link back to maybe the bison, but also just sort of this running feel. Its like a [Sings] “duhn duhn dat dat dat dat dat”. So I don’t know I just it felt really right and it felt like it really worked for the mood and the theme of the piece.\n \n\n11:25\tMichelle Wilson:\tWhat do you see as the themes in “Bedson” and how did that influence the kind of sonic imagery you came up with?\n \n\n11:32\tAngus Cruikshank:\tI think the theme of the song “Bedson” is one of incarceration and the penitentiary, the structure that still exists today and is still a penitentiary and one of the oldest in Canada if not the oldest. I think a lot of people aren’t aware of that and how it played a role in essentially isolating, confining people who resisted colonization. And kind of the isolation of the penitentiary itself within this vastness. And having lived out there, and sort of seen vastness, that isolation of winter in the prairies, it’s sort of a very beautiful yet morose vibe, because nothing can really survive out there, yet the sun is shining and its 40 below. Yeah, nothing except bison can survive out there and it’s beautiful. And I think it worked really well with, when I picture Stoney Mountain Penitentiary just sort of sitting there alone, or when you listen to it you sort of maybe hear that maybe hopelessness, but maybe frustration, but also like an empathy towards those who are incarcerated there, both human and nonhuman such as the bison. I think musically it works so well, and I think why it is my favourite is because it really captures that vastness I was talking about, the use of delay it’s really just like kind of two chords, and then yeah then a slight variation as the song progresses.\n \n\n13:23\tMichelle Wilson:\tOkay Angus, one last question. We’ve collaborated together for a very long time. I was wondering if you could tell me a bit about what it’s like to collaborate by layering on someone else’s words?\n \n\n13:38\tAngus Cruikshank:\tYou’re really interpreting and trying to compliment what is being said, and that can be kind of hard sometimes because the music is there to support the story. You have a lot of leeway, but at the same time it’s really hard to capture the essence of what is being said and it does take time to kind of get that right feeling. Because if you don’t have it then it could distract from the actual story itself, and that is really the most important part.\n \n\n14:13\tMichelle Wilson:\tWell thanks so much Angus, I really do think that you bring life and texture to these pieces and a lot of the empathy that people perceive in them comes from your compositions so thank you, and here is “Bedson”. [Start Music: “Bedson” by Angus Cruikshank] It is a testament to how remarkable the sight of bison were, that in 1880, 800 people attended the auction that determined the fate of just 13. Because the bison were once so plentiful here that at a distance, they could have been mistaken for a churning, brownish-black river surging across the plain. The winner of the auction was Samuel L. Bedson, the warden of Stony Mountain Penitentiary. In the early hours of a frigid morning, a tawny bison calf was born onto trembling legs. Still wet with afterbirth, he had barely taken his first tentative steps when his herd, now 14 in number, was roused from slumber by men sent to drive them to their new home.\n \n\n15:22\tMichelle Wilson:\tImagine the wind whipping across a sea of flat, uniform ground on a painfully bright February day. On top of a sudden swell in the land sits a three-story sandy brick building. Dozens of elegant arched windows peer down upon you, the bars not discernable from a distance—that’s what those 14 bison saw. The bison were often corralled in a stone pen near the farm on the prison grounds. This complex was nicknamed “the castle,” and Bedson was its king. He was no great hunter; he was a collector, always trying to domesticate wild animals for the amusement of his family and neighbours. The farm at Stony Mountain housed a collection of wolves, deer, bears, and badgers, but Bedson’s moose were local favourites; a pair had even been trained to pull a handsome sled in the winter.\n \n\n16:17\tMichelle Wilson:\tOn a Christmas afternoon, Bedson tried a similar trick with a two-year-old bison bull. His shaggy brown body was hitched to a toboggan. Eight merry makers loaded on the sled while five or six of the incarcerated men held onto a rope tied around the bison’s neck. Imagine this ludicrous game of inter-species tug-of-war, the free laughing and playing while the prisoners, human and bison, were scared for their lives. A tense calm lasted for about 15 or 20 minutes until suddenly the bull leapt into the air, scattering prisoners and guests into the snow. There was no catching the bull once he had gained his freedom. Months later, Bedson received a letter from North Dakota that a lone young bull had been found grazing with an old rope tied around his neck. Bedson sent a hired man across the border to bring his property back. [End Music: “Bedson” by Angus Cruikshank]\n \n\n17:32\tSíle Englert:\tMy name is Síle Englert. I am a writer, editor, and visual artist, and I feel very grateful to be a small part of this project, in that it was my work to edit in a sort of cut and paste way, like a collage, to take these longer pieces describing the history of the bison and rework them into shorter narratives to be recorded, like storytelling.\n \n\n17:55\tMichelle Wilson:\tSíle, could you tell us a bit about the story you most enjoyed working on?\n \n\n18:00\tSíle Englert:\t“Fight or Flight”, I think is the piece that probably affected me and stayed with me the most. Maybe, because you’ve written it in a first-person perspective from the mind of one of the bison and that means you brought an immediacy to the history. It changed the language you were able to use to describe the experience, allowing human emotions and familial relationships so that the listener completely empathizes with the bison’s and experience. I think the shift to a first-person perspective makes the process of creating this piece, step-by-step even more interesting too. You’ve done an incredible amount of research, collecting historical accounts, stories, and statistics. And collected, the picture that all of this information paints is sad and disturbing, evocative of the horrors and the pointless suffering that humans put these animals through. But in “Fight or Flight” in particular, we hear the story from one of the bison herself. And it’s a sort of magic, I think, to take this pile of numbers and information and create a first person account of some of these moments where you can feel the pain of it right in your chest.\n \n\n19:30\tSíle Englert:\tAnd then you sent the longer story to me and my part I think was another kind of archaeological process: digging through this wealth of matter to find pieces that felt like the essence of the story. And then figuring out how those pieces fit together as a narrative. And there’s there’s an emotional element to the process too. When so much damage was done to both these bison and to the environment that we share, when so much pain was caused, how do you decide what’s most important? What people should hear? I had to make sure I kept enough of the spirit and the experience of the bison as you wrote it, and enough of the horror so that those listening could understand what these creatures went through – and to maintain that organic flow that’s kind of difficult to describe in words that movement you can hear in the story. All of that comes through in the final step, in the recording you’ve done, the sound and the music, these bison, this particular bison comes to life –her wants and needs and experience and pain. I think several steps of distilling this down to its essence from history, to story, from information, to emotion allows those listening to connect with something real, something far beyond numbers and statistics.\n \n\n21:12\tMichelle Wilson:\tThank you so much Síle for that generous and thoughtful reflection. And now here is “Fight or Flight”.\n \n\n \n\n21:22\tMichelle Wilson:\t[Start Music: Low-pitched String Instrumental] [Michelle performing ‘Flight or Flight”] We are grazing, hidden in the breaks between sand hills. Always alert, our ears panning for the sounds of men. My body orients toward the wind, waiting for the odour that twangs my fraught nerves and triggers our flight. I don’t want to leave this place. The snow has just melted from the slopes, moistening the thirsty earth below, reviving the scrubby grass after a long winter. There are so few of us, now. So few babies. We cannot let down our guard to breed as we used to. Two lame bulls follow us but they barely have the energy to register when we are in estrus. When we do conceive, our bodies can no longer nourish the unborn. We are haunted by those stolen from us. Mothers who aren’t killed fighting off the snatchers return again and again to the site of their loss. As the night lifts, my body is alive with sensation— rain drizzles, a sweet, pungent balm rises from the earth. I don’t detect them until they are among us. We bolt toward the wind. We cannot stop moving. We might still outrun them. The bulls cannot keep up and drift away, but these predators are not enticed by weakness. Night settles again and they keep pressing us. The sun rises and they are still there. Three nights and days they keep at our heels. Urine, sweat, and dead skin wafts toward me on a breeze exhaled from a canyon mouth. I turn, lead my sisters and their young onto an open prairie. My instincts have betrayed me, betrayed us. I hear the oscillating whistle of a lasso and the desperate, grunting cry of a calf. I hear him fall. A thud, thud, thud, dragging and scraping. The man’s rope finds another of our young and pulls him down. But now we know what he is here for. My sister is a blur of bristled hair as she charges him. There is a crack of thunder, and mushrooming from the deafening sound is the acrid, smoky, rotting smell of water that cannot breathe. My sister staggers a few strides from the source of her pain and sinks to the earth. Disoriented by the sound and smell of death, I barely register the hum of the rope when it strikes out and brings down our last baby. [End Music: Low-pitched String Instrumental]\n \n\n24:14\tMichelle Wilson:\tThis next story runs parallel to the one you just heard. “Fight or Flight” and this story “How Buffalo Jones Got His Name” were created from autobiographies of a man named Buffalo Jones. “Fight or Flight” uses his observations to understand the beings he prayed on, while “How Buffalo Jones Got His Name” confronts the attitudes used to justify the hunt.\n \n\n24:41\tMichelle Wilson:\t[Start Music: Piano and String Instrumental] [Michelle performing “How Buffalo Jones Got His Name”] Some people would have you believe that Charles Jesse ‘Buffalo’ Jones got his nickname for his conservation efforts. Please don’t believe them. Jones heard God’s call in Genesis 1:26 –.\n \n\n24:54\tVoice Actor:\t[Church Choir Singers Underlaid] “Let Us make man in Our image, after Our likeness; and let them have dominion over all the earth and over everything that creepeth upon the earth.”\n \n\n25:17\tMichelle Wilson:\t[Michelle performing “How Buffalo Jones Got His Name”] – He set out to capture the last remaining remnants of the great southern bison herd, not as some noble conservation effort, but as breeding stock for his own grand experiment. On the first three expeditions, he took only calves. He learned as he went, and the bison he encountered suffered for his mistakes. The calves refused buckets of water and called relentlessly for their mothers. Jones and his men rode out, looking for range cows to forcibly milk, but instead found two of the bison mothers wandering the site of their loss. Jones shot one of them for her meat and milked her dead body. When calves became rare, he resolved not to leave any bison on the plain. Capture myopathy was not identified until 1964, diagnosed in another endangered species. The stress of being captured triggers the creature’s biological defense mechanisms, and the prolonged or intense engagement of these mechanisms causes massive, often fatal system failure. The animal suffers lethargy, muscle weakness, incoordination, rapid breathing, shivering, dark red urine, and hypothermia. Their blood turns to acid. Their muscles suffer necrosis and die as the animal is still struggling for life. This is how the last of the Southern bison died. Jones believed that there was no place for wild bison on their former ranges. Man’s mastery transformed these arid tracts into productive farms “made exceptionally fertile by the manure, bones, and flesh of the millions which lived and died there during centuries past.” With a name like Buffalo Jones, it would be easy to believe that he saved the bison. [End Music: Piano and Strings Instrumental]\n \n\n27:35\tMichelle Wilson:\tAfter Buffalo Jones’ bison schemes went bust, he sold his herd, a mix of bison from the Southern Plains and decedents of the Saskatchewan calves, to two ranchers at the Flathead Reservation in Montana. These two ranchers, Michael Pablo and Charles Allard were adding to their captive herd. But how had these bison come to be protected within the Flathead Valley? Tracking down this history was, for me, a journey through a twisted game of racist telephone. It was really fascinating, in the way that a disaster is fascinating, to see how white authors used quotes and citations in articles and dissertations to give legitimacy to each garbled version of the past. I followed this path until at last, I arrived at a telling shared by the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes of the Flathead Reservation. In the show notes, we’ve linked to a video produced by the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes about the return of the bison and their fight to continue their stewardship and sovereignty over their lands. You will hear the following two stories back-to-back, they share how the bison came to be on the land, and how they were forced from it.\n \n\n28:53\tMichelle Wilson:\tThe search for facts goes in circles. I find a fact and follow it back to its source, only to find every new telling contaminated. [Start Music: Intermittent Percussion, Tonal Sounds] Who first brought the bison back to the Flathead Reservation? A white trader named Charles Aubrey inserted himself into history by recording his story.\n \n\n \n\n29:12\tMichelle Wilson:\t[Reading Charles Aubrey’s words] In the year 1877, I was located at the Marias River and engaged in the Indian trade…Among the Pend d’Oreille Indians… from across the mountains, was (a)… man… whose Christian name was Sam. He was known to the Blackfeet as Short Coyote… A rather comely girl had attracted the attention of Sam… (and) she became his wife. I told him very frankly that he had made a mistake…I said to him; “You are a strong Catholic and your Church does not permit polygamous marriages” He feared he would be punished by the fathers of St. Ignatius Mission…I thought there was still a chance to make peace with the soldier band of his tribe by getting a pardon from the fathers… I then suggested…he rope some buffalo calves…and then give them as a peace offering to the fathers at the mission. Sam herded his buffalo with the milk stock for five days, resting and making arrangements for his trip across the mountains… seven head in all is my recollection of the bunch… I afterward learned… that immediately upon his arrival upon the reservation he was arrested and severely flogged… In the course of time I heard of Sam’s death…passing away peacefully in his lodge…\n \n\n30:24\tMichelle Wilson:\tOther tellings of Sam’s story seep into my consciousness as I wade deeper into newspapers and websites. Racism oozing between every word. They describe Walking Coyote’s meeting with Charles Allard and Michel Pablo, who bought the bison calves. They speak of him “brooding… over gleaming piles of wealth.” They record his death as “a less-than-heroic exit” under a Missoula bridge, resulting from “a drinking spree,” and “one that matched the spirit in which he had lived and captured the calves that were now prospering on the rich grasslands of the Flathead.” The words sit like bile in my mouth. Walking Coyote’s legacy as a drunk, greedy Indian became entrenched in the dominant archive. I wonder if the tendrils of Aubrey’s story have made their way into others. Did interviewers seek out those that would corroborate their stories? Or did the keepers of more profound knowledge withhold it, for fear of contamination? In 1978, when he was 87 years old, Pend d’Oreille Elder and historian Mose Chouteh recorded the story of how bison returned to the Flathead reservation. I will let Mose Chouteh’s words speak for themselves:\n \n\n31:40\tMichelle Wilson, reciting Mose Chouteh:\t[Reading Mose Chouteh’s words] While I was growing up I heard this told by many elders…It is about a man called Ataticeʔ. (While on a hunt several buffalo followed their camp) And so in the evening, (the men) went into the tipi. The chiefs were smoking… Ataticeʔ said, “Hello. I have come to ask you, my chiefs. I think that it would be good if we took these buffalo back to our land to live there.” Some of the chiefs said, “that’s exactly right.” And some chiefs said… if we take them back to our land, we will be tied down… We will not be able to go anywhere. We will just be in one place as we gather our food.” The chiefs disagreed with each other. Half of them said yes and the other half said no. (After three days the council remained at an impasse and out of respect for the tribal need for consensus on major decisions Ataticeʔ withdrew his proposal). As he mounted his horse… He waved at these buffalo, like sending them to different parts of the prairies. Ataticeʔ said to the buffalo… “it will be up to each of us whatever happens to you and whatever happens to me. That is all.” And all these buffalo turned towards the east, the rising sun… They were going away. And Ataticeʔ cried. Ataticeʔ’s son Ɫatatí having the same deep connection to the buffalo as his father, renewed his father’s request to capture calves in the 1870s. The council, seeing the effects of the unchecked settler slaughter of the buffalo, approved Ɫatatí’s plan. Six calves were brought over the mountain range, they soon flourished and became twelve. Ɫatatí’s mother, meanwhile, remarried Samwel Walking Coyote. While Ɫatatí was away, two people went to see Samwel. One was called Charles Allard, and the other man was called Michel Pablo. These two men met with him and told Samwel, “we’ve come to buy your buffalo.” Samwel said, “ok, it will be so…” Ɫatatí returned to his house… all the buffalo were gone… he asked his mother, “where are my buffalo?” And his mother told him, “your stepfather sold them.” And Ɫatatí cried. [End Music: Intermittent Percussion, Tonal Sounds]\n \n\n34:07\tMichelle Wilson:\tMichel Pablo’s bison were sold to the Canadian government in 1907. [Start Music: Xylophone Instrumental] Extraction from the land was violent and rail travel for bison was perilous. I wonder if the removal triggered memories of their previous transfer from Kansas to Montana. The only recorded death during that transfer of bison was a calf who was trampled to death in the stifling, shifting, rattling cars. In my imagination, the calf is still a reddish caramel colour. She is not yet weaned. Was she with her mother? Had her mother been born into captivity or was she dragged by lasso from her own mother’s side? I know that somewhere in her matrilineal line, a cow fought a man to keep her calf and probably died in the process. Did this trampled calf carry that memory in her bones? Did her mother listen to the imperatives of her instincts and keep her calf close? Did her own feet bring her calf’s death? The egg that became my daughter existed in my genetic code when I was an egg inside my mother. What of my mother’s trauma is playing out in my daughter’s body? How does this kind of trauma make its way into genetic material? They say a butterfly has sense memories carried over from its caterpillar self, even though it basically becomes a gooey soup of cells in the chrysalis. I imagine the phantom call of a calf falling under shifting panicked feet, echoing in the body of another cow who died shortly after being loaded onto a wagon train on the Flathead Reservation. Cowboys loaded her into a reinforced wagon without her calf. The calf grunted and called to his mother. The call of her offspring drove her into a frenzy. In desperation she rammed her horns through the two inches of wood that imprisoned her. Her horns became lodged in the wood and in thrashing against it she broke her own neck. She was butchered, and her hide sold. I don’t know what happened to her calf. I know that 19 other bison died in the round up. 708 were shipped off the Flathead Reservation.653 made it to the ill-fated Buffalo National Park. 55 stayed at Elk Island National Park and founded a herd there. The colonial story of bison conservation is one of rescue. The Confederated Salish And Kootenai Tribes of the Flathead Reservation, and many other signatories of the Buffalo Treaty, are writing a new and yet ancient story. It is theirs to tell. It is incumbent on us to find it. [End Music: Xylophone Instrumental]\n \n\n37:11\tMichelle Wilson:\tWe now arrive at Buffalo National Park near Wainwright, Alberta. The archival information around this now-defunct park demonstrates an absolute indifference to the agency of other beings and to the specificity of this place. The result was an ecological and economic disaster. In this piece, I tried to speak with two voices, one that personifies the Parks service’s approach to resource management and another that takes the lives of bison and their kin seriously.\n \n\n37:47\tMichelle Wilson:\tNumbers. [Start Music: Atmospheric Instrumental] They transmogrified breathing, eating, shitting, connected bison into numbers. That’s what happens when a being becomes a commodity –\n \n\n37:57\tMichelle Wilson + Voice Actor:\t[Michelle and a deep voice recite simultaneously] 20 to 60 million bison ranged North America before colonial contact.\n \n\n38:03\tMichelle Wilson:\t–Surveyors and homestead inspectors came looking for a home for the government’s newly acquired bison. What they saw was land that had no value because it could not be settled or farmed. It was worthless, but maybe it could be made useful. This place, southwest of Wainwright, Alberta, became Buffalo National Park in 1908. Reducing the bison’s lives to numbers –\n \n\n38:29\tMichelle Wilson + Voice Actor:\t[Michelle and a deep voice recite simultaneously] In 1888 there were 103 wild plains bison in North America.\n \n\n40:13\tMichelle Wilson:\t–The land and the bison had sustained one another. The bison compacted the arid ground, helping it hold on to precious moisture. Cows and bulls felt their way across the grassland, stems and blades tickling their nostrils as soil stirred up by a roving muzzle and probing tongue was inhaled –\n \n\n40:20\tMichelle Wilson + Voice Actor:\t[Michelle and a deep voice recite simultaneously] By 1912, 748 bison had arrived at Buffalo National Park from Michel Pablo’s herd.\n \n\n40:20\tMichelle Wilson:\t–There was an intimate interconnection between bison and the thousands of “microbes; fungi, bacteria, and protozoa” populating each square centimetre of forage. These microscopic beings had the enzymes to break down cellulose in the grasses the bison eats. Neither being could live without this symbiotic relationship –\n \n\n40:20\tMichelle Wilson + Voice Actor:\t[Michelle and a deep voice recite simultaneously] The government wanted quick and exponential growth. By 1922, 6,780 bison were sharing the park’s limited resources with large deer, moose, and elk populations. The land strained under the pressure of all these mouths and bodies.\n \n\n40:20\tMichelle Wilson:\t–Reciprocity and movement had co-evolved over centuries, enabling the dunes and desert-like conditions of the Hills to sustain vast herds over the winter months –\n \n\n40:20\tMichelle Wilson + Voice Actor:\t[Michelle and a deep voice recite simultaneously] Over 19,141 bison were slaughtered over the park’s thirty-year existence.With Canada’s involvement in World War II looming, the park was declared a failure. On December 30, 1939, the last bison were shot; untold numbers of deer, moose, and elk followed them to the abattoir. [End Music: Atmospheric Instrumental]\n \n\n40:20\tMichelle Wilson:\t– Just numbers.\n \n\n40:23\tMichelle Wilson:\tWe have been on a journey through space and time. In this final piece, we arrive at Wood Buffalo National Park in the year 2021. I wrote this closing section in response to an article by Chloe Dragon Smith and Robert Grandjambe in Briarpatch magazine. We’ve linked it in the show notes as well. Chloe and Robert live off the land within their ancestral territory, which falls within the bounds of Wood Buffalo. Their article is a missive from the future to their future children. It references an imagined fulsome and personal apology delivered by Parks Canada to the 11 Indigenous nations and councils whose traditional territories the sprawling Wood Buffalo occupies. In this section, I used the archival information around Wood Buffalo to imagine what that apology would need to atone for. This apology felt like the only way to address the ongoing violations at Wood Buffalo, but also not nearly enough. So, for me, it is simply a place to start.\n \n\n41:38\tMichelle Wilson:\t[Start Music: Reverberating Tonal Sound ] I want to speak to you today about what we did— our predecessors— the many branches of the Dominion government and the people who ran them; the treaty negotiators, the Department of the Interior, and Parks Canada. The creation of Wood Buffalo National Park was an act of “ecological imperialism.” From its first inception, the Park was designed to be a place that excluded Indigenous peoples, a place where Canada could extinguish treaty rights. We created a swath of Land where vital relationships between human and non-human have been severed. We saw the bison as an exploitable resource and used their bodies to make money. Our park wardens slaughtered bison one day and persecuted your hunters the next. We turned exercising your rights and sovereignty into a privilege. We used racial dogmas to determine who had hereditary rights within the Park, and we used a politics of purity to drive communities apart. We separated families. We ignored letters pleading to be reunited. We contributed to the residential school system and intentionally engendered dependency instead of acknowledging your right to hunt and practice lifeways on your own lands. We chose to believe that pulling the strand of bison from this web wouldn’t cause it to unravel. We armed police and then wardens to arrest and harass your guardians. We created a policy of surveillance and intimidation. Even when we built abattoirs and killed hundreds a year, still we kept you from the bison. Our attachment to conceptual borders extends to policing the boundaries between Wood Bison and Plains Bison, between pure and hybrid, between contaminated and uncontaminated. Steeped in white supremacy, we did not see how these logics of purity were weaponized against both bison and your people. These imagined borders place bison and Indigenous peoples outside the protective bounds of white and human. This pattern has continued. Our pools of knowledge are shallow, and our spatial and temporal scales are different than yours. Your pools of knowledge are deep and dependent on a connection to place and language. We have come to embrace the term “two-eyed seeing,” as envisaged by Mi’kmaw Elder Dr. Albert Marshall. It is a concept of “learning to see from one eye with the strengths of Indigenous knowledges and ways of knowing, and from the other eye with the strengths of mainstream knowledges and ways of knowing, and to use both these eyes together for the benefit of all.” But first, we acknowledge that for nearly a century our laws stripped Indigenous peoples of their treaty rights if they pursued a university education. We tried to outlaw “two-eyed seeing”. We are ashamed that we fought for nearly a century to avoid fulfilling our Treaty commitments to your Nations. We apologize to you. We apologize for making your communities fight for what was theirs. We would like to work with you, the descendants of the dispossessed, to make restitution for these wrongs. To move beyond access and towards true sovereignty on the Land. We recognize that decolonization is not a metaphor. [End Music: Reverberating Tonal Sound]\n \n\n45:37\tMichelle Wilson:\tThank you so much for coming with me on this journey. The audio pieces I have shared with you today have many lives. They can also be experienced as part of an interactive textile map. It will be on view as part of the “GardenShip and State” exhibition at Museum London, in London, Ontario. We will link to the exhibition and documentation of the piece in the show notes as well. I hope that this collection of stories has illuminated how bison conservation has been a tool of colonization. The sources I have drawn from want us to believe conservation stories are ones of rescue, but as Indigenous literature scholar Pauline Wakeham puts it, conservation narratives attempt “to overwrite colonial violence” and locate it in a distant past. If you are interested in a future where a decolonized relationship with bison exists, please check out the work being done by Dr. Leroy Little Bear, The Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes of the Flathead Reservation, and many other signatories of the Buffalo Treaty. We’ve linked to an excellent site that documents the work of the Buffalo Treaty to get you started on this journey\n \n\n46:57\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 producer this month is Michelle Wilson. The audio artworks featured in this episode were originally created as part of Michelle’s interactive textile map, “Forced Migration”. It’s on view at Museum London as part of the “GardenShip and State” exhibition until January 23rd, 2020. See the links in the show notes and the image gallery on our episode webpage to engage more deeply with the research and stories behind this episode. Our podcast project manager and supervising producer is Judith Burr and 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. Stay tuned to your podcast feed later this month for ShortCuts with Katherine McLeod, mini stories about how literature sounds. [End Music: SpokenWeb Podcast Theme Music]"],"score":3.062659},{"id":"9617","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 S3E4, SoundBox Signals Presents “Performing the Archive”, 3 January 2022, Shearer, Butchart and Sallam"],"item_title_source":["SpokenWeb Podcast web page."],"item_title_note":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/soundbox-signals-presents-performing-the-archive/"],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Podcast"],"item_series_title":["The SpokenWeb Podcast"],"item_series_description":["Series of podcasts by the SpokenWeb network."],"item_subseries_title":["The SpokenWeb Podcast Season 3"],"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":["Karis Shearer","Megan Butchart","Nour Sallam"],"creator_names_search":["Karis Shearer","Megan Butchart","Nour Sallam"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/61365463\",\"name\":\"Karis Shearer\",\"dates\":\"1980-\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Producer\"]},{\"url\":\"\",\"name\":\"Megan Butchart\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Producer\"]},{\"url\":\"\",\"name\":\"Nour Sallam\",\"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/470425b9-3ec2-4306-83fc-49f6bc3a2b7d/audio/1c30fb73-bdd4-42e2-8a5b-6d70ff8f0b07/default_tc.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"s3e4-soundboxsignals-performingthearchive.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"44.1 kHz\",\"duration\":\"00:59:37\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"57,301,830 bytes\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"MP3 audio\",\"title\":\"s3e4-soundboxsignals-performingthearchive\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/soundbox-signals-presents-performing-the-archive/\"}]"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"2022-01-03\",\"type\":\"Publication Date\",\"notes\":\"\",\"source\":\"\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/123757617\",\"venue\":\"University of British Colombia Okanagan AMP Lab\",\"notes\":\"\",\"address\":\"3333 University Way, Kelowna, BC, V1V 1V7\",\"latitude\":\"49.94217525\",\"longitude\":\"-119.39902819775307\"}]"],"Address":["3333 University Way, Kelowna, BC, V1V 1V7"],"Venue":["University of British Colombia Okanagan AMP Lab"],"Note":["[]"],"Related_works":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"John Lent’s “A Matins Flywheel”: https://thistledownpress.com/product/a-matins-flywheel/\\n\\nDavid R. Loy’s “Nonduality in Buddhism and Beyond”: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Nonduality/David-R-Loy/9781614295242\\n\\nDaphne Marlatt’s Ana Historic: https://houseofanansi.com/products/ana-historic\\n\\nInspired Word Cafe: http://www.inspiredwordcafe.com/\\n\\nRead more about the AMP Lab’s events with Daphne Marlatt:\\n\\nShearer, Karis. “Performing the Archive: Daphne Marlatt, leaf leaf/s, then and now.” The AMP Lab Blog. 17 November 2019. http://amplab.ok.ubc.ca/index.php/2019/11/17/performing-the-archive-daphne-marlatt-leaf-leaf-s-then-and-now/\\n\\nBuchart, Megan. “Poetry, Campus, Community: Tuum Est.” The AMP Lab Blog. 18 November 2019. http://amplab.ok.ubc.ca/index.php/2019/11/18/poetry-campus-community-tuum-est/ \\n\\nOddleifson, Shauna. “Performing the Archive: Daphne Marlatt.” In Featured Stories and Our Students, UBCO Faculty of Critical and Creative Studies. 11 September 2019. https://fccs.ok.ubc.ca/2019/09/11/performing-the-archive-daphne-marlatt/ \"}]"],"_version_":1853670549710962688,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:54.290Z","contents":["This month on the SpokenWeb Podcast, we are excited to share with you a special episode from our sister podcast Soundbox Signals. Host Karis Shearer, guest curator Megan Butchart, and poet Daphne Marlatt have a conversation about Daphne Marlatt’s 1969 archival recording of leaf leaf/s and her experience of performing poetry with the archive in 2019. This episode was co-produced by Karis Shearer and Nour Sallam.