[{"id":"9594","cataloger_name":["Ella,Hooper"],"partnerInstitution":["Concordia University"],"collection_source_collection":["SpokenWeb AV"],"source_collection_label":["SpokenWeb AV"],"collection_contributing_unit":["SpokenWeb"],"source_collection_uri":[""],"collection_image_url":["https://archiveofthepresent.spokenweb.ca/_nuxt/img/header-img_1000.fd7675f.png"],"collection_source_collection_description":["SpokenWeb Audio Visual Collection"],"collection_source_collection_id":["ArchiveOfThePresent"],"persistent_url":["https://archiveofthepresent.spokenweb.ca/"],"item_title":["SpokenWeb Podcast S4E3, Drum Codes [Part 2]: Sounds of Data, 5 December 2022, Miya"],"item_title_source":["SpokenWeb Podcast web page."],"item_title_note":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/drum-codes-part-2-sounds-of-data/"],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Podcast"],"item_series_title":["The SpokenWeb Podcast"],"item_series_description":["Series of podcasts by the SpokenWeb network."],"item_subseries_title":["The SpokenWeb Podcast Season 4"],"item_series_wikidata_url":["https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q117038029"],"item_series_uri":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/spokenweb-podcast/"],"item_identifiers":["[]"],"rights":["Creative Commons Attribution (BY)"],"rights_license":["Creative Commons Attribution (BY)"],"access":["Streaming and download"],"creator_names":["Chelsea Miya"],"creator_names_search":["Chelsea Miya"],"creators":["[{\"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/f155a6f6-3a58-44fe-8b40-8536a7c437ab/audio/89995b0d-9cfc-4a2e-a427-ad697eb76aea/default_tc.mp3?nocache\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"s4e3.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"44.1 kHz\",\"duration\":\"00:50:41\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"48,663,031 bytes\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"MP3 audio\",\"title\":\"s4e3\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/drum-codes-part-2-sounds-of-data/\"}]"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"2022-12-05\",\"type\":\"Publication Date\",\"notes\":\"\",\"source\":\"\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"venue\":\"University of Alberta Humanities Centre\",\"notes\":\"\",\"address\":\"11121 Saskatchewan Drive NW, Edmonton, AB, T6G 2E5\",\"latitude\":\"53.5269794\",\"longitude\":\"-113.51915593663469\"}]"],"Address":["11121 Saskatchewan Drive NW, Edmonton, AB, T6G 2E5"],"Venue":["University of Alberta Humanities Centre"],"City":["Edmonton, Alberta"],"content_notes":["No transcript."],"contents":["Audio technology and audio data come in radically different forms. This month’s episode, “Sounds of Data” is a follow up to Season Two’s “Drum Codes” and takes us deeper into the sonic world of data: from the sounds of surveillance to music of the stars to the wireless transmission of drum songs. Featuring interviews with sound artist and poet Oana Avasilichioaei, NASA sonification expert Matt Russo, and speech technologist Tunde Adegbola, each offering a unique perspective on the question: what does data sound like?\n\nSpecial thanks to master drummer Peter Olálékan Adédòkun, whose music you hear in the first half of the episode. Original music and performance clips were also provided by Oana Avasilichioaei and by Matt Russo and his team at SYSTEM Sounds. Thank you, as well, to Sean Luyk, who co-produced the “Drum Codes” episode and played a significant role in conceptualising this follow-up."],"Note":["[{\"note\":\"No transcript.\",\"type\":\"General\"}]"],"Related_works":["[]"],"_version_":1853670549530607616,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:53.966Z","score":2.5099764},{"id":"9592","cataloger_name":["Ella,Hooper"],"partnerInstitution":["Concordia University"],"collection_source_collection":["SpokenWeb AV"],"source_collection_label":["SpokenWeb AV"],"collection_contributing_unit":["SpokenWeb"],"source_collection_uri":[""],"collection_image_url":["https://archiveofthepresent.spokenweb.ca/_nuxt/img/header-img_1000.fd7675f.png"],"collection_source_collection_description":["SpokenWeb Audio Visual Collection"],"collection_source_collection_id":["ArchiveOfThePresent"],"persistent_url":["https://archiveofthepresent.spokenweb.ca/"],"item_title":["SpokenWeb Podcast S4E1, Listening to Fire Knowledges in and around the Okanagan Valley Presents “Challenging, beautiful bioregion”, 3 October 2022, Burr"],"item_title_source":["SpokenWeb Podcast web page."],"item_title_note":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/listening-to-fire-knowledges-in-and-around-the-okanagan-valley-presents-challenging-beautiful-bioregion/"],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Podcast"],"item_series_title":["The SpokenWeb Podcast"],"item_series_description":["Series of podcasts by the SpokenWeb network."],"item_subseries_title":["The SpokenWeb Podcast Season 4"],"item_series_wikidata_url":["https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q117038029"],"item_series_uri":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/spokenweb-podcast/"],"item_identifiers":["[]"],"rights":["Creative Commons Attribution (BY)"],"rights_license":["Creative Commons Attribution (BY)"],"access":["Streaming and download"],"creator_names":["Judith Burr"],"creator_names_search":["Judith Burr"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"name\":\"Judith Burr\",\"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/31248cf9-be05-49e8-9e8a-b28ed3022a72/audio/c94c3c7a-5e2d-423d-b2b2-3a77183099eb/default_tc.mp3?nocache\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"s4e1-crossover-fire-knowledges.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"44.1 kHz\",\"duration\":\"01:00:33\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"58,128,971 bytes\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"MP3 audio\",\"title\":\"s4e1-crossover-fire-knowledges\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/listening-to-fire-knowledges-in-and-around-the-okanagan-valley-presents-challenging-beautiful-bioregion/\"}]"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"2022-10-03\",\"type\":\"Publication Date\",\"notes\":\"\",\"source\":\"\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"venue\":\"University of British Columbia Okanagan Creative and Critical Studies Building\",\"notes\":\"\",\"address\":\"1148 Research Road, Kelowna, BC, V1V 1V7\",\"latitude\":\"49.93921425\",\"longitude\":\"-119.39841307186015\"}]"],"Address":["1148 Research Road, Kelowna, BC, V1V 1V7"],"Venue":["University of British Columbia Okanagan Creative and Critical Studies Building"],"Note":["[]"],"Related_works":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"In this episode, we hear clips from a cover of Bob Dylan’s “All Along the Watchtower” from the Lent Fraser Wall Trio’s album “Shadow Moon.” Used throughout this episode with permission from John Lent. The rest of the music in this episode is from Blue Dot Sessions, and you can find specific tracks cited in the transcript: https://app.sessions.blue.\\n\\nCatherine Owens, Locations of Grief: An Emotional Geography (Hamilton: Wolsack & Wynn, 2020).\\n\\n“It is clear that a successful record of fire suppression has led to a fuel buildup in the forests of British Columbia. The fuel buildup means that there will be more significant and severe wildfires, and there will be more interface fires, unless action is taken.” Filmon, G. (2004). Firestorm 2003: Provincial Review. Government of British Columbia, https://www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/public-safety-and-emergency-services/wildfire-status/governance/bcws_firestormreport_2003.pdf.\\n\\n“Master Plan for Okanagan Mountain Provincial Park.” 1990. Kamloops, B.C.: B.C. Parks, Southern Interior Region.\\n\\nMy analysis of B.C. Wildfire Service data using QGIS. Okanagan watershed defined by watershed atlas polygons and compiled by fellow Living with Wildfire researcher Renée Larsen. Area burned data from: “Fire Perimeters – Historical.” Statistics and Geospatial Data. BC Wildfire Service. Available at https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/safety/wildfire-status/about-bcws/wildfire-statistics.\\n\\nXwisten et al., “Xwisten Report Executive Summary,” Revitalizing traditional burning: Integrating Indigenous cultural values into wildfire management and climate change adaptation planning (Department of Indigenous Services Canada (DISC) First Nations Adapt Program, 2019), Accessed April 2022 at https://www.fness.bc.ca/core-programs/forest-fuel-management/first-nations-adapt-program.; Eli Hirtle, Xwisten (Bridge River Indian Band) (Masinipayiwin Films, 2019), Accessed April 2022 at https://vimeo.com/383104228.; Shackan Indian Band et al., “Shackan Indian Band Report Executive Summary,” Revitalizing traditional burning: Integrating Indigenous cultural values into wildfire management and climate change adaptation planning (Department of Indigenous Services Canada (DISC) First Nations Adapt Program, 2019), https://www.fness.bc.ca/core-programs/forest-fuel-management/first-nations-adapt-program.; Eli Hirtle, Shackan Indian Band (Masinipayiwin Films, 2019), https://vimeo.com/383108850.\\n\\nForest Enhancement Society of BC, “Projects,” Accessed May 2022, https://www.fesbc.ca/projects.\\n\\nAmy Thiessen, “Sharon Thesen’s ‘The Fire’,” English Undergraduate Honours Thesis, 2020, https://sharonthesenthefire.omeka.net/about.\\n\\n\\nMore Resources: \\nFireSmart Canada, https://firesmartcanada.ca/; Blazing the Trail, https://firesmartcanada.ca/product/blazing-the-trail-celebrating-indigenous-fire-stewardship.; Nature Conservancy, Prescribed Fire Training Exchanges (TREX), http://www.conservationgateway.org/ConservationPractices/FireLandscapes/HabitatProtectionandRestoration/Training/TrainingExchanges/Pages/fire-training-exchanges.aspx; Karuk Climate Change Projects, “Fire Works!,” https://karuktribeclimatechangeprojects.com/fire-works; NC State University, “Prescribed Burn Associations,” https://sites.cnr.ncsu.edu/southeast-fire-update/prescribed-burn-associations; Firesticks Alliance, https://www.firesticks.org.au.