\n\nProduced by the SpokenWeb team at AMP Lab at UBC Okanagan, SoundBox Signals brings literary archival recordings to life through a combination of ‘curated close listening’ and conversation. Hosted and co-produced by Karis Shearer, each episode is a conversation featuring a curator and special guests. Together they listen, talk, and consider how a selected recording signifies in the contemporary moment and ask what *listening* allows us to know about cultural history. Find out more at https://soundbox.ok.ubc.ca.\n\n00:05\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\n00:18\tHannah McGregor:\tDoes literature sound like? What stories, what we hear if we listen to the archive? Welcome to the SpokenWeb Podcast: Stories about how literature sounds.\n \n\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. It can be both wonderful and surprising to notice the work of your favourite writer change over their years of inspiration and creation. The recorded literary events that we hold in collections across the SpokenWeb network give us a particular opportunity to reflect on the multiplicity of an artist: an opportunity to talk to living artists and writers about the recorded works and performances by their younger selves. Sound recordings can reveal layers of memory beyond a text. They can evoke embodied memories: What emotion can we hear in an author’s voice and tone? What can we hear of literary community in the sounds of the room, the staccato of laughter, and the bursts of cheers and applause? How do artists reflect on their own performances as they are carried across time in these recordings? Today we bring you an episode from our sister podcast, SoundBox Signals, that considers the poetry and practice of Canadian poet Daphne Marlatt across decades of writing and performance. In this episode, producers Karis Shearer and Megan Butchart record a thoughtful conversation with Marlatt. They use a 1969 archival recording of Marlatt reading from her book leaf leaf/s to reflect together on her readings from the collection 50 years apart. The SpokenWeb project uplifts the power of such work with living authors. This episode exists in conversation with others we’ve shared with you in our monthly episodes and ShortCuts minisodes. If you enjoy this episode, check out “Lisa Robertson and the Feminist Archive”, “Listening Ethically to the Spoken Word”, “Talking about Talking”, “the Sounds of Trance Formation”, and “Robert Hogg and the Widening Circle of Return” for more conversations with artists about their recorded works. SoundBox Signals is produced by the AMP Lab at UBC-Okanagan, which holds recordings of Daphne Marlatt’s work in the SoundBox Collection. This episode was originally aired in February 2020, and we are delighted to bring it to you today on the SpokenWeb Podcast. [Start Music: SpokenWeb Podcast Theme Music] Here is Karis Shearer and Megan Butchart with “Performing the Archive.” [End Music: SpokenWeb Podcast Theme Music]\n03:07\tSoundBox Signals Intro Music:\t[Start Music: SoundBox Signals Theme Music] I see you face to face. What is the voice? The certainty of others, the life, love, sight, hearing of others.\n \n\n03:19\tSoundBox Signals Intro Music:\tWhere is this voice coming from?\n \n\n03:23\tSoundBox Signals Intro Music:\tI see you also face to face.\n \n\n03:27\tKaris Shearer:\tThis is SoundBox Signals, a podcast that brings archival recordings to life through a combination of curated close listening and conversation. Together we’ll consider how these literary recordings signify in the contemporary moment and ask what listening allows us to know about cultural history. Full-length versions of these recordings are available online in our SpokenWeb archive at soundbox.ok.ubc.ca.\n \n\n03:52\tAudio recording, Clip of Warren Tallman reading “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry”:\tHow curious you are to me. [Tape Click]\n \n\n03:55\tKaris Shearer:\tHave you ever listened to a recording of yourself when you were younger and noticed how your voice has changed? On September 20th, 2019, Megan Butchart and I got together with Canadian poet Daphne Marlatt and talked with her about the experience of doing just that. In our SoundBox collection, we have a recording of Daphne from 1969 when she was just 26 years old talking with Warren Tallman about her second book leaf leaf/s. Yes, she had published two books by the time she was 26. Our conversation took place the day after contemporary Daphne had given a reading here in Kelowna with her younger self, or her archival recorded voice, as part of our “Performing the Archive” series. The event was co-hosted by Megan Butchart, Erin Scott, and Cole Mash, and took place at Milk Crate Records. It was sponsored by Tuum Est, SpokenWeb, City of Kelowna, and the Inspired Word Cafe. In this podcast episode, you’ll hear our conversation with Daphne Marlatt. But first, let’s rewind to July 1969 and hear Daphne read from leaf leaf/s  [Tape Click]\n \n\n05:01\tAudio Recording, Daphne Marlatt, 1969:\t“4pParts of morning for 714” i: that petals’ veins / rift blue  / pared with razor / edge / tired eyes against the / gold dust, daisies / in a jug dyes / slowly into water / seeping pink. ii: moon drops / early / roused rocks / dry already a / firefly / threats rain it / flickers / green light over / night / sink’s / rust.  iii: white hood of a white / pickup parked on / green / trucks can be / steam risers, lettered / white / hollyhocks / of sun a whirl, / Cézanne, in a / tall tree. / iv: like it / flowers hail / outside our / back door stars / saw as worm / clots trod / morning / glories in deeper / small shells. [Tape Click]\n \n\n06:13\tKaris Shearer:\tYou just heard “4 parts of morning for 714.” Now we’ll fast forward to our contemporary conversation. In the first half of it, you’ll hear us ask Daphne about her experience listening to and voicing poems at public readings. In the second half of our conversation, we will talk about the archival recording itself and the experience of performing poetry with it. [Music Interlude]\n \n\n06:37\tKaris Shearer:\tMy name is Karis Shearer.\n \n\n06:37\tDaphne Marlatt:\tMy name is Daphne Marlatt.\n \n\n06:41\tMegan Butchart:\tMy name is Megan Butchart.\n \n\n06:42\tKaris Shearer:\tAnd we are here podcasting, or preparing material for a podcast. So, we have nine questions in kind of three different areas. But we also have a lot of flexibility around adding more or, I encourage Daphne to also flip the questions back on us as well. So, it becomes kind of more of a conversation, if we would like to do that. So, there really is no firm structure, that’s for sure. The first questions though, have to do with poetry readings because you know, we are very interested in the poetry reading. And Megan, you have the first question. So, do you want to?\n \n\n07:19\tMegan Butchart:\tYeah. All right. So, Daphne –.\n \n\n07:21\tDaphne Marlatt:\tMm-hmm.\n \n\n07:21\tMegan Butchart:\tCan you recall the first time that you ever heard a poem read out loud?\n \n\n07:27\tDaphne Marlatt:\t I’m trying to remember, whether – well, the first poem that I ever saw that would have been a wonderful one to read out loud was on the wall of my grade 12 classroom at Delbrook High School in North Van and my English teacher had put up one of Allen Ginsberg’s poems, which was the first time I ever heard about Allen Ginsberg. I mean, we’d been reading much much further back. I don’t think we’d even got, we must have got to Dylan Thomas, but nothing like Ginsburg, and I can’t remember if Mr. Patterson, that was his name, actually read it aloud to us or not. It’s the kind of thing he could have done.\n \n\n08:20\tKaris Shearer:\tSo, building on that, can you, can you tell us about the first poetry reading you ever attended, and what kind of impact it had on you?\n \n\n08:30\tDaphne Marlatt:\tThe first poetry reading was probably at UBC. And Prism held poetry readings, it seems to me, and there was another student magazine that did too, Raven. The first one that I actually remember, because I was very nervous about it, was one that I had been asked to read in. And I suspect it was a Raven poetry reading. It wasn’t raven as in “R-A-V-I-N’,” it was raven as in the blackbird, the trickster. And I said I’m too nervous to read. I don’t think I can read my poem. And I can’t remember whether it was Frank or someone else who said, you know from the TISH group, who said “I’ll read it for you.” I have a feeling it might have been Frank. Anyway, he read it and I squirmed in my seat because he didn’t read it the way I thought it should be read and from then on, I vowed I would always read my own poems out loud to an audience. [Laughter]\n \n\n09:51\tMegan Butchart:\tAnd so, how do you prepare to deliver for a poetry reading then?\n \n\n09:56\tDaphne Marlatt:\tOh, that’s a very good question. [Laughs] Hmm, it’s really interesting because it has become more flexible as I age. I still start the same way, I look at the book and I look at what I feel like reading that day, and I look at maybe different kinds of line that I might do from poem to poem. Sometimes it turns out there is a kind of image motif that’s running through several poems. I think, well, maybe I’ll do that. Sometimes I look at a poem and I think, I don’t want to read this poem aloud. When I was younger, I would take the book and I would look at the book and I would say, “I don’t feel like reading any of these.” [Laughs]. And that was pure nervousness before a reading, but now I will sometimes get up and I think, no I want to read this other poem instead. I mean I prepare, I have a list of what I’m going to read. I even time it because everybody is so concerned about timing and if there are other readers, I don’t want to go over my allotted time. But sometimes, like last night, last night’s reading, I wasn’t going to read the “Beo” poem at all and I just thought, no, I really I think after hearing Kurt read his Caetani poem, which used a lot of the language origins of the Caetani family, I thought, yeah, I want to read “Beo,” because that brings up a little of it, and it certainly talks about the relationship that Sveva had with her mother. So, that felt more appropriate, I guess.\n \n\n12:09\tKaris Shearer:\tYeah. I was struck by that too, last night, how responsive you were to the audience and to the kind of moment and things that were going on. How you were kind of re-crafting the reading in the moment.\n \n\n12:19\tDaphne Marlatt:\tRight, Right. Yeah, now that I’m the ripe old age that I am [Laughs] I feel more comfortable in front of an audience, so it gives me more freedom to do that.\n \n\n12:34\tKaris Shearer:\tYeah. Can I connect that back to what you said about hearing Frank read your work and then deciding – that as an impulse to want to read your own work. Can you kind of draw us a line from that to kind of feeling much more comfortable and responsive and being flexible in that moment? Were there kind of key pieces along the way in readings?\n \n\n12:57\tDaphne Marlatt:\tNo. No, I can’t. I don’t think I can know how to respond to that. It’s more a sense of having grown into your own voice and you have a sense of what your own voice is. and it’s interesting to me that even then I was beginning to have a sense of my own voice and it was not the voice that was reading the poem.\n \n\n13:17\tKaris Shearer:\tNice. Yeah. Thank you.\n \n\n13:18\tMegan Butchart:\tDaphne, can you share some of your thoughts on the significance of the live poetry reading during the period of the 1960s?\n \n\n13:25\tDaphne Marlatt:\tYeah, the live poetry reading was very important. It was a social glue, in a sense, that held all of us writers together. It was an occasion for being serious and being hilarious at the same time. No doubt there was room for a lot of grandstanding. But because, the group of writers that I knew met regularly, once a month, anyway, and sometimes more if we met at Warren’s house, to read to each other or to discuss. For instance, we had one evening where we had a long discussion of Olson’s essay on projective verse trying to figure out what he was saying and how that applied to any of us. So, there was a lot of push and pull, give-and-take, and I think the importance of those live readings was that it brought the language back into the body. The body was very present in the voicing, each person’s characteristic voicing of line, voicing of sound patterns, and so on. And I think that it clued us into that very quickly.\n \n\n15:03\tKaris Shearer:\tAnd you were doing that as students, right? I mean I’m talking about a time when you were undergrads at UBC.\n \n\n15:06\tDaphne Marlatt:\tYeah. Yeah. Well, some of them were, I mean, several of them were older than me and they left in ’63 right after the ’63 conference and went on to graduate school. Whereas, I still had another year anyway as an undergraduate. Yeah, and I can’t figure out, I mean, some of them were doing student teaching too, I think so, I don’t know if they stayed an extra year or the Honours program required an extra year. I have no idea. I just don’t remember all of that.\n \n\n15:43\tKaris Shearer:\tAnd were you also that student group that’s kind of like the Writers Workshop group?\n \n\n15:47\tDaphne Marlatt:\tAnd the TISH group. Yeah.\n \n\n15:50\tKaris Shearer:\tWere you also going to see other visiting writers give –\n \n\n15:54\tDaphne Marlatt:\tOh, definitely. Yeah. Yeah, I remember Leonard Cohen coming to give a reading. Yes, a poetry reading from what was it, Spice Box of the Earth, his first book, and that was remarkable because, he started out, it was in a classroom in the Buchanan Building and he started out to read and he suddenly stopped in the middle of a line! And we all thought, what? what’s going on? And he said something like “no, that’s not right” and he started again. And I was very impressed by that, like he was being so true to his sense of the line and he wanted it to come across the way he wanted it to come across, and that was a moment of freedom. Freeing for me because I realized the importance of that. And then I heard Irving Layton read. I can’t remember maybe that was in the old Auditorium. Was odd. There was kind of a stage set up but it was lower than a proper theater stage. So, I don’t know where it was, which room, but there he was. He had two young women posed on this little stage on each side of him. [Laughs] Layton. And okay. Well, that’s okay. That’s Layton, that’s Irving Layton. It was a very different reading from Leonard Cohen’s. And then, of course, we had these arts festivals that began and they were starting to do that and they brought in incredible people like – all these names are going to escape me. At 77, memory begins to go. There’s a New York poet, I cannot remember his name, and he did these very, to us, astonishing readings, which were not readings, they were performances. And he assigned lines to a number of us to say as we walked around the auditorium. But that really stuck in my mind because it was the beginning of the language approach that the Language School of Writers in the U.S. and was a beginning of that, I think. Very different from the aesthetic that we had developed and grown up with through the San Francisco Poets coming up, especially Robert Duncan, but Jack Spicer too, and of course Robin Blaser. So, it was a bit of an eye-opener to me that you could do that kind of thing with language. And it was like doing in language what John Cage was doing in music.\n18:57\tKaris Shearer:\tCool.\n \n\n18:57\tDaphne Marlatt:\tYeah.\n \n\n18:57\tKaris Shearer:\tWho is organizing that festival? Is that Warren?\n \n\n18:59\tDaphne Marlatt:\tThere wasn’t. No, there was a group. There was a group of faculty people from, I think, theater people as well as music people and people from English. Literary people. It was great. It was wonderful. It brought the outside world to us in performance and it was very exciting.\n \n\n19:25\tKaris Shearer:\tSounds amazing.\n \n\n19:26\tDaphne Marlatt:\tYeah.\n \n\n19:27\tKaris Shearer:\tWere you there for the Jack Spicer reading in ’65? Was it ’65?\n \n\n19:31\tDaphne Marlatt:\tUh, no, I was not there. I was in Bloomington, Indiana.\n \n\n19:35\tKaris Shearer:\tRight. Okay.\n \n\n19:36\tDaphne Marlatt:\tYeah.\n \n\n19:37\tKaris Shearer:\tYeah. That sounds like an incredible, I mean, just I always kind of think about myself, being back at, wanting to be back and that kind of moment of just kind of heady readings.\n19:47\tDaphne Marlatt:\tOh yeah, well Robert Duncan, of course, was the big one for me and for a number of us. Because he himself was so dramatic. I can see him walking between the catalpa trees, striding between them in his black cape on the way to giving a reading in the Buchanan building. [Laughs]. I learned a lot from Robert Duncan, a lot about language and the music of language and how language carries breath and spirit.\n \n\n20:21\tKaris Shearer:\tYeah. Can I ask you, following on that – you would’ve read the Black Mountain Poets before they arrived in ’63, I mean, I guess they read at different times, some of them, at UBC.\n \n\n20:32\tDaphne Marlatt:\tYeah, yeah.\n \n\n20:33\tKaris Shearer:\tBut prior to meeting them in person, had you formed ideas about them that maybe were changed by meeting them in person?\n \n\n20:44\tDaphne Marlatt:\tYeah, I had no idea that Denise Levertov for instance was such a dynamic reader. That was a wonderful event. And she was so open to young women poets. I mean I had a coffee with her and chat about my imminent marriage and whether I could continue writing, and she was great. She was very supportive. Robert Duncan, we knew because he’d come up several times before ’63. Olson was a revelation, because he was such a large man and his work was so large in its scope and yet he was very open to talking to us. You know, one of the things he said to me in Warren and Ellen’s kitchen, was when I told him – he asked me where I’d grown up. And so I told him I spent my childhood in Penang and grew up North Van. And he said, you should write about Penang. And I’m only just doing this now in my late 70s. [Laughs]. But some things kind of stay with you, you know. You get gifts like that. And Creeley. We knew Creeley, and he had taught a wonderful Creative Writing course. I think it was the first Creative Writing course that the English Department had given and it was – I mean Edward Bernie was busy trying to get a Creative Writing Department going, but I took that one from Robert and Bob Creeley. Yeah, Bob didn’t teach it like a workshop, like we know Creative Writing workshops these days. What he did was he brought in a lot of ideas in the form of reading assignments and discussions of what we had read and how does that relate to what you’re writing? It was very opening for me. It was about at the level of the older TISH poets. So, I was floundering around a bit, but it set the tone for me. Set the bar high, intellectually. Yeah.\n \n\n23:22\tKaris Shearer:\tNice. Nice. Can I pick up on that and ask, I mean, some of the things that strike me about like your descriptions of the Creative Writing course or your experiences in English courses are so different from how courses are run these days, typically –.\n \n\n23:37\tDaphne Marlatt:\tI know. [Laughs] Yeah.\n \n\n23:37\tKaris Shearer:\t– so that description and then what you said the other night about Warren teaching an English course, but having students do a lot of reading aloud.\n \n\n23:53\tDaphne Marlatt:\tYeah, right.\n \n\n23:54\tKaris Shearer:\tCan you take us back to that for a second, just the role of reading aloud?\n \n\n23:54\tDaphne Marlatt:\tRight. Right. That was that course, we did a lot of Whitman in and it was a poetry reading. It was a course on poetry and it’s funny, I can’t remember who else we studied. But Whitman was an eye-opener because in a way it was a bit excruciating for the class. He didn’t want to talk about the content of the poem, several poems, he just had different students read aloud. He would point to someone say, “okay, you read this one.” Person would read and he’d say, “you read that! and you read that!”. And of course, we would hear all these different versions of the same poem and we would all be thinking, “okay, what is the version he’s looking for?” But what it did was, it opened us up to hearing the poetry, hearing how the words were moving together, musically, rhythmically, semantically\n \n\n25:03\tKaris Shearer:\tNice. So, we have another set of questions that have to do with this recording of leaf leaf/s in an interview that you did with Warren Tallman in July 21st, 22nd, 25th, 1969. [Marlatt Laughs] Warren is not really sure what day it was recorded. But I wanted to ask you about that recording in the next couple of questions, and whether you can recall how you came to do that recording, that interview?\n \n\n25:32\tDaphne Marlatt:\tWhich one month was it?\n \n\n25:34\tKaris Shearer:\tJuly 1969. Some recording of an interview with Warren’s Tallman about leaf leaf/s and you’ve heard a copy of this where you read the full book in two parts, and he asks you a series of questions about it.\n \n\n25:49\tDaphne Marlatt:\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 had had when I wrote those poems, so 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. You know, I mean we sat in the living room where he usually recorded and I was very happy that he wanted to record the whole book and then talk about it, but I think we had some slight – we had different approaches to my writing at that point because I had gone somewhere else. I had been in Bloomington and then I had been in the Napa Valley in California and in Bloomington. I belonged to – I joined a small writing group that Clayton Eshleman organized and D. Alexander was part of the deal. D. was a linguist. And we had a very significant conversation, significant for me, in one of the local student pubs. They don’t call them “pubs” down there, “bars,” in Bloomington, about language. And he pointed out to me that there was, there’s an elasticity, and a semantic associativeness and flexibility that I was not paying attention to because I wasn’t thinking of language just as a medium, as language. I was thinking of language referring to objects and actions in the world. And he said, I mean, this is Saussure, right? It’s basic Saussure. “No, you should read Saussure, for one thing, but language is a medium unto itself and it has all these currents in it that you could be hearing.” And that was a big eye-opener for me. So, leaf leaf/s was very much written out of learning that and trying to put that into practice. I find it a rather abstract book now, but it taught me a lot about writing because it taught me a lot about language.\n \n\n28:40\tMegan Butchart:\tAnd so, what does this recording mean to you now to listen back to it?\n \n\n28:44\tDaphne Marlatt:\tWell, as I said, I was surprised that my voice was so present in it, in the language. I was happy to hear that. I was still, I mean reading it in Warren’s living room was very familiar territory for me. So, it wasn’t like reading it aloud to an audience, which I still then found very nerve-wracking. But reading it to Warren –I can’t remember if other people were present or not. I know when he had me read frames of a brain, frames of a book, of a story…. Yeah, see, I can’t even remember the title of my first book! [Laughs]. Frames of a Story. He had me read that in his living room to a group of people when it first came out. I think it was – it might have been a fireplace. There might have been a fire burning in the fireplace. I felt very much at home there, and a lot of my friends were there in the living room and it was a big experience for me to read the whole, the whole of that book! “Warren, are you sure? really all of it?” “Yes. Yes. Yes.” [Laughs] So leaf leaf/s was after that. And it seems to me it was more, I don’t think there were many other people there, if any other people were there.\n \n\n30:13\tKaris Shearer:\tYeah. I didn’t get the sense listening to it that there were others.\n \n\n30:15\tDaphne Marlatt:\tYeah, yeah. Yeah. I think Warren was trying to figure out what had happened to my language while I was away. I suspect that occasioned that.\n \n\n30:27\tKaris Shearer:\tYeah, that transition from that kind of Black Mountain Poetics. It’s Duncan, Creeley, especially. He really wants to emphasize [inaudible], right?\n \n\n30:37\tDaphne Marlatt:\tThat’s right. Well he is very close to Creeley’s work. Yeah, yeah.\n \n\n30:41\tKaris Shearer:\tCan I take a little detour and ask about this concept of reading the entire book? Because that comes up in the Sir George Williams University recording as well where George Bowering says, back in Vancouver we would just – a reading, you would just read the whole book to your friends. Was that a common thing?\n \n\n31:00\tDaphne Marlatt:\tNot that I remember, no. I think Warren probably, I think, George was probably thinking about Warren, because I don’t remember that happening elsewhere, the whole book.\n \n\n31:13\tKaris Shearer:\tOkay. Yeah. I was just curious.\n \n\n31:16\tMegan Butchart:\tHow do you think that changes the reading experience though? To read just single poems versus reading something consecutive?\n \n\n31:24\tDaphne Marlatt:\tYeah. Well, for me, there’s always what you might call a kind of, it’s not a narrative in a book of poetry, necessarily, but narrative has always been of interest to me and that’s what Frames was. It told the narrative, but there’s a sense in a collection of poems some sort of line of a development through the book, and so you would only get that if you read the whole book.\n \n\n32:00\tKaris Shearer:\tAs a listener, I really love these moments where we get to attend a reading where someone reads the entire book because it feels like you’ve in advance made a commitment to staying for that kind of duration, it’s a significant duration –\n \n\n32:15\tDaphne Marlatt:\tThat’s right. That’s right. It is.\n \n\n32:16\tKaris Shearer:\t– and a kind of dedication to that person who’s going to read. They’re always –they’re very – and they also feel like a kind of communal dedication everybody in the room is there for the whole for the whole thing.\n \n\n32:25\tDaphne Marlatt:\tThat’s right. Yeah, yeah.\n \n\n32:28\tKaris Shearer:\tI long for those occasions, although one cannot have them all the time. [Laughs]\n \n\n32:32\tDaphne Marlatt:\tNo, but it was particularly nice to have an occasion like that in Warren’s living room. I should always say Warren and Ellen – because it was both of them – they were both such wonderful supporters of young writers. Really, I mean that whole phenomenon that’s become known as the TISH group wouldn’t have happened without them.\n \n\n32:59\tKaris Shearer:\tCan you talk a little bit about Ellen’s role in that? I know it was significant.\n \n\n33:02\tDaphne Marlatt:\tYeah. Ellen was very significant because not only did she help organize that 1963 conference, but she had the contacts because of growing up in Berkley and going to –I mean growing up in San Francisco and going to Berkeley. She had the contacts with Robert Duncan and Jack Spicer, and Robin Blazer, and she brought those with her when they moved to Vancouver. So, there was a clear line, a clear artery, if you like, for infusion. I knew Ellen not as a teacher. She became a teacher. She taught at UBC later. But when I knew her she was more, the one that everyone could talk to about their personal lives, their problems. She was remarkable. I’ve never known anyone who could cook a whole meal in the kitchen while talking to somebody about their deep emotional angst. [Laughs] She was a phenomenon in herself and I was really glad when she started writing in her later life about her experiences meeting all those people. And I wished, I mean, she had a very busy career as a therapist, and she was very, very supportive to a number of people in the AIDS community who it would have been very different for them without Ellen. And she didn’t have much room left in her life for writing. But the pieces that she did write were so good, and I kept encouraging her to try and find more time to write, but it was difficult. And she had her health problems as she aged to deal with. So, yeah.\n \n\n34:59\tKaris Shearer:\tI think of her very much, as you say, that social, as someone who had the kind of social connections to invite those writers up, but also who received them when they did come. And he talks on one of the recordings about choosing Robert Duncan’s poems and choosing the entire lineup for him and kind of orchestrating behind the scenes.\n \n\n35:24\tDaphne Marlatt:\tYeah. Yep, yep. Yeah, she was –she was intelligent and I think a lot of people might not have known that in the early days. She was very intelligent. Yeah. And also, intuitive about people. Yeah.\n \n\n35:37\tKaris Shearer:\tYeah. We need to talk more about that kind of work behind the writing. Because it’s so important.\n \n\n35:44\tDaphne Marlatt:\tIt is, and Gladys fulfilled that role too.\n \n\n35:48\tKaris Shearer:\tYeah.\n \n\n35:49\tDaphne Marlatt:\tYeah Gladys Hindmarch, Maria.\n \n\n35:53\tKaris Shearer:\tYeah, very much. So, I want to turn to, if you don’t mind, talking about last night’s reading, because it was a pretty marvelous, marvelous event in so many ways and I can’t stop thinking about it. Last night, you read with your former self [Marlatt Laughs], as we and sort of billed it –\n \n\n36:14\tDaphne Marlatt:\t[Laughs] That’s right.\n \n\n36:15\tKaris Shearer:\t–with your 26-year-old voice, from the archive as part of our “Performing the Archive” series. I know you’ve only had a short time to maybe think and reflect on that, but what was it like to collaborate with yourself?\n \n\n36:30\tDaphne Marlatt:\tWell, first of all, I was very very glad that Craig would key me in, because I didn’t want to read the poems as I heard them. I didn’t want to read them on the page. I wanted to hear them. And so, I couldn’t always remember when a poem would end. And so, I was always looking at him to clue me in to when to start reading in my current voice from that book. And we did this sandwiching thing, past and present, past and present, past and –so, it was interesting because it felt, well, it felt peculiar, in one sense, to hear my voice played back to me. And it wasn’t my voice as it is now. Bridget commented afterward that she noticed that there was still more English pronunciations, English-English pronunciations in it, which – and probably in the tone more than anything, I would think. And that voice was very clear about what it wanted, how it wanted the line to sound and exactly where the brakes went. It was a musical score, basically. The poems were kind of a musical score, and that voice was very keen on paying attention to that. And then when I read in my present voice, there was more focus on maybe image, and on the movement of a poem as a whole. Yeah, I don’t know what other people heard.\n \n\n38:20\tKaris Shearer:\tWell, actually, I’m going to turn to Megan and ask her. What did you hear in that kind of movement from the archival voice to the contemporary voice?\n \n\n38:31\tMegan Butchart:\tWell, it was interesting to me because you have two different contexts in which you’re reading. So, the 1969 voice is just you and Warren in the living room, which you would think would be the more intimate setting, whereas last night’s reading was in front of a crowd of I don’t even know how many –\n \n\n38:46\tKaris Shearer:\t70 people.\n \n\n38:46\tMegan Butchart:\t70 people.\n \n\n38:47\tDaphne Marlatt:\t70, huh?\n \n\n38:48\tMegan Butchart:\tAnd in that case, it seems like you would naturally want to perform more. And I actually found that the 1969 voice was more performative, in a sort of deliberate sense. Whereas, your reading last night was, like, I got musicality of the words together more –\n \n\n39:06\tDaphne Marlatt:\tOh, wonderful.\n \n\n39:08\tMegan Butchart:\t– I felt it was a softer reading, and I feel like everyone was so intent and so attentive, to your reading that there was sort of this silence around your speaking almost, it was incredible.\n \n\n39:21\tDaphne Marlatt:\tIt was a wonderful – well, it was a wonderful audience. And you know, we’d heard such diverse voices before I got up to read and that audience was open to every one of us. That was the astonishing thing.\n \n\n39:36\tMegan Butchart:\tYeah.\n \n\n39:37\tKaris Shearer:\tYeah. Erin Scott and Cole Mash have really crafted – I mean, that’s been a reading series over the past more than two years and every time I’ve been to it the audience is so generous and so warm.\n \n\n39:51\tDaphne Marlatt:\tWell Cole really sets that up. He’s so spontaneous and himself. And no posing at all on stage.\n \n\n40:00\tKaris Shearer:\tListening to him afterwards, one of the things I love about the way he hosts is he manages to kind of move between the sort of different registers, like that comic register, this sort of open, outrageous comedy, but then very respectful, thoughtful attentiveness and seriousness as well. And he’s able to move through those registers back and forth in a way that is very energizing. But also, yeah, just really attentive to the audience.\n \n\n40:30\tDaphne Marlatt:\tAnd the space was really good for a reading because even though I’m surprised to hear there were 70 people there because it didn’t feel like that, I mean, there’s all the records at the back and the shirts, t-shirts hanging up in the back and so on, but on the in the front this peculiar platform of a stage with an Asian carpet spread out on it [Laughs] and…\n \n\n40:57\tKaris Shearer:\tAnd a Mickey Mouse table. [Laughs]\n \n\n40:59\tDaphne Marlatt:\tAnd a Mickey Mouse table, that’s right. It’s very – well, it reminded me of the 70s actually. So, I felt really at home there. And also, the way, it was announced that this was probably the last event there, because people were being evicted, had to move, and Richard, I mean the flowers for Richard, the owner, not owner, but manager of Milk Crate Records, I guess he’s the owner of Milk Crate Records, not the owner of the building, and how he got up and spoke so, with such determination about the future of the place and then the diversity of the poets, the three poets before, and then Sari reading. It did feel almost like being in somebody’s living room. Yeah.\n \n\n41:58\tMegan Butchart:\tYeah. I mean, even there’s a couch in the front row –\n \n\n42:01\tDaphne Marlatt:\tThat’s right.\n \n\n42:02\tMegan Butchart:\t– and everyone’s just hanging around.\n \n\n42:05\tDaphne Marlatt:\tWith footstools – with hassocks with footstools or, yeah.\n \n\n42:08\tKaris Shearer:\tOne of the things I’ve been reminded over the last couple of days from the events that we’ve been doing. Just the kind of diversity of audience for poetry that really, I find very invigorating. You know, we’ve had at the “curated close listening” event, first-year students and students who are coming with sometimes very little background in poetry itself or knowledge of a particular poet, and they’re coming for a variety of reasons and contributing amazing things to the conversation. Yeah, and that struck me too with Milk Crate, with the reading last night, we saw a variety of different performers, different styles.\n \n\n42:50\tDaphne Marlatt:\tRight. Very much so. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And there was a variety in the audience too.\n \n\n42:56\tKaris Shearer:\tYeah, definitely.\n \n\n42:59\tDaphne Marlatt:\tWell, I hope they find a good place.\n \n\n43:01\tKaris Shearer:\tMe too.\n \n\n43:02\tDaphne Marlatt:\tAnd keep it going. Because it is, it does remind me of what the Vancouver poetry scene was like, and there were readings in folk music coffee shops [Laughs] and readings in bookshops. It wasn’t always this staged thing where you sold tickets or whatever.\n \n\n43:32\tKaris Shearer:\tYeah, it reminds me too, I mean Milk Crate Records is a venue for music and has been so welcoming to poetry. And so, Sari’s response last night, to your question Megan, about what undergrad course had most influenced her. I mean our connection sometimes are very much outside of the literary classroom, if you will, or the poetry community proper, and I think that those other connections are often where it finds growth.\n \n\n44:00\tDaphne Marlatt:\tWell, poetry should never be just an academic subject. It was never meant to be that in the beginning. And in one of the things that, I feel, the commercialization of the literary industry in Canada’s done is make it much more ambitious, the whole award business for one thing, I mean I’ve been on one of those juries and it’s impossible to choose the best book for the year. It’s a matter of people’s tastes finally vying and you get some kind of compromise. But poetry comes out of life, it comes out of lived experience and it also reaches for something that I was thinking of this morning, as philosophy in the original sense ‘philos’’sofia’, the love of wisdom. It’s about how to live, how to be alive in this time with all that we’re facing, as a culture as a society, and going through one’s individual life journey as well, at the same time.\n \n\n45:31\tKaris Shearer:\tDefinitely. I mean in that sense it has to reach out beyond the poetry community, proper. Draw from and be responsive to.\n \n\n45:43\tDaphne Marlatt:\tYeah. Yeah.\n \n\n45:46\tMegan Butchart:\tDo you think it could describe a little bit more, sort of, how you’re reading style has changed? I mean your voice has changed some, it has become less English, perhaps, but, like, your reading style.\n \n\n45:58\tDaphne Marlatt:\tWell, how did you hear it? How did you hear the difference?\n \n\n46:02\tMegan Butchart:\tI mean I heard the difference is being less deliberately performative, which is interesting. And maybe it was sort of the intimacy of having the mic right there instead of perhaps just, you know, a reel-to-reel machine in the room, right? So, there might have been a little bit.\n \n\n46:16\tDaphne Marlatt:\tSo, I didn’t have to project as much.\n \n\n46:18\tMegan Butchart:\tPerhaps not. Yeah. But I’m not sure. Karis, do you have any thoughts about that?\n \n\n46:22\tKaris Shearer:\tYeah, I mean, I think what I heard in the recording was a voice that was clipped and deliberate and for a long time, when I think about leaf leaf/s I think about that recording and that’s kind of in my head, the reference point for the sound of it. What struck me when you were reading last night was the way that you kind of opened up some of the vowels and it kind of lengthened and some of the vowels and it felt much more kind of flowy, and the turns more gentle. Then yeah, that particular – but I still hear echoes of the style, of course, across both.\n \n\n47:03\tDaphne Marlatt:\tOh, that’s good feedback for me. Yeah. Thank you.\n \n\n47:06\tKaris Shearer:\tYeah.\n \n\n47:07\tDaphne Marlatt:\tYeah, well, I’ve always had these two diverging interests in writing and one is narrative and one is the lyric. And the narrative also fights against the sense of sequence, that sequence doesn’t have to be narrative. And yet I’ve written narratives, I’ve written two novels, if not three, and I fought against, in each case, I fought against writing a traditional narrative [Laughs]. So, there’s an interesting conflict that feeds into the writing. And the lyric side of it has to do with my feeling that poetry is not about being declamatory. It’s about music. It’s what the music in the language, how it informs one, even sometimes unconsciously. Writing feels to me much more like improvisation than trying to get from A to B. So, there’s a funny kind of uneasy balance in my work between getting from A to B, as in a narrative, and the improvisatory.\n \n\n48:42\tSpeaker 5:\tWhen you were finishing with leaf leaf/s last night and transitioning to some of the other work, you mark that transition with a reference to the longer line, right? The very short lines of leaf leaf/s and the move into this like long the longer line of Steveson, for example. Can you talk a little bit about that?\n \n\n49:02\tDaphne Marlatt:\tYeah. Well it was wonderful for me to be able to stretch out into a longer line. And of course, I started trying to do that with the Vancouver poems. But even there they would come back to a short line here a short line there and so on, whereas with Steveston the writing was really informed by the flow of the Fraser River that ran underneath everything I wrote about Steveston. I wanted the flow of the river there, and the flow of history, which has a kind of, what’s the word I want? It has a kind of fatality to it, that is like the flow of the river out to sea, you can’t reverse it. You can’t reverse the tide. Not the tide, but the current in the river. It keeps on going out, and it keeps going out into this disappearance, into the oceanic. And I wanted to talk about the fatality of that awful moment in Canadian history when people who are born here as citizens, Japanese-Canadian citizens, were suddenly stripped of their citizenship and sent off, basically imprisoned and in camps in the Interior. And how fear it has a kind of fatality in it that grabs people so that they cannot see outside it. I wanted some of that to come through, and so there was this, you could call it a driving force, that was driving the line. But at the same time, it was aware of the music of the line because when a river flows it eddies around the banks and at eddies around whatever it encounters in the current and so there was this waylaying, musically, of that current driving forward. And I was really intrigued with a balance of that or trying to balance that in some way.\n \n\n51:31\tKaris Shearer:\tThat’s also picked up on the, I mean, the spaciousness of the page as well, I think. Right?\n \n\n51:35\tDaphne Marlatt:\tYeah. Yeah, which is why I thought the books have those white pages. Yes. I ran into such trouble trying to submit poems from Steveston to anthologies or magazines. I mean sometimes anthologies would ask me for poems, and “please, don’t cut the line!”\n \n\n51:58\tKaris Shearer:\tAnd so, to pick up on that is the page a unit for you in that sense?\n \n\n52:04\tDaphne Marlatt:\tYeah, the page is a kind of unit. And of course, then, poems will go over the page. And so that’s interesting. Where did they go? Over the page. How do they get over the page?\n \n\n52:27\tKaris Shearer:\tYeah, and especially when you’re in when the work is anthologized, I mean if you’ve had control or input in the page as a compositional unit in the original publication that gets –.\n \n\n52:38\tDaphne Marlatt:\tCompletely undone, yeah.\n \n\n52:38\tKaris Shearer:\t–compromised unintentionally.\n \n\n52:38\tDaphne Marlatt:\tYeah, that has been a cause of great aggravation.\n \n\n52:39\tKaris Shearer:\tI want to ask, Daphne, you, and Megan. We’ll start with Daphne. Is there anything you’re reading right now that you would recommend to the audience, the listeners?\n \n\n52:49\tDaphne Marlatt:\tYeah, there’s a book. I picked up at Mosaic Books here in Kelowna. That I was delighted to see — it’s John Lent’s new book. It’s called Matten Flywheel and they are remarkable poems because they’re written in the aftermath of a near-fatal heart attack and he, I would say those poems, they radiate that kind of ‘philosophia’ that I was talking about as what poetry reaches for. There’s a lot of it in there as well as the daily. But it always has to be. The daily always has to be there too. And the other book I’m reading that I’m very interested in is David R. Loy’s Nondual Thought.It’s a very exciting investigation of how the Buddhist notion of emptiness, which is very present in Chan and Zen Buddhism, and in Mahayana Buddhism. It has been presaged – there are connections with earlier Western philosophers, including Heidegger and Kant and he’s talking about the non-binary. And I think that is such an important concept. It’s one that I was first came in contact with through Rachel Blau Duplessis’s work and the work of feminist theorists generally and of course, Loy doesn’t talk about that, which he should do, but he doesn’t. He’s philosophical. And it’s a really interesting investigation of that, of those kinds of connections, and he’s now applying that to ecology and the environment. So, I’m going to be curious to hear what he has to say about that.\n \n\n55:04\tKaris Shearer:\tThat’s great, Thank you very much. Megan, over to you, for final thoughts. What would you recommend?\n \n\n55:10\tMegan Butchart:\tI’m in class right now. So, I’m reading a lot of books for class. But I’ve also been re-reading Ana Historic. Kind of in anticipation of this visit. That’s a book that’s meant a lot to me, because of its topics with archival work and archival studies and trying to retrieve voices, often marginalized voices from the periphery that have been silenced. So yeah, just re-reading that and also thinking about the SpokenWeb project more broadly and the sort of work that it’s it’s hopefully doing, yeah.\n \n\n55:47\tDaphne Marlatt:\tGreat.\n \n\n55:48\tMegan Butchart:\tYeah.\n \n\n55:48\tDaphne Marlatt:\tWonderful.\n \n\n55:49\tKaris Shearer:\tThank you so much.\n \n\n55:49\tDaphne Marlatt:\tWell, the archival is very interesting. Of course, I’ve used archives a lot in my work. What was it Olive Senior said in her recent talk? At the Writers Union, their little magazine writing has a kind of synopsis of it, but she said something like “place is never fixed.” It’s not fixed in time. We affect place, place affects us too. And the archival is interesting because it gives us a sense of what was there before we encounter it. We tend to think what we encounter is all there is, it isn’t. And we need to have not only a sense of what was there before we encountered it, but where it’s all moving to now, especially with climate change. So, there’s, I don’t know what you’d call the opposite of the archival, but it has to leap forward from the archival, just as Indigenous knowledge, and what the elders teach moves from very very far back in what preceded us, now, here, and forward to seven generations, they affect seven generations down the line. That’s the kind of view we need in our culture.\n \n\n57:19\tKaris Shearer:\tYeah.\n \n\n57:19\tMegan Butchart:\tYeah.\n \n\n57:20\tDaphne Marlatt:\tSorry to get a little [inaudible] –.\n \n\n57:21\tKaris Shearer:\tBut, a kind of a living archive that is not just passed on, but also co-created maybe?\n \n\n57:30\tDaphne Marlatt:\tYeah. Well the understanding of it has to be very much in the present, but it looks back and it looks forward and it should be a guide for action. [Start Music: SoundBox Signals Theme Music]\n \n\n57:47\tKaris Shearer:\tThat was episode two of SoundBox Signals. You were listening to a recording by Daphne Marlatt from our archive called the SoundBox Collection. I want to thank Daphne Marlatt for talking with us and for allowing us to share the recording online, and also to the Warren Tallman estate for the same permission. You can find full-length recordings online at soundbox.ok.ubc.ca. I’m your host Karis Shearer and I will see you next time. [End Music: SoundBox Signals Theme Music]\n \n\n58:26\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. The episode we shared with you this month was produced by Karis Shearer and Megan Butchart for our sister podcast, SoundBox Signals, from UBC-Okanagan’s “Audio-Media-Poetry” Lab – a.k.a. – the AMP Lab. You can follow the work of the AMP Lab on Instagram @amplab_ubco. The SpokenWeb Podcast project manager and supervising producer is Judith Burr. This episode was transcribed by Kelly Cubbon and Nour Sallam. 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. Stay tuned to your podcast feed later this month for ShortCuts with Katherine McLeod, mini stories about how literature sounds. 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In this episode, Jason Camlot – SpokenWeb Director and Professor of English at Concordia University – takes us on a reflective listening tour through recordings of the Words and Music Show as it has evolved through the pandemic since early 2020. The Words and Music Show has been organized by Ian Ferrier for two decades to bring performances of literature, art, and music to live audiences at the Casa del Popolo in Montreal. Jason assisted Ian with organizing after Covid sent the series online, and this episode takes us into the in-person and virtual sounds of the Show. In this episode, we listen to the journey of one reading series and its co-curator over the past two years. Join us in reflecting on how the pandemic has changed the ways we share and connect to each other through literature, art, and performance.\n\n00:00:06\tSpokenWeb Podcast Theme Music:\tInstrumental Overlapped With Feminine Voice] Can you hear me? I don’t know how much projection to do here.\n \n\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. [End Music: SpokenWeb Podcast Theme Music]\n \n\n00:00:36\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 have our experiences of live artistic events changed during the pandemic? The Words and Music Show is a monthly gathering that poet and musician Ian Ferrier has organized for over twenty years. It invites artists to share spoken word poetry, literature, music, dance, and other kinds of performance. Before March 2020, Ian brought the show to audiences in the physical space of Casa del Popolo in Montreal. The pandemic sent this event online and into strange hybrid physical/digital forms, as has happened with so many events that we used to attend in our favourite venues. Jason Camlot assisted Ian in hosting the show online during this pandemic period.\n \n\n00:01:34\tHannah McGregor:\tIn addition to co-hosting the Words and Music Show Jason Camlot is the director of the SpokenWeb Network and a Professor of English at Concordia University. He uses past recordings of the show to bring us this new episode of the podcast during yet another wave of Covid contagion and shut-downs. Listening to these recordings is a call to reflect back on the many pivots this show and other live events have made over the past two years of Covid-impacted life. Jason wonders aloud whether it’s too soon (and too close to home) to yet theorize about how Covid has transformed reading events, but he suggests it might be helpful to listen back to what organizers, artists, and fans of the show have been experiencing. What does this artistic gathering sound like now? Some of the sounds may be familiar to you: Zoom glitches and tech troubles; the lonely reverberance of a small crowd clapping; coughing fits; the strange absence of ambient conversation; and the background sounds of pets and children, reminders that people are listening from usually-private home spaces.\n \n\n00:02:34\tHannah McGregor:\tArtists and creative event organizers are a tough bunch: they have and will continue to weather the storms of challenges and unknowns in order to share writing, art, and poetry with those who wish to listen. We invite you to listen to this episode with us, as we reflect on the shifting sounds of poetry readings and artistic community – and the power these events continue to have for us all. Here is Jason Camlot with Episode 5 of our third season of the SpokenWeb Podcast: “The Show Goes On: Words and Music in a Pandemic”. [Interlude: SpokenWeb Podcast Theme Music]\n \n\n00:03:14\tAudio Recording, Ian Ferrier, Words and Music Online, August 2020:\tHere we go. Four minute venue buzz. Let’s see if it works… [Indistinct Shuffling Sounds] Not a chance.\n \n\n00:03:28\tAudio Recording, Jason Camlot, Words and Music Online, August 2020:\n \n\nIt’s not working? [Laughs] Are you sharing computer sound? [Sounds of Ian and Jason Troubleshooting Continue]\n00:03:32\tJason Camlot:\tThat is the sound of me, Jason Camlot, and Ian Ferrier working out some technical effects just before the start of a Words and Music show that we hosted on Zoom in August, 2020.\n \n\n00:03:43\tAudio Recording, Jason Camlot, Words and Music Online, August 2020:\t– well, you don’t have the advanced?\n \n\n00:03:45\tAudio Recording, Ian Ferrier, Words and Music Online, August 2020:\tI’m not sure that I do at the moment…\n \n\n00:03:47\tJason Camlot:\tI’m Jason Camlot, a professor in Concordia University’s department of English and research chair in Literature and Sound Studies.\n \n\n00:03:55\tIan Ferrier:\tHi, I’m Ian Ferrier and as far as this conversation is concerned, I’m a poet and a musician and a curator of multimedia shows featuring literature, music, poetry, performance, and dance.\n \n\n00:04:11\tAudio Recording, Ian Ferrier, Words and Music Online, August 2020:\tYeah, I think we’re just gonna start this.\n00:04:17\tAudio Recording, Jason Camlot, Words and Music Online, August 2020:\tOh, here’s Jay Alexander Brown.\n \n\n00:04:20\tAudio Recording, Ian Ferrier, Words and Music Online, August 2020:\tOh, there we go. [Laugh].\n \n\n00:04:24\tAudio Recording, Jason Camlot, Words and Music Online, August 2020:\t[Laugh] Yeah. Let that go for a minute before we start. [Start Music: Instrumental with Voices]\n \n\n00:04:26\tJason Camlot:\tThis episode is about all the shows that Ian and I have hosted online during the pandemic.\n \n\n00:04:32\tAudio Recording, Ian Ferrier, Words and Music Online, August 2020:\tSo, good evening everyone and welcome to the Words and Music Show.\n \n\n00:04:36\tJason Camlot:\tSince 2016, the “Where Poets Read” online listing of literary events in Montreal (curated by my colleague and regular collaborator Dr. Katherine McLeod) has posted details of nearly 800 readings. [End Music: Instrumental with Voices] The last “live” in-person event listed on the site (until very recently) was for the Épiques Voices: Bilingual Poetry Show held at La Vitrola on March 10th, 2020. That amazingly fun and moving bilingual show was co-hosted by Katherine and Catherine Cormier-Larose. I remember the show very well, not only because of the awesome readings by Klara du Plessis, Kama La Mackerel, Alexei Perry Cox, and ten other excellent poets, but especially because it was the last public reading I would attend in person for a period for a very long time. For 593 days, to be exact. More about how that stretch of time ended a bit later in this podcast.[Sound Effect: Tape Rewinding] But first let’s go back to March 2020, a time when we were just beginning to understand the implications of how the pandemic might alter our lives. Between March 12th and March 29th, the “Where Poets Read” listing showed a series of notices for “cancelled” or “postponed” shows. You would find messages on Facebook, like this one from Ian Ferrier.\n \n\n00:05:59\tIan Ferrier:\t[Start Music: Breaking News Music] [Voice Effect: News Anchor Voice] Tonight’s show is not cancelled, only postponed. We are collecting tracks from all the performers who were scheduled to present and preparing the way to present them live in this group sometime in this upcoming week. Stay tuned and stay safe.\n \n\n00:06:12\tJason Camlot:\tAnd then we see a listing for the Words and Music Show online.\n \n\n00:06:18\tIan Ferrier:\tIt took longer than a week, by the way, it ended up being towards the middle or the end of April, before we could get people online.\n \n\n00:06:26\tJason Camlot:\tYeah, this was the first one, right? Like April 20 –April 19th?\n \n\n00:06:30\tIan Ferrier:\tGee, was that it? Wow, that was a good one too.\n \n\n00:06:33\tJason Camlot:\tOr was it…?\n \n\n00:06:35\tJason Camlot:\tThe correct date of that first online Words and Music Show of the Pandemic Period was March 29th, 2020. It featured work by Brian Bartlett, Lune tres belle, Alexei Perry-Cox, Nisha Coleman, and Choeur Sala.\n \n\n00:06:50\tJason Camlot:\tSince that date (based on data some students of mine have been collecting by scouring events postings on social media) there have been thousands of online literary events (readings, book launches, public interviews and panels) hosted from locations across Canada (and across the world) using platforms such as Zoom, Facebook Live, Crowdcast, Instagram and YouTube. If you have ever attended a poetry reading (whether you enjoyed it or not), or if you have ever listened to an episode of the SpokenWeb Podcast before, you will know that public readings and performance are an important kind of literary communication, circulation and community-building. Much of the collaborative research pursued across the SpokenWeb network is committed to preserving, listening to, and trying to understand the many meanings of historical recordings that document literary activity in Canada. In studying the thousands of recordings that constitute our collective archives of literary sound, we find ourselves asking, “What did this event mean?” [Start Music: Ambient Sounds] Sometimes we find ourselves asking even more basic questions, like, “Whose voice is that? [Pause] What’s that sound?” [Pause] But here we are, in a period of major disruption again to just about everything, including to literary events, readings, and gatherings. There seem to be new, urgent questions to ask: What does this pandemic mean for literary performance communities? What does it mean for the way we think about and experience literature, as compared to how we did before, when we could see each other in person without concern of spreading or catching a potentially fatal virus? Even as I articulate the question, “What does this mean?” another question arises simultaneously, not quite drowning out the first one, but certainly obscuring its intelligibility and potential. “What does this mean? Is this a question I should be asking right now? [End Music: Ambient Sounds]\n00:08:53\tJason Camlot:\tBack in May, 2020, my colleague, Katherine McLeod, and I made a podcast for this SpokenWeb Podcast series, an episode called “How are we Listening Now?” –\n00:09:07\tAudio Recording, Jason Camlot, Words and Music, May 2021:\t[Zoom Doorbell Chime] Hello? [Start Music: SpokenWeb Podcast Theme Music]\n00:09:09\tAudio Recording, Katherine McLeod, Words and Music, May 2021:\tHello? Can you hear me?\n00:09:11\tAudio Recording, Jason Camlot, Words and Music, May 2021:\tYep. Hi Katherine.\n00:09:13\tAudio Recording, Katherine McLeod, Words and Music, May 2021:\tHi!\n00:09:14\tAudio Recording, Jason Camlot, Words and Music, May 2021:\tWait, let me turn my video on. Where are you, in your kitchen?\n00:09:21\tAudio Recording, Katherine McLeod, Words and Music, May 2021:\tUh, no, actually I’m in my office room.\n00:09:25\tAudio Recording, Unknown Voice, Words and Music, May 2021:\tHello from my kitchen!\n00:09:26\tJason Camlot:\t– about what it felt like to live and listen under pandemic conditions [End Music: SpokenWeb Podcast Theme Music] just a few months after the COVID-19 pandemic first began March 2020.\n00:09:35\tAudio Recording, Ian Ferrier, Words and Music, March 2020 :\tGood evening and welcome to a fine winter evening of literature and some poems and some music.\n00:09:44\tJason Camlot:\tWe actually used the sounds from that first online Words and Music Show, including the performances of Nisha Coleman –\n00:09:51\tAudio Recording, Nisha Coleman, Words and Music, March 2020 :\tIt’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 maintaining this connection over the internet.\n00:10:13\tJason Camlot:\t– and Alexei Perry Cox.\n \n\n00:10:16\tAudio Recording, Alexei Perry Cox, Words and Music, March 2020 :\t[Baby Cooing] [Reciting Poetry] My lover believed there had to be a point at which reality perfect and conquerous would get through to humankind.\n00:10:23\tJason Camlot:\tIn retrospect, it marked the beginning of a long series of ongoing, and maybe repetitive questions. That episode could go on and on, with only slight modifications to the title: How are we listening, now? And now? [Multiple Repetitions of “and now”] Katherine and I did revisit the episode and expand our thinking around that initial question in a scholarly article recently published in a special “Pandemics” issue of the journal, Canadian Literature. We ended our contribution to the article with a rather upbeat take on the transformative implications of the pandemic upon our scholarly and pedagogical activities. We concluded:\n \n\n00:10:58\tJason Camlot and Katherine McLeod:\t[Simultaneous Voices] Pandemic listening may be a new, tremulous classroom within which we will come to hear, unlearn, and transform our understandings and practices of listening.\n \n\n00:11:20\tJason Camlot:\tOur article is filled with theses of different kinds about pandemic listening, that were developed through a process of listening to the kinds of online conversations about literature that we were having with students and colleagues during the first months of the pandemic. Writing the article necessarily represented an exercise in abstraction and theorization of that early experience (at least I felt it was necessary in preparing the article).\n00:11:41\tJason Camlot:\t[Start Music: Ambient Electronic Sounds] When is it a good time to reflect on a crisis within which one is still deeply entrenched? When’s a good time to reflect on our experience of the pandemic? Is it too soon to do so? Given that we are in a fifth wave now, and that the Omicron variant has initiated a series of public responses that are reminiscent of the very early period of the pandemic, it may be a good time to listen to what we have gone through, even though we’re still going through it. Perhaps it is still too early to theorize the meaning of the pandemic, but it feels helpful, somehow, to listen to it. [Pause] In this episode, my way of listening to my recent experience of the texture of time, and to the pandemic as it existed for me for an hour or so, on every third Sunday of the month, will take the form of selecting and playing recorded moments from some of the sixteen distinct online Words and Music Show events that I have co-hosted with Ian Ferrier (from my institutional Zoom account) since March 22nd, 2020. [Pause] In selecting moments from pandemic episodes of the Words and Music Show, I have been as interested in listening to the sounds around the performance, as the performances themselves. [End Music: Ambient Electronic Sounds].\n00:13:16\tJason Camlot:\tWe were interested in the sounds that surround the show, as well.\n \n\n00:13:19\tAudio Recording, Ian Ferrier, July 2020:\tSo, Jason, will you be doing the fake applause?\n00:13:25\t \nAudio Recording, Ian Ferrier, July 2020:\n\nOh, I can send you some fake applause if you want.\n00:13:28\tAudio Recording, Jason Camlot, July 2020:\tYeah, sure. Send me some fake applause.\n00:13:31\tAudio Recording, Ian Ferrier, July 2020:\tOne sec –I just –Jason, I just sent you a couple of little applause clips.\n00:13:39\tAudio Recording, Klara du Plessis, July 2020:\tHow’s everyone’s weekend been?\n00:13:46\tAudio Clip:\t[Applause]\n00:13:47\tMultiple Voices:\t[Laughter]\n00:13:47\tAudio Recording, Cole Mash, July 2020:\tIt was like Klara just walked in on a sitcom and –.\n00:13:49\tMultiple Voices:\t[Laughter]\n00:13:53\tAudio Recording, Ian Ferrier, July 2020:\tBy the way, that’s real life Casa applause.\n00:13:57\tAudio Recording, Klara du Plessis, July 2020:\tOh cool!\n00:13:57\tAudio Recording, Ian Ferrier, July 2020:\tAnd I just sent you four minutes of crowd buzz too, which is like just when nothing’s going on –\n00:14:04\tAudio Recording, Jason Camlot, July 2020:\tRight.\n00:14:05\tAudio Recording, Ian Ferrier, July 2020:\t– and people are talking with each other.\n00:14:07\tAudio Recording, Jason Camlot, July 2020:\tOh, hi Judee.\n00:14:07\tAudio Recording, Judee Burr, July 2020:\tHey everyone.\n00:14:10\tAudio Recording, Jason Camlot, July 2020:\tThanks for coming.\n00:14:13\tAudio Recording, Judee Burr, July 2020:\tYeah! So happy to be here. Jason, that’s a virtual background. I didn’t know.\n00:14:19\tAudio Recording, Jason Camlot, July 2020:\tIt is.\n00:14:19\tAudio Recording, Judee Burr, July 2020:\tIt’s quite deceptive.\n00:14:20\tAudio Recording, Jason Camlot, July 2020:\tYeah. It’s the Casa del Popolo where the Words and Music show often happens or usually happens. Yeah.\n00:14:28\tAudio Recording, Ian Ferrier, July 2020:\t[Start Audio Clip: Crowd Buzz] There we go! Crowd buzz.\n00:14:31\tAudio Recording, Jason Camlot, July 2020:\tCrowd buzz. We’re creating a virtual atmosphere.\n00:14:35\tAudio Recording, Judee Burr, July 2020:\tWow, the crowd is so, so loud. It’s hard to hear you guys!\n00:14:38\tAudio Recording, Jason Camlot, July 2020:\t[Laugh] I know. That’s why we gotta yell.\n00:14:42\tAudio Recording, Ian Ferrier, July 2020:\tIn honour of this crowd, I’m gonna go grab myself a beer before this show starts. I’ll be right back.\n00:14:48\tAudio Recording, Jason Camlot, July 2020:\tGood idea. Alright.\n00:14:49\tAudio Recording, Katherine McLeod, July 2020:\tIt’s so crowded. He might find there’s a line up.\n00:14:52\tMultiple Voices:\t[Laugher]\n00:14:55\tAudio Recording, Jason Camlot, July 2020:\n \n\nHey Kenny, I don’t know if you can hear us.\n00:14:58\tJason Camlot:\tSounds like audience buzz and different kinds of applause captured on tape [End Audio Clip: Crowd Buzz] from past live shows to give a sound of appreciation from a group of people that is practically impossible to produce when on Zoom, [Start Audio Clip: November 2021, Words and Music Crowd Buzz] because Zoom cancels out sound altogether when more than two or three people speak or make noise at the same time, at least with the standard noise cancellation settings on. [Audio Clip of Crowd Buzz continues] We missed those sounds online. [End Audio Clip: November 2021, Words and Music Crowd Buzz]\n00:15:32\tJason Camlot:\tThose first ten months of the Pandemic. Oh my god. Not only were we dealing with the anxiety and intense uncertainty of the virus, not quite knowing what it was all about, and many months away from the first vaccines. But Donald Trump still had a Twitter account (that was only taken away from him on January 9th, 2021). And on May 25th, George Floyd, was murdered. [Silence] Teaching and collaborative research activities, and community work (like being on the Board of the Quebec Writers Federation, QWF) kept me sane by giving me a sense of purpose. But the dull hum sounding feelings of utter purposelessness and helplessness were always there, in the background. Through my participation in the QWF, and with the leadership of spoken word performer and novelist Tanya Evanson, a regular Words and Music performer over the years, I became involved in collaboratively producing a show that featured Black Montreal-based performers, Roen Higgins, Fabrice Koffy, Faith Paré and Jason (Blackbird) Selman. For this QWF, Wired on Words, Throw Collective, and SpokenWeb special “Black Writers Out Loud” edition of the Words and Music Show, we invited these four amazing performers to appear on the legendary stage of the Sala Rossa.\n \n\n00:16:55\tJason Camlot:\t[Start Background Audio: Sounds of the Sala Rossa]\n00:18:01\tJason Camlot:\tOn this night for the recording of the Montreal Black Writers Out Loud event, a little more than two years later, the atmosphere at the Sala was something quite different. Venues were not allowed to have audiences at shows. We were recording the performances from the Sala stage to be webcast as a “live from the Sala Words and Music show” just a few hours later. The only people in the venue were the four performers, the audio and video technicians who were recording the sets, Ian, who was introducing the artists from the stage, and me, because it was thought I might need to Zoom cast the show from there if the recording took longer than expected. We were all masked when I said hi to the performers before they began, and then I watched in the chilly empty space leaning on the bar at the back of the room. The taps were dry. The performances were fantastic. Fabrice Koffey.