\\n\\nMore Fire Podcasts: Amy Cardinal Christianson and Matthew Kristoff (Hosts), Good Fire Podcast, https://yourforestpodcast.com/good-fire-podcast; Amanda Monthei (host), Life with Fire Podcast, https://lifewithfirepodcast.com; Adam Huggins and Mendel Skulski (hosts), “On Fire: Camas, Cores, and Spores (Part 1),” Future Ecologies Podcast, August 29, 2018, https://www.futureecologies.net/listen/fe1-5-on-fire-pt-1.\"}]"],"_version_":1853670549774925824,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:54.290Z","contents":["This month, the SpokenWeb Podcast features an episode created by our former supervising producer and project manager Judith Burr. This audio is part of Judith’s podcast, “Listening to Fire Knowledges in and around the Okanagan Valley,” which she produced as her master’s thesis at UBC-Okanagan. While Judith was working on The SpokenWeb Podcast, she was also working on the research methodology of making a podcast as thesis and on the compiling of interviews and tape that would become the sound of this representation and intervention in ecological thinking. The episode features a number of Judith’s interviews about living with wildfires in the Okanagan, including the story and poetry of Canadian poet Sharon Thesen. Listeners of the SpokenWeb Podcast might remember Thesen from past episodes, including Episode 7 of last season about the Women and Words Collection, or from episodes of our sister podcast SoundBox Signals produced by the Audio-Media-Poetry Lab at UBCO. In Judee’s conversations with Sharon and other interviewees, we hear first-hand perspectives of those who have witnessed and lived through the dangers of these wildfires. We hear about challenges of resource management and land-use planning in fire-prone geographies. And we hear about the role that storytelling may have to play in helping us reckon with these challenges.\n\n\n00:19\tSpokenWeb Podcast Theme Music:\n \n\n[Instrumental Overlapped With Feminine Voice] Can you hear me? I don’t know how much projection to do here.\n00:36\tKatherine McLeod:\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]\nMy name is Katherine McLeod, 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. For our first episode of this season, we’re bringing you sound work by someone who has been instrumental to The SpokenWeb Podcast as a team member: Judith Burr. Judith Burr is our former supervising producer and project manager, and she’s now off to embark on a PhD in geography at UBC. During her work on our podcast, she was also hard at work on a podcast that she called, “Listening to Fire Knowledges in and around the Okanagan Valley.” That podcast was her master’s thesis project in the Digital Arts & Humanities theme of the Interdisciplinary Graduate Studies program at the University of British Columbia Okanagan. You heard Judith Burr’s voice on the episode “Talking Transcription: Accessibility, Collaboration, Creativity” that I co-produced with Kelly Cubbon.\n\nWe interviewed Judith back in February 2022, when she was in the early stages of conducting oral histories for her podcast. At that point, she had so many sounds – clips from news reports of the Okanagan wildfires – long conversations with wildfire experts – and was planning to speak with poet Sharon Thesen about how the environment finds its way into the sound of her writing. Sharon Thesen is a poet who the UBCO Amp Lab, as part of SpokenWeb, has previously featured in a collective reading of her work. Hearing Thesen on this podcast feels like a bringing together of Judith’s work her master’s thesis and on The SpokenWeb Podcast. Along with Thesen, you’ll hear from foresters Daryl Spencer, Dave Gill, and Gord Pratt; UBCO Living with Wildfire project lead Mathieu Bourbonnais; forest technologist Jeff Eustache; and FireSmart program lead Kelsey Winter. The SpokenWeb Podcast starts season with Judith’s podcast because it is a timely call to reflect on how we listen and live within our complex and challenging ecosystems. [Music Interlude]\n\n03:05\tJudee Burr, Narration:\tHi, it’s Judee. This is the second episode of my thesis podcast, Listening to Fire Knowledges. This episode includes a number of conversations about surviving wildfire events and living in their aftermath. My heart and thoughts go out to those who have lost something in a disastrous wildfire event, including to my aunt and uncle who lost their home in the California Camp Fire in 2018. I know conversations about wildfire disasters can be challenging to hear, so I hope you can take care of yourself, and listen when you are ready. Thanks for being here.\n \n\n03:45\tSharon Thesen, Interview, January 2022:\tWell, I love the dry heat [Music Starts] I love the smell of the earth. I love the blue and gold, the blue sky and the gold grass. I love the orchards. They always seemed so beautiful in an almost biblical way: these orchards with all this fruit hanging, the gift of that. And the gift of its warmth, its welcoming warmth. Maybe it’s the smell of the pines too, that resinous perfume. I mean, you come from a different place and so you would have your experience of this place too.\nMy name is Sharon Thesen. I’m Professor Emeritus of Creative Writing at UBC’s Okanagan campus. I’ve been a writer, a poet, a critic, and an editor for many decades in the Canadian, BC, and Cascadian worlds – Cascadia being the bioregion that encompasses most of BC, including the Okanagan and the coast and Washington State and Oregon and part of Northern California. It’s an extremely unstable region – geologically – prone to fire, tsunami, earthquake, volcano, flood, avalanche. It’s a landscape that’s very vibrant, very beautiful, but also dangerous. It creates challenges for sure. And in this challenging beautiful bioregion, I’ve been living for most of my life.\n\nLiving in Vancouver, I was always aware, as a writer, of being in a different zone from the rest of Canada. It seemed that we writers – a lot of us poets in Vancouver – had deeper aesthetic and poetic connections with our counterparts in the States. But the quote-unquote “rest of Canada” was not involved in these poetics. There was always an east-west stretch. There was a sense of not belonging, really, to either of them. Okay, so then what do you belong to? So here is this very prominent geography and landscape. [Music Ends]\n\nBut I always had a soft spot for the Interior. I spent probably about 10 years of my young life, living in the Kamloops and Vernon areas, and always wanted to come back. I appreciated the spectacular landscape on the coast, but my body, my heart, was here. So, when we started coming back here, I would feel at home. Because I could smell it. I could recognize the weeds –when you’re a little kid, you’re closer to the ground and you’re seeing the weeds and all that small stuff. It’s all about those weeds, right? And it still is. [Start Music] It still is the place of my heart, and my deepest being is this landscape.\n\n07:39\tJudee Burr, Interview, January 2022:\tYou sat down with another student Amy Thiessen almost two years ago, who was another student in the AMP Lab, like I am, to record a digital edition of your poem “The Fire,” which was really wonderful to listen to. You talked about your experience of living through the 2003 Okanagan Mountain Park fire, and I’m really grateful that you’re willing to revisit these experiences again. It sounds like that was the year that you move to Kelowna was the year of this fire. I wonder, if you, if you’re comfortable talking about it again, talk about what you remember of that fire happening and the experience of having to be evacuated at that time. [Music Shifts]\n08:24\tSharon Thesen, Interview, January 2022:\tWe had moved into this new subdivision. We were thrilled to be able to live in a beautiful house that was new, and certainly didn’t cost nearly as much money as a house like that would on the coast at the time, especially then. I did have doubts about it, but, anyway, we moved there. On every side of the house, was forest. And it was beautiful. We had these two dogs, I’d take them to walk every morning. There was trees, forest, coyotes. There was a little lake. It was really, really hot for a couple of weeks prior to the fire starting, but we didn’t mind. We liked it.\nCan I read this little paragraph?\n\n09:10\tJudee Burr, Interview, January 2022:\tPlease do.\n09:10\tSharon Thesen, Interview, January 2022:\t[Reading from Locations of Grief] Hundreds. The subdivision was called South Ridge and there were about 40 houses off a t-shaped roadway. “A park” was made somewhere in the middle and a new road was already being built just above ours. Hundreds of acres of woods, streams, and meadows flourished just beyond where the roads ended, having not yet succumbed to the inferno that would engulf the landscape a couple of months later. – That’s when we first moved. – June and her husband David lived a little farther up the hill, while we were closer to cherry orchards and large, old properties that until then had been somewhat out of town. Deer hunters still stalked the woods not far from our houses back in 2003 when I first met June. Late one night after a lengthy heat wave, we were awakened by a thunderclap and, in the morning, a plume of smoke could be seen rising into the sky to the south. This plume, by the time June and I got to the beach that afternoon for our regular swim, was starting to develop an ominous anvil shape on its eastern edge. Two days later, you could hardly see or breathe for the smoke. And there were reports of houses burning in a residential area far to the south. But, for some reason, we weren’t quite sure about that, even though evacuation alerts were being handed out in neighborhoods farther down from us. We tried to stay calm as falling embers burned holes in our lawn chairs. Paul – that’s my husband – Paul and I had made a casual arrangement just in case, with friends who lived in Penticton should the worst come to the worst which we didn’t think was possible. Surely the fire wouldn’t jump the blocks-wide clearing where the big power lines were. [Stops reading]\n11:02\tSharon Thesen, Interview, January 2022:\tBy the time they started trying to put it out, it was out of control. [Music changes] And the wind was blowing. And the wind is the worst thing that can happen with a fire. When a fire gets really bad, as this one did, it became the worst level of fire you could have, a Rank 6 firestorm. People even farther north than us were getting evacuation alerts. So we’re just thinking “oh, well, they must think we’re going to be okay then,” right? Because we didn’t get one. But it got to a point where I was starting to get really nervous. I was starting to think maybe we should pack some things up. To go through that process is horrible. We phoned our friends in Penticton, and Paul said, “you go and I’ll stay here and hold the fort.” And – it was that afternoon – it was pitch dark from smoke, and driving down to Penticton you saw the whole east side of Okanagan Mountain Park, from Kelowna to Naramata, on fire. That side of Okanagan Lake used to be green and forested. There was that little railway near the top. [Music ends] Paul went down to June and David’s for dinner\n12:34\tJudee Burr, Interview, January 2022:\tWho lived in that same subdivision, nearby?