\n \n\n00:18:58\tAudio Recording, Fabrice Koffey, Black Writers Out Loud, Words and Music Show, November 2020:\n \n\n[Fabrice performs the work “Je m’appelle Serge…” alternating between French and English]\n00:19:19\tJason Camlot:\tThey were all the more amazing given that each artist has to do their set a second time because the sound messed up during the first recording session, and the error was only discovered after all four sets of the entire hour-long show had been performed. In fact Roen Higgins had to come back another day to re-record her set because she couldn’t hang around to it a second time; she had to get home to a child who was sick. So her set wouldn’t make it out to Zoom and Facebook Live that night. Faith Paré\n00:19:47\tAudio Recording, Faith Paré Black Writers Out Loud, Words and Music Show, November 2020:\tHi there guys. Thank you so much for coming out tonight. I wanna say thank you to the Quebec Writers Federation, to Wired on Words and Ian Ferrier, to SpokenWeb Canada and to the Throw Collective. This is really wicked to be able to be in the space again. So as well, thank you to the Sala Rossa team for taking good care of us and Fabrice and Jason and to Rowan who’s here with us in spirit. It was awesome getting to chat with you guys in September and really wicked to be performing alongside some powerhouse poets from Montreal. So thank you for welcoming me into this community as well. I have a kind of suite of poetry for you guys, which is kind of a Black feminist elegizing of the world. And it begins with an epigraph from the poet, Claire Harris. [Begins reading poetry] While babies bleed, this is not the poem I wanted./ It is the poem I could./ Poetry is the stuff of a life lived./ What I have endured is no life./ The insult of that, the salt poured into the wound my mouth was replaced with./ I know the unsolicited tips to smooth my frown lines./ I know to try a smile from every sidewalk, leering guy./ I know the flies I’m bound to catch, how impolite. /No one likes mouth on a Black girl, unless it’s sucking cock or it’s an open grave, best when both./ And when they still see a hanged man in my dangling shin, I need to fix my face/ But my face is already fixed on the doomscroll, /The hashtags wreck, the headline bolded and stampeding through my throat./ When I’m sitting with a pen./ When I try laughter/ When I take a sip of water stolen from somewhere and still smell smoke from the flash bang grenade tossed on the Black girl asleep./ The breathless call for mother of a Black girl when they barked her off balcony/ Black girl, after Black girl submerged in river after river/ Because of their dead names can’t go,/ Can’t go anywhere in the world. /Can’t go when the one door out is my mouth./ Can’t when sound is cowering inside me with canned food, ready to hide years on end./ Can’t. [Intake of breath].\n \n\n00:22:08\tJason Camlot:\tThe Sala show was an experiment of sorts, an attempt to give the effect of a live show delivered from a beloved venue for an online audience. The quality of the performances, and the quality of the audio and video were both great. But there was also something a bit eerie about the juxtaposition of a recognizable, happening venue in which nothing was happening apart from the amazing performances on stage. The silence surrounding the sets was more than just noticeable. It was audible. It was thick. Thick with quiet and absence. [Audio Clip: Person Exhales] . Jason Blackbird Selman\n \n\n00:22:49\tAudio Recording, Jason Blackbird Selman, Writers Out Loud, Words and Music Show, November 2020:\t[Jason Blackbird Selman performing “Lend me a psychedelic dream…”] Lend me a psychedelic dream./ Lend me pieces of daylight./ Lend me a destruction sweeter than anything I can remember./ Lend me open sounds, a courtyard, Sedgwick Ave. /Bury this knowledge and sound./ A beat that repeats a rhythm that has a mind of its own./ Let the mind grow,/ spread to all five boroughs like a virus, black fire, wild stone rhythm for talk,/ Speak softly. Take over the world./ It was so easy to know you once I began listening to myself,/ the verse became free psychedelic colours and psychedelic graves./ Daisies growing wild from the barrel of a gun shoot stars./ Love is an idle threat shouted to the world who is not like I when delivering themselves to themselves,/ a glass filled with years, this venom filled with love./ I love her so much because she lets me know that I am fading./Ghetto codes and grey days./ The search for search, the sound of sound./ Find yourself in flames evenings on pause, part of something, apart and in parts/ Open the first door./ Let yourself in. [End reading]\n00:25:20\tAudio Recording, Jason Blackbird Selman, Writers Out Loud, Words and Music Show, November 2020:\tGood evening. It’s good to be here at Sala. It’s always good to be here, in amongst wonderful poets from our city. And all of you are watching right now. I just wanna say thank you to KWF to Ian, Words and Music. And, it’s good that we can do this. But I also really look forward to coming back into the world and having a full audience because we appreciate your virtual support, [Start Music: Ambient Sounds] but we also appreciate your energy and face to face. Cause that does make what we do really worth doing.\n \n\n00:26:06\tJason Camlot:\tI feel honoured to have been one of a handful of people who was in the room to see those terrific live performances before an absent audience. I hooted and yeahed, clapped and cheered loudly through my mask from the back of the room. The reverberation of my solitary response was a bit sad. I could have been an installation in the show currently running at the Montreal Museum of Modern Art, entitled, “How long does it take for one voice to reach another?” For the next month’s show, Ian and I went back to sitting in front of our computers and hosted an event of performers and audience members who were sitting in front of theirs. [End Music: Ambient Sounds] As we realized that online shows meant you could invite just about anyone in the world to perform (on Zoom), I suggested to Ian that we invite the UK-based poet Angela Szczepaniak to join the December 13th, 2020 show. I had just finished editing Angela’s third poetry collection for DC books, and I knew it would be great to hear her read from it.\n \n\n00:27:09\tAudio Recording, Ian Ferrier, Words and Music, December 2020:\tShe lectures in creative writing at the University of Surrey, and she has a new book coming out soon called The Nerves Center. So please welcome Angela Szczepaniak.\n00:27:18\tAudio Recording, Angela Szczepaniak, Words and Music, December 2020:\tThank you so much, Ian. And thank you for having me. It’s really lovely to be here from London very late at night right now, for me. Really nice to meet you all too. So, I’ll be reading from my forthcoming book, The Nerves Center, which is a long narrative poem about a performer in the midst of stage fright while on stage and attempting to give a performance. And each act in the sequence of the long poem she, the performer is trying to speak and what she actually says, which takes a form of sound poems. The sounds poems are comprised, I guess I should say, of recordings of panic attacks, that I played into transcription software, which then assigned kind of letters and phrases and words-ish, to it. It wasn’t very good at transcribing, which was very helpful when I was reshaping them into sound poems for the page. What didn’t really occur to me until now – this is my first reading of the work or from this book –[Cough] excuse me – is that I am essentially going to be reenacting lots of panic attacks that I once had [Laugh] long ago, which is a kind of exciting night, I guess, for everyone. [Cough] Excuse me.\n \n\n00:28:40\tJason Camlot:\tIt seemed especially appropriate for the Zoom stage, which might add its own sonic glitches through wavering connectivity. I was excited to hear what the planned silences in the poems would sound like on Zoom. And I was just excited to see Angela, since it had been a while since we’d zoomed, because she had contracted the COVID virus some months before and had been knocked out of commission for quite a while, now.\n \n\n00:29:03\tAudio Recording, Angela Szczepaniak, Words and Music, December 2020:\tI suppose also I should say that panic attack-wise, I very helpfully caught a virus a while ago, which results in me coughing constantly. So that’s what you’re going to hear for a lot of those kind of breathy sound poems. It’s just going to be replaced by coughing today. [Coughs] Excuse me. There are ten acts all together and each one maps onto a specific self-help strategy for managing anxiety and performance anxiety. [Coughs] Excuse me. I will keep this short also given the cough. So The Nerves Center, a novel in performance anxiety. The nerves center in 10 acts, the nerves center in 131 stanzas 2,417 fantic utterances and tonight, especially for you all 9, 381 coughs – and I’m guessing on that. [Angela begins performing] Act one. Act natural. Be yourself. /Speaker stands alone at microphone pin neat, polite,/ Serenity slipping through finger twitchers./Speaker ready self opens mouth. Silence. / Mouth opens this time with resolve./ Silence snaps jaws shut. Speaker opens steady mouth. Finally./ [Exhaling] [Coughing] Regroup reapproach. [Exhaling] [Coughing] Speaker back steps, wheezes, a casual graveyard whistle./ Shuffles a soft shoe, sidles up microphone adjacent to take it by surprise. [Exhaling] [Coughing]\n \n\n00:31:19\tJason Camlot:\tAngela continued performing, despite the discomfort, from several other acts in The Nerves Centre, as we all listened intently to a combination of breathing, coughing, and rich descriptions that frame the staged readings within a vaudevillian kind of world. Angela’s book is very funny, and remarkable for its acceptance without judgement of so many failures in speech, for the sense of hope that each act brings, and for the deep compassion the book shows for anyone who may be struggling to find their voice, for anyone trying to speak and be heard. And here we were, sitting in our own isolated sets, listening to a performance of anxiety and disarticulation that was both deliberate and real, highly performative and absolutely involuntary, at the same time.\n00:32:11\tAudio Recording, Angela Szczepaniak, Words and Music, December 2020:\tI am going to stop there. Thank you everyone for listening. And, were it not for many, many coughing fits I would continue, but I think you get the idea [Laughs] of what this is like. Thank you.\n \n\n00:32:26\tJason Camlot:\tIn many ways, it was the most pandemicky performance imaginable. Painful, beautiful, absurd. It made perfect sense.\n \n\n00:32:34\tAudio Recording, Ian Ferrier, Words and Music, December 2020:\tAnd thank you so much for coming. I should tell everybody, Angela’s been telling us a little bit about living with COVID in the UK, which sounds pretty intense with Starbucks open and everything else open and lots of people catching it. And it’s one in the morning for you. So I thank you very much for joining us tonight.\n00:32:50\tAudio Recording, Angela Szczepaniak, Words and Music, December 2020:\tThank you. Thank you so much, everyone for listening to that.\n00:32:54\tAudio Recording, Ian Ferrier, Words and Music, December 2020:\tAnd if you wanna catch some more of that, I think The Nerves Center is coming out this winter at some point.\n00:32:58\tAudio Recording, Angela Szczepaniak, Words and Music, December 2020:\n \n\nYeah. Thank you.\n00:33:01\tJason Camlot:\t[Audio Clip: Fastforwarding Tape Sound] Alright, let’s speed ahead a bit. Lots of shows happened between December 2020 and the special Words and Music Show – SpokenWeb Symposium edition held in May 2021. February 21st, 2021 for Black History Month, we reprised a screening of the Sala Rossa Black Writers Out Loud show, now with Roen Higgins’s performance restored so that all four sets could be viewed together.\n \n\n00:33:25\tAudio Recording, Roen Higgins, Black Writers Out Loud, Words and Music, November 2020:\t[Roen Higgins performing] Ware shell shocked, numb, sick and tired./These are the symptoms of PTSD whether we march, kneel, or speak./ Our voices are unheard in the streets, /every living thing on this earth retreats or reacts or stands still until the threat passes./ So please stop asking our people who are paralyzed to walk with you./ Stop judging others for not speaking up when their vocal chords are shot from screaming,/ Crying for babies, they never birthed yet feel the contractions of these now household names./ I can’t even say all their names as there are too many to remember, but their faces are etched in my mind/ with their mothers cry looped over this never ending soundtrack./ We are forever in labour with pain that our children will never belong or feel accepted,/ that they are guilty and being groomed from preschool to prison./ Before they leave their house they’re reminded by their mamas/ Stand tall, smile, look straight so you won’t come off hostile./ Keep your hands where it can be seen. Move slowly. Never, never run./ Don’t hang out on the streets and keep your hoodie off./ Comply. Answer their questions and cordially and politely./ Whatever you do, just stay calm and keep the camera rolling. Thank you. [End performance]\n \n\n00:35:02\tAudio Recording, Roen Higgins, Black Writers Out Loud, Words and Music, November 2020:\tThank you everyone. Thank you for this opportunity. It’s an amazing time to have a show in these times to be able to come together even virtually while they say we socially distance, we do not distance socially.\n \n\n00:35:13\tAudio Recording, Jason Camlot, Black Writers Out Loud, Words and Music, November 2020:\tThank you. Ronan\n00:35:15\tJason Camlot:\t[Start Music: Upbeat Accordion] Sunday March 21st the Words & Music Show is your online welcome to Spring. Tawhida Tanya Evanson is here with a new book. And catch poems, music, art and dance with: Emilie Zoey Baker (Australia), Raymond Jackson (New Orleans) , Marie-France Jacques (Montréal), Visual Art by Francis Caprani . Verse by Kelsey Nichole Brooks . Music by Ramela Arax Koumrouya.\n \n\n00:35:46\tVarious Speakers:\t[Collage of audio of March 2021, Words and Music Show]\n \n\n00:36:59\tAudio Recording, Ian Ferrier, Words and Music, March 2021:\tOkay. Thanks folks. Goodnight for now.\n00:37:01\tVarious Speakers:\tThank you very much Ian! Nice meeting you all. Yeah. Nice meeting you all. Likewise. See you next time. Cheers everyone. Thank you.\n00:37:06\tAudio Recording, Jason Camlot, Words and Music, March 2021:\n \n\nBye everyone, thank you. We’re going to go off air now. [End Music: Upbeat Accordion]\n00:37:07\tJason Camlot:\t[Start Music: Various Vocals and Musical Sounds] April 18th 2021. An absorbing evening featuring: verse by Sarah Wolfson , music by Geronimo Inutiq , art by Louise Belcourt, David Bateman as Dr. Sad , a new video by Marie-Josée Tremblay , words and music by Ian Ferrier, with a wealth of words, music, video and art, an online show to help us forget 8PM lockup (or is that lockdown?)\n00:37:41\tVarious Voices:\t[Collage of audio of audio from 18 April 2021 show] Should I start now? [Laugh] Yes, you are live! [Laugher] Okay. “They love to laugh together and drink and shop, especially when they were unhappy. She was much less happy than he was.” “In those days. We had a tool for taking the cords off beats. We grew everything. Then even our little toes. If our noses went missing, we replaced them with the most obliging webs.” “I love my grandfather. I hated my parents. He painted all the time. I hung around him.” [Guitar] “We’re just too many and we’re born too fast. Sarah and Will and James and Tina and Ian and John and Michael and Eric and Ty and Sarah, Beth, and Mary.” Bye. Take good care. Bye. Goodnight everyone.\n \n\n00:38:46\tJason Camlot:\tSo now we’re entering May 2021, and the entire Concordia SpokenWeb Team is deep into planning and delivering the annual SpokenWeb Symposium, which, for the second year in a row, was supposed to bring everyone to Montreal to share work, but which, again, had to take place online. The Symposium, with the theme “Listening, Sound, Agency” was a great success, with over 30 panels (so nearly 100 papers presented) by scholars and students from all over the world who were interested in exploring intersections between literary studies and sound studies. The Symposium was great, and then the Summer Sound Institute, filled with all kinds of workshops and research showcases, was also great. But, with all of that done, I was extremely excited to host a special edition of the Words and Music Show, where anyone from the Symposium, or from our research network, could share a poem, a story, a song, or a joke. We sent out a call trying to entice people to participate. And once we had a roster, I asked Ian to prepare one of his radio promo ads for the show.\n \n\n00:39:51\tIan Ferrier:\tOn Sunday May 23rd Wired on Words partners with SpokenWeb to present a special edition of the Words and Music show.\n \n\n00:39:56\tJason Camlot:\tIf this had been a live show, it would have taken place at the Casa Del Popolo, longtime home of the Words and Music Show. Instead, we were online again. Still, it was as close as we would come, that summer, to hanging out, joking around, being silly and creative, together.\n \n\n00:40:12\tAudio Recording, Jason Camlot, Words and Music, May 2021:\tYeah. We have a bunch of different performances from members of the SpokenWeb network. And this is really – it doesn’t replace the gathering and party that we would’ve had if we’d been able to all gather together in Montreal, but it’s meant to have the fun feel of that kind of gathering.\n \n\n00:40:32\tJason Camlot:\tPoet and Simon Fraser University PhD student Cole Mash, hosted it in a way that made it all feel, at times, like we really were at the Casa together.\n \n\n00:40:41\tAudio Recording, Cole Mash, Words and Music, May 2021:\tI’m just turning my video off so I have a better connection and then kinda having a drink. But yeah! Welcome to the Words and Music show SpokenWeb edition. I personally have actually never seen this show but I’m really honoured and privileged to be able to host it and be a part of it. I hear it’s a pretty good show. We’ve got – we have about 10 or so lucky people who have signed up for tonight’s event. So can everyone please turn their cameras off? [Pause] Okay, great. Everyone turn their mics on. [Pause] Everyone say “Words and Music” all at the same time and see how that goes. [Various voices overlapping: “Words and Music”] All right. All right. That was pretty good actually. I got to hear quite a few people. That was nice. OK. Everyone turn their cameras back on, but make a weird face when you turn your camera back on. [Pause] [Laughter] All right. Very nice. Very nice. So now that I know you’re all listening…\n \n\n00:41:49\tJason Camlot:\t[Start Audio Clip: Jason Camlot Archival Performance] My own contribution to the show is to play a clip from the archive of me performing a song at a Words and Music show that took place nearly 20 years earlier.\n \n\n00:42:00\tAudio Recording, Jason Camlot, Words and Music, May 2021:\tSo thanks so much Cole. And it’s great to be back on the pin screen. [End Audio Clip: Jason Camlot Archival Performance] And, it seemed appropriate really to –rather than to do something new since we’ve been spending so much time with Ian’s archive of shows– to dig into that and to play something that – play a performance that I did back in 2003. And I was thinking about this– and this is what happens when you listen back into an archive, especially if you find yourself in it. Even if you don’t, if you were at a show or whatever– but I’m thinking 2003, that means my son was probably around the same age as Cole’s son is now. I think of Deana Fong and I think of some of my colleagues and friends now who are starting families and that’s sort of where I was at in 2003, actually, my son was probably a year and a half and my daughter was just born probably about a month before this show. And I chose to play a song that I’ve just been singing in the backyard with my daughter no less than a couple weeks ago. So she’s 16 now and taught herself guitar during COVID and has been writing songs herself. And so we’re sharing our own compositions with each other. And so this is one that I taught her and that she’s sang along with. So it’s from the Words and Music show, April 27th, 2003.\n \n\n00:43:13\tJason Camlot:\tIt was fun to introduce this clip, set it up, and listen to it so many years later with new friends and students.\n \n\n00:43:19\tAudio Recording, Jason Camlot, 2003\tAnd we’re just gonna play one more song. I want to thank Ian for lending me his guitar. This song is called Derbyland, and Kenny’s gonna be playing arango, which is made of an Armadillo.\n00:43:45\tAudio Recording, Kenny Smilovich, 2003:\tA dead Armadillo. [Laugh].\n00:43:47\tAudio Recording, Jason Camlot, 2003:\tYeah. If you hear some screaming, that’s the Armadillo. [Start Music: Guitar]\n \n\n00:44:07\tJason Camlot:\t[Music Continues: Guitar] It was especially fun and moving to have my old friend and music collaborator tune into the show and to hear his response to a recording that he never knew existed. [End Music: Guitar].\n00:44:17\tAudio Recording, Kenny Smilovich, 2003:\tYou know, I’m trying to think back to that time and everything’s a blur, but –\n00:44:22\tJason Camlot:\tMusician, Kenny Smilovich\n00:44:24\tAudio Recording, Kenny Smilovich, Words and Music, May 2021:\t– I don’t remember, like how did that end up recorded? Was that sort of the plan or did it just happen that someone recorded it?\n00:44:34\tAudio Recording, Jason Camlot, Words and Music, May 2021:\tSo Ian recorded pretty much every Words and Music Show almost since its inception.\n00:44:40\tAudio Recording, Kenny Smilovich, Words and Music, May 2021:\n \n\nWow. That’s amazing.\n00:44:41\tJason Camlot:\tThis was the longest online Words and Music Show of the pandemic period, by far.\n00:44:46\tVarious Voices:\t[Audio Collage of several performances from the May 2021 show.] [Start Music: Guitar] “When the artist takes matter and builds fence around it in the name of the line, or takes matter into their own hands and abstracts, what results is a manifestation of power in the sense of imposition and not in the sense of strength.” “This poem’s called ‘Asking the Spoon to Runaway Takes Courage: A spoons work is never done. They sit folded in the time waiting as we all do to be picked up.” I should have predicted the death of this city. I couldn’t predict it. Only there had been no such creepy blocks.” Pools and pavement in black ice, random stones steam, faintly. Lime water and liquorish light. Think how the black dust Beth made men dance.” “I have no words, officer lay my tongue. You stole each one in a scamper for escape. When he begged me when your men with the gavelbang voices hounded me. Yes.” “Using my full song to the wise intoxicating yarl and thrall alike. I know the rooms, the words of white. I know the words of flaming light. The words that still the sea at midnight.” [End Music: Guitar] [Start Music: Singing] “I see my from the west down to the east. Any day now. Any day…. [Fade Out Singing] [Start Music: Guitar and Singing] “All of my friends in a plastic, all around jumping train, track, silver effects, bang all back, sleep on a bench in a park on your birthday….” [Fade Out Singing]\n \n\n00:47:11\tJason Camlot:\tAnd yet even after two hours, we were happy to linger, chat, and debrief.\n00:47:17\tAudio Recording, Jason Camlot, Words and Music, May 2021:\tWell, I guess at this point we’ve been together for two hours. It’s gone really quickly and it’s been so enjoyable. I just want to thank, first of all, Cole and Ian for hosting tonight. And Ian, like I said earlier also for just lending us The Words and Music stage for this evening and really to everyone for taking the chance to share something tonight, it’s –I think as Mike put it – it’s a safe environment that we’re trying to create both in terms of sharing ideas, concepts, methods, in our research and our collaborative practice, but also our creativity. And this is just an extension of that. And, since we haven’t been able to join in person this year, it just felt like it would be great to have a space where we could just share some stuff and other parts of ourselves. And I think that really happened tonight. And I’m just so happy that it did.\n \n\n00:48:11\tJason Camlot:\tTo help make the signoff period feel less harsh and abrupt, we engaged in an exercise of imagining each other offline, after the show as a way of saying goodbye, but still keeping each other in mind.\n \n\n00:48:23\tAudio Recording, Jason Camlot, Words and Music, May 2021:\tI will say finally, when Katherine and I had a workshop recently, we were sort of trying to address the issue of like, well, where do people go after they disappear from Zoom? You could spend time together and then suddenly you’re in a shared space and then you’re no longer in the shared space. So maybe as a way to lessen the blow of departure I’m gonna suggest that we do the same thing again and ask you, what’s the next thing you’re gonna hear, or the next thing you’re gonna do after leaving us tonight? Katherine, you wanna share what you’re gonna hear next?\n00:48:58\tAudio Recording, Katherine McLeod, Words and Music, May 2021:\tYeah, sure. I’m gonna be picking up my little cat, who’s been hanging out and we’re gonna have a little chat. And then, I’m gonna hear the creaking of the door. And I also just feel like putting on some music and continuing to just move and stretch. I feel like it really made me want –I said this after the last time,I was gonna go dance –but I feel like just like moving and stretching, just some music. That’s what I’m gonna do next. Yeah.\n00:49:27\tAudio Recording, Jason Camlot, Words and Music, May 2021:\tI’m gonna go see if my daughter wants to play guitar outside. [Laughs] How about you, Kenny? What’s the next sound you’re gonna hear?\n00:49:36\tAudio Recording, Kenny Smilovich, Words and Music, May 2021:\tI’ll probably have a few bites of dinner and then head downstairs and see if I can remember the chords to “Derbyland” by Tarango.\n00:49:43\tAudio Recording, Jason Camlot, Words and Music, May 2021:\t[Laughs]. Awesome. That’d be great. Klara?\n00:49:48\tAudio Recording, Klara du Plessis, Words and Music, May 2021:\tI’m definitely gonna get some ice cream, which means I’ll be opening the fridge and there will be a suction sound from the fridge. [Laughs].\n00:49:55\tAudio Recording, Jason Camlot, Words and Music, May 2021:\t[Laughs] Nick, what’s the next sound you’re gonna hear after you leave us?\n00:50:01\tAudio Recording, Nick Beauchesne,\nWords and Music, May 2021:\n\nWell my cat’s meowing and I have to keep grinding at my dissertation. So –\n00:50:05\tAudio Recording, Jason Camlot, Words and Music, May 2021:\t[Laughs] Some grinding, just grinding. [Laughs]\n00:50:08\tAudio Recording, Nick Beauchesne,\nWords and Music, May 2021:\n\n \n\n– not for too long. I’m gonna go do something fun after, but that’s when next,\n00:50:14\tAudio Recording, Jason Camlot, Words and Music, May 2021:\tHow about you Faith?\n00:50:15\tAudio Recording, Faith Paré, Words and Music, May 2021:\tProbably the sound of my roommate and I chatting. I’m probably gonna watch a movie tonight, so maybe some horror movie screams and we have some Indian food on the way. So like that kind of straw sound, you know, sucking up like the last bits of like mango lassi I’m very excited for that particular thing. Yeah.\n00:50:35\tAudio Recording, Jason Camlot, Words and Music, May 2021:\tThat’s great. Great array of sounds. Ali, how about you? What’s the next sound you’re gonna hear?\n00:50:41\tAudio Recording, Ali Barillaro, Words and Music, May 2021:\tSo probably similar to other people. I don’t know if you can see her, but my cat over there will probably wake up. So I’ll probably hear her – she’s right there. And probably my own excitement over going to eat some food. So sounds of excitement.\n00:50:57\tAudio Recording, Jason Camlot, Words and Music, May 2021:\tFelicity?\n00:50:58\tAudio Recording, Felicity Tayler, Words and Music, May 2021:\tI’m gonna open the door to this room and walk down my very creepy hallway. And I missed somebody’s bedtime. So either I will hear silent breathing or I will hear a little voice that says “mama?”.\n00:51:17\tAudio Recording, Jason Camlot, Words and Music, May 2021:\tJudee, how about you?\n00:51:19\tAudio Recording, Judee Burr, Words and Music, May 2021:\tYeah. Without you all, it’ll just be undiluted fan noises in this apartment with some like thum of traffic. Just steady cars. And I’ll probably walk outside. So I’ll get some door creak and maybe even a cricket.\n00:51:36\tAudio Recording, Jason Camlot, Words and Music, May 2021:\tAnd Cole?\n00:51:37\tAudio Recording, Cole Mash, Words and Music, May 2021:\tWell, there’s three unbathed children awaiting me, so there’s gonna be screaming most likely. And then, after that, I hope silence.\n00:51:48\tAudio Recording, Jason Camlot, Words and Music, May 2021:\tSo it makes it a lot easier – not easy – but a lot easier to say goodbye to you all now. Thanks for a wonderful evening, everyone. And, we’ll see you soon at one of the events this week I hope. Take care, everyone.\n00:51:59\tAudio Recording, Kenny Smilovich, Words and Music, May 2021:\tThanks, Jason!\n00:52:01\tJason Camlot:\tThat particular show did feel as close to a live encounter over Zoom as I’ve had. The livest online event I’ve ever attended. Since we’re just about out of time, let me take you to the last Zoom conversation of what we thought, we hoped, [Start Music: Jay Alexander Brown singing “Beyond beyond”] might be the last online Words and Music Show of the pandemic period, September 19th, 2021. [End Music: Jay Alexander Brown singing “Beyond beyond”]. We thought that might be it, that we would never see each other again, in the flat, tiled, and often inaudible world of Zoom. We spoke to each other as if we were preparing to teleport into another dimension.\n00:52:47\tAudio Recording, Ian Ferrier, Words and Music, September 2021:\tI’m so excited to imagine that we can start, collaborating, and joining together and seeing things in real life.\n00:52:57\tAudio Recording, Katherine McLeod, Words and Music, September 2021:\tIt also makes one realize just what sort of community there has been created through the online shows. So I felt that through listening to John’s piece, that it actually – it would be different to hear that on the stage. And it’s very intimate that we are able to gather here to listen to it here tonight.\n00:53:16\tAudio Recording, Jay Alexander Brown, Words and Music, September 2021:\tAnd it feels like it’s maintained a sense of community and a sense of continuity throughout the pandemic to have these. It’s – in my opinion, it’s not the same as the vibe you have in a room full of people. But the fact that this show didn’t just disappear off the face of the earth and has kept us all tethered to the phenomenon called Montreal – cuz you know, barely leaving the house, especially last year when I was more paranoid about COVID – I could have been anywhere. Who even knows if you’re in Montreal.\n00:53:52\tAudio Recording, John Sweet, Words and Music, September 2021:\tI’m just – I’m concerned though – if we go back to doing like real live performances, what are you gonna do Jason? I’m concerned. [Laughs]\n00:54:04\tAudio Recording, Jason Camlot, Words and Music, September 2021:\tI only exist here in this square. I mean – I will still be here if ever you return 20, 30 years from now. You know, if you decide to come back, here I will be.\n00:54:15\tAudio Recording, John Sweet, Words and Music, September 2021:\tAnd you’ll look exactly the same.\n00:54:17\tAudio Recording, Jason Camlot, Words and Music, September 2021:\t[Laughs] Exactly. Yeah.\n00:54:18\tAudio Recording, Unknown Speaker, Words and Music, September 2021::\tJason isn’t real, John.\n00:54:21\tVarious Voices:\t[Laughter]\n00:54:24\tAudio Recording, Jay Alexander Brown, Words and Music, September 2021:\tJason’s gonna show up at Cafe Resonance as a cardboard cut out.\n00:54:29\tAudio Recording, Jason Camlot, Words and Music, September 2021:\n \n\n[Laughs] That’s right. Katherine’s gonna be carrying me on a stick.\n00:54:31\tAudio Recording, Various Voices, Words and Music, October 2021:\tAudience chatter and background noise\n00:54:44\tJason Camlot:\tAfter having co-hosted the Words and Music show online for nearly two years, Ian invited me to perform at the first live show since March 2020 – a show that we thought would be a return to live events on a regular basis.\n \n\n00:54:56\tAudio Recording, Various Voices, Words and Music, October 2021:\tAudience chatter and background noise.\n00:55:10\tAudio Recording, Ian Ferrier, Words and Music, October 2021:\tGood evening, everyone and welcome to our first live show in 18 months. Holy crap. [Audience Applause]. I mean, I look back at that whole time and it feels like a giant hallucination and I wonder where I was I and what was going on. And it’s so nice to see people in a room and to be able to present things for them and to actually jam with other musicians from time to time. All of this stuff is so great. So thank you so much for coming tonight. It’s really nice to have everybody here.\n \n\n00:55:42\tJason Camlot:\tI was quite anxious about participating in this show, not so much about giving a reading as about being in a room with lots of people. Anxious, but very excited as well. I had to arrive a bit late and so I sat in the back of the room for most of the first set. Then at intermission, I moved up to join some friends who were seated in the audience. [Start Music] It felt great to sit at a table and chat with people. I had a new book of poems that was about to come out. So I printed up some flyers that the press had given me and handed them out to people during intermission. Then I went up to the mic in front of people and read.\n \n\n00:56:17\tAudio Recording, Ian Ferrier, Words and Music, October 2021:\t[Audience Chatter and Instrument Tuning Background Noise Throughout] Welcome to our fabulous second set. For this set we’re very, very lucky. When we started this project, the project had going online at the beginning of COVID. I was very lucky to have help from Jason Camlot who’s a fine poet and also one of the core people in a project called SpokenWeb, which is taking audio literature and making a databases up so that people can study it in 30 years and say, wow, those people were amazing, whatever they were. And he’s got a new book, which is just coming out called Vlarf. The reason you have those sheets on your table is – the books not quite out yet, but if you have one of these sheets, you get a big discount in the book, so you can get it later. Please welcome Jason Camlot. [Audience Applause].