\n12:36\tSharon Thesen, Interview, January 2022:\tYeah, nearby. So they were eating dinner inside, and June went out to see how things were. And there was the fire coming right down the hill. So, Paul jumped in the car, drove back to our place. I had packed some stuff and he was throwing it in. The police were going up and down and saying get out right now, right now, right now… So…\n13:01\tJudee Burr, Interview, January 2022:\tAnd you hadn’t received an evacuation alert prior to that?\n13:04\tSharon Thesen, Interview, January 2022:\tNo.\n13:05\tJudee Burr, Interview, January 2022:\tWow. It was moving that fast.\n13:07\tSharon Thesen, Interview, January 2022:\tIt was moving that fast, and, also, I think that the authorities didn’t really even know we were still there, because it was such a new development. We probably weren’t even on the map. So he had to drive down through what was an old quarry, and is now called “The Quarry.” June and David decided to go back to White Rock, and they stayed overnight at our friends in Penticton in their car. [Start Music]\n13:39\tSharon Thesen, Interview, January 2022:\tThere was a period of time when they thought the whole town was going to go up in flames. The whole town. And there was still so much chaos, and the fire still wasn’t really out for quite a long time. It was the Winfield fire department that saved our place. I still see the tracks of their boots in our little flower beds around the house where they were working, but they had given up. The fire was coming. It was too hot. It was terrifying. They could have died. But the wind changed. The wind changed and took the fire north to an area called Crawford and burned up most of the houses there. Ours were left standing. But we didn’t know that for a long time.\n14:29\tJudee Burr, Interview, January 2022:\tSo, when did you find out that – when were you able to return back to your house?\n14:35\tSharon Thesen, Interview, January 2022:\tThe fire department held a meeting in the big Trinity Baptist Church downtown, because they were not saying what areas had burned. There were roadblocks keeping people out from the badly affected neighbourhoods. All those people were to sit in Trinity Baptist Church while whoever it was pointed out all the lots on a map, which houses burned and which were still standing and which were damaged. And so, can you imagine that meeting? [End Music]\n15:30\tJudee Burr, Interview, January 2022:\tNo.\nDo you remember anyone talking about fire danger before the, um, fire?\n\n15:38\tSharon Thesen, Interview, January 2022:\tNo.\n15:46\tJudee Burr, Narration:\tAnyone who was living in the Okanagan in 2003 remembers the firestorm. It was a season stoked by drought. This fire started in a park where people had been warning of the accumulating fuels and fire danger for years, but little had been done. The Okanagan Mountain Park Fire burned more than 25,000 hectares, caused 33,000 residents to be evacuated, damaged or destroyed 238 homes, and caused $200 million in damages. It was one fire of many in “Firestorm 2003,” a summer that set a record high number of forest fires burning in British Columbia. [Music Ends] A Provincial Review team was established after this fire season was over to evaluate the response to these fires and make recommendations for the future. The resulting Filmon Report explicitly linked the severe wildfires of 2003 to the build-up of fuels caused by decades of fire suppression. Between then and the time I write this in early 2022, the Okanagan Valley has experienced even larger fire seasons. Here is Matthieu Bourbonnais again.\n17:12\tJudee Burr, Interview, January 2022:\tDo you have any specific fires that have happened in the Okanagan that you point to, to explain what our wildfire situation is here in the Valley? Or examples you use to think through how we live with wildfire and what the challenges are?\n17:12\tMathieu Bourbon, Interview, January 2022:\tYeah, the Okanagan, the communities here, have a lot of like experience with fire. The 2003 Okanagan Mountain Fire was – if we look back over the last 20 years – it was one of those fires that put fire as a big threat to communities back in people’s minds. We lost few hundred homes, there was thousands of people evacuated for over a month, and it’s something that it’s ingrained in the mentality here in the Okanagan. You hear people who lived through it still talk about the 2003 fire. And if you go up into that area where it burned, there’s infographics and signs talking about the fire and what happened. So that’s one that people that have been here for a long time, they remember it.\n18:13\tDaryl Spencer, Interview, January 2022:\tIt was unpleasant to understate it. Yeah, it was quite smoky and fiery and scary. Houses were being burned, and it was really kind of apocalyptic. And I remember seeing the fire, the smoke start. When the fire first started and I heard about the lightning strike and the fire started burning, and people were out looking at and it just kept burning northward and northward and started destroying homes. [Music begins] So yeah, it was quite a scary occurrence to happen. And at the same time there are some health risks too – I was into different athletic events back then, that was when I was into marathons and running and so forth, and it really interrupted my training schedule which wasn’t good. [Both Laugh] Either that, or I was going to just be smoking all day while I run through this smoke. I remember the smoke being so thick at times you couldn’t see more than 20 feet through it.\nSo, my name is Daryl Spencer. I’ve been a registered professional forester since 1985, so it’s been a few years. I’ve done fire management and planning amongst other things in the Okanagan Valley for the past 20 years. My current role – I work for the government. I work with the Forest Practices Board, which is an environmental watchdog for the Province. We look at various things that fall under the Forest and Range Practices Act and the Wildfire Act.\n\nCertainly there was fires, but not as predominant as say, 2003 was like a fulcrum kind of point where fire seemed to take off for me anyway. I think that fire, like I said earlier, was a launching point or staging point for more awareness with municipalities, the parks, and the government and served as a bit of a wake-up call for, say the city of Kelowna, BC Parks, and the Ministry of Forests. And it raised awareness of the importance of managing interface fuels and so forth. So that was a key thing there. And I mentioned all those homes were burned down. It was a situation where Okanagan Mountain Park which was back then a Class A park – I think it still is – and Class A parks are left unto themselves to evolve ecologically. So there’s huge mats of pine needles on the forest floor up to two or three feet thick and gathers in areas. So a lightning strike in that fuel – which is readily burnable and burns quite rapidly – started that fire and all these homes were being developed adjacent to this park without the thought of fuel management. So that resulted in a lot of these homes burning up. So that was kind of a wake-up call for city planners and parks and so forth to start setting up interface and buffer areas and so forth to protect homes. [Music ends]\n\n20:57\tDave Gill, Interview, February 2022:\tThe night the fire started, our oldest who’s 20 now…it was a thunderstorm on a Saturday night, I think it was, or a Friday night. And it woke her up. I remember walking around, holding her and tried to console her and get her to go back to sleep. We saw these flashes of lightning, and I was thinking to myself exactly about this guy that was on his horseback in that area just a few weeks before that. And thinking, wow, you know, it’s been so dry all summer, this is going to start something. And the next morning, yes, for sure, [Music Begins] it had cleared off and there was this wisp of smoke going right over our house. It was this odd yellowy color, and it was just a thin strip of smoke. And it was fairly hot, and I thought, ‘Oh, man. It did, it started.’ My name is Dave Gill. I am a registered professional forester, and I work for Westbank First Nation, a company called Ntityix Resources, which is Westbank’s forest management company.\nWe heard them on it, we could hear the helicopters on the fire. We thought that they’d bring it under control, but within a couple days, we realized it was much more than that. It wasn’t long before people were starting to crowd on the streets around us, and higher up on the hill behind us, just looking at this thing. A few days later we were told to leave.