\n \n\n00:57:16\tAudio Recording, Jason Camlot, Words and Music, October 2021:\tThanks so much, Ian, thank you everyone. It’s so exciting to be with other people.\n00:57:22\tAudience Member:\tYes! [Clapping]\n00:57:25\tAudio Recording, Jason Camlot, Words and Music, October 2021:\tLet’s just give ourselves a hand for having made it through the last two years, and as Ian said, we’ve been doing the Words and Music Show on Zoom. I had a background of the Casa, always on my screen as I was hosting it from my basement. And it’s just a great feeling to be listening with people and to have the opportunity to read tonight. [Reading poetry] They keep well in winter and sometimes like jagged mounds, they appear frozen in the lake ice. /And then they suffocate in shallow pits, are digested with wood and transform into charcoal and muck./ My botanical book speaks of exogenous stems plunged into lead./ I don’t in the least want to know what that means. /I prefer to understand them as the grounds trembling scales, the soil thus sung in coral shiver./ [Applause]\n00:58:47\tJason Camlot:\t[Audio of Words and Music Show Audience Plays Underneath] In listening back to the audio of those two most recent live Words and Music Shows, the last shows of 2021. It is amazing to hear just how noisy they are with movement, chatter, tumult.\n00:59:18\tAudio Recording, Words and Music, October 2021:\n \n\n[Audience Chatter and Musicians Tuning Instruments]\n00:59:23\tJason Camlot:\t[Audio or Words and Music Show Audience Plays Underneath] This was the buzz we had been trying to emulate in awkward attempts that were comically artificial due to latency, inappropriate amplitude, and bad timing. Awkward too, because that “venue buzz” as Ian called it, isn’t just background noise. Not really. It is the sound of affect in action. [Audience Clip Swells] The sound of a kind of responsive choreography that captures what it feels like. Maybe even what it means to be together at an event where people get up on stage and share something they made just for you. [End of Audience Audio] When I interviewed Ian for this podcast during the final days of 2021, it was clear that we had no idea where the next Words and Music Show would happen – in person, online, we didn’t know.\n01:00:17\tIan Ferrier, 2021 interview\tHopefully this latest iteration of COVID is as not as dangerous as the ones before, but it sure is virulent from the looks of it. So I feel kind of lost about that. I’ve just – I just think that – I mean the first lockdown, I don’t know how it was for you. I found I was in a bit of shock just cuz I didn’t realize how much of my life had been based on going from thinking of something to making something, to putting that thing out and seeing how it lived in the world to going back and making something else, you know? That was the core of my creative practice and all of a sudden that was gone and I –and until we did those live shows, I didn’t realize how much I’d missed it. And it was like, oh yeah, we’re back on stage. And this feels so much better and it’s so much more present. It’s so much more focused. So, I’m gonna– I’m hoping that if we get stuck again, and I very much hope we don’t, but it looks like we probably will – that we can, that I can devise something more interesting to do with that time. Something that I enjoy doing as opposed to the feeling of being stuck indoors.\n01:01:27\tJason Camlot:\tWe talked about how the past two years –and now this recent return to something like a lockdown in Quebec with bars, pubs and restaurants closed to in-person patrons – has taken its toll on the venues that have supported the Words and Music show over the years. La Vitrola (the venue where the Epique Voices show of March 10th, 2020 had taken place) was long gone. The Casa del Popolo had closed its showroom in March, 2020 and tried to make a go it as a shop for a while.\n01:01:56\tIan Ferrier, 2021 interview\tWell, it’s still kind of unfolding. At the moment, it sounds like the two partners in Casa and Sala who were partners themselves or breaking up and they’re running through all the troubles that involves at the same time as these venues that they ran together have basically closed down. Sala is still open, but I haven’t seen anything at Casa del Popolo since COVID happened. I hear the occasional rumour that there will be something in April, but I’m not, I’m not really sure. James Goddart is working there in the office now, so I occasionally ask him, but he doesn’t know either what’s gonna happen. And that would be tough because, for a lot of us in this neighbourhood, that was a place where we could always drop in and catch something or say hello to a friend or meet for coffee or for food or whatever. We did our Mile End Poets Festival – we did at least one or two nights there for almost 10 years too. So I really miss the place.\n01:02:55\tJason Camlot:\tAnd now in the first days of 2022, we have learned that the Ressonance Café, the venue that Ian turned to for the most recent live shows, is shutting down too. The Sala has managed to stay afloat in part through the kind of live streaming and recording sessions that we did for the Black Writers Out Loud show. Just a couple of days ago, CBC reporter, Fenn Mayes published a profile piece on venue covering the long history of the place and interviewing the staff and owners about what it means to them and how they’ve managed to keep going. It makes me a little anxious to read a story like this, which might just as easily be an obituary as a feel good profile piece under the current ongoing circumstances. But the article ends on a positive of note of sorts. The final line being quote, if these walls could talk, they’d sing close quote. I mean, at least didn’t report that the Sala was closing. Even if we could do the next show in person, where would that be? Ian doesn’t know, but not knowing what’s coming next, as far as pandemic circumstances are concerned, does not create even the slightest shiver of uncertainty in Ian about the Words and Music Show.\n01:04:06\tIan Ferrier, 2021 interview\tI think, well, let’s go around the world and find [Unknown Name] from France or something, or track down some people we really like to hear and would normally not be able to bring, I think that’s one quality of it. And another quality is on the shows online. I think it would be worthwhile getting people talking, among, to each other, at the beginning of the show or at the end or something like that, or intermission just to keep part of that spirit alive. Cuz I just notice people actually like to be with each other, and they like to talk and flirt and get huffy or nod or go through all the kinds of experiences they can go through with both with people they know and the joy of total strangers, not knowing who that person is and what they’re gonna bring. [Start Music: Guitar Instrumental, Ian Ferrier, “Rail Music”]\n01:05:00\tJason Camlot:\tThere is a stubbornness of imagination. One might say a resilience of imagination to use a popular COVID period word that characterizes our continued willingness and will to keep creating, gathering, and sharing sounds and stories. It’s not so much that the Words and Music Shows must go on. It’s just a given. The show goes on.\n01:05:32\tAudio Recording, Ian Ferrier, “Rail Music”:\t[Singing] You wake up, find yourself on a train, no memory of how you got on. No knowledge of where you’re going…[Music Instrumental Fades].\n01:06:46\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 producer this month is SpokenWeb Director Jason Camlot of Concordia University. Our podcast project manager and supervising producer is Judith Burr. Our episodes are transcribed by Kelly Cubbon. A special thanks to Ian Ferrier, and all of the hosts and organizers, artists, performers, and audience members who have engaged in online literary events over the past two years, when we have been unable to gather in person. To find out more about Spokenweb visit: spokenweb.ca and subscribe to The Spokenweb Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you may listen. And if you love us, let us know! Rate us and leave a comment on Apple Podcasts or say hi on our social media @SpokenWebCanada. Stay tuned to your podcast feed later this month for ShortCuts with Katherine McLeod, mini stories about how literature sounds. [End Music: SpokenWeb Podcast Theme Music]\n\n"],"score":3.062659},{"id":"9620","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 S3E6, Listening, Sound, Agency: A Retrospective Listening to the 2021 SpokenWeb Symposium, 7 March 2022, Aubin and Ricci"],"item_title_source":["SpokenWeb Podcast web page."],"item_title_note":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/listening-sound-agency-a-retrospective-listening-to-the-2021-spokenweb-symposium/"],"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 3"],"item_series_wikidata_url":["https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q117038029"],"item_series_uri":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/spokenweb-podcast/"],"item_identifiers":["[]"],"rights":["Creative Commons Attribution (BY)"],"rights_license":["Creative Commons Attribution (BY)"],"access":["Streaming and download"],"creator_names":["Mathieu Aubin","Stéphanie Ricci","Stéphanie Ricci"],"creator_names_search":["Mathieu Aubin","Stéphanie Ricci","Stéphanie Ricci"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"name\":\"Mathieu Aubin\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Producer\"]},{\"url\":\"\",\"name\":\"Stéphanie Ricci\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[]},{\"url\":\"\",\"name\":\"Stéphanie Ricci\",\"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/907a6097-2e63-4d18-91c3-879fad904e7e/audio/2c7d91e4-3dcd-4c88-bfef-e21e495d7ffd/default_tc.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"swp-s3e6-listeningsoundagency.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"44.1 kHz\",\"duration\":\"00:51:44\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"49,736,351 bytes\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"MP3 audio\",\"title\":\"swp-s3e6-listeningsoundagency\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/listening-sound-agency-a-retrospective-listening-to-the-2021-spokenweb-symposium/\"}]"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"2022-03-07\",\"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, 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":["This is a mixed format episode presenting SpokenWeb members Mathieu Aubin and Stéphanie Ricci’s critical commentary after taking part in the organization of and attending the Listening, Sound, Agency Symposium. Bridging techniques from journalism and oral history, this episode includes sounds from the conference, interviews, and critically reflective discussions between Mathieu and Stéphanie. This episode was produced by Mathieu Aubin and Stéphanie Ricci, with audio engineering by Scott Girouard.\n\nThis episode explores the Symposium from the perspective of a first-time conference attendee coupled with a veteran attendee; these join the voices of multiple conference participants. Mathieu and Stéphanie focus on the process of organizing, holding, and listening to the 2021 SpokenWeb Symposium, and they discuss its themes of listening, sound, and agency as they emerge through the presentations and discussions. \nThe episode begins with the theme of listening ethically and intentionally, before diving into a discussion of issues surrounding sound politics. It concludes with the topic of agency in relation to the amplification of sound as a potential means of empowerment. \n\nA special thanks to the 2021 Listening, Sound, Agency organizing committee, especially Jason Camlot, Klara DuPLessis, Deanna Fong, Katherine McLeod, Angus Tarnawsky, and Salena Wiener, whose voices are featured at the beginning of the episode.\n\n"],"Note":["[]"],"Related_works":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"Audio Credits:\\n\\nKvelden Trapp from Blue Dot Sessions:\\nhttps://app.sessions.blue/browse/track/94421\\n\\nCitations:\\n\\nBergé, Carole. 1964. The Vancouver Report. FU Press.\\n\\nBrittingham Furlonge, Nicole. May 19, 2021. “‘New Ways to Make Us Listen’: Exploring the Possibilities for Sonic Pedagogy.” \\n\\nDu Plessis, Klara. May 21, 2021. “From Poetry Reading to Performance Art: Agency of Deep Curation Practice.” \\n\\nMcLeod, Dayna. May 18, 2021. “Queerly Circulating Sound and Affect in Intimate Karaoke, Live at Uterine Concert Hall. \\n\\nRobinson, Dylan. May 19, 2021. “Giving/Taking Notice.” \\n\\nSun Eidsheim, Nina. May 20, 2021. “Re-w\\nriting Algorithms for Just Recognition: From Digital Aural Redlining to Accent Activism.”\"}]"],"_version_":1853670549717254144,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:54.290Z","score":3.062659},{"id":"9622","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 S3E7, ‘The archive is messy and so are we’: Decoding the Women and Words Collection, 4 April 2022, Mofatt and Sharren"],"item_title_source":["SpokenWeb Podcast web page."],"item_title_note":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/the-archive-is-messy-and-so-are-we-decoding-the-women-and-words-collection/"],"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 3"],"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":["Kate Moffatt","Kandice Sharren"],"creator_names_search":["Kate Moffatt","Kandice Sharren"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"name\":\"Kate Moffatt\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Producer\"]},{\"url\":\"\",\"name\":\"Kandice Sharren\",\"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/67ec6133-5296-49c5-9c61-bdd8872657fb/audio/f4d8cb13-a39c-4b77-8445-413a9cfcbfe5/default_tc.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"swp-s3e7-archiveismessy.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"44.1 kHz\",\"duration\":\"00:46:14\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"44,464,214 bytes\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"Mp3 audio\",\"title\":\"swp-s3e7-archiveismessy\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/the-archive-is-messy-and-so-are-we-decoding-the-women-and-words-collection/\"}]"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"2022-04-04\",\"type\":\"Publication Date\",\"notes\":\"\",\"source\":\"\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/3725404708\",\"venue\":\"Simon Fraser University\",\"notes\":\"\",\"address\":\"515 West Hastings Street Vancouver, B.C, V6B 5K3\",\"latitude\":\"49.2824032\",\"longitude\":\"-123.1085513\"}]"],"Address":["515 West Hastings Street Vancouver, B.C, V6B 5K3"],"Venue":["Simon Fraser University"],"City":["Vancouver, British Columbia"],"contents":["Simon Fraser University’s Special Collections and Rare Books holds the rich Women and Words Collection, which contains more than one hundred recordings from the Women and Words Conference in 1983, a decade of WestWord writing retreats and workshops, and a number of other readings, meetings, workshops, and events. Although the audio in this collection has a significant paper archive to accompany it, the absence of pre-existing metadata made it difficult to identify the recordings. This episode is framed by how two research assistants, Kandice Sharren and Kate Moffatt, encountered the collection—one physically, in the archive, and the other solely with digitized audio recordings and scanned print materials—and takes us behind-the-scenes of their work to make sense of both its depths and the Women and Words Society’s history.\n\nSpecial thanks to Tony Power, librarian and curator of the Contemporary Literature Collection at Simon Fraser University, and to SFU’s Special Collections and Rare Books.\n\nImage Gallery\nPage 2 of the Women and Words Conference from 1983, containing a note from the organizers. Photo credit: courtesy of SFU Bennett Library Special Collections & Rare Books.\nFirst page of a timeline outlining WestWord retreat organization, application, and admittance processes. Photo credit: taken by Kandice Sharren, courtesy of SFU Bennett Library Special Collections & Rare Books.\nPress release for WestWord III from February 1987. Photo credit: taken by Kandice Sharren, courtesy of SFU Bennett Library Special Collections & Rare Books.\nPoster for the WestWord III public events, readings, and panels, including a reading by Sharon Thesen. Photo credit: Taken by Kandice Sharren, courtesy of SFU Bennett Library Special Collections & Rare Books.\nThe tape holding the Sharon Thesen reading from August 18, 1987 (MsC23-85). Photo credit: courtesy of SFU Bennett Library Special Collections & Rare Books.\nPoster for WestWord V public events, readings, and panels. Photo credit: Taken by Kandice Sharren, courtesy of SFU Bennett Library Special Collections & Rare Books.\nPoster for WestWord VI public events and readings. Photo credit: Taken by Kandice Sharren, courtesy of SFU Bennett Library Special Collections & Rare Books.\n"],"Note":["[]"],"Related_works":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"Beverly, Andrea. “Traces of a Feminist Literary Event.” CanLit Across Media, MQUP, 2019, p. 221, https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvscxtkg.15.\\n\\n“Castor Wheel Pivot.” Blue Dot Sessions. Accessed 2 April 2022. https://app.sessions.blue/browse/track/100713\\n\\n“Dust Digger.” Blue Dot Sessions. Accessed 27 March 2022. https://app.sessions.blue/browse/track/99584.\\n\\n“Flipping through a book.” Free Sound. Accessed 2 April 2022. https://freesound.org/people/Zeinel/sounds/483364/\\n\\nHeavenly choir singing sound, “Ahhh.” Free Sound. Accessed 2 April 2022. https://freesound.org/people/random_intruder/sounds/392172/\\n\\n“Palms Down.” Blue Dot Sessions. Accessed 15 March 2022. https://app.sessions.blue/browse/track/96905\\n\\n“Record Scratch.” Free Sound. Accessed 2 April 2022.  https://freesound.org/people/simkiott/sounds/43404/\\n\\nRooney, Frances. “activist; Gloria Greenfield.” Section15, 22 May 1998. Accessed 31 March 2022. http://section15.ca/features/people/1998/05/22/gloria_greenfield/.\"}]"],"_version_":1853670549718302720,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:54.290Z","score":3.062659},{"id":"9623","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 S3E8, Academics on Air, 2 May 2022, Kroon, Beauchesne and Miya"],"item_title_source":["SpokenWeb Podcast web page."],"item_title_note":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/academics-on-air/"],"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 3"],"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":["Ariel Kroon","Nick Beauchesne","Chelsea Miya"],"creator_names_search":["Ariel Kroon","Nick Beauchesne","Chelsea Miya"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"name\":\"Ariel Kroon\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Producer\"]},{\"url\":\"\",\"name\":\"Nick Beauchesne\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Producer\"]},{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/9162060349751401864\",\"name\":\"Chelsea Miya\",\"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/4d8a0871-f27e-4d7f-825d-1b9962330239/audio/5c6123d8-1c4b-451b-941a-8b331156eb91/default_tc.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"swp-s3e8-academicsonair.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"44.1 kHz\",\"duration\":\"00:50:55\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"48,954,349 bytes\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"MP3 audio\",\"title\":\"swp-s3e8-academicsonair\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/academics-on-air/\"}]"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"2022-05-02\",\"type\":\"Publication Date\",\"notes\":\"\",\"source\":\"\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/10238561\",\"venue\":\"University of Alberta\",\"notes\":\"\",\"address\":\"11121 Saskatchewan Drive, North West Edmonton, Alberta T6G 2E5\",\"latitude\":\"\\t53.52682\",\"longitude\":\"-113.5244937350756\"}]"],"Address":["11121 Saskatchewan Drive, North West Edmonton, Alberta T6G 2E5"],"Venue":["University of Alberta"],"City":["Edmonton, Alberta"],"Note":["[]"],"Related_works":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"Sound FX/Music\\n\\nBBC Sound Effects. “Communications – Greenwich Time Signal, post January 1st 1972.” BBC Sound Effects, https://sound-effects.bbcrewind.co.uk/search?q=07042099.\\n\\nBBC Sound Effects. “Doors: House – House Door: Interior, Larder, Open and Close.” BBC Sound Effects, https://sound-effects.bbcrewind.co.uk/search?q=07027090.\\n\\nBBC Sound Effects. “Footsteps Down Metal Stairs – Footsteps Down Metal Stairs, Man, Slow, Departing.” BBC Sound Effects, https://sound-effects.bbcrewind.co.uk/search?q=07037171.\\n\\nBBC Sound Effects. “Industry: Printing: Presses – Electric Printing Press operating.” BBC Sound Effects, https://sound-effects.bbcrewind.co.uk/search?q=07041078.\\n\\nBertrof. “Audio Cassette Tape Open Close Play Stop.” Freesound, https://freesound.org/s/351567/.\\n\\nConstructabeat. “Stop Start Tape. Player.” Freesound, https://freesound.org/people/constructabeat/sounds/258392/.\\n\\nCoral Island Studios. “28 Cardboard Box Open” Freesound, https://freesound.org/people/Coral_Island_Studios/sounds/459436/.\\n\\nGis_sweden. “Electronic Minute No 97 – Multiple Atonal Melodies.” Freesound, https://freesound.org/people/gis_sweden/sounds/429808/.\\n\\nGJOS. “PaperShuffling.” Freesound, https://freesound.org/people/GJOS/sounds/128847/.\\n\\nIESP. “Cage Rattling.” Freesound, https://freesound.org/people/IESP/sounds/339999/.\\n\\nInspectorJ. “Ambience, Children Playing, Distant, A.” Freesound, https://freesound.org/people/InspectorJ/sounds/398160/.\\n\\nJohntrap. “Tubes ooTi en Vrak.” Freesound, https://freesound.org/people/johntrap/sounds/528291/.\\n\\nKern PKL. “Limoncello.” Blue Dot Sessions, https://app.sessions.blue/browse/track/104864.\\n\\nKyles. “University Campus Downtown Distant Traffic and Nearby Students Hanging Out Spanish +Some People and Groups Walk by Steps Cusco, Peru, South America.” Freesound, https://freesound.org/people/kyles/sounds/413951/.\\n\\nLillehammer. “Arbinac.” Blue Dot Sessions, https://app.sessions.blue/album/9f32a891-6782-4a63-8796-cafa323b711e.\\n\\nMichaelvelo. “Packing Tape Pull.” Freesound, https://freesound.org/people/Michaelvelo/sounds/366836/.\\n\\nNix Nihil. “Vocal Windstorm.” Psyoptic Enterprises, 2016.\\n\\nOymaldonado. “70’s southern rock mix loop for movie.” Freesound, https://freesound.org/people/oymaldonado/sounds/507242/.\\n\\nPsyoptic. “Forest of Discovery.” Thought Music. Psyoptic Enterprises, 2006.\\n\\nSagetyrtle. “Cassette.” Freesound, https://freesound.org/people/sagetyrtle/sounds/40164/.\\n\\nSuso_Ramallo. “Binaural Catholic Gregorian Chant Mass Liturgy.” Freesound, https://freesound.org/people/Suso_Ramallo/sounds/320530/.\\n\\ntonywhitmore. “Opening Cardboard Box.” Freesound, https://freesound.org/s/110948/.\\n\\nZiegfeld Follies of 1921. “Second hand Rose” [restored version]. George Blood, LP. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/78_second-hand-rose_fanny-brice-grant-clarke-james-f-hanley_gbia0055858a/Second+Hand+Rose+-+Fanny+Brice+-+Grant+Clarke-restored.flac\\n\\n \\n\\nArchival Audio\\n\\nCarlin, George. “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television.” Indecent Exposure. Little David Records, 1978.\\n\\n“Dorothy Livesay.” Celebrations. Dept. of Radio and Television and CKUA, 8 Feb. 1984.\\n\\n“Douglas Barbour.” Celebrations. Dept. of Radio and Television and CKUA, 10 Oct. 1983.\\n\\n“Margaret Atwood.” Celebrations. Dept. of Radio and Television and CKUA, 12 Oct. 1983.\\n\\n“Marian Engel.” Celebrations. Dept. of Radio and Television and CKUA, 18 Jan. 1984.\\n\\n“Linguistic Taboos and Censorship in Literature.” Voiceprint. Dept. of Radio and Television and CKUA, 8 April 1983.\\n\\n“Phyllis Webb.” Celebrations. Dept. of Radio and Television and CKUA, 16 Nov. 1983.\\n\\n“Poetry: The Sullen Craft or Art.” Paper Tygers. Dept. of Radio and Television and CKUA, 1 Jan. 1982.\\n\\n“Robert Kroetsch.” Celebrations. Dept. of Radio and Television and CKUA, 23 Nov. 1983.\\n\\n“Rudy Wiebe.” Celebrations. Dept. of Radio and Television and CKUA, 21 March 1984.\\n\\n“Stephen Scobie.” Celebrations. Dept. of Radio and Television and CKUA, 26 Oct. 1983.\\n\\n“Women’s Language and Literature: A Voice and a Room of One’s Own.” Voiceprint. Dept. of Radio and Television and CKUA, 4 March 1981.\\n\\n“Speech and Its Characteristics.” Voiceprint. Dept. of Radio and Television and CKUA, 18 March 1981.\\n\\n \\n\\nWorks Cited\\n\\nThe Canadian Communications Foundation, https://broadcasting-history.com/in-depth/brief-history-educational-broadcasting-canada.\\n\\nBashwell, Peace. “Weird and Wonderful Scenes from the Bardfest.” The Gateway, November 10, 1981, pg. 13. Peel’s Prairie Provinces, http://peel.library.ualberta.ca/newspapers/GAT/1981/11/10/13/.\\n\\nThe Canadian Communications Foundation (CCF). “CKUA-AM.” History of Canadian Broadcasting, https://broadcasting-history.com/listing_and_histories/radio/ckua-am.\\n\\nFauteux, Brian. “The Canadian Campus Radio Sector Takes Shape.” Music in Range: The Culture of Canadian Campus Radio. Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2015, pp. 37-64.\\n\\nKostash, Myrna. “Book View.” The Edmonton Journal, 17 Jan. 1981.\\n\\nKirkman, Jean. “CKUA: Fifty years of growth for the university’s own station.” University of Alberta Alumni Association: History Trails, March 1978, https://sites.ualberta.ca/ALUMNI/history/affiliate/78winCKUA.htm.\\n\\nRemington, Bob. “Banning of Radio Show Called Cowardly.” The Edmonton Journal, 26 May 1983.\\n\\n \\n\\nFurther Reading\\n\\nArmstrong, Robert. “History of Canadian Broadcasting Policy, 1968–1991.” Broadcasting Policy in Canada, Second Edition. University of Toronto Press, 2016, pp. 41-56.\\n\\nThe Canadian Communications Foundation (CCF). “A Brief History of Educational Broadcasting in Canada.” History of Canadian Broadcasting, https://broadcasting-history.com/in-depth/brief-history-educational-broadcasting-canada.\\n\\nDeshaye, Joel. The Metaphor of Celebrity : Canadian Poetry and the Public, 1955-1980. University of Toronto Press; 2013.\\n\\nGil, Alex. “The User, the Learner and the Machines We Make” [blog post]. Minimal Computing, 21 May 2015, https://go-dh.github.io/mincomp/thoughts/2015/05/21/user-vs-learner/.\\n\\nMacLennan, Anne F. “Canadian Community/Campus Radio: Struggling and Coping on the Cusp of Change.” Radio’s Second Century: Perspectives on the Past, Present and Future, edited by John Allen Hendricks, Rutgers University Press, 2020, pp. 193-206.\\n\\nRubin, Nick. “‘College Radio’: The Development of a Trope in US Student Broadcasting.” Interactions: Studies in Communication & Culture, vol. 6, no. 1, Mar. 2015, pp. 47–64.\\n\\nWalters, Marylu. CKUA: Radio Worth Fighting For. University of Alberta Press, 2002.\"}]"],"_version_":1853670549718302721,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:54.290Z","contents":["In the early 1980s, the University of Alberta funded a series of experimental literary radio programs, which were broadcast across the province on the CKUA community radio network. At the time, CKUA station had just been resurrected through a deal with ACCESS and was eager for educational programming. Enter host and producer Jars Balan – then a masters student in the English department with limited radio experience. For five years, Balan produced three radio series, Voiceprint, Celebrations, and Paper Tygers, which explored the intersection of language, literature, and culture, and he interviewed some of the biggest names in the Canadian literary scene, including Margaret Atwood, Maria Campbell, Robert Kroetsch, Robertson Davies, and many others.\n\nThis episode is framed as a “celebration” of those heady days of college radio in the early 80s. In it, clips from Jars’s radio programs, recovered from the University of Alberta Archives, supplement interviews with Balan and audio engineer Terri Wynnyk. Special tribute will be given to the recently departed Western Canadian poets Doug Barbour and Phyllis Webb through the inclusion of their in-studio performances recorded for Balan’s own Celebrations series. By looking back on the pioneering days of campus radio, this episode sheds light on the current moment in scholarly podcasting and how the genre is being resurrected and reimagined by a new generation of “academics on air.”\n\nSpecial thanks to Arianne Smith-Piquette from CKUA and Marissa Fraser from UAlberta’s Archives and Special Collections, and to SpokenWeb Alberta researcher Zachary Morrison, who worked behind the scenes on this episode.\n\n00:06\tSpokenWeb Podcast Theme Music:\t[Instrumental Overlapped With Feminine Voice] Can you hear me? I don’t know how much projection to do here.\n00:18\tHannah McGregor:\tWhat does literature sound like? What stories will we hear if we listen to the archive? Welcome to The SpokenWeb Podcast: Stories about how literature sounds. My name is Hannah McGregor, and each month I’ll be bringing you different stories of Canadian literary history, and our contemporary responses to it, created by scholars, poets, students, and artists from across Canada. \nVoiceprint. Celebrations. Paper Tygers. These are the names of three campus radio shows produced in the late 70s and early 80s at the University of Alberta, and broadcast province-wide. All three explored how literature, culture, and politics intersect: Voiceprint was the first and longest-running of the three, about poetics, speech, and communications theory; “Celebrations” celebrated the 75th anniversary of the University of Alberta in 1983; and “Paper Tygers” was about the practical ins-and-outs of being a writer. They were created by University of Alberta Masters student Jars Balan, and had production teams and guests that ranged from other students—like the show’s audio engineer and production assistant, Terri Wynnyck—to librarians, professors, and writers. \n\nIn today’s episode, SpokenWeb contributors Ariel Kroon, Nick Beauchesne, and Chelsea Miya celebrate and share the history of these three campus radio shows they found preserved in the University of Alberta archives. As Jars himself says in this episode, campus radio was an opportunity to share the kinds of thinking and conversations happening inside the university with those outside of it, too. But where were these campus radio shows produced, and how? What, exactly, were the circumstances of their creation? How were they received? And what echoes of campus radio do we hear in scholarly podcasting today? Featuring interviews with producer Jars Balan and audio engineer Terry Wynnyck, and archival audio of Western Canadian poets Doug Barbour and Phyllis Webb, Ariel, Nick, and Chelsea dive into the rich history of campus radio, from conception and script-writing to the physical cutting and editing of tape. \n\nWe invite you to listen to this episode with us and celebrate those early campus radio shows, and the people who made them. Here are Ariel Kroon, Nick Beauchesne, and Chelsea Miya with Episode 8 of our third season of the SpokenWeb Podcast: “Academics on Air”. [Music Interlude: SpokenWeb Podcast Theme Song]\n\n02:55\tJars Balan\tHello and welcome to “Celebrations”. [Trumpet Fanfare]\n03:33\tMichael O’Driscoll, Zoom, 21 June 2021:\tEvery great Spoken Web story starts with a box of something or other…\n03:37\tChelsea Miya:\tIt’s June, 2021. The Spoken Web Alberta team has gathered together over Zoom. We’re here to witness the unboxing of the archive. Michael O’Driscoll, director of Spoken Web U Alberta, is sitting next to a cardboard box.\n03:52\tMichael O’Driscoll, Zoom, 21 June 2021:\tI got these by the way, directly from Jars. I had to drive by his house and picked them up from his front porch and we had a nice socially distanced talk about things. I have been very well behaved. I haven’t even peeked. I have no idea. Ooh, what is in here? And they’ve been sitting here in my office next to me for a, for weeks now. And I, and I have resisted the urge to check.\n04:16\tAriel Kroon:\tThis is me Ariel.\n04:19\tChelsea Miya:\tAnd this is me Chelsea.\n04:21\tNick Beauchesne:\tThis is Nick reporting.\n04:23\tAriel Kroon:\tThe three of us are the producers of this SpokenWeb Podcast episode. We’re also researchers at the University of Alberta where we’ve been digitizing the “Voiceprint” series. Over hours of listening, we feel like we’ve gotten to know this forgotten campus radio show, and its host Jars, pretty well. We’re fans.\n04:41\tChelsea Miya, Zoom, [21 June 2021]:\tIt makes it feel more…\n04:45\tArielKroon, Zoom, [21 June 2021]:\tTangible?\n04:45\tChelsea Miya, Zoom, [21 June 2021]:\tTangible, yeah. And I think it’ll give us a sense of the amount of work but also that the chaos and energy that went into this. [Laughter]\n04:53\tAriel Kroon:\tMichael peels back the cardboard flaps and reaches inside [Sound Effect: Box Opening, Papers Shuffling] He pulls out a stack of tapes.\n04:58\tMichael O’Driscoll, Zoom, 21 June 2021:\tSo these are cassette recordings [Papers Shuffling] I would assume of some of the voice of nine different “Voiceprint” broadcasts, some of which we currently have a record of and some of which are entirely new.\n05:15\tAriel Kroon:\tHe also finds stacks of brown manila folders, which resemble case files. Scribbled across each folder is the name of a different episode. And they are stuffed with material.\n05:28\tMichael O’Driscoll, Zoom, 21 June 2021:\t[Papers Shuffling Throughout] So these are clearly the background research papers that were being used to develop ideas and the concepts for the different “Voiceprint” issues that Jars was developing at the time. So there’s a lot here in terms of the context for the developmental stuff, which I think is pretty interesting. Some library reference materials, some background on the history of the printed word, cognitive relations to the printed word. So, all kinds of interesting things, for sure. What else do we have in here? And some time codes for the materials that he was working with… a handwritten set of interview questions for Phyllis Webb [Unknown Voice: Oh that’s cool!] [Pause] –Wow.