\n\nThat was the way I was initiated to fire in the Okanagan, and that in itself changed the way I thought about fire [Music Ends] – from what I learned to, you know, on the ground what I’ve been hearing from people that that live here, rather than what I had learned in school. From there, we had the Filmon Report, and we had a lot of other, I guess for the most part, high-level reports that came out about fire. And that maybe we’ve been taking the wrong approach with fire for about 100 years. [Music Begins]\n\n23:28\tMathieu Bourbonnais, Interview, January 2022:\tMore recently, just even the last few years – Mount Christie fire, White Rock Lake Fire – again fires that really, really quickly came right to our doorstep. These aren’t fires that – oh, there’s an evacuation alert, or you need to be kind of prepared. It was just, pretty quickly, it was right there. That’s the situation that we have in the Okanagan where oftentimes there are really dry conditions that are really conducive to fire spreading quite quickly. And what we should be expecting moving forward is really more of that. It’s unfortunate, again people lost homes. It disrupted a lot of people’s lives. You always try to take that into context, but those are examples you can point to – like this is what we should be expecting, and we need to kind of prepare better for that. From 2003 to now, we look at this last year: the heat dome, these extreme kind of weather conditions that regardless of where you are, if there are those kind of conditions, there is a good chance that if a fire happens, you’re going to have a lot of problems. [Music ends] Yeah, definitely landscape management is a part of it, but also just our legacy and our history of how we’ve managed this Valley combined with how our climate is changing. You can see the progression now as you look back over the last kind of 20 years. [Music Begins]\n25:11\tJudee Burr, Interview, January 2022:\tJust hearing about that experience of really not having a lot of conversations about fire and then having this massive fire happen, I wonder how fire seasons since then have been for you. Do you hear more conversations happening about fire preparedness and FireSmart? Also, what’s it been like for you for these past fire seasons that have been bad, again, to have to live through those kind of smoky summers again?\n25:45\tSharon Thesen, Interview, January 2022:\tSmokey summers. It’s true, I’m extremely anxious every summer. We moved to Lake Country. I guess it felt like a new start or a fresh start. Or to go somewhere where there hadn’t been that kind of destruction and damage. Yes, Smokey summers, the heat, the wind, extreme anxiety. Then it gets cooler in the fall and you kind of forget about it. Then everybody says, “oh, it’s not going to happen here.” Or “oh, they know enough about it now that they will make sure that there’s protection.” But anyway, last May, half of the fire departments from around the Okanagan, were in our very neighborhood practicing putting out forest-interface zone fires. [Music Begins] And I’m sort of like “ha ha, just practice! not rehearsal I hope!” This last summer, because we live in a place where we can see northward up the lake toward Vernon, there was that Monte Lake fire that was burning for about a month and a half.\n27:16\tJeff Eustache, Interview, February 2022:\tYeah, there’s a lot of work needed. Just speaking to the Okanagan Band lands here and the fire that they experienced last summer was quite devastating for the community and the loss could have been a lot worse. But if you look at the landscape, from about a kilometer from here, I’m on the north end of the Reserve, to the south end, which is probably at least 10 kilometers in length – once you get off the lake you get into interface forest and it’s quite thick. Very dead, decayed, pine and fir. I know they do fuel reduction projects, but you’re talking 10, 20 hectares at a time. [Music changes]] And you probably need 50,000 hectares to be done along the whole interface to make a difference.\nMy name’s Jeff Eustache, I’m a registered Forest technologist. I’m from the Simpcw First Nation just north of Kamloops, but I live and reside on the Okanagan Indian Band lands. And I work as the emergency program manager for IPO West, Natural Resources Canada.\n\n28:29\tJudee Burr, Narration:\tBefore moving over to Natural Resources Canada recently, Jeff had worked for the First Nations Emergency Services Society of British Columbia since the mid-2000s. That’s how I found his work. As head of the Fuel Management Department, Jeff supported First Nations communities in taking care of wildfire hazards on their land. This also included working on the “Revitalizing Cultural Burning” project in 2019 with the BC Wildfire Service, the Bridge River Indian Band, and the Shackan Indian Band. This project provided funding for these First Nations communities to conduct cultural burns and document their Indigenous fire stewardship knowledge in videos, reports, and infographics. I’ll put the link to those projects in the show notes. In all of my interviews including this one with Jeff, we talked about much more than you’ll hear in this podcast. But it was significant for me to hear Jeff – someone with extensive wildfire hazard management experience – reflect on living through the White Rock Lake fire last summer on Okanagan Indian Band land.\n29:30\tJeff Eustache, Interview, February 2022:\tThat fire that came through here last year, it started at Monte Lake, which is about, I don’t know, 30 kilometers from here. When they kept on talking about it, I said well it’s never going to get here. They’ll knock it down over there somewhere. The next thing you know, we’re getting evacuated. I was pretty surprised at even how it came into the community, because I know there’s some what I thought would have been pretty good fire breaks. I was pretty surprised that it made it that far. [Music Changes] We got kind of lucky; we’re a little bit further away from where the fire actually was. We got displaced maybe three times over the summer, but some were displaced for probably most of the summer. Unfortunately, some haven’t been able to go home because they lost their homes, right.\nSo, you can see the need for higher-level, landscape-level treatments. You can do the fuel reduction outside at the doorstep there, but once it starts rolling like it did, it takes a lot more than a 50, 100 metre fuel treatment to stop that. I think it’s going to require a lot more aggressive fuel reduction treatments. I know my wife’s family members, they actively go out – and it’s really about, I would say, not even five kilometers from here – they would actually go out every spring and do some burning outside of their property. I’m fairly sure that resulted in a few of their structures being saved, because it didn’t have that understory that could have ignited and swept through there. I was pretty surprised there was not a lot more losses along the Valley here where it came down. It hit pretty hard, but I’m fairly sure that the burning practices of that family really helped. Because they would go in the forest, it wasn’t just grass burning, and they’d go up the hillside and that really, I think, resulted in some protective measures for them. You need to try to increase that more and more. Otherwise, like I said, once it starts rolling that quickly, it’s pretty hard to stop. [Music Changes] You actually can’t stop it.\n\n32:09\tGord Pratt, Interview, January 2022:\tI’m Gord Pratt. A professional forester who works as an operations manager with the Forest Enhancement Society of BC. [Music Ends] And yeah, just happy to be able to join you here today, Judee.\nI was actually on the Peachland fire, back in 2012, I believe. I remember being in Kamloops that day, and it was one of those hot, early September days where, you know what, you’re starting to think you’re past the fire season in many ways. But, it was windy, super windy. I actually remember having a conversation with a friend of mine who was pretty active with BC Wildfire, who said, ‘this isn’t a good day. If we get a start, it’s going to be a problem somewhere.’ Right? And, sure enough, later that weekend, Peachland was on evacuation. It started up, I believe, in the top end on the Coq [Coquihalla Highway] and it ripped down through the community. [Music Begins]\n\nIt’s hard to predict where it will happen. My philosophy is reduce the fuels where there’s likelihood of starts. Where’s that fire behavior going, and what’s the typical weather going to move it towards – and that’s where we need to do it.\n\n33:40\tJudee Burr, Interview, January 2022:\tI wonder if you could just introduce the FESBC for folks who might not know what that is, and talk about your role in this work now. And maybe we could talk about some of the projects in the Okanagan too.\n33:50\tGord Pratt, Interview, January 2022:\tFor sure. The Forest Enhancement Society was formed by government back in 2016. It’s really about a good opportunity to invest back in the province good stewardship projects going forward. Those stewardship projects are governed by our five primary purposes…\n34:12\tJudee Burr, Narration:\tThe Forest Enhancement Society of BC has been a major funder of fuel management projects. I spoke with the foresters I interviewed extensively about fuel management practices. This refers to work to remove combustible layers of woody debris and brush and other material that is accumulating in forested areas where fire has been suppressed and excluded. Sometimes these projects involve removing material from the forest floor, sometimes they involve cutting down some trees to open up a forested canopy to reduce the likelihood of a wildfire spreading from tree to tree, and sometimes they include prescribed burns. We’ll hear a lot more about fuel treatments in the next episode. I asked Gord about some of these projects in the Okanagan.\n34:54\tGord Pratt, Interview, January 2022:\tI think hats off to the Okanagan-Shuswap District, who applied for funding through us to do a lot of work, primarily in the Southeast Kelowna area. And it’s fit into the Ministry’s Wildfire Risk Reduction Program, which is their own internal program that started after FESBC initiated these projects to continue that good work. Because there’s a lot of work that needs to happen throughout the Okanagan.\n35:26\tJudee Burr, Interview, January 2022:\tHave you noticed a change in the way people perceive these projects? [Music ends] Are people able to see a thinning project as ‘this is actually making my home a lot safer’ – from your time in Kelowna, even, through now?\n35:44\tGord Pratt, Interview, January 2022:\tWe have. I think people are pretty sensitive and, I hate to say it, but sometimes an event like 2003 makes it easier. The events of ‘17, ‘18, and ‘21 makes it easier for people to believe us. But, that being said that, there’s definitely a need for that balance. We fund a project in the Joe Rich area. That’s an area, I guess it would be southeast of Kelowna on the highway towards Rock Creek. Gee, what year was that? 2017, 2018 – Joe Rich had a significant fire of note. I think it was four to six hundred hectares. That scared everybody there. The need for a treatment in there probably changed the perception of the people. That project came as an application to us in ’17, ’18, somewhere in there. But I was involved with the high-risk concern of the Joe Rich area when I was in wildfire from 2009 to 2014. Difficult, you know – what do you do there? There’s so much work to do that you kind of need the partnership of industry to do it. And then, you know, maybe that’s too much. [Music Begins]\n37:07\tGord Pratt, Interview, January 2022:\tNone of these things can happen overnight, Judee. And, I guess that’s the other thing, is it takes time to get these things done, to plan it right, get it all done. I always encourage our industry partners to be part of our project because you and me and everybody in BC – we can’t afford to do all this. Well, it’s expensive for us all to do. We can’t afford not to do it, but it’s expensive for us to do, I guess is probably a better way to put it. We need the assistance of our forest industry.\nOne of the balancing acts of some of the projects that we have funded is the importance of the irrigation districts and the watershed groups in and around the Okanagan. We’ve funded some planning and some treatments that either we have done or have been picked up by the wildfire risk reduction program by the Province, to recognize how important the watersheds are – not only for the public but your agricultural industry in the Okanagan.\n\nI am so excited and happy to see that the importance of wildfire risk reduction is getting out in the public eye. Because it can be forgotten so quickly. I saw that in my career as a fuels management specialist – if we didn’t have a fire last year, nobody cared. All I care about is I’m going to go canoeing and camping have a campfire. And, all of a sudden, we get smoked out. It’s a really lousy summer. You know, in Kamloops, I think in Kelowna it was the same there: we got robbed of a summer. In so many different ways. Either we knew somebody who was impacted from an evacuation, or, in my household, people had trouble breathing. It was just one of those things. So, you know what, I think this is critical that we’re getting this out to the public eye, and I think it’s important to all of us who live near, in, around the wildfire-urban interface, those who recreate in BC’s forests: we all have a role in reducing the starts and supporting the activities that our leaders actually want to get done to reduce the likelihood of fire in your neighborhood. That’s the key thing for me. [Music Changes]\n\n39:28\tJudee Burr, Interview, January 2022:\tDid you ever work on any fires in the Okanagan?\n39:31\tKelsey Winter, Interview, January 2022:\tYes. [Laughs] Of course. As a firefighter in British Columbia, that’s like a rite of passage. There’s fires in the Okanagan season, right, it’s just an eventuality, right?\nMy name is Kelsey Winter. I work for the BC Wildfire Service in the Province of British Columbia in Canada. And I’m also the chair of the BC FireSmart Committee.\n39:57\tJudee Burr, Interview, January 2022:\tDo you have any stories from some of the first fires that you worked on?\n40:02\tKelsey Winter, Interview, January 2022:\tYeah, I have quite a few stories. I’m trying to think of a good one. We got a report of a fire way, way up a Forest Service Road. No helicopters. It’s the middle of the fire season. There’s more important targets elsewhere. We’re probably on day 12 of working, so people are pretty tired. We drove up there regardless. It took us quite a while. This was not a very well-maintained FS, Forest Service, road. So there’s potholes that could sink your entire vehicle if you weren’t careful. Got up to where it was, thankfully not a big hike from the forest service road – no water anywhere. And we’re talking anywhere. A helicopter that was bucketing on another fire was able to come by and say, yeah, the best place to get water is way back down the road you just drove up on. And so we went all the way back down, filled up our tank and then on the way up, got a flat tire. Got a flat tire. So we’re perched on a super steep section of the road, obviously can’t change the tire without emptying the tank. So all of the water we just went and got, we dumped all over the road so that we could change the tire. Drove all the way back down. Thank goodness the fire was like in some pretty gnarly slash and some bigger growth. So it hadn’t taken off – because it we were not very quick on our initial attack. But yeah, we did it, went back down, got more water, drove all the way back. It was challenging. But that was one of my very first ones too – I was like, are they all going to be like this? Holy…\nThe one I think of the most, Smith Creek, fire in the Okanagan, I was there with an incident management team. We were pretty sure we’re going to lose neighborhoods. It’s scary. It’s a scary place to fight fire because it’s so populated, right, and the fuel type there is not an easy one to stop when it’s hot and dry and windy, right?\n\n42:09\tJudee Burr, Interview, January 2022:\tIs there anything that stands out to you from working in this Valley?\n42:13\tKelsey Winter, Interview, January 2022:\tI think for me, in my job now too as the FireSmart Program Lead, the Okanagan for me is always like – if we’re succeeding in the Okanagan, that’s a really good indicator that we’re succeeding. [Music Changes] Because it’s somewhere that’s always going to be impacted by fire. Somewhere that historically has had some of the worst fires that have really heavily impacted the populations. It’s a tourist center. It’s economically a super important area of British Columbia. I think it’s kind of where all of those things converge. One of the things with FireSmart that I say all the time – that everybody that lives and breathes FireSmart does – is that it’s not a disaster unless homes are involved. And in the Okanagan homes are involved. You know, it’s populated, there’s people, everybody lives in the wildland-urban interface..\n43:06\tJudee Burr, Interview, January 2022:\tYeah. Can you think of any particular stories or projects that are happening in the Okanagan with FireSmart? I don’t know if there’s any like specific, place-based stories that you have of doing this work in this area.\n43:25\tKelsey Winter, Interview, January 2022:\tYeah, so in BC our primary funding program for FireSmart is the Community Resiliency Investment Program, and it’s run through UBCM, which is the Union of BC Municipalities. But basically it provides up to 150 thousand dollars per community to do FireSmart work or fuel management work, which is amazing. And the eligible activities within that program, you know, you can do assessments, you can replace the cedar shake on your roof, you can make those small changes that – you can change bylaws, you know. Create a position that’s dedicated to FireSmart. Cross-train, so you get your fire department staff out with your wildfire staff and make sure that they know how to handle each other’s equipment, that kind of thing. And the Okanagan has quite a few areas that have been involved in that that grant funding for a long time. Penticton has probably one of the best FireSmart programs in British Columbia. They have a van that’s a FireSmart van, they have community events, they have year-round positions. They have by-laws that are in place that enforce FireSmart principles if you live in Penticton. So they’ve really gone above and beyond.\nKelowna is really involved in the program. They have the Home Partners program there, which is detailed mitigation assessment of individual homes. The homeowners are provided a report, and then they are able to go do those mitigation recommendations on their property, and then they get a certificate at the end that says you’re a FireSmart property that they can then use for their insurance. So Kelowna is really involved. I can’t list all of them. But there’s a ton of great areas in the Okanagan that have really adopted the program, and I think that’s, like you were saying earlier, that’s because of living in the Okanagan. They understand it’s something that’s always going to be there, right? [Music ends]\n\nThere’s a project that we started last year through the BC FireSmart committee and it’s doing research in the wildland-urban interface on structure ignition. So, basically, getting more data on why some structures ignite and why some don’t. So when a wildfire moves through a community, why are there those – you see the pictures, especially more out of the US, but even in Lytton – of that one house on that row that’s still standing, and the others that are gone. And I went to a couple fires this summer in the Okanagan with the research team, and it was crazy to see the little things. Like – maintained green grass. So, someone who just mowed their grass, you know, might make a huge difference, might be the reason why that house was still there and the one beside it was gone. Or things like, all their lawn furniture was pulled away off their deck, or their deck was sheathed in. And so, to me, being there and actually seeing those structures – the one that’s just ash and all you can see is bricks that were there on the chimney stack and everything else is gone – next to the one that is still there. That’s some pretty powerful stuff. I was saying to the researchers, you’re coming home and you’re walking down your driveway, and you have this idea of what’s going to be at the end of your driveway. It would be so I think reassuring to a member of the public – and we talked to a few of them – that were like, ‘I did everything I could like. When I left that house, when I was told to evacuate, it was FireSmart to the best of my abilities.’ Like, ‘I was confident leaving that house that I had given it the best chance I had of coming back to it.’ Versus someone who is thinking ‘Oh man, the propane tank was right up against the house’ or, you know, those little changes. Or ‘the windows were open’. I think that was pretty powerful for me this summer, just seeing what people were going to end up coming home to right. [Music Begins] And what we can do as a program to encourage them to make those changes ahead of time, right? When they still have time to do it.