\n06:25\tAriel Kroon:\t[Start Music: Ambient Atmospheric Music] When we first stumbled upon this archive, or rather were handed it in a cardboard box, we thought the celebrity guests were the coup. We had hours of interviews and performances from Canadian literary stars like Phyllis Webb. These recordings hadn’t been played in decades and hardly anyone knew about their existence. But as we listened to the tapes, we realized that Jars, the host of the show, was himself a fascinating character. Rather than centring on the poets, our episode looks back on the heyday of campus radio culture… and tells the story of how students like Jars and radio aide Terri Wynnyck broke ground by experimenting with radio as a form of public scholarship. [End Music: Ambient Atmospheric Music]\n07:17\tChelsea Miya:\t[Audio Clip: Digital Musical Notes] [Audio Clip: Students Walking, Chatting] There are about 80 different college and university-affiliated campus radio stations across Canada. And each of these stations has their own unique story and history. CKUA radio is Canada’s first public broadcaster. [Start Music: Fanny Brice’s “Second Hand Rose”] It’s story begins on the University of Alberta campus in 1927. The school received a grant from the province to start its own radio station setting up shop in the Department of Extension.Over the next fifty years, CKUA became more than just a campus radio station. From the beginning, they experimented with new formats: radio dramas, square-dancing lessons, even an Alcoholics Anonymous program. The station broadcasts to remote areas, reaching everyone from farmers to fur trappers. But even as listenership expanded, CKUA still maintained close ties with the University. [End Music: Fanny Brice’s “Second Hand Rose”] Brian Fauteux, Professor of Music at UAlberta, explains…\n08:18\tAudio Recording, Brian Fauteux, Interview, [2 Feb 2022]:\tThe university still maintains a couple hours a week for programming, maintaining that sort of focus on radio talks and lectures as well as what they were calling good music, classical music often. This idea that they were uplifting listeners or passing on something that was the domain of the university. So it’s a very unique station in that sense. It’s sort of education as framed by showcasing arts and culture that maybe you wouldn’t hear on commercial radio.\n08:50\tChelsea Miya:\t[Start Music: Rock Music] Then the 70’s arrive. A time of self-expression and rebelling against the man. In Quebec and Alberta, separatism is in the air. The federal and provincial governments clash over broadcasting rights, and CKUA gets caught in the middle. [End Music: Rock Music] At this point, CKUA is operated by Alberta Telephones, which is illegal under federal rules. [Start Music: Instrumental] But just as things are looking dire, ACCESS, The Alberta Educational Communications Corporation, is created. Educational programs have special status under new broadcast regulations. And ACCESS offers CKUA a new license. And so the station was reborn. [End Music: Instrumental]\n09:39\tNick Beauchesne:\t[Sound Effect: Radio Signal Test Tone] CKUA was back on air and better than before! Originally, CKUA had only aired on AM frequencies, which transmit farther, but have poorer sound quality and are best suited for talk radio. [Start Music: Electronic Instrumental] Now, CKUA could broadcast with 100,000 watt transmitters, which were 200 times more powerful than what they had before, and the station aired on the higher bandwidth FM frequencies. With these new transmitters, everyone in Alberta could tune into their shows, and every note could be heard, clear and crisp. It was during this period of intense expansion and revitalization that Jars Balan joined the station. [End Music: Electronic Instrumental]\n10:25\tAudio Recording, Jars Balan, Interview, [24 May 2021]:\tNow I did my undergraduate work uh in at the University of Toronto. I did an Honours BA in English Literature there. And my plan was to take two or three years off with a friend and fix up his van and drive to the West Coast, work at the sawmill, make a pile of money, go to Mexico, hang out, smoke a lot of pot, party, and then come back and enter an MA program. It all kind of fell through because when we got to BC the forestry industry was in the doldrums, there was no work and we came back here. I ended up working on a farm near the international airport. In the meantime I found out there were a couple of profs in the English department who are very sympatico to my literary interests: Stephen Scobie and Doug Barbour. So I met with them and I decided, well this a good place to do my MA. So I signed up for an MA in ‘77 and entered the MA program in English/Creative Writing.\n11:21\tAriel Kroon:\tThe Executive Producer of the University’s Department of Radio and Television was Roman Onifrijchuck.\n11:26\tArchival Recording, Jars Balan, Voiceprint, 4 Mar 1981:\tThe problem of sexist language is perhaps most frequently encountered by people working in the field of publishing.\n11:32\tArielle Kroon:\tAs it turned out, Jars and Roman were old friends. They had spent several summers working together as camp counselors at a Ukrainian summer camp.\n11:41\tAudio Recording, Jars Balan, Interview, [24 May 2021]:\t[Sound Effect: Children Playing] It was kind of a bunch of us 60’s guys running a camp, a summer camp, the way we thought we should have gone to summer camp and never did at the, you know, it was pretty loosey goosey, but it was very successful and popular, but we became very good friends.\n11:55\tAriel Kroon:\tJars had just entered UAlberta’s masters program in English, when Roman approached him to ask if he had an idea for a show.\n12:02\tAudio Recording, Jars Balan, Interview, [4 Jan 2022]:\tThe whole purpose of CKUA was to produce programming that highlighted and showcased the work of scholars at the U of A. And so I sketched out this concept for a show called “Voiceprint”. Because I was trying to work towards a materialist approach to poetics [Start Music: Instrumental] by which I meant poetics based on a knowledge of linguistics, communications theory, nuts and bolts sort of use of language and communication strategy and how that can be translated into making poetry more effective. And so Voiceprint for me became that working document that enabled me to work out my theories. Roman liked the idea. They gave me 13 half-hour shows. We started with that in ’79 and that was considered successful. So I said, you know, I can do, I really could use an hour. And they agreed to that. And I fleshed it out into what then became 39 one hour shows in the Voiceprint series.\n13:09\tAriel Kroon:\tBefore he knew it, one show became three. Jars also hosted the “Celebrations” series, interviewing the university’s writers-in-residence, authors like Marian Engel and Margaret Atwood. [End Music: Instrumental]\n13:20\tArchival Audio, Jars Balan, 1983-84:\t[Sound Effect: Trumpet Fanfare] Our guest tonight is the novelist and short story writer Marian Engel… Robert Kroetsch… Margaret Atwood… Dorothy Livesay… poet Phyllis Webb…\n13:28\tAudio Recording, Jars Balan, Interview, [4 Jan 2022]:\tAnd so we took advantage of the fact that they were on campus in Edmonton for me to be able to interview them. It was like shooting fish in a barrel.\n13:37\tAriel Kroon:\tHis third radio show, “Paper Tygers”, was about the ins and outs of being a writer. For example, advice on how to find an agent and land a book deal.\n13:46\tArchival Audio, Jars Balan, [1 Jan. 1982]\t“Paper Tygers”, a program for creative and working writers.\n13:50\tAriel Kroon:\tWhile completing his masters, Jars was also producing these three radio shows. It was like having another full-time gig.\n13:57\tAudio Recording, Jars Balan, Interview, [24 May 2021]:\tI was very lucky. I basically used the shows to pay for my education. I didn’t have to take any tutorials or anything like that. So I wasn’t beholden to my professors for any work. For me it was very important. I wanted to be independent. I was spared the agony of having to mark undergraduate papers which I hated to read and do even though I was an undergraduate once myself. By the time I finished my MA I was supporting myself freelance writing so – I was paid for the Voiceprint, they were $750 bucks a show and I got pretty good at turning out a show a week, which in those dollars was pretty good money and I was able to pay off my student debt and support myself.\n14:41\tAriel Kroon:\t“Voiceprint” was his biggest “hit.” The show was subtitled “Speech, language, communications technology, and the Literary Arts in a Changing World.”\n14:51\tArchival Audio, Jars Balan, [4 March 1981]\t[Digital Musical Notes] “Voiceprint”.\n14:54\tAriel Kroon:\tThe topic seemed to strike a chord with listeners, finding a wider audience outside of the university campus. “Voiceprint” ran for three years on CKUA’s Access Radio station. At its peak, it aired every week on Wednesdays at 7pm. This is prime-time for radio shows.Voiceprint earned a glowing review in the Edmonton Journal. The reviewer, quoting Roman, calls it “Sesame Street for adults.” Voiceprint invited the public to confront the ways in which language, politics, and culture intersect. This radio series was unafraid to tackle controversial subjects, such as the subtleties of sexism in language, with a nuanced, academic perspective. As the critic from the Edmonton Journal put it…\n15:35\tAudio Recording, Re-enactment of Edmonton Journal Review:\t[Sound Effect: Typewriter keys] These programs are most assuredly not straight lectures, not a solitary patrician male voice droning on into the fog of the airwaves. “Voiceprint” is, in the jargon of electronic media, a magazine show. The format is the montage: many voices, recurring theme segments, a bit of music, readings, interviews. Jars Balan, an Edmonton poet and editor, is the producer and host. He asks the questions we want to ask of linguists, anthropologists, doctors, classicists, writers…\n16:07\tAudio Recording, Jars Balan, Interview, [24 May 2021]:\tWhen you think about it, the concept from the university’s view is a good one! All this work goes on at the university and if you’re not reading academic journals and you aren’t attending lectures, you don’t know what the hell these people are doing. And so this was an attempt to sort of get that out into a wider audience. You’d get somebody, I remember somebody saying, “so I caught your show was driving to Lethbridge from Calgary”… it obviously did reach an audience.\n16:33\tNick Beauchesne:\tJars was the host of “Voiceprint”. But the show was a collaborative effort. At least ten people worked on the production team. Some were students, like Jars. Others were UAlberta staff and professors, whom Jars recruited to produce special segments.\n16:48\tAudio Recording, Jars Balan, Interview, [4 Jan 2022]:\tI took advantage. There were people already involved in producing things in the Department of Radio and Television and I would use them for my program too for voices. So, Anna Altmann, who was a librarian, was somebody who was doing some other recording stuff and I said oh great, would you read these portions of the show, the scripted portions, and did various sound work, narrative work with us.\n17:13\tNick Beauchesne:\tAnna stood out to us, as listeners, because she speaks with a distinct affectation called “received pronunciation.” As heard in this clip, Anna hosted a bibliographic segment, where she would recommended “must-read” books about the different episode topics.\n17:31\tAudio Recording, Anna Altmann, “Voiceprint”, 1981:\tIf you’d like to learn more about language and problem of sexism, probably the best place to begin reading is a very accessible book, titled Words and Women.\n17:41\tNick Beauchesne:\tIt turns out her mind was as noteworthy as her voice; she went on to become director of UAlberta’s School of Library and Information Science. And then there was Richard Braun who provided the definitions for some key words. Here he is discussing how sexism is ingrained in language.\n18:02\tArchival Record, Roman Onifrijchuck, “Voiceprint”, 1981:\tLet’s look at those two words: male and female.\n18:03\tArchival Record, Richard Braun, “Voiceprint”, 1981:\tMale, female. A very annoying thing that happens in English. An intentional misspelling, mispronunciation, to make it appear that “male” is the basic thing and upon it you add the meaningless “fe.”\n18:20\tAudio Recording, Jars Balan, Interview, [4 Jan 2022]:\tRichard Braun was an unusual character that I found in the classics department. He taught classics, but his real passion was etymology and he was great and he was quite eccentric, both looking and just in his manner. But he really enjoyed –I’d give him a list of words that I thought related to the theme of the show and he would look them up, the history of the word and whatever, and talk about it in a very engaging way. I wish I had a picture of him because he looked like a professor [Laughs]. Terri was the person probably I worked most closely with.\n18:57\tNick Beauchesne:\tTerri Wynnyk, the Production Assistant, was also a student at UAlberta, and the tech guru of the team.\n19:04\tAudio Recording, Terri Wynnyk, Interview, [7 Jan 2022]:\t[Audio of Tape Recording Stopping and Starting Throughout] I think I was the tech guru for Jars because Jars was so technically incompetent. Jars was always living in his head, and he couldn’t figure out how to use a tape recorder.\n19:17\tNick Beauchesne:\tShe remembers the day that she got recruited to work for the campus radio station.\n19:22\tAudio Recording, Terri Wynnyk, Interview, [7 Jan 2022]:\tSo I was studying political science and economics at the University of Alberta. And and one of my sociology classes, the sociology of sex roles, I met this wild and crazy guy named Manfred Loucat who said, “Hey you’ve got to come and work at the university radio station. We’re just opening it up, we’re just opening it up, it’s been closed for a year, It’s been mothballed and we’re going to start it up.” So I ended up being the news director.\n19:49\tNick Beauchesne:\tAnd before she knew it, Terri got promoted.\n19:53\tAudio Recording, Terri Wynnyk, Interview, [7 Jan 2022]:\tThis guy, this bear of a guy with a big beard and wild and crazy hair, cigarettes hanging out of his mouth named Roman Onufrijchuk, showed up one day at CJSR. And said, “Do you want a job? Would you like to freelance for me?” And I said, “Sure, what are you paying?”\n20:17\tNick Beauchesne:\tTerri and Jars worked on multiple shows, spending countless hours in the radio studio, which became like a second home.\n20:28\tChelsea Miya:\t[Sound Effect: Audio Crackling] Today’s podcasts can be recorded anywhere. The three of us who worked on this SpokenWeb episode live in different parts of the country: Kitchener, Calgary, and Kamloops. We worked on this show remotely, conducting interviews from home on Zoom. But in the past, campus radio was very much rooted in a specific sense of place. Jennifer Waits is a campus radio historian and a producer of the Radio Survivor podcast. Like Jars and Terri, Jennifer worked on a campus radio station in the early 80s. Only in her case, she was based at Haverford College outside Philadelphia. Her radio program had a smaller following than CKUA. It only aired during lunch-hour in the cafeteria hall. But she still remembers how excited she was, hearing her shows broadcast over the school speakers…\n21:18\tAudio Recording, Jennifer Waits, Interview, [3 Feb 2022]:\tSo I did college radio starting when I was a freshman in college and didn’t really pay any attention to college radio history at the time. But I think what happened was I must have come back to a reunion at some point and had heard sad tales about the radio station falling on hard times… like somebody sold off a bunch of the record collection that I remember being a part of lovingly kind of restoring service from major record labels when I was there in the 80s. And, and so I had this sadness about pieces of the history getting sold off and I think it’s at that point that I got really interested in digging into the history of the radio station. So I kind of embarked on this project and interviewed people from Haverford College’s radio past going as far as the 1940s.\n22:07\tChelsea Miya:\tSince then, Jennifer made it her quest to celebrate and preserve campus radio culture. She’s visited hundreds of stations across America, documenting their different stories. As Jennifer explains, the campus radio studio is a sacred space. It has its own distinct aura.\n22:25\tAudio Recording, Jennifer Waits, Interview, [3 Feb 2022]:\t[Start Music: Ambient Electronic] There’s often a community feeling at a college radio station, so you might have a couch that’s been there forever. Sometimes I’ve been warned to not sit on a particular couch because of nefarious things that might have happened on said couch. Often you’ve got layers of history on the walls of radio stations, so you might have stickers from bands and from other radio stations, you might have flyers from concerts that have happened or you know, material that has been sent in with records. So promotional items like glossy photos of bands and posters. So you’ll see stuff all over the walls, you’ll often see cabinets that have stickers all over them. What I love are just sort of funky pop culture artifacts. [Laughs] So there might be a troll doll in the record library or a lava lamp. I’ve seen skulls at a lot of radio stations, I don’t really know why. [End Music: Ambient Electronic]\n23:21\tChelsea Miya:\tLike Jennifer, Jars and Terri also spent a lot of time in their campus radio studio. And as they explained, the studio space became part of university lore.\n23:31\tAudio Recording, Terri Wynnyk, Interview, [7 Jan 2022]:\tDid Jars tell you physically where we were located? The Department of Radio and Television was two floors below ground in the basement of the biological sciences building.\n23:40\tAudio Recording, Jars Balan, Interview, [7 Jan 2022]:\tWeIl it was a special place come to think of it because it was in the bowels of the biological sciences building and literally in the bowels, not in the basement, but in the second basement or sub basement. [Laughter] So you went right down to the bottom. And I mean, the building itself is this gargantuan building and you know, as all these biological specimens and in display cases on different floors.\n24:06\tAudio Recording, Terri Wynnyk, Interview, [7 Jan 2022]:\tIt was a warren. It was a rabbit’s warren of offices in this nether world. [Sound Effect: Cages Rattle] We once found a boa constrictor that had escaped. Because up above us was all sorts of science labs and buildings and rabbits and cockroaches and we had so much wildlife [Sound Effect: Animal Noises] two floors below ground.\n24:32\tAudio Recording, Jars Balan, Interview, [4 Jan 2022]:\tPeople didn’t know about it. You would really have to know where – people were shocked when they learned about it. When we’d tell ’em to come and I’d have to have a map to explain to them how to get to the studios.\n24:43\tNick Beauchesne:\tWe asked Terri to elaborate on her duties as the resident tech guru and production assistant.\n24:49\tAudio Recording, Terri Wynnyk, Interview, [7 Jan 2022]:\tJars, I think, would edit the programs and he designed them, but my job was to put them together. We had a Uher tape recorder which was rarely used–it was a small, portable recorder. We had a Nagra which is a Swiss built small recorder that took small reels, but it was portable so we could take that out into the field. And I have a really strong memory of going in the dead of winter with my arm in a cast and this heavy tape recorder trudging through the snow from the Biological Sciences building to the Humanities to interview Rudy Wieb and it took me forever to get there and get my parka off and get the reels done. Poor Rudy. But he was such a prince, such a king of a man, you know, he gave me this fantastic interview. And then he helped me pack up and he even zipped me up because I couldn’t zip myself up with my hand. That tape recorder provided the best recording. Then we had two Ampex decks, reel-to-reel decks. The Ampex were used for editing, so we would listen to the interview first once across, make our notes, and then begin editing out what we didn’t want. We would cut on the diagonal, a little metal bar, it had a slot in it for the tape and a sliced whole. And we would use clear splicing tape to put the ends together. [Sound Effect: Stretching Tape, Cutting Tape] And tape them across. And then we had two Revox reel-to-reel players that handled the large ten-inch reels, and we used them for mastering. So once we had our show complete and edited, we would record the master tape from one deck to the other. The problem with the Revoxes were they had light-sensitive heads. So, if a splice was not very well done and you had a gap and the light came through and hit the head that was playing back, the playback head, it would stop, but only the take up reel would stop, not the letting-down reel. So you get this dump of tape. You just sit and babysit those.\n27:40\tNick Beauchesne:\tToday, podcast producers have access to online sound libraries with countless sound effects available at the click of a mouse. But in the heyday of alternative radio, sound design was done by hand. Campus radio producers like Jars and Terri would have to create sound effects themselves in the studio or track down physical recordings and transfer them from a record onto reel-to-reel tapes. The magnetic tape could then be sliced by hand into samples and remixed. We asked Jars and Terry about the eclectic musical stings and sound effects samples used in “Voiceprint”, “Celebrations”, and “Paper Tygers”.\n28:20\tArchival audio, “Voiceprint”, 1981:\t[Electronic sound effects]\n28:26\tAudio Recording, Jars Balan, Interview, 4 Jan 2022]:\tThe sounds we used for the different subheadings of the show, were a collective effort. Some of them were my ideas. I’d go looking for something that I thought would work well there. Roman Onofrijchuk was very good, I think Terri helped out. We decided early on with “Voiceprint” [Music: Funky Electronic Reverberation] it was a funky, technical thing that we were doing to go with the sound effects for that. “Celebrations” was just my choice. I thought, well, okay, so it’s called Celebrations.\n28:49\tArchival audio, “Celebrations” Intro Music, 1983:\t[Trumpet Fanfare]\n28:50\tAudio Recording, Jars Balan, Interview, [4 Jan 2022]:\tA fanfare was perfect, that brassy upbeat. I was a member of the Edmonton public library and you could take out records and so I took a whole bunch of classical records that I thought I might find something on and found that particular fanfare which is identified at the end of the show. It was a combination of talents, I guess, that came in to contribute towards it.\n29:24\tAudio Recording, Terri Wynnyk, Interview, [7 Jan 2022]:\tWe listened to different programming on BBC and NPR. We had a library of albums [Sound: Flipping Through Tapes] at radio and TV and of course I had I sort of had access to the stuff over at CJSR, as well. We had things like tubular bells [Bells Chime]. For “Sacred Circle”, I think we had a lot of really mystical and choral music [Choral Singing].\n29:54\tNick Beauchesne:\t[Choral Singing Continues] “Sacred Circle”, by the way, is another UAlberta radio show that Terri worked on. But that is a story for another podcast episode, another paper.\n30:04\tAudio Recording, Terri Wynnyk, Interview, [7 Jan 2022]:\tAnd something would come up from the stuff that was being done at Convocation Hall because, although often they performed –my favourites were the old classics they also performed new music. And new music is very exciting because it could be atonal, [Music: Atonal Sounds] it can be twelve-tone. [Music: Twelve-Tone Sounds] We had a few sound effects albums because now you can get anything you want from the internet. But we actually had a couple of records where you that you could queue up. We got a lot of that. We nearly wore those sound effects albums out using them for every kind of sound we needed. [Music Fades]\n30:55\tNick Beauchesne:\tThese sound effects tapes are probably still gathering dust in the University of Alberta archives. The library’s inventory includes cassettes from 1979, with labels like “English meadow, night in the country,” “ultimate thunderstorm,” and “shell and gun fire.” The experimental sound design of late 1970s campus radio programs also coincides with the rise of the Canadian avant-garde sound poetry scene. The literary guests that Jars invited on air brought their own unique flavours to the show. For instance, as part of the “Celebrations” series, Jars interviewed poets Stephen Scobie and Douglas Barbour. At the time, Scobie and Barbour were both professors in the English Department. They performed poetry on campus under the shared stage name “Re:Sounding.” And their live shows had quite the reputation. A reviewer for The Gateway student paper describes Scobie and Barbour’s spoken word shows as “unforgettable madness.” The following is my dramatic re-enactment of the performance review:\n32:06\tAudio Recording, Re-enactmnet of The Gateway \t[Sound Effect: Typewriter Clacking] These two English professors think and act primal barbarism (pun intended)… I looked out accompanied by the sound of explosive static in the speakers to find Barbour hopping from one box to another repeatedly yelling something like “B-Bible dible-u,” while Scobie made a long spitting hiss into the microphone… this atavism went on for ten minutes. I was amazed at their vocal stamina… a crude finale to what had been for the most part a tasteful evening.\n32:38\tNick Beauchesne:\t[Sound Effect: Recording Buzz] Here’s a clip from their performance of their poem “What the One Voice” recorded live-in-studio for the “Celebrations” program in 1985.\n32:50\tArchival audio, “What the One Voice,” Stephen Scobie and Douglas Barbour, Re:Sounding, 1983:\t\n[Overlapping Voices] What the one voice affirms the other denies. What the one voice conceals, the other displays. When the one voice says yes the other says no. When the one voice is silent, the other voice cries. What the one voice believes, the other voice doubts. [Repetition, Voices Diverging and Swapping Lines] The voice of the left mind, the voice of the right. The voice of the right mind, the voice of the left. [Repetition, Volume Increasing and Then Dropping to Whispers]\n33:58\tNick Beauchesne:\tWhen we first heard this clip, Chelsea, Ariel and I wondered if Jars had attended Barbour’s live poetry reading series, hosted in the English Department. His answer caught us by surprise!\n34:10\tAudio Recording, Jars Balan, Interview, [28 Mar 2022]:\tI not only watched them perform. I performed at events with them.\n34:14\tNick Beauchesne:\tJars had created a collection of sound poems for his thesis project. Scobie and Barbour were his supervisors. Under their tutelage, he rubbed shoulders with the rock stars of the Canadian sound poetry scene. Jars remembers taking the stage with the Four Horsemen, fronted by bpNichol and Steve McCaffery, who were like the Pink Floyd of avant garde poetry. Jars had invited his family to the event.\n34:40\tAudio Recording, Jars Balan, Interview, [24 Mar 2021]:\tAll these Ukrainians came, my grandmother among them. And I mean they sat there with their jaws on the floor. [Laughs]They thought these people are crazy! Making these sounds and jumping around on stage and everything like that. Sound poetry explores that area between music vocalizations and literature. I’m interested in these gray areas, I guess, which may be the best way to put it.\n35:06\tNick Beauchesne:\tOne of the great achievements of the “Celebrations” series is a very personal touch to discussing individual authors and poets, their works and their lives – especially as more time passes, and more and more of these people are leaving this world. They leave behind a special “voice print” in the form of Jars’s “Celebrations”. The “Re:Sounding” clip hits that much harder, knowing of Douglas Barbour’s passing in 2021, just a few months before this podcast episode was produced. Another clip from the CKUA archive that touched us was a reading of “Stellar Rhyme,” a poem by the great Phyllis Webb, who also passed in the year 2021.\n35:52\tArchival audio, “Stellar Rhyme,” Phyllis Webb, “Celebrations”, 1983: \t\n[Page Flipping] A ball star, tiny columns and plates falling from very cold air, a quick curve into sky. My surprised winter breath, a snowflake caught midway in your throat.\n36:15\tAriel Kroon:\tJars was also a talented interviewer, and he had a special knack for getting the guests on his shows to open up. He explains that he realized early on that being interviewed for a radio show, even a lesser-known campus show with a studio in the biology basement, could be intimidating. Once he placed a microphone in someone’s face and did a sound check, people would freeze up. So, he took a different approach.\n36:38\tAudio Recording, Jars Balan, Interview, [4 Jan 2022]:\tOne of the things I learned was how to ease them into the interviews. I would meet them when they came in and help them take off their coat and start chatting with them and stuff. We’d sit down, and I’d click on the microphones. And we’d just keep talking about this, that. You know, their time at the university. General stuff. Get them comfortable talking. And I’d just ask, “So tell me how did you get interested in psycholinguistics?” A light would come on in their heads saying, like, oh wow, the interview has begun! And it made it much more smooth.\n37:04\tAriel Kroon:\tOne of Jars’ most memorable guests was poet Ann Cameron. He interviewed Cameron for an episode of Voiceprint called “Women’s Language and Literature: a Voice and a Room of One’s Own.” Only a few clips made it into the final episode. But the raw interview file is riveting. They talked for almost an hour. We were captivated by her candid discussion of everything from sexism to motherhood to her contempt for the label of “poetess.”\n37:32\tArchival audio, Jars Balan, “Voiceprint”, 1981:\tDo you object to being identified as a woman writer?\n37:37\tArchival audio, Ann Cameron, “Voiceprint”, 1981:\tNo, I am a woman, and I am a writer.\n37:40\tArchival audio, Jars Balan, “Voiceprint”, 1981:\tYou don’t mind having… I mean there are a lot of people who…\n37:43\tArchival audio, Ann Cameron, “Voiceprint”, 1981:\tI object to being referred to as a “poetess.”\n37:46\tArchival audio, Jars Balan, “Voiceprint”, 1981:\tMm-hmm\n37:47\tArchival audio, Ann Cameron, “Voiceprint”, 1981:\tSomehow a poet, semantically or whatever, a poet has has dignity and pride and has an ability to use words and move people, and a poetess is hung on a hook of iambic pentameter and nobody bothers [Laughs].\n38:12\tArchival audio, Jars Balan, “Voiceprint”, 1981:\tWell, it’s the ending is a… the suffix is a… has a diminutive, derivative quality to it.\n38:21\tArchival audio, Ann Cameron, “Voiceprint”, 1981:\tIt…what does really piss me off is when someone comes up and says, “Oh, I read the thing you wrote. My, you write just like a man!” And I used to choke, just choke! And now, I smile demurely and say, “Oh shit, I hope not!” [Laughs].\n38:45\tAriel Kroon:\tThe campus radio shows in the University of Alberta archive are full of gems like these, from Canadian authors who often engage with Jars on a deeply personal level, sharing stories about their work and their lives. These audio artifacts transport us back to a particular moment in the history of Canadian literature, and also a particular moment in the history of alternative radio.\n39:13\tArchival audio, “Voiceprint”, 1983:\t[Sound Effect: Warning Tone] [Announcer Voice] Warning. The following program candidly examples the subject of pornography, censorship, and linguistic taboos. Listener discretion is advised.\n39:23\tArchival audio, Jars Balan,“Voiceprint”, 1983:\tMy name is Jars Balan. And tonight I’ll be exploring the delicate issue of profanity in language and literature. Our guests include several people fascinated by four-letter words, including comedian George Carlin.\n39:36\tChelsea Miya:\tThe final episode of Voiceprint never made it to air. The subject of the episode was “Linguistic Taboos and Censorship”. Ironically, this episode about censorship was what got the show kicked off CKUA. Jars had included a clip from comedian George Carlin’s infamous monologue. You might have heard it. It’s about the “seven words you can’t use in television.”\n39:58\tArchival Audio, \nGeorge Carlin, “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television,” 1978: \n\nArchival audio, George Carlin, “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television,” 1978: Bad words! That’s what they told us they were, remember? That’s a bad word! You know: bad words, bad thoughts, bad intentions… and words! You know the seven, don’t you? That you can’t say on television: Shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, and tits. Huh? [Audience Laughter, Applause].\n40:26\tChelsea Miya:\tFor the ACCESS-run CKUA station, remember this is the ACCESS that emphasized “educational programming,” airing the Carlin clip crossed a line. They said Jars had “contravened the station’s policy on obscene language.” The Edmonton Journal criticized CKUA for being “too sensitive” about the whole issue. In the editor’s view, the “program in question was a sober academic discussion.” Jars himself is quoted in the article. And he laments the decision as “truly unfortunate.” “Voiceprint” was, he says, “serious radio” and they’d been “castrated!” Again, Jars’s words, not mine. [Sound Effect: Electronic Beeping]. And so… Voiceprint came to an end. Until, that is, it was rediscovered, four decades later, by the SpokenWeb research team. [Boxes Opening] With a little help from Jars..\n41:22\tAudio Recording, Jars Balan, Interview, [24 May 2021]:\tWell I think I got about two bankers boxes’ worth of stuff. Because I’ve got stuff in the shed and I’ve got stuff here. So, I could bring this to campus. [Tape Recording Starting]\n41:32\tAriel Kroon:\tJars gave us additional recordings of “Voiceprint”, and folders upon folders of handwritten production notes. Sifting through this material, we were amazed at the sheer amount of work each participant put into producing these shows, often without knowing who (if anyone) would be listening. Nowadays, the lived reality of campus radio from 40 years ago seems so foreign to those of us working on podcasts. For example, we are able to access listener metrics with the click of a mouse through podcasting hosting platforms, and insert audio very easily without having to cut up the physical recording media.