\n\n47:52\tRecording, Sharon Thesen:\t[Thesen reading the final sections of her poem “The Fire,” from Amy Thiessen’s digital edition of the poem.] … And now once more the wind is blowing [Music ends] and the fire surges upon the town and the countryside the dear historic what was lovely the firs and the pines, etc. the brown rabbit hopping the canyon road to the railway trestles where we took our brother and our mother on a Sunday or a Wednesday with its tall ears standing up I would comfort if I could but would have to wrestle it down and feel its sacred heart pounding A stubble of blackened shards where magpies fly, try to settle—in autumn light pine sap looks blue against bark’s carbonic crust and a spray of brown needles on the forest floor we pretend are a carpet of grass and not a scorch of tears upon the miles of roots that smolder still in molten maze where a bluish haze appears to mark [Music begins] the transit of ghosts and giants who left an arsonist’s hoard heaped extinct to matchsticks leaning tip to tip\n49:34\tMusic Interlude:\tJohn Lent singing a cover of Bob Dylan’s “All Along the Watchtower” from the Lent Fraser Wall Trio’s album “Shadow MoonThere\n50:12\tJudee Burr, Interview, January 2022:\t[Music Ends] I’m curious to hear more about this homemaking in a fire-prone place. Can you say more about actually writing “The Fire,” and about how home and making a home in the Okanagan came through in the poem?\n50:30\tSharon Thesen, Interview, January 2022:\tI think my sense of being at home in the Okanagan at the time that I wrote that poem was still really new and fresh, because we had more or less just moved there. We didn’t know that many people, except for June and David. And there’s another little section of my little piece that I call “My Friend June” that I can read – because for me, home is people too. It isn’t just my house. My memory of that time is as much about June as it is about the fire, and the two events coincide so deeply in my memory of the time.\n51:22\tJudee Burr, Interview, January 2022:\tSharon read from her essay “My Friend June”, which is published in a collection called Locations of Grief. June got sick with cancer and passed away two and a half years after she and Sharon lived through the Okanagan Mountain Park Fire together. Sharon and I talked about the importance of her friendship with June, and Sharon told me about an event that she and June organized to bring people together after the fire.\n51:48\tSharon Thesen, Interview, January 2022:\tSo after the fire, June and I decided we should get some people together. Because everybody, this entire city, had been traumatized and then we’re just all kind of sitting there. So why don’t we get some people together to talk about their experiences, share their experiences of the fire? I don’t know why. So, we organized this and made posters and sold tickets. I got on the phone to the local helicopter company and asked if somebody be willing to speak about being a helicopter pilot, putting out fires. Indeed, this one fellow did come, and it was fascinating. We got Patrick Lane, who used to live in the Okanagan. Wonderful poet who was living on Vancouver Island, but he came up and read. John Lent’s quartet came and played afterwards – and the place was packed. It was just a relief. It was a relief, to be with other people and talk about this. Cry, and everything.\n52:56\tJudee Burr, Interview, January 2022:\tI keep thinking about what is powerful about poetry and art and literary work that has to do with fire, and why it’s important to have a space for these kind of fire humanities reflections. This gathering that you organized seems to embody a lot of what feels powerful about it. Like, this ability to use language to notice together, and also the way that poetry can bring people together, and literature and music. Do you have other reflections on what the humanities have to offer and what poetry has to offer in communities that are fire-adapted and live with fire?\n53:41\tSharon Thesen, Interview, January 2022:\tI think what writing does and maybe poetry even more so is [Music begins] it brings to life the particulars of an experience. Not just the generalities about it or some aspect of it, but actual, real particular things. From particular feelings, to particular objects, to particular relationships. Where there isn’t this sense that okay, if it’s a poem about the fire, it has to be about “the fire.” When the fire is just part of what’s happening. So, I think what poetry does is restore us to the real. Restore us to who we are as feeling, perceiving, spiritual beings – and reminds us of the value of that. And that’s not a trivial thing. Like I was saying earlier, what we care about is tremendously significant. And we have to keep remembering what we care about. Because we’re often misled by things that are impossible to care about. Who can care about an abstraction? Who can care about some general office language about this, that, and the other? Maybe the people working there need it to do whatever they have to do. But it’s just an aspect. It isn’t the fullness of the real. What we share are these particularities in our experience. And that’s what holds us together. I don’t know. It just seems that sometimes these terrible things happen. When we were together at the Rotary Centre afterwards, we were together again, as human beings who’d experienced a calamity. But I think what is at risk now is precisely that separation of home and people. And I think when that happens it’s very hard to restore. [Music Changes]\n56:52\tJudee Burr, Narration:\tThe Okanagan based Lent Fraser Wall Trio played music at the gathering that Sharon and June organized in 2003. You’ve been hearing parts of their cover of Bob Dylan’s “All Along the Watchtower” in this episode, used here with permission of John Lent. The rest of the music in this episode is from Blue Dot Sessions. You also heard a selection from Sharon Thesen’s poem The Fire in this episode, recorded for the digital edition of the poem created by UBC Honours English graduate, Amy Thiessen. You can view the digital edition of the poem and hear Amy’s interview with Sharon at sharonthesenthefire.omeka.net. In this episode, you been listening to my conversations with Sharon Thesen, Mathieu Bourbonnais, Daryl Spencer, Dave Gill, Jeff Eustache, Gord Pratt, and Kelsey Winter. We spoke about living through severe wildfire events and about how to protect communities from wildfire danger. You can get going today to prepare yourself and your home for wildfire events, and there is great information on the FireSmart Canada website about this, at firesmartcanada.ca. You can listen to many of my full interviews on my thesis project website, listeningtofirepodcast.ca. You can also find the transcripts of those interviews there, and transcripts of each of these episodes. The episode transcripts include citations for my research. This research was supported in part by the Government of Canada’s New Frontiers in Research Fund through UBC Okanagan’s “Living with Wildfire” Project. I’m Judee Burr, and thanks for listening. [Music continues and fades]\n58:56\tKatherine McLeod:\t[Start Music: SpokenWeb Theme Music] The Spoken Web podcast 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 Judith Burr, PhD student in geography at the University of British Columbia. You can listen to her full podcast by searching “Listening to Fire Knowledges in and around the Okanagan Valley” in your favorite podcast app. Our supervising producer is Kate Moffatt, our sound designer and audio engineer is Miranda Eastwood, and our production manager and transcriptionist is Kelly Cubbon. Judee would like to extend a special thanks to the SpokenWeb project team for teaching her so much about podcasting, and to her thesis co-supervisors Karis Shearer and Greg Garrard, who encouraged her and supported her as she created a thesis in the form of a podcast. 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 me, Katherine McLeod—mini stories about how literature sounds."],"score":2.5099764},{"id":"9593","cataloger_name":["Ella,Hooper"],"partnerInstitution":["Concordia University"],"collection_source_collection":["SpokenWeb AV"],"source_collection_label":["SpokenWeb AV"],"collection_contributing_unit":["SpokenWeb"],"source_collection_uri":[""],"collection_image_url":["https://archiveofthepresent.spokenweb.ca/_nuxt/img/header-img_1000.fd7675f.png"],"collection_source_collection_description":["SpokenWeb Audio Visual Collection"],"collection_source_collection_id":["ArchiveOfThePresent"],"persistent_url":["https://archiveofthepresent.spokenweb.ca/"],"item_title":["SpokenWeb Podcast S4E2, The Night of the Living Archive, 7 November 2022, Makarova"],"item_title_source":["SpokenWeb Podcast web page."],"item_title_note":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/the-night-of-the-living-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 4"],"item_series_wikidata_url":["https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q117038029"],"item_series_uri":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/spokenweb-podcast/"],"item_identifiers":["[]"],"rights":["Creative Commons Attribution (BY)"],"rights_license":["Creative Commons Attribution (BY)"],"access":["Streaming and download"],"creator_names":["Liza Makarova"],"creator_names_search":["Liza Makarova"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"name\":\"Liza Makarova\",\"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/fb141e0b-924d-4e1f-8ea4-d1b28a057963/audio/c5a844a6-1623-443d-ba91-bb326cefe213/default_tc.mp3?nocache\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"s4e2.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"44.1 kHz\",\"duration\":\"00:49:16\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"47,303,828 bytes\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"MP3 audio\",\"title\":\"s4e2\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/the-night-of-the-living-archive/\"}]"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"2022-11-07\",\"type\":\"Publication Date\",\"notes\":\"\",\"source\":\"\"},{\"date\":\"2022-11-07\",\"type\":\"Publication Date\",\"notes\":\"\",\"source\":\"\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"venue\":\"Concordia University McConnell Building\",\"notes\":\"\",\"address\":\"1400 Boulevard de Maisonneuve O, Montreal, QC, H3G 1M8\",\"latitude\":\"45.4968036\",\"longitude\":\"-73.57792785757887\"}]"],"Address":["1400 Boulevard de Maisonneuve O, Montreal, QC, H3G 1M8"],"Venue":["Concordia University McConnell Building"],"City":["Montreal, Quebec"],"Note":["[]"],"Related_works":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"In For Instance Radio Show: Literary Arts Program Interviewing Fred Wah, https://fredwah.ca/node/431\\n\\nPoetry Reading – March 8, 1979, https://new.fredwah.ca/node/438\\n\\nFred Wah: Classroom Conversation on March 9, 1979\\n\\nWah, Fred. Mountain. Buffalo, NY: Audit/East-West, 1967. Print.