\n42:09\tAudio Recording, Stacey Copeland, Interview, [2 Feb 2022]:\tWe often hear [Laughs] all the different terms like “knowledge mobilization,” getting thrown around as really important. Well, what does that actually look like? If we’re thinking about those kinds of aspects of projects being important, we need to start seriously thinking about how we can change our research into more publicly accessible work.\n42:29\tAriel Kroon:\tThis is Stacey Copeland, one of the producers of the Amplify Podcast Network. One of the Amplify Podcast Network’s goals is to have podcasting recognized by academic institutes as legitimate scholarly work.\n42:43\tAudio Recording, Stacey Copeland, Interview, [2 Feb 2022]:\tWhat Amplify is interested in doing is not only bringing scholarly podcasts to light, but thinking about how to make them count as scholarship in more formal ways as well through peer review. So, thinking about the podcast equivalent to a manuscript.\n43:01\tAriel Kroon:\t[Sound Effect: Printing Press Mechanizations] The printed journal or book has long been held up as the gold standard of academic research, how a scholar measured the impact of their research. But these traditional forms of scholarly production can be alienating. As academics, we’re removed from the process of “making knowledge” in a material, hands-on way. Much like Jars and Terri did with campus radio shows like “Celebrations” and “Voiceprint”, today scholars are using podcasting to reconnect with their research and, at the same time, find an audience outside of academia.\n43:35\tAudio Recording, Stacey Copeland, Interview, [2 Feb 2022]:\tFor me it often means learning how to better articulate my research, in general. If you can’t talk about your research with your grandma [Laughs] then you really need to start rethinking what your scholarship’s bringing to the world and what it’s actually contributing beyond your specific discipline. And, when you start to engage in something like making a podcast, it brings up a lot of those bigger conversations and bigger questions.\n44:03\tAriel Kroon:\tIn addition to her work with the Amplify Podcast Network, Stacey researches the history of queer and feminist radio. She points out how campus and community radio in the 70s and 80s pushed back against the mainstream. In this sense, shows like Voiceprint paved the way for podcasts, as a more experimental alternative to major public and commercial broadcasters.\n44:25\tAudio Recording, Stacey Copeland, Interview, [2 Feb 2022]:\tWhen we’re looking at pre-Internet era, community radio and campus radio in particular played a huge role in creating any sort of space for community and any sort of political discussion that didn’t fit CBC or private commercial radio. So, spaces to have those more local-oriented conversations and also conversations around queer act activism, around racial activism, and politics and movements across different decades in Canada that just didn’t get the airtime on, say, a CBC. And when the Internet didn’t exist, these were the only spaces we could have those conversations.\n45:06\tNick Beauchesne:\t[Start Music: Ambient Music] Jars did not win his battle with ACCESS, and “Voiceprint” was ultimately banned. But he has no regrets. As Jars himself put it, the show “concluded with an exclamation point, which wasn’t necessarily a bad way to go out.” Through ups and downs, highs and lows, Jars still cherishes the memories of his time as a campus radio host. [End Music: Ambient Music]\n45:30\tAudio Recording, Jars Balan, Interview, [4 Jan 2022]:\tRadio is no longer the same thing that it was when these shows were produced. When I think back on the way we edited with a razor blade and tape to do the splicing and how now all of that just done with dials, digitally and you don’t have a tape even is a world of difference. And I enjoyed the tactile thing of of doing the cuts. And I got good at it.\n45:54\tNick Beauchesne:\tFor Jars, campus radio is a chance for academics to connect with the public in a meaningful way, to lend voice to larger social and political conversations which affect us all.\n46:06\tAudio Recording, Jars Balan, Interview, [4 Jan 2022]:\tOne of the things that’s changed about the university is that in an attempt to combat this image of being an ivory tower, academics now realize it’s important to reach out into a wider audience. That if society is going to support universities financially, morally, politically, they need to be able to show the worth of the learning that goes on at the university. And so sharing that knowledge, sharing that experience is very important. And I think more scholars realize that.\n46:35\tNick Beauchesne:\tAfter graduating from UAlberta, Jars continued to write and perform sound poetry. He also went on to teach remote learning courses in Australia. This was before the internet, so Jars would record his lectures on tape, and those tapes would then be mailed to students. To his surprise, being a distance educator was a lot like being a radio host.\n46:59\tAudio Recording, Jars Balan, Interview, [24 May 2021]:\tThe fact that I had to record these in a studio and sit for three hours, they are three-hour lectures, it really helped the fact that I was used to sitting in front of a microphone in a studio [Sound Effect: Recording Sounds] , and I could hold forth. I just make notes, spread them out on the thing, and talk.\n47:15\tNick Beauchesne:\tJars later returned to the University of Alberta where he was hired by the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies.\n47:22\tChelsea Miya:\tAs for Terri, she made the leap from radio to film, devoting her life to telling stories about social justice, women’s rights, and the arts.\n47:31\tAudio Recording, Terri Wynnyk, Interview, [7 Jan 2022]:\tAfter I left radio, I became a documentary filmmaker and I’ve spent my entire career doing that. But I did love radio first and foremost: that was my passion, my heart.\n47:43\tChelsea Miya:\tWe asked Terri if she had any advice for the next generation of aspiring academic podcast.\n47:50\tAudio Recording, Terri Wynnyk, Interview, [7 Jan 2022]:\t[Start Music: “Limoncello” by Kern PKL] Voiceprint was fun! Voiceprint was so rigorous. The first thing I would pass on is: listen to people, and listen with an open mind. Don’t bring your prejudices to what you’re listening to. Listen with an open mind. And I would say, always speak. Always speak your truth. Be respectful when you speak it, but speak so that you can articulate yourself. Speak so that you can make yourself understood. Speak so that you can express your frustrations in a way that are respected, speak so that you’re not just a dumb human being on this planet, but you contribute to the rest of society. [End Music: “Limoncello” by Kern PKL]\n49:02\tAriel Kroon:\t[Music Starts: “Celebrations” Fanfare] With that, we conclude this brief profile from the campus radio history archives at the University of Alberta. We’d like to thank Arianne Smith-Piquette from CKUA and Marissa Fraser from UAlberta’s Archives and Special Collections. We’d also like to give a special shout out to SpokenWeb Alberta researcher Zachary Morrisson, who worked behind the scenes on this episode. All works cited and contributors can be found in the show notes for this episode. This is myself, Ariel Kroon, on behalf of my colleagues Chelsea Miya, and Nick Beauchesne, bidding you a pleasant good evening. [End Music: “Celebrations” Fanfare]\n49:50\tHannah McGregor:\t[Start Music: SpokenWeb 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 Ariel Kroon, Nick Beauchesne, and Chelsea Miya of the University of Alberta. Our podcast project manager and supervising producer is Judith Burr—and next month, this position will be taken over by our new supervising producer, Kate Moffatt. 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. Stay tuned to your podcast feed later this month for ShortCuts with Katherine McLeod, mini 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":3.062659},{"id":"9627","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 S3E10, “starry and full of glory”: Phyllis Webb, in Memoriam, 4 July 2022, Collis"],"item_title_source":["SpokenWeb Podcast web page."],"item_title_note":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/starry-and-full-of-glory-phyllis-webb-in-memoriam/"],"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 3"],"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":["Stephen Collis"],"creator_names_search":["Stephen Collis"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/61873157\",\"name\":\"Stephen Collis\",\"dates\":\"1965\",\"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/616261ad-c0b6-4d7d-8634-17bbd4d166e8/audio/af1aede3-b3a7-4498-8c72-a223ddb811b8/default_tc.mp3?nocache\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"s3e10-mp3.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"44.1 kHz\",\"duration\":\"00:49:26\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"71,197,047 bytes\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"MP3 audio\",\"title\":\"s3e10-mp3\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/starry-and-full-of-glory-phyllis-webb-in-memoriam/\"}]"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"2022-07-04\",\"type\":\"Publication Date\",\"notes\":\"\",\"source\":\"\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/3725404708\",\"venue\":\"Simon Fraser University\",\"notes\":\"\",\"address\":\"515 West Hastings Street Vancouver, B.C, V6B 5K3\",\"latitude\":\"49.2824032\",\"longitude\":\"-123.1085513\"}]"],"Address":["515 West Hastings Street Vancouver, B.C, V6B 5K3"],"Venue":["Simon Fraser University"],"City":["Vancouver, British Columbia"],"Note":["[]"],"Related_works":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"Camus, Albert. The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays. Trans. Justin O’Brien. New York: Knopf, 1961.\\n\\nDuncan, Robert. Quoted in Thom Gunn, “Adventurous Song: Robert Duncan as Romantic Modernist.” The Three Penny Opera no. 47 (Autumn 1991): 9-13.\\n\\nKeats, John. Letter to George and Tom Keats, 21 December 1817. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/69384/selections-from-keatss-letters\\n\\nLibrary and Archives Canada. Item: Webb, Phyllis – Library and Archives Canada (bac-lac.gc.ca)\\n\\n“The Coast is Only a Line: Phyllis Webb reading at the SFU Art Gallery on July 9, 1981.” Audio recording (cassette) in Reading in BC Collection, Simon Fraser University.\\n\\nRobinson, Erin. Wet Dream. Kingston: Brick Books, 2022.\\n\\nWebb, Phyllis. Peacock Blue: The Collected Poems of Phyllis Webb. Ed. John Hulccop. Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2014.\\n\\n—. Talking. Quadrant Editions, 1982.\"}]"],"_version_":1853670549727739904,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:54.290Z","contents":["This episode is a commemoration of the life and work of Canadian poet Phyllis Webb (1927-2021). Drawing upon archival recordings of Webb’s readings, poet Stephen Collis, a friend of Webb’s, charts a path through the poet’s work by following the “stars” frequently referred to in her poetry—from the 1950s through the 1980s. Included in the podcast are two interviews, discussing specific poems, with former Canadian Parliamentary Poet Laureate Fred Wah, and poet Isabella Wang, with whom Collis discusses a recorded reading of an unpublished, uncollected poem.\n\nSpecial thanks to Kate Moffatt for her production support in the making of this episode, and to Simon Fraser University’s Special Collections and Rare Books and Library and Archives Canada for the archival recordings featured.\n\n00:19\tSpokenWeb Podcast Theme Music:\t[Instrumental Overlapped With Feminine Voice] Can you hear me? I don’t know how much projection to do here.\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. [End Music: SpokenWeb Podcast Theme Music].\n \n\nMy 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. “She was someone I needed to know, someone who made the writing of my own poetry possible.” That is one of the ways that SFU English professor Stephen Collis remembers Canadian poet Phyllis Webb. Webb passed away on November 11th, 2021. Steve has created this episode as a site of thinking through and thinking with Webb’s poetry and her long and acclaimed career as her friend and her literary executor. This is another podcast episode that shows us how ideas and literary learning communities can be cultivated by preserving and caring for archival recordings. Those recorded writers continue to be vocal teachers. Phyllis Webb’s voice resounds through this episode. We hear her in the archival recordings of her beautiful and deliberate poetry readings. We hear her work flowing through Steve’s memories, analysis, and reflections. And we hear her animating the conversations that Steve records with poet Isabella Wang and former Canadian parliamentary poet laureate Fred Wah to discuss their memories and interpretations of her life and work. This episode allows you to engage with the presence and power of Webb’s legacy in these audible scenes of remembering. Steve invites us to participate in the constellations of ideas and people that are connected through Webb’s life and poetry.\n\n \n\nStephen Collis is the author of a dozen books of poetry and prose, including Almost Islands: Phyllis Webb and the Pursuit of the Unwritten, a memoir of his friendship with Webb. He created this episode with production support from Kate Moffatt and with additional audio courtesy of Special Collections and Rare Books at Simon Fraser University and Library and Archives Canada. Here is Episode 10 of Season Three of the Spoken Webb podcast, ‘Starry and full of Glory’: Phyllis Webb, In Memoriam. [Musical Interlude: SpokenWeb Podcast Theme Music]\n\n \n\n03:08\tStephen Collis:\t[Start Music: Atmospheric Tones] When Phyllis Webb, Canadian poet and former broadcaster, passed away last year, it felt like a cosmic event. She died on November 11 2021—remembrance day—just as a massive storm—an atmospheric river, in fact—arrived out of the Pacific, flooding farmland, overwhelming river banks, and sending hillsides, weakened by the summer’s forest fires, rushing down into gorges, washing out bridges and sweeping away homes on the floodplain. It has been a wet and grey winter. Whenever I can, I look for the stars’ rare appearance in the nighttime sky. “Passed away” is such a strange expression. Into the stars, we sometimes have imagined—that’s where the dead go, “starry and full of glory,” as Phyllis wrote.\n \n\nWhere to begin? Phyllis Webb began in Victoria, in 1927, where she was raised by her mother, later attending the University of British Columbia, studying literature and philosophy; was the youngest person, at 22 years old, to run for elected office in Canada, as a candidate for the socialist Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, lost, began to write poetry, publishing many volumes in the decades ahead, worked for the CBC, co-founding the long-running radio program Ideas, stopped writing when words “abandoned her”, as she said, in her sixties, began to make collages and to paint, carrying this practice into her 80s. That’s the one-sentence biography.\n\n \n\nBut, that’s not where I want to begin either.\n\n“There Are the Poems,” Phyllis Webb titled one of her poems, offering an answer to my question. Start with the poems. I leafed through the almost 500 pages of Peacock Blue, her Collected Poems, published by Vancouver’s Talonbooks in 2014. I felt like I was star-gazing—just looking in wonder at the familiar and fixed, constellations of words that had long guided me. I visited Phyllis at her Salt Spring Island home, three or four times a year, for the last two decades of her life. I don’t know that I can call her a mentor. That word is both too large and too small. She was someone I needed to know and enjoyed knowing, someone who made the writing of my own poetry possible—just by being there. Just by existing—and being reachable, by letter, phone, or ferry. In returning to her poems after her death, I wasn’t sure what might rise to the surface this time. The atmospheric river passed on, the night skies cleared. I saw—stars\n\n06:15\tArchival Recording, Phyllis Webb, 1964:\t[Sound Effect: Tape Clicking In] It’s called “The Glass Castle”. The glass castle is my image for the mind that if out motive has its public beauty, it can contain both talisman and leaf and private action, homely disbelief. And I have lived there as you must and scratched with diamond and gathered diamond dust have signed the castle tents and fragile glass and heard the antique cause and stoned Cassandras call me and I answered in the one voice I knew: I am here. I do not know, but move the symbols and polished up the view. For who can refrain from action. There is always a princely kiss for the sleeping beauty. When even to put out the light takes a steady hand for the rewarded darkness in the glass castle is starry and full of glory. I do not mean I shall not crack the pain. I merely make a statement judicious and polite that in this poise of crystal space I balance and I claim the five gods of reality to bless and keep me sane. [Sound Effect: Tape Finishing, Clicking Out]\n07:49\tStephen Collis:\tThe stars were everywhere in Phyllis’s work, it turned out. If one polished the mind, however fragile it might be, however likely to increase the darkness surrounding thought, the reward was starry and glorious. [Start Music: Atmospheric Tones] Stars often spangle the darkest passages of Webb’s poetry—they are there in the closing lines of her poem of existential crisis, “To Friends Who Have Also Considered Suicide,” where she invokes “the bright crustaceans of the oversky.” Poetry, for this poet, is a crucial mode of thought—and living. Her “consideration” of suicide here is related to French philosopher Albert Camus’s claim that whether to end or continue one’s life was the “only” philosophical question. Luckily Webb also had other questions to ask of her stars.\n \n\nThey are connectors, bridges, means of relating the above and below, the distant and the near—the unfathomably long reaches of spacetime that cosmic light crosses and the immediacies of the days and nights of humble human lives. So “the star in the cold, staring sky” (this is from an early poem called “Double Entendre”) is also “the star reflected in the human eye.” In a poem written over three decades later, Webb is in a more playful mood, willing to “tangle with invisible / superstrings” as she entertains quantum theory “while the planets burn” (this from the poem “A Model of the Universe,” from her final, 1990 collection, Hanging Fire). Poetry, despite being, as Webb writes, quote, “cloaked in sheer / profundities of otherness,” is about the reach over and towards that otherness. I think Webb would have agreed with the contemporary American poet Tongo Eisen-Martin, who describes poets as, quote, “the healers of the continuum.” Stars provide healing light. [End Music: Atmospheric Tones]\n\n10:04\tStephen Collis:\tNot long ago, Simon Fraser University student Isabella Wang brought an unpublished, and to me previously unknown poem of Webb’s to my attention. That poem was under the influence of the stars too. Isabella is a fine poet in her own right, author of the wonderful debut collection Pebble Swing, which contains a sequence of poems written in response to Webb’s Ghazals from her book Water and Light. I spoke to Isabella in my office at SFU, where we also listened to the poem, “Here I Am, Reading at the Planetarium.”\n \n\n10:40\tStephen Collis, Interview, 3 Feb 2022:\tIsabella, how did you find this poem?\n10:42\tIsabella Wang, Interview, 3 Feb 2022:\tSo I was working as an RA for SpokenWeb in my first or second year. And so I was introduced to the BC Readings Archive of over 5,000 tapes in the Special Collections vault. And of course, the first tapes that I gravitated towards, that I searched for were tapes of Phyllis Webb. And, this was a poet whom I had studied significantly in classes and stuff and heard so much about through other poets’ stories. And for someone I had never met and someone who doesn’t do live readings anymore, who doesn’t publish anymore, it was just surreal. And it was astounding. I couldn’t believe it when I put it into a type player [Sound Effect: Tape Clicking] and her voice came up and her readings came up of poems I had actually read. It was just amazing.\n11:42\tArchival Audio, Phyllis Webb, at  SFU Art Gallery, 9 July 1981:\t[Sound Effect: Tape Clicking, In] Here I am reading at the planetarium. The planet – arium. Arium. The planet I have just discovered in downtown Toronto. Stars, stars, stars, stars. Give me poets a handfull of dust before the skies fall down. [Sound Effect: Tape Clicking, Out]\n12:15\tIsabella Wang, Interview, 3 Feb 2022:\n \n\n[Music Interlude: Atmospheric Tones] And so later on, I had the idea to make recordings, 30 minute long recordings of her readings at past events, into individual playlist of poems so that each poem would be titled and be cut into their own kind of playlist. So that instead of going into the 30 minute long recording not knowing what to look for they could just look up any poem they wanted to listen to.\n12:44\tStephen Collis, Interview, 3 Feb 2022:\tNice.\n12:44\tIsabella Wang, Interview, 3 Feb 2022:\n \n\nSo I had the idea of doing that. So “Here I Am, [Reading] at the Planetarium” was the first poem that came up for the first recording that I worked with, cuz I was cutting the poems in order. And this was the first one that she came up and of course it makes sense cuz she read this as a preface to her reading.\n13:07\tStephen Collis, Interview, 3 Feb 2022:\tYeah.\n13:08\tIsabella Wang, Interview, 3 Feb 2022:\n \n\nBut when I heard it, I was like, [Start Music: Atmospheric Tones] I don’t ever remember reading it in the Collected Poems. And then I looked back and I couldn’t find the title anywhere in the table of contents. So of course I wrote to you and I was like, “Do you remember this poem? Have you ever read it anywhere?” And at first you thought you had read it somewhere. But then when we tried to look for it on paper, we just couldn’t find it.\n13:34\tStephen Collis, Interview, 3 Feb 2022:\n \n\nYeah. So my suspicion was that maybe I’d read it in the archive once in Ottawa, but I can’t be sure. And we don’t have a paper copy and don’t have access to that archive right now. [End Music: Atmospheric Tones]So we’re in this position of having to reconstruct a poem on paper that we’ve never seen if we wanna create a written copy. So how do you think we go about figuring out things like line breaks or layout or anything like that with the poem?\n13:55\tIsabella Wang, Interview, 3 Feb 2022:\n \n\nYeah. So we had the cool and fun idea of just listening to this poem separately and then coming up with our own version or two of this transliterated poem on paper and then comparing it with each other. So it’s kind of like a surprise and reveal. And we had, we ended up with really different versions of what the poem might look like, but we kind of had similar approaches. We looked, we listened to the recording, we looked at the metadata of the tape. So we knew when this reading took place. And then in that recording, Phyllis did mention that she wrote this poem for another reading that happened recently, quote, “recently”. So we knew it kind of happened between, I think The Sea is also a Garden and her book Wilson’s Bow. So we knew kind of the forms that she was working with, her styles and her line breaks her kind of, her voice. And the flow of her voice at the time. And that was one approach that we took.\n15:11\tStephen Collis, Interview, 3 Feb 2022:\tLike I think we had similar line breaks didn’t we?\n15:13\tIsabella Wang, Interview, 3 Feb 2022:\tWe did have similar line breaks.\n15:14\tStephen Collis, Interview, 3 Feb 2022:\tDifferent layouts, but similar, like she reads with such emphasis, you could sort of hear where a line break would go.\n15:20\tIsabella Wang, Interview, 3 Feb 2022:\n \n\nYeah. So the way I structured my version was more like in the traditional stanzas. Everything is aligned to the left. We – it had traditional line breaks. And I just worked with where her voice kind of emphasized and paused and all that. You had the idea of transcribing it in a version that kind of flows a bit more kind of in terms of the form as well. And kind of moves across the page to almost like a painting it’s more free flowing. And that was really cool because this poem actually precedes her poem. What was it? Snowflakes?\n16:03\tStephen Collis, Interview, 3 Feb 2022:\tSnow crystals…What is it? Field Guide to Snow Crystals.\n16:05\tIsabella Wang, Interview, 3 Feb 2022:\n \n\nField Guide to Snow Crystals.\n \n\nYeah. So in the reading, she read this as a preface. And the right after she read that poem. [Start Music: Chimes Instrumental] And the thing is, we do have a transcription of this poem published in her book Talking. And the way Field Guide to Snow Crystals. is structured is also in that similar free flowing form, you know, lines kind of move kind of organically across the page. And so we were able to go on that a bit and see, okay, where did she emphasize and pause while reading “Snow Crystals” poem and then yeah. And so we ultimately worked with and decided to go with your version more. [End Music: Chimes Instrumental]\n\n16:53\tStephen Collis, Interview, 3 Feb 2022:\tI win. [Laughs].\n16:54\tIsabella Wang, Interview,3 Feb 2022:\tYes. You win.\n16:55\tStephen Collis, Interview,3 Feb 2022:\tWell, you know what, the other thing I find interesting is in snow crystals, it’s kind of one of those sciencey poems.\n17:01\tIsabella Wang, Interview, 3 Feb 2022:\tYes.\n17:01\tStephen Collis, Interview, 3 Feb 2022:\n \n\nShe uses scientific language and has this flow all over the page, like she’s thinking her way through these complicated sounds and words. There’s other poems like that too. I think whenever she’s dealing with scientific kind of things. The form becomes more fluid and less, you know, traditionally poetic and more exploratory maybe. And so that’s kind of what I was thinking. And I think you agreed that with this poem that might make sense.\n \n\nAnd just, just finally, what do you like about this poem? What attracts you to it? Or what do you find interesting in it?\n\n17:28\tIsabella Wang, Interview, 3 Feb 2022:\n \n\nFirst of all, it’s such a concise poem. It’s one of her shorter poems and yet it packs so much, it just, those last lines just grabs at me The sense that this was a poem she had composed for a festival at the planetarium. Yeah. And just that alone. Right. Poets gathered to read it none other than the planetarium feels so dreamy. [Start Music: Atmospheric Tones]\n17:54\tStephen Collis, Interview, 3 Feb 2022:\tUnder the stars. [Laughs]\n17:55\tIsabella Wang, Interview, 3 Feb 2022:\tExactly. I wish we had that all the time here.\n17:59\tStephen Collis, Interview, 3 Feb 2022:\t[Laughs] Right.\n18:00\tIsabella Wang, Interview, 3 Feb 2022:\n \n\nAnd then, so, and in some ways she captures that exact feeling, not only of kind of the stariness of the planetarium itself, but also the feeling of being held and supported and connected with poets, other poets kind of like a community of constellations, individual poets. And then that line, right. “Give me poets a handful of dust before the skies fall down.” It lands with that community. It lands in that burning moment.\n18:35\tStephen Collis, Interview, 3 Feb 2022:\tYeah. And that feeling of danger and the need for each other and a fragile world. Yeah it’s Lovely.\n18:42\tIsabella Wang, Interview, 3 Feb 2022:\n \n\nYeah. For me, it’s like that –the planetary of it, it’s supposed to be such a big space, but maybe it’s because it’s a short poem it just feels really small. It feels compact.\n18:51\tStephen Collis, Interview, 3 Feb 2022:\tYeah. I love that. [End Music: Atmospheric Tones]\n \n\n19:04\tStephen Collis:\tI like Isabella’s description of the way words, in the Planetarium poem, “flow across the page” irregularly, as she said, like a painting [Start Music: Strings Instrumental] (that is, like paint on a painting—the surface of the page or canvas taken as a spatial field where the elements can be arranged relationally). I suggested this was “exploratory”—a way of using the poem, perhaps, to discover something—and then, in a brilliant turn of phrase, suggested you could see this in Webb’s “sciency poems.” [End Music: Strings Instrumental] That’s a technical, literary term—“sciency.” [Clears Throat]\n \n\nLet’s have a listen to one of those “sciency” poems, one Isabella mentioned too—“Field Guide to Snow Crystals,” which Webb included in her 1982 collection of essays and radio commentary, Talking.\n\n19:58\tArchival Audio, Phyllis Webb,  SFU Art Gallery, 9 July 1981:\t[Sound Effect: Tape Clicking, In] Field Guide to Snow Crystals. Stellar rime,/ star crystals. In a sunfield / of snow. No/ two crystals exactly alike, like / me and the double I’ve never known / or the four-leaf clover./ A down drifting / of snow. Spatial dendrites,/ irregular germs,/ snow grows, scales, skeletons fernlike extensions,/ needles, scrolls / and sheathes, branches./ Lightly or heavily/ rimed / Stars on cold ground shining./ Ice lattice! For the field guides me/my / flutterhand to a fistful of/ plates, clusters, minute columns./ Graupel-like snow of lump type/ solid and hollow bullets / cup / Cupped in my hand / thrown across a fiel / “or… a series of fields folded.” A ball, star (“tiny columns and plates fallen from very cold air”)/ a quick curve into/ sky/my / surprised/ winterbreath/ a snowflake / caught midway in your throat. [Sound Effect: Tape Clicking, Out]\n21:49\tStephen Collis:\t[Start Music: Atmospheric Tones] I suggest that poetic thinking—relational thinking—thinking by intuitive leaps and links—lateral connections and sudden shifts of scale, position and voice—allows not logic nor rational argument but embodied and felt movement over and through and in and along the contours of language. Webb, like many poets, works under the assumption that there is a valid pursuit of knowing that is lateral, oblique, latent, and relational and that is the work of poetry. I like how poet Erin Robinsong phrases this in her forthcoming book, Wet Dream:“we must work across realms / and poetry will be how.” In her “sciency” poems, Webb is doing just this: working across realms. [End Music: Atmospheric Tones]\n \n\nWebb’s “Field Guide” poem takes its title, and quotes liberally throughout, from a book of the same title published by Edward Lachapelle in 1969. The use of source material this way—a kind of repurposing of found material—is such a common poetic practice that is hardly bears mentioning, although it’s clear this particular book was a rich resource, as Webb [Start Music: Chime Instrumental], in an almost painterly way, applies the unique lexicon to her page. If stars are to be my guide through Webb’s work in this podcast, the stars, here, are playing a game of as above / so below—a chemical transformation where falling or fallen snow crystals and the stars above “rime,” as she writes several times in the poem. This is an expanded sense of “rime,” which Webb adapts from poet Robert Duncan: things that look alike, or mean alike, as well as things that sound alike, can “rime.” There’s also the play on r-i-m-e rime—the accumulation of ice tufts on frozen surfaces. [End Music: Chime Instrumental] Okay—I could get carried away with a close reading of this poem; let me just draw attention to its gorgeous concluding lines—where the speaker’s “surprised / winterbreath” (all one word—winterbreath) is likened to “a snowflake / caught midway in your throat.” [Start Music: Chime Instrumental] And that’s it, the poem leaving us there, with its words in our throat, melting like a snowflake on the tongue—or a star fading out as the sun begins to blue the morning sky. [End Music: Chime Instrumental] ]\n\n \n\nI asked poet Fred Wah if he’d be willing to talk about Phyllis’s work with me for this podcast, and he immediately said yes, and that he wanted to talk about one poem and one poem only. It’s called “Leaning,” from Webb’s book of Ghazal’s, Water and Light. The ghazal or [pronounces] ghazal is a Persian form—a poem written in couplets, but in its traditional practice, following numerous other rules, including subject matter (they are usually about love). Webb’s poems are, as she often called them, “anti-ghazals.” “Leaning” is perhaps the most anti- of all the poems in Webb’s book—especially in terms of subject matter\n\n25:13\tArchival Audio, Phyllis Webb,  ibrary and Archives Canada:\t[Sound Effect: Tape Clicking, In] I am halfway up the stairs/ of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. // Don’t go down. You are in this/ with me too.// I am leaning out of the Leaning/ Tower heading into the middle distance// where a fur-blue star contracts, becomes/ the ice-pond Brueghel’s figures are skating on.// North Magnetic pulls me like a flower/ out of the perpendicular// angles me into outer space/ an inch at a time, the slouch// of the ground, do you hear that? /the hiccup of the sludge about the stone.// (Rodin in Paris, his amanuensis, a torso …)/ I must change my life or crunch over// in vertigo, hands/ bloodying the inside tower walls// lichen and dirt under the fingernails/ Parsifal vocalizing in the crazy night// my sick head on the table where I write/slumped one degree from the horizontal // the whole culture leaning…// the phalloi of Mies, Columbus returning/ stars all short out – //And now this. Smelly tourist/ shuffling around my ears// climbing into the curvature. /They have paid good lira to get in here. //So have I. So did Einstein and Bohr./ Why should we ever come down, ever?// And you, are you still here // tilting in this stranded ark/ blind and seeing in the dark. [Sound Effect: Tape Clicking, Out]\n27:21\tStephen Collis:\tFred calls it “one of the best poems in Canadian literature.” And I think he should know. Fred Wah—he will cringe at me saying this—is a treasure of Canadian letters. He has had a huge influence on me and many other poets, writers and artists of the past few generations. A founding member of the TISH group of student poets at UBC at the beginning of the 1960s, Fred has gone on to a distinguished teaching career, writing dozens of books of poetry and prose. He has been recognized with a Governor General’s Award for poetry, and served a term as Canada’s Parliamentary Poet Laureate. Fred and I have visited Phyllis together several times, and it feels like we are deep into a many-years long conversation about her life and work. We spoke at Fred’s Strathcona home in East Vancouver.\n \n\n28:10\tFred Wah, Interview, East Vancouver, 8 March 2022:\tOne of the things I’m realizing about, you know, when you said you wanted to talk about the poem. And you start thinking more and more about it, you and you can’t – I can’t stop thinking about it. It just goes on and on. How aware Phyllis [Laughs] I keep thinking of SpokenWeb, spoken Webb. Webb.\n28:29\tStephen Collis, Interview, East Vancouver, 8 March 2022:\t[Shared Laughter] Exactly.\n28:30\tFred Wah, Interview, East Vancouver, 8 March 2022:\tBut, Phyllis was so compositionally aware of what she was doing. That her kind of composition mentality, if you like, her cognitive ability to just putting things together. So, you know, the book at the poem “Leaning” is just, it’s part of the section middle distance.\n \n\nSo the proposition is, if you start looking at like, and Pauline in her book on Webb, she did a lot of, she did some research on this from a particular point of view. [Start Music: Atmospheric Tones] But, you find that Phyllis has really been thinking about this in a larger context. This is an – this’t just an incidental poem. This is a poem that fits into a kind of discourse that she’s sort of in, in a large scale thing, over years.\n\n29:28\tStephen Collis, Interview, East Vancouver, 8 March 2022:\tThat’s right. I totally agree.\n29:30\tFred Wah, Interview, East Vancouver, 8 March 2022:\tAnd it starts fitting into all kinds of other things. And I hadn’t, I mean, I didn’t realize, Pauline mentioned this to me that Virginia Woolf’s essay “Leaning”. [End Music: Atmospheric Tones]\n29:45\tStephen Collis, Interview, East Vancouver, 8 March 2022::\tOh my gosh. I didn’t think of that either.\n29:46\tFred Wah, Interview, East Vancouver, 8 March 2022:\tYou know? And it’s an incredible thing. I know this is Paula doing research, but…\n29:52\tStephen Collis, Interview, East Vancouver, 8 March 2022::\t[Laughs] Presumably, so.\n29:54\tFred Wah, Interview, East Vancouver, 8 March 2022:\t“The Leaning Tower” was a paper that Woolf presented to the Workers Educational association. Brighton May, 1940.\n30:01\tStephen Collis, Interview, East Vancouver, 8 March 2022:\tAmazing.\n30:01\tFred Wah, Interview, East Vancouver, 8 March 2022:\tShe describes the privileged socioeconomic position of contemporary British writers as a leaning tower, quote, “trapped by their education, pinned down by their capital. They remained on top of their leaning tower and their state of mind as we see it reflected in their poems and plays and novels is full of discord and bitterness, full of confusion and of compromise.” And further that “they are trapped on a leaning tower from which they cannot descend.”\n30:28\tStephen Collis, Interview, East Vancouver, 8 March 2022:\tThat’s amazing. That’s perfect.\n30:29\tFred Wah, Interview, East Vancouver, 8 March 2022:\tSo this is, I’m sure Phyllis would be very aware of this, right? Yeah. Okay. This is an address to that whole patriarchal construct. And there are more feminist links in there. But the fact that she’s, this is a whole thing, like it’s whole, it’s a, there’s kind of a whole cloth here. So although I love the poem “Leaning” because of its poem-ness –\n31:03\tStephen Collis, Interview, East Vancouver, 8 March 2022::\t[Shared Laughter] Right, right.\n31:04\tFred Wah, Interview, East Vancouver, 8 March 2022:\t– it’s such a great, it’s so well written. And I can read it without even paying any attention to the – or much attention to the references. Cuz the poem is constructed so musically so beautifully that I’m just – I don’t really need to pay attention to the reference. I know they’re there. Of course, once you get into the references, the thing just like [Vocalizes Expanding Sounds] – goes on and on and on.\n31:29\tStephen Collis, Interview, East Vancouver, 8 March 2022::\tWell they’re all men. Right. And which goes with, maybe Pauline’s reading here in this kind of patriarchal context for that leaning. Right. Cause you’ve got, I mean, what we’ve got, we’ve got, Rodin, [Start Music: Low String Tones] we’ve got Brueghel. We’ve got, you’ve got Rilke, I think hiding behind Rodan. Because Rilke was Rodin’s secretary and Phyllis loved Rilke and there’s that “I must change my life” line in the poem. It sounds – that’s pretty much Rilke right there. But then also Columbus, Mies van der Rohe, the architect and on and on. Right. Einstein. Bohr. It’s all men that we mention the poem. Yeah. I love that idea of yours and I totally agree. But you can read the poem without noticing or thinking about its references. You can read it for its poem-ness.\n32:15\tFred Wah, Interview, East Vancouver, 8 March 2022:\tYeah. And just, you can just say, well, oh, they’re all men. This is just this sort of, yeah. She’s kind of hitting these guys for different things, but it’s all very particular. But then as we can discover, Pauline pulled this up, in an interview with Ann Mutton, Webb explains the link between “Leaning” and “Following”,  another poem –\n32:41\tStephen Collis, Interview, East Vancouver, 8 March 2022:\tYeah. Yeah. Yeah. Amazing!\n32:41\tFred Wah, Interview, East Vancouver, 8 March 2022:\t– that isn’t – that she kept out of middle distance. She says, the leaning tower is a phallic image and once I wrote that poem, a similar image kept flashing and that was a woman from Botticelli. I then wrote a poem called “Leaning”, dealing with Botticelli and the women. However, Webb adds that it’s not a very good poem. It doesn’t have the weight. It may be fatal for me to give up this male oppression on my psyche.\n33:06\tStephen Collis, Interview, East Vancouver, 8 March 2022:\t[Shared Laughter] Right. You need your demons sometimes like again, going back to Rilke, Rilke famously a friend said, “Hey, I can get you a session with Freud.” Cuz he was having all sorts of depressive issues and Rilke said, “No, I don’t wanna be cured. This is how I write poetry.” [Shared Laughter]\n33:25\tFred Wah, Interview, East Vancouver, 8 March 2022:\tWell, I think Webb is very aware of this – is playing around and that this is really a middle distance for her –\n33:31\tStephen Collis, Interview, East Vancouver, 8 March 2022:\tYeah. Yeah. Let’s come back to that.\n33:34\tFred Wah, Interview, East Vancouver, 8 March 2022:\t– in so many ways, and there, I mean there is this of course the feminist thing. And she does write to –it is – there’s a correspondence with Daphne. And the poem, “Leaning” is dedicated to Daphne.\n33:48\tStephen Collis, Interview, East Vancouver, 8 March 2022:\tThat’s right.\n33:48\tFred Wah, Interview, East Vancouver, 8 March 2022:\tSo, there’s that. But there’s also a whole bunch of other –the way I take it, the way I played with it was through Negative Capability.\n \n\n33:59\tStephen Collis:\tNegative Capability was poet John Keats term for, as he wrote in a letter to his brothers in 1817, the creative state of [Start Music: String Instrumental] “being in uncertainties, mysteries, and doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.” In other words, it is the ability to reside in between doubt and certainty, to carry on thinking about a problem that you don’t know the answer to. Poet Robert Duncan had something similar in mind when he spoke of poetry as “the intellectual adventure of not knowing.” [End Music: String Instrumental]\nPerhaps Fred and I get a little carried away here—we had a lot to say about this poem. In the second part of this interview we discuss what Fred calls the “germ of thought we’re still trying to unravel” which lies at the heart of Webb’s poem—“all these binaries,” as Fred says, going on to discuss the possibly dialectical space of the between—here’s Negative Capability again—and the idea that “betweenness is a place to be”—maybe the place to be.\n\n \n\n35:06\tFred Wah, Interview, East Vancouver, 8 March 2022:\tAnd I’m attracted to “Leaning” because of it’s playing around with this, between-ness.\n35:13\tStephen Collis, Interview, East Vancouver, 8 March 2022:\tI was gonna say – the space between. Yeah, exactly.\n35:15\tFred Wah, Interview, East Vancouver, 8 March 2022:\tBut there are so many other ways to play with this poem too. There’s that feminist thing which is very obvious once you start realizing that yes, these are guys, they’re all guys here. But then because we’re now in a kind of –we’re trying to address the entropy of our social climate. And I’m thinking of all the [Start Music: Atmospheric Tones] sort of microrisal structures, the networks, the plants and the fungus, the mycellial networks –\n35:58\tStephen Collis, Interview, East Vancouver, 8 March 2022::\tThat’s in there too.\n35:59\tFred Wah, Interview, East Vancouver, 8 March 2022:\t– and all of this requires, as the ecologists tell us, we have to learn how to balance these things, balance these contradictions. And so the poem is right in bed– and this is what, 1982, she’s writing this poem I think?\n36:15\tStephen Collis, Interview, East Vancouver, 8 March 2022:\tYeah, yeah. About that.\n36:18\tFred Wah, Interview, East Vancouver, 8 March 2022:\tShe’s right in this. She’s got a sense of that germ of thought. That we’ve now come to where we’re still trying to unravel this, all these contradictions, all these binaries.\n36:37\tStephen Collis, Interview, East Vancouver, 8 March 2022:\tAbsolutely.\n36:38\tFred Wah, Interview, East Vancouver, 8 March 2022:\tAnd we keep – the poet, I think, is reminding us of this. I don’t think she’s finding, she’s not offering a solution. She’s just reminding us that it’s very imbalanced. And am I gonna have to remain under this patriarchal mindset just to keep going…or?\n37:01\tStephen Collis, Interview, East Vancouver, 8 March 2022:\tIt’s even right there in that mentioning Einstein and Bohr, which I don’t think accidental that those two have a big argument in the early 20th century about basically reality essentially. Quantum physics and Einstein was a holdout, not loving the conclusions of quantum mechanics and Bohr was the advocate and they were not in agreement and this whole spiraling leaning tower, you know, it seems so cosmological in some ways.\n37:30\tFred Wah, Interview, East Vancouver, 8 March 2022:\tBut also Bohr on the atomic thing, like entropy is–\n37:34\tStephen Collis, Interview, East Vancouver, 8 March 2022:\tEntropy. Exactly.\n37:34\tFred Wah, Interview, East Vancouver, 8 March 2022:\t– is the basis of the atomic physics. And so, [Laughs] …\n37:41\tStephen Collis, Interview, East Vancouver, 8 March 2022:\tAnd it’s even here as a colonial process that entropy and that apocalyptic Columbus returning, stars all shot out. [Shared Laughter] He’s blown that cosmology away in sense. So, and we should come back to your “fur-blue stars” [Start Music: Chime Instrumental] and the “middle distance”. I think we’re in a realm of aesthetics. That’s one interpretation of middle distance, right. Is that it’s an aesthetic painterly term. If you’re looking at a painting what’s in the foreground, there might be figures in the foreground, there’s a background, you know, Renaissance painting, you’ll see maybe mountains or towers or a town in the far away, but there’s a middle distance, or who knows what it could be like animals in a field portrayed or something.\n \n\nBut the art historians will talk about and use those terms. So middle distance is also an art historical term, an aesthetic term for interpreting a painting. So I think right after, is it right after it’s first mentioned that we get…? Yeah. The next line after the mention of middle distance, is “the fur blue star” and Brueghel. And I wonder if that’s a description of a painted star, right. That might look fur blue might look, I mean, think even Van Gogh – those kind of crazy fuzzy, blurry looking stars.\n\n38:53\tFred Wah, Interview, East Vancouver, 8 March 2022:\tYeah. It could be. I mean, I still, as I said earlier, I don’t still don’t know what fur blue star, if it’s a particular reference in the sky. You know, if there is a fur blue star that’s in some story.\n39:10\tStephen Collis, Interview, East Vancouver ,8 March 2022:\tOr in Brueghel’s painting [Laughs].\n39:11\tFred Wah, Interview, East Vancouver, 8 March 2022:\tBut that becomes – the fact that it becomes the ice pond Brueghel’s figures are skating on. In other words, that all of these perceptions are all this the sky and the earth. Another binary. Earth and sky.\n39:28\tStephen Collis, Interview, East Vancouver, 8 March 2022:\tYes. Yes.\n39:30\tFred Wah, Interview, East Vancouver, 8 March 2022:\tTrying to find that. “A north magnetic pulls me…” So it’s a – there’s a directional thing, a geometric or a geo thing here.\n39:40\tStephen Collis, Interview, East Vancouver, 8 March 2022:\tThat’s right.\nSo part of what I see you describing here Fred, is that you constantly transform [Start Music: String Instrumental] from one reference to the next couplet. Couplet by couplet. This constant movement and shaping in the poem going on. Constant shifting and moving to different locations, but always working with kinds of binaries. And when you get to Rodin it’s Rodin and his “amanuensis”.\n\n40:01\tFred Wah, Interview, East Vancouver, 8 March 2022:\tRight. Right. [Shared Laughter]\n40:02\tStephen Collis, Interview, East Vancouver, 8 March 2022:\tYeah. So you constantly got these, this pairing or binary working through of things.\n40:08\tFred Wah, Interview, East Vancouver, 8 March 2022:\tYeah. Yeah. And she’s – I think she’s realizing that this middle distance is, the dynamics of this middle distance is rife just with all these binaries [End Music: String Instrumental] and the equivocation that we find ourselves in trying to deal with the binary aspect of our world.\n40:31\tStephen Collis, Interview, East Vancouver, 8 March 2022:\tYeah.\n40:31\tFred Wah, Interview, East Vancouver, 8 March 2022:\tSo this, like the ground, the here, this it’s “angles me into outer space an inch at a time”, “the slouch of the ground, do you hear that?”, “the hiccup of the sludge about the stone”.\n40:44\tStephen Collis, Interview, East Vancouver, 8 March 2022:\t[Shared Laughter] To that the hardness of that phallic tower and the wooshing of the ground or something, another binary.\n40:55\tFred Wah, Interview, East Vancouver, 8 March 2022:\tAnd at the back of mine, mine is [ostranenie?]. The stone makes the stone, the stone stoney. [Laughs]\n41:05\tStephen Collis, Interview, East Vancouver, 8 March 2022:\tYeah, yeah. Right. Oh amazing! [Laughs] I love that.\n41:05\tFred Wah, Interview, East Vancouver, 8 March 2022:\tI don’t know. [Laughs]\n41:12\tStephen Collis, Interview, East Vancouver, 8 March 2022:\tBut there’s even a binary or a relationality, I guess we could say too, and then focus on the idea of the, of the middle or the, between, and that relational space. But in between the speaker of the poem and the reader, right. You, this directedness right. Are in this with me too. And at the end, and you, are you still here? That’s another really interesting betweeness.\n41:32\tFred Wah, Interview, East Vancouver, 8 March 2022:\tMm-hmm <affirmative>. Yes.\n41:33\tStephen Collis, Interview, East Vancouver, 8 March 2022:\tAddresser and addressee or something.\n41:36\tFred Wah, Interview, East Vancouver, 8 March 2022:\tBut it’s also that – it’s the one and the many.\n41:39\tStephen Collis, Interview, East Vancouver, 8 March 2022:\tYes!\n41:41\tFred Wah, Interview, East Vancouver, 8 March 2022:\tOkay. It’s the paradox. Well, not so much a paradox. I think she’s trying to – she doesn’t pose it as a paradox. She’s just posing it as a condition of this “I” and “you”. The local, the universal. The sky, the earth, the… [Laughs] –\n41:58\tStephen Collis, Interview, East Vancouver, 8 March 2022:\tExactly.\n41:59\tFred Wah, Interview, East Vancouver, 8 March 2022:\t– all these oppositions. And so even these – I guess what you’re suggesting is perhaps even all these men are part of this. They’re both, they’re both part of it. They’re also part of that accusation from Virginia Woolf that they’re caught in this leaning tower.\n42:18\tStephen Collis, Interview, East Vancouver, 8 March 2022:\tYes. Yeah, absolutely.\n42:19\tFred Wah, Interview, East Vancouver, 8 March 2022:\tAnd they can’t come down. [Laughs]\n42:20\tStephen Collis, Interview, East Vancouver, 8 March 2022:\tYeah, exactly. Yeah. Does the – is the speaker gonna walk away at the end? [Laughs]\n42:25\tFred Wah, Interview, East Vancouver, 8 March 2022:\tWell, so I guess, in a sense, this sort of goes to buttress up my notion that between this is a place to be. Right. And that we’re actually – there are that, we’re kind of – like my metaphor of it is the cafe door.\n42:47\tStephen Collis, Interview, East Vancouver, 8 March 2022:\tExactly.\n42:47\tFred Wah, Interview, East Vancouver, 8 March 2022:\tCaught in the doorway. And I’ve always been interested in trying to, or for a long time, I’ve been interested in trying to describe, or trying to figure out the character or the dynamics of where you are when you’re caught in the doorway, you’re standing the doorway. The advantage is you can see both rooms at the same time, so you see a larger view. The disadvantage is, is that you’re in the way! [Laughs]\n43:12\tStephen Collis, Interview, East Vancouver, 8 March 2022:\tRight, right. [Laughs]\n43:13\tFred Wah, Interview, East Vancouver, 8 March 2022:\tGet outta the way!\nSo there’s lots of – there’s both. There’s both, once again, you’re in a middle place. Yeah. So there’s both things going on. Yeah. And trying to negotiate. So how to negotiate between this. And I’m not so sure – I don’t know if she’s coming up, thinks she’s coming up with an answer to her. I don’t think so. But that “And you, are you still here/tilting in this stranded ark /blind and seeing in the dark.” Well, the ark is, that is what the collectivity, it’s the kind of humanity all collected together. Everything’s together. But it’s stranded. [Laughs]\n\n43:56\tStephen Collis, Interview, East Vancouver, 8 March 2022:\tNot getting anywhere, not getting outta the flood. [Shared Laughter]\n44:00\tFred Wah, Interview, East Vancouver, 8 March 2022:\tEven that. That “I” and “you” that becomes “we” is still stranded. So it’s in that sense, I suppose one could say it’s perhaps, not a negative statement, but she’s not coming up with an answer to this problem of balancing the binaries. I think she’s simply pointing out that there are binaries there. And we have to find some, or we’re in it. That’s what we’re in. It’s not –there is no, you know, polar black and white. [Laughs]\n44:41\tStephen Collis, Interview, East Vancouver, 8 March 2022:\tRight. Well, I dunno if it’s anyone’s job to decide this, but I certainly don’t think it’s the poet’s job to decide that right. The poet’s job is to be in, well, I always think these days of entanglement. The post job is to identify and illuminate our entanglements. [Start Music: Atmospheric Tones] Here’s where we are. Here’s where, we’re what we’re all bound up and what we can’t get out of.\n44:58\tFred Wah, Interview, East Vancouver, 8 March 2022:\tYeah. And reacting to it with language.\n45:09\tStephen Collis:\tThere’s something of the very essence of poetry, for me, in this matter of the stars in Webb’s work—something of the supercharged task of grasping at the ungraspable—of rendering in words—what tries to escape words. To “see in the dark,” as the speaker is doing at the end of “Leaning,” is perhaps to see by starlight—faintly, but gloriously, luminously. And while the coldness of that starlight might sometimes read as isolating, I was glad to see both Isabella and Fred take up the image of the constellation in their comments—the constellation of poets in the planetarium, as Isabella had it, making vast cosmic space smaller, more intimate, and Fred’s sense of Webb’s “compositional awareness,” as he called it, of how everything in the poem fits together seamlessly, and how the poem itself fits into larger “constellations” through its wide field of references.\nBut what about that “fur blue star”? Well, for one thing, it’s an image of “betweenness” once again—of something touching both furry animals and burning cosmic bodies in their deep space orbits—that which is above, and that which lies below—and the strangeness of being human, with our capacity to partake of both the furry world and starry contemplation, shuttling between with our poems and stories.\n\nBut I’m also tempted to connect the “fur blue star” from “Leaning” with the “starry rime” (r-i-m-e) from “Field Guide to Snow Crystals.” If stars seem fuzzy to the human eye—if they radiate blurry halos in certain atmospheres—why not furry? Why not blue? Or, at the end of the day, why not … just not know, for sure, and let the image’s Negative Capability pulse on in thought and undecidability?\n\nI think, I will always be in media res, in a state of betweenness, when it comes to Phyllis Webb and her poetry. If this podcast is a tribute to her, it necessarily takes the form of an in-progress thinking through and thinking with the example of her life and work—and with other poets similarly caught midway in their thinking through her life and work. That’s the thing—despite often cutting the image of an isolato, alone on her island for all those years, Phyllis Webb was always forming constellations of poets, always a part of important poetic constellations, and always allowing new poets into her orbit. That was her star power. Thanks for listening. [End Music: Atmospheric Tones]\n\n48:15\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 producer this month is Stephen Collis English professor at Simon Fraser University.\n \n\nOur podcast project manager and supervising producer is Kate Moffatt. And our sound designer and audio engineer is Miranda Eastwood. Our episodes are transcribed by Kelly Cubbon, and thanks to Judith Burr for hanging around and continuing to help us out. A special thanks to Special Collections and Rare Books at Simon Fraser University and Library and Archives Canada.\n\n \n\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 our social media @SpokenWeb Canada, stay tuned to your podcast feed later this month for shortcuts with Katherine McLeod, many stories about how literature sounds.\n"],"score":3.062659},{"id":"9628","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 S3E11, The WPHP Monthly Mercury Presents “Collected, Catalogued, Counted”, 1 August 2022, Moffatt and Sharren"],"item_title_source":["SpokenWeb Podcast web page."],"item_title_note":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/the-wphp-monthly-mercury-presents-collected-catalogued-counted/"],"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 3"],"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":["Kate Moffatt","Kandice Sharren"],"creator_names_search":["Kate Moffatt","Kandice Sharren"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"name\":\"Kate Moffatt\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Producer\"]},{\"url\":\"\",\"name\":\"Kandice Sharren\",\"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/6080ec77-e13a-430d-a98b-4ceca70315bb/audio/e49a4567-fbbc-4581-9c84-c312cadf060f/default_tc.mp3?nocache\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"s3e11-mp3.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"44.1 kHz\",\"duration\":\"01:23:32\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"80,203,485 bytes\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"MP3 audio\",\"title\":\"s3e11-mp3\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/the-wphp-monthly-mercury-presents-collected-catalogued-counted/\"}]"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"2022-08-01\",\"type\":\"Publication Date\",\"notes\":\"\",\"source\":\"\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/3725404708\",\"venue\":\"Simon Fraser University\",\"notes\":\"\",\"address\":\"515 West Hastings Street Vancouver, B.C, V6B 5K3\",\"latitude\":\"49.2824032\",\"longitude\":\"-123.1085513\"}]"],"Address":["515 West Hastings Street Vancouver, B.C, V6B 5K3"],"Venue":["Simon Fraser University"],"City":["Vancouver, British Columbia"],"contents":["This month on the SpokenWeb Podcast we are excited to share an episode from The WPHP Monthly Mercury, hosted by Kandice Sharren and our very own podcast supervising producer, Kate Moffatt. First aired on July 21, 2021, this episode of The WPHP Monthly Mercury features an interview with Dr. Kirstyn Leuner, director and editor-in-chief of The Stainforth Library of Women’s Writing. You can read more about the episode, and about Dr. Leuner’s project, on the Women’s Print History Project website.\n\nThe WPHP Monthly Mercury is the podcast of the Women’s Print History Project, a digital bibliographical database that recovers and discovers women’s print history for the eighteenth- and nineteenth-centuries. Inspired by the titles of periodicals of the period, The WPHP Monthly Mercury investigates women’s work as authors and labourers in the book trades.\n\n"],"Note":["[]"],"Related_works":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"Music by Ignatius Sancho, “Sweetest Bard”, A Collection of New Songs (1769) from https://brycchancarey.com/sancho/bard.jpg, and played by Kandice Sharren\\n\\n*\\n\\nWorks Cited:\\n\\n“Francis Stainforth.” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Stainforth, accessed 21 July 2021.\\n\\nLeuner, Kirstyn. “Restoring Authority for Women Writers: Name Authority Records as Digital Recovery Scholarship” in Huntington Library Quarterly, vol. 84, no. 1, Spring 2021, pp. 13–26.\\n\\nLeuner, Kirstyn. “Dynamic Cross Reference Links in Catalog Browsing.” The Stainforth Library of Women’s Writing, February 2020, https://stainforth.scu.edu/dynamic-cross-reference-links-in-catalog-browsing/. Accessed 21 July 2021.\\n\\nThe Monument of Matrones. Compiled by Thomas Bentley. London: Henry Denham, 1582.\\n\\nMoss, Celia and Marion. Early Efforts. A Volume of Poems by the Misses Moss, of the Hebrew Nation. Aged 18 and 16. London: 1839.\\n\\nCatalogue of the Extraordinary Library, Unique of its Kind, Formed by the Late Rev. F. J. Stainforth. London: Sotheby, Wilkinson & Hodge, printed by J. Davy and Sons, 1867. Google Books, https://www.google.com/books/edition/Catalogues_of_Items_for_Auction_by_Messr/3T5bAAAAQAAJ/.\\n\\nWalker, Cheryl. American Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century. Rutgers UP, 1992.\"}]"],"_version_":1853670549730885632,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:54.290Z","score":3.062659},{"id":"9648","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 S3 Trailer, Welcome to Season 3! Our Trailer, 20 September 2021, Burr and McGregor"],"item_title_source":["SpokenWeb Podcast web page."],"item_title_note":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/welcome-to-season-3-our-trailer/"],"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 3"],"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":["Judith Burr","Hannah McGregor"],"creator_names_search":["Judith Burr","Hannah McGregor"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"name\":\"Judith Burr\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Producer\"]},{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/20153713810358661443\",\"name\":\"Hannah McGregor\",\"dates\":\"1984-\",\"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/4df61375-c766-4dc5-8d86-ca0f12d5fc53/audio/f79cc9ff-2d57-41a0-a9e2-aaf1fbbc5216/default_tc.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"swp-s3e0-trailer-2021.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"44.1 kHz\",\"duration\":\"00:02:06\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"2,018,043 bytes\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"MP3 audio\",\"title\":\"swp-s3e0-trailer-2021\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/welcome-to-season-3-our-trailer/\"}]"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"2021-09-20\",\"type\":\"Publication Date\",\"notes\":\"\",\"source\":\"\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/123757617\",\"venue\":\"University of British Colombia Okanagan AMP Lab\",\"notes\":\"\",\"address\":\"3333 University Way, Kelowna, BC V1V 1V7\",\"latitude\":\"49.94217525\",\"longitude\":\"-119.39902819775307\"}]"],"Address":["3333 University Way, Kelowna, BC V1V 1V7"],"Venue":["University of British Colombia Okanagan AMP Lab"],"Note":["[]"],"Related_works":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"Clips Featured:\\n\\nKPFA recording of Robert Hogg reading at Berkeley Poetry Conference, 1965, from\\nS2E10 “Robert Hogg and the Widening Circle of Return”\\n\\nMavis Gallant, SFU, 1984, from\\nS2E9 “Mavis Gallant Part 2: The Paratexts of ‘Grippes and Poche’ at SFU”\\n\\nMathieu Aubin, in\\nS2E2 “Lesbian Liberation Across Media: A Sonic Screening”\\n\\n“Listen to Black Womxn”, by jamilah malika, and Katherine McLeod in\\nS2E8 “Talking about Talking”\\n\\nPenn Kemp, from\\nS2E3 “Sounds of Trance Formation: An Interview with Penn Kemp”\\n\\nWisdom Agorde, from\\nS2E4 “Drum Codes Pt 1: The Language of Talking Drums”\\n\\nKlara du Plessis, from\\nS2E1 “Deep Curation: Experimenting with the Poetry Reading as Practice”\\n\\nStacey Copeland, from\\nS2E5 “Cylinder Talks – Pedagogy in Literary Sound Studies”\\n\\nTreena Chambers, from\\nS2E7 “Listening Ethically to the SpokenWeb”\\n\\nMusic –\\n“Slapstick” by Moon Juice\\nfrom Blue Dot Sessions\"}]"],"_version_":1853670549762342913,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:54.290Z","contents":["Another season is upon us! At the SpokenWeb Podcast, we continue to bring you episodes that journey into literary history and explore our contemporary responses to it. This season, researchers from across the SpokenWeb community – and a few special guests – produce audio stories that creatively engage with literary recordings in the SpokenWeb archives and put this archival history into context. We will dive deep into clips of preserved sound, reflect on the power of poetic performance, and consider how sound studies can inform our understandings of history and literature. We will look closely at both the individuals and communities that have shaped our literary world. We will consider how our podcast episodes can be a form of scholarship. We will listen closely together.\n\nThis podcast is for everyone who holds a love for literature, sound, archives, or history – and for all those who love learning something new by listening. We hope you’ve enjoyed our past episodes, and we can’t wait to share this new season with you – coming to your podcast feeds on October 4, 2021!\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\n(00:03)\tHannah McGregor\t[Start Music: Upbeat Instrumental] What is it about a voice –.\n(00:07)\tAudio Recording, KPFA recording of Robert Hogg reading at Berkeley Poetry Conference, 1965, from S2E10 “Robert Hogg and the Widening Circle of Return”\t…and the voice said, “walk” –.\n(00:07)\t\nHannah McGregor\n– that can bring Canada’s literary past back here into the present?\n(00:13)\nAudio Recording, Mavis Gallant, SFU, 1984, from S2E9 “Mavis Gallant, Part 2: The Paratexts of ‘Grippes and Poche’ at SFU”\n[Sound Effect: Tape Clicking Into Recorder] You see I’m a fetishist, the watch has to be there and not there.\n(00:15)\nHannah McGregor\nWhat might have been forgotten if no one had pressed record or listened to these voices in the archives?\n(00:24)\nMathieu Aubin, in S2E2 “Lesbian Liberation Across Media: A Sonic Screening”\n[Sounds of a printing press] Like a cacaophony of lesbian liberation print sounds.\n(00:27)\nHannah McGregor\nOn the SpokenWeb Podcast, our producer researchers have investigated the stories behind the sounds [Audio Recording: Intake of breath] we’ve saved. [Audio Recording: Intake of breath].\n(00:36)\nAudio Recording, “Listen to Black Womxn”, by jamilah malika, from S2E8 “Talking about talking”\n[Audio Recording: Intake of breath, repeated] Listen to Black women/ As a Black woman.\n(00:39)\nHannah McGregor\nWe’ve immersed you in the mystique and –\n(00:41)\nPenn Kemp, from S2E3 “Sounds of Trance Formation: An Interview with Penn Kemp”\n[Underlaid sound] [Repetitive non-verbal sounds as sound poem is performed].\n(00:41)\nHannah McGregor\n– joy of Penn Kemp sound poems.\n(00:43)\nPenn Kemp, from S2E3 “Sounds of Trance Formation: An Interview with Penn Kemp”\n–can I hear you please? [End Music: Upbeat strings and cello]\n(00:46)\nHannah McGregor\nWe’ve grappled with questions of sonic communication in our episode, Drum Codes.\n(00:51)\nWisdom Agorde, from S2E4 “Drum Codes Pt 1”\nThe talking drum travels several kilometres. [Audio Recording: Talking Drum] [Start Music:  SpokenWeb Instrumental]\n(00:57)\nHannah McGregor\nWith the deep curation of poetry readings –\n(01:00)\nKlara du Plessis, from S2E1 “Deep Curation”\n[Audio Effect: Voice Echo] I wanted to really curate a poetry reading.\n(01:02)\nHannah McGregor\n– with teaching audible history in “Cylinder Talks”–\n(01:05)\nStacey Copeland, from S2E5 “Cylinder Talks – Pedagogy in Literary Sound Studies”\nInviting students to engage in audio production.\n(01:08)\nHannah McGregor\n– and, with the ethics of listening.\n(01:10)\nTreena Chambers, from S2E7 “Listening Ethically to the SpokenWeb”:\nYou don’t go into it with a preconceived agenda and you can enjoy it for just for the sake of listening.\n(01:19)\nHannah McGregor:\nNow in season three of the SpokenWeb Podcast, we continue this audible research and storytelling. We have new stories to look forward to, more histories of Canadian writers and poets, more on the technologies of talking drums, and more explorations of the places that preserving sonic history can take us as tools of memory, teaching, and wonder. Whether you’re a lover of literature or a sound studies scholar, this podcast has something to share with you. We hope you’ll subscribe and join us for season three of the SpokenWeb Podcast coming to your podcast feeds on October 4th. [End Music: SpokenWeb Instrumental Music]\n "],"score":3.062659}]