\\n\\nhttps://fredwah.ca/content/mountain\\n\\nWah, Fred. Limestone Lakes Utaniki. Red Deer, AB: Red Deer College P, 1989. Print.\\n\\nhttps://fredwah.ca/content/limestone-lakes-utaniki\\n\\nWah, Fred.”Limestone Lakes Utaniki.” Karabiner: the Journal of the Kootenay Mountaineering Club 30 (1987): 9-12. Print. https://fredwah.ca/content/karabiner-journal-kootenay-mountaineering-club-30\\n\\nWah, Fred. “Limestone Lakes Utaniki” So Far. Vancouver: Talonbooks, 1991. Print.\\n\\nhttps://fredwah.ca/content/so-far\\n\\nWah, Fred. “Don’t Cut Me Down” Tree. Vancouver: Vancouver Community, 1972. Print.\\n\\nhttps://fredwah.ca/content/tree\"}]"],"_version_":1853670549780168704,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:54.290Z","contents":["What better way to understand the archival state of a poem than to ask it? \n\n“The Night of the Living Archive” is an audio drama/mock interview between research assistant Liza Makarova and Fred Wah’s poems Mountain (1967), Limestone Lakes Utaniki (1987, 1989, and 1991),  and Don’t Cut Me Down (1972), which currently live in the Fred Wah Digital Archive (fredwah.ca). \n\nPoems within the archive are independent documents that live incredibly interesting lives that are celebrated within this episode. Over a series of three interviews, Liza invites these poems, drifting in “the Great Universal Archive,” to speak about their existence in the digital realm. These poems are given the opportunity to speak their minds  on topics such as how digital archives are treated, the poems’ complex histories, and their relationships with each other on a literal and literary level.\n\nThis episode will also present excerpts of Fred Wah’s archive of audio recordings, ranging from his 1979 Poetry Reading Series to an interview which aired at a literary arts radio show in Calgary. As an artist, educator, and writer, Wah has built an incredible social network throughout generations through his poetry, which has the capacity to tell its own story.\n\n\n(00:04):\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\n(00:19):\tKatherine McLeod\tWhat does literature sound like? What stories will we hear if we listen to the archive? Welcome to the Spoken Web Podcast, stories about how literature sounds. [End music: SpokenWeb Podcast Theme Music].\nMy name is Katherine McLeod 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. Do you ever wonder what a piece of literature is thinking? What better way to find out research assistant Liza Makarova realized, than to ask?\n\nAnd in this episode of The SpokenWeb Podcast, Liza does exactly that. Three of Fred Wah’s works that live in the Fred Wah Digital Archive are given voice as Liza interviews them about their lives. Mountain from 1967, Limestones Lakes Utaniki from 1987, 1989 in 1991, and “Don’t Cut Me Down” from Tree in 1972. What is a typical day in a digital literary archive? In this episode, Liza imagines how the preservation of a digital archive can impact the works that it holds and what the relationship between multiple versions of a work in an archive could look like and sound like.\n\nThe episode cleverly and creatively examines the shape of print and digital archives and their preservation and engages in questions of textuality and performance. It dives into the lives of these literary works and how they have shifted and changed over time, and how they feel about this new age they live in. Our producer, Liza Makarova is an undergraduate student at Concordia University in the honors English and Creative Writing Program, and a research assistant on the SpokenWeb affiliated project, “Mapping social bibliography in the Fred Wah Digital Archive.”\n\nThe Fred Wah Digital Archive is a bibliography and repository for the works of Canadian writer Fred Wah. This episode features archival audio of Wah and the voices of the students, researchers, and scholars on the “Aapping social bibliography in the Fred Wah Digital Archive” Project. Here is episode two of season four of the SpokenWeb Podcast, “The Night of the Living Archive.”\n\n \n\n(03:25):\tArchival Recording Fred Wah In Class Conservations – March 9,1979\t[Sound Effect: Sound of a tape clicking shut]\nSteve McCaffery, a Toronto sound poet, and I have been having discussions about the mutations or mutability of a poem. He is now writing poems which, at a certain point, the poem reaches the pages and he admits that: “Okay, at one stage in a poem’s life it belongs in a book or on a page in type, but there are further stages to that poem’s life.”\n\n[Sound Effect: Tape Clicking Shut]\n\n(04:07):\tLiza Makarova\t[Start Music: Upbeat Percussion]\nHello, SpokenWeb Podcast listeners! My name is Liza and I am an RA for a Spoken Web-Affiliated Project called “Mapping Social Bibliography in the Fred Wah Digital Archive” led by the brilliant literary editor, researcher, Concordia doctoral candidate, and archivist, Deanna Fong. Fred Wah is an extraordinary experimental poet, professor, literary critic, editor, and community literary legend currently based in British Columbia but he has connections all throughout Western Canada.\n\nHis poetry, prose, and scholarly work has been in circulation since the 1960s. Various researchers, developers, and academics have been involved with his digital archive, building off the work of Susan Rudy, who initially started the Fred Wah Digital Archive around 2006 after starting the paper archive in the late 80s/early 90s. Working on the archive of a writer who is still active is a curious and special thing. If we have a question about something or need more context, we can directly contact Fred for support.\n\nPlus, the archive is still growing as we add his recent collections. I used to think of an archive as something purely historical, out of date, a storage room. But ever since I started working on the Fred Wah Digital Archive I realized that archives are incredibly dynamic and ongoing spaces. I would even go as far as to say that most digital archives… [End Music:Upbeat Percussion] are living. //\n\nI first noticed it when I was organizing a dataset in the backend of the site. I was having some trouble with finding older entries so I could update them, nothing was coming up when I was searching for a couple of his poems. I decided to refresh the page when all of a sudden I heard a voice. I thought I was hallucinating from too many all nighters but then I heard it again. “Hey! Don’t do that! We’re trying to bring our brother over from our old place. He’s stuck in the search box,” I looked and the site URL was replaced by the text for one of Fred’s poems called “Artknot 14”.\n\nI quickly copied and pasted him into a new entry and heard cries of joy from the reunion. They asked how they could repay me and I said by letting me interview a couple of them…for research. They said okay, if Fred said okay and Fred said okay as long as the poems get back before 8am the next day because they have a lecture to attend together. Today, I have the deepest honor and pleasure of speaking to three of Fred Wah’s collections and poems from the Digital Archive. First off, I would like to introduce Mountain, a collection of Wah’s poems from 1967.\n\n(06:44):\tComputerized Voice:\t[Music Interlude: Synthesizer] Hello and welcome to the Fred Wah Digital Archive. Please sit closer to your device to proceed onto the liminal speaking platform.\n(06:53):\tLiza Makarova\tUh, like this?\n(06:55):\tComputerized Voice:\tExactly. Who can I connect you with today, past, present, or future?\n(07:00):\tLiza Makarova\tI would like to speak to Mountain, please. From 1967.\n(07:04):\tComputerized Voice:\tUnderstood. Mountain is now loading. [Sound Effect: Computer whirring]\n(07:14):\tMountain\tUh, hello?\n(07:16):\tLiza Makarova\tHello, and welcome to the podcast.\n(07:18):\tMountain\tHello. Hello.\n(07:20):\tLiza Makarova\tOh, what’s up? How’s it going?\n(07:22):\tMountain\tI’ve been good. Coasting. What about you?\n(07:26):\tLiza Makarova\tYeah. Mm-hmm. Not much, but, but good. Okay. I’m just gonna jump right in. How long have you been in the archive?\n(07:34):\tMountain\tThat’s a difficult question.\n(07:36):\tLiza Makarova\tHow so?\n(07:37):\tMountain\tWhat archive are you talking about?\n(07:39):\tLiza Makarova\tOh, well, the Fred Wah Digital Archive.\n(07:42):\tMountain\tAh, okay. You see, saying the archive without specifying which one usually signifies the whole universe.\n(07:49):\tLiza Makarova\tThe archive is the whole universe?\n(07:52):\tMountain\tPrecisely. As soon as something is made, even if it was just a second ago, it becomes part of the archive.\n(07:59):\tLiza Makarova\tThe great universal archive. It seems vast and overwhelming.\n(08:05):\tMountain\tIt is, but that’s why you exist, right? To keep it all organized?\n(08:10):\tLiza Makarova\tYeah, and I guess it is.\n(08:12):\tMountain\tAnyway, to answer your question, I’ve been around since the beginning of Fred’s archive, but not the archive. Moving from platform to platform since 2008. Then in 2015, and now again in 2022.\n(08:23):\tLiza Makarova\tBy platform you mean website, right?\n(08:26):\tMountain\tMm-hmm.\n(08:27):\tLiza Makarova\tWhat’s it like in Drupal 9 in general, but also compared to previous platforms?\n(08:33):\tMountain\tSo far it’s not too much different from other places we’ve lived. Think of moving from a duplex to a townhouse.\n(08:39):\tLiza Makarova\tInteresting. What about the jump from Drupal 5 to Drupal 7?\n(08:43):\tMountain\tWe call that period… [Ominous music starts and then ends] the dark times. The age of Link Rot.\n(08:55):\tLiza Makarova\tLink Rot? Can I ask what happened?\n(09:00):\tMountain\tNovember 6th, 2013. It was a Wednesday and we were getting quite a lot of visitors because of “Diamond Grill”, Fred’s 1996, semi-fictional biography. Since everyone was trying to figure out that Lorde song by looking up the lyrics, “I’ve never seen a diamond in the flesh.” It was at the top of the charts, you know? That was our last normal day for a while.\nWe noticed something was wrong right away after that, Susan Rudy, Darren Weshler, derek beaulieu, Bill Kennedy and a group of researchers like you were always active on the site. In fact, from 2009 to 2013, even the public could submit pitches and bibliographic material to the site. We became accustomed to this very caring community. We knew something was wrong when sections of the archives started to get dark. We literally could not see them. Poems, which were friends of ours, literally started to disappear.\n\nNothing seemed to work properly and the quality of our space gradually decreased as no human was working on the archive at the time. By working, I mean what you humans call maintaining the site by updating it to the right versions of Drupal, editing data sets and uploading new ones. As our website link died, so did our connection to the digital ecosystem. We were lost in space and time. For a human it would be like if you were stranded and then your phone dies.\n\n(10:16):\tLiza Makarova\tAnd that’s Link Rot? It almost sounds like a  loss of identity or not being able to properly take care of yourself.\n(10:24):\tMountain\tIt’s exactly that. But one day it all changed. We don’t celebrate a lot of holidays over here at the Fred Wah Digital Archive, but we do celebrate the summer of 2014. [Calming, ethereal music begins]\nSuddenly two new users logged into the site and then a huge group of student researchers, archivists, and designers followed. After a month or so, we were launched onto a whole new platform.\n\n(10:46):\tLiza Makarova\tWell, yeah. Hearing  the project start up again in 2015 from your perspective is so special. I’m really touched. Thank you.\n(10:54):\tMountain\tOf course. We’re very, very lucky to have been supported and taken care of for so long, and that there were people like Deanna Fong and Ryan Fitzpatrick who were able to get more funding and get us back on our URL. [Music ends]\nIt’s hard to imagine the number of archives, especially ones about tracking social relationships in the literary world that go under. All of those fellow poems suddenly go dark and disappear.\n\n(11:16):\tLiza Makarova\tAnd why do you think that Fred Wah’s Digital Archive has lasted so long?\n(11:21):\tMountain\tOur versatility, our literary community, the longest breath of all.\n(11:27):\tLiza Makarova\tWhat was the best part about being rebooted?\n(11:30):\tMountain\tI would say the most special part was being reunited with collections who were still in the process of being digitized in 2013. Seeing them in the digital realm was miraculous.\n(11:40):\tLiza Makarova\tAw, one big family reunion.\n(11:43):\tMountain\tYes. It was such a happy but interesting day.\n(11:47):\tLiza Makarova\tOh?\n(11:48):\tMountain\tWell, Fred wrote, recorded and performed new work while the archive was down. There were a lot of first time introductions to be made as this new work, which was very well received and known in the public, was unknown to us in the archive. Making space for them in Drupal 9 was easy though.\n(12:04):\tLiza Makarova\tYou know, that’s actually something the current team is working on right now.\n(12:07):\tMountain\tOh, are you digitizing more archival material?\n(12:11):\tLiza Makarova\tYeah. Over the summer, the humans working on the archive went to Vancouver to work in the SFU Special Collections. We went over the digital archive and found what didn’t have a cover or a textual scan, pulled it from the collections and scanned it. While we were there, we formally met the SFU Fred Wahl Archival human team and hosted a public talk about what it was like to work on a “so-called” living archive. We called the conversation “Mountain Many Voices: The Archival Sounds of Fred Wah.”\n(12:39):\tMountain\tHow original [Mountain and Liza laugh] That’s super sweet.\n(12:44):\tLiza Makarova\tYeah, we mostly talked about Fred Wah’s audio fonds, which are a collection of his audio tapes and recordings. At the end of the trip, we brought home a lot of good memories, new scholarly knowledge, and a USB full of archival material.\n(12:57):\tMountain\tI’m looking forward to the reunion as well as a new design of the site. We’ve all been chatting about this a lot. I’m most excited for the audio recordings to get their own page. They do not respect after hours noise regulations. [Mountain and Liza laugh]\n(13:12):\tLiza Makarova\tSpeaking about having a page of one’s own, how does the way we organize the archive affect the relationships between the various poems on the site? Do you feel like being represented on separate pages/links isolates you from specific contexts?\n(13:26):\tMountain\tI mean, not really. We already represent different places and time periods depending on when we were created.\n(13:32):\tLiza Makarova\tCould you clarify what you mean by created? Do you mean when/where you were published or when/where you were written?\n(13:40):\tMountain\tDo you really think there’s a difference? Where do you think we came from?\n(13:45):\tLiza Makarova\tI guess from Fred Wah, but the thing about his work, about you, I guess, is that his writing is really inspired and contextualized by the environments he grew up in. His Chinese Canadian heritage, the politics of the time and the social groups, he was, and still is a part of.\nI’m a writer myself, so I really like to compare it to the textual art of embroidery. You have this base, which is like a book website or even a single poem, and you’re using all these threads that you’ve collected by living life to weave together these art forms. Oh, sorry. That was really long winded.\n\n(14:22):\tMountain\tNot at all. I quite miss the wind actually.\n(14:30):\tLiza Makarova\t[Liza blows into the mic to simulate the sound of wind blowing] Is this helping?\n(14:32):\tMountain\tIt’s the thought that counts. You’re really making me think about my home and my fellow poems. We’re all so different from each other, in conversation with each other, but also in comparison or reference to other pieces of art, music and writing. These influences can be hard to highlight in print, but the vastness of a digital archive creates a lot of space for these intimate connections to receive the attention they deserve.\n(14:55):\tLiza Makarova\tI would love to know more about what it’s like in the actual digital space.\n(14:58):\tMountain\tWell, we live in a five story house. Each floor is labeled by sections A through E.\n(15:04):\tLiza Makarova\tRight. We call that the bibliography. For those who might want more clarification, a bibliography is essentially a list of everything a writer ever wrote. What are your thoughts on how you’re currently organized?\n(15:15):\tMountain\tI really like it. It’s what I’m used to, you know? Archival work has always kind of been a thing, but digital archival work is super new. Susan, as in Susan Rudy, started this digital archive with a team of researchers in 2006. Fred has always had an organizational system, so we got used to who we were surrounded with, who’s in the neighborhood. Thankfully, Susan made sure that when we got digitized, the same system was put in place, hence our bibliography. [Soft warm music begins to play]\nI’ll never forget the feeling of being scanned for the first time. I think you can imagine it as an x-ray. I’m pretty old, so I’m not used to any of those things. I thought that laser scanning would be the end of me, but instead it was the beginning.\n\n(15:59):\tLiza Makarova\tI can only imagine how that might have felt. [music ends]\nWhat about migrating? What is it like to migrate onto version 2.0? How did it feel?\n\n(16:07):\tMountain\tKind of feels like a huge family road trip.\n(16:10):\tLiza Makarova\tOh, that’s really sweet.\n(16:12):\tMountain\tYeah. Yeah. I’m pulling your leg. Assuming that it is pullable. It was quite a long process since we can’t all just move at once. There are a lot of steps involved to make sure everything goes smoothly. Think of migrating from site to site like this. You’re moving boxes from one shelf to another, but the other shelf has slightly different dimensions, so you have to make certain adjustments to make sure everything fits again. Then again, these spaces can be filled with new software updates that improve the overall functionality of the site. It’s like moving into a bigger house, so now you have space for that vintage standing lamp you’ve always wanted.\n(16:47):\tLiza Makarova\tWow. I just love hearing your thoughts on all this. As we discussed, digital archives are a really incredible tool to showcase and disseminate the oeuvre of writers who use multimedia such as audio, visual arts, and small press publishing. You mentioned earlier that due to the age of Link Rot, newer material didn’t get on the site until a couple years after they were published, so I’m not quite sure who makes the calls inside the archive, if someone or something like that exists for you, but out here we have something called for-profit publishing companies.\n(17:21):\tMountain\tHmm, Yes, the InPrint books or the LabuorLeaflets, if you’re trying to be a part of the open source movement.\n(17:28):\tLiza Makarova\tThe movement… [Liza hesitates before going on] [whispering]  Can we talk about this near a recording device?\n(17:33):\tMountain\tOf course. I think more people should know about this. Here in the archive, no one is in charge, no anthology name or chatbook is more important than the community that we make up. But it’s true that outside of the archive, some work is still in print and therefore under institutional control.\n(17:50):\tLiza Makarova\tRight. We can’t scan or upload anything still circulating for the public to purchase. Does that make you sad or feel anything in particular?\n(18:00):\tMountain\tIt’s simply a phase of our lives and the archive is hopefully the next.\n(18:04):\tLiza Makarova\tWould you consider the archive as your home at the moment?\n(18:08):\tMountain\tIt’s definitely not a permanent home. I don’t think something like that exists for anything. Like for you, where would you consider home? Where you were born, where you grew up, where you are now, or where you’ll end up? Like a retirement home. Nothing and no one stays somewhere forever, or at least a part of them is always somewhere else.\n(18:28):\tLiza Makarova\tCould you expand on what you mean by a part of them is always somewhere else? [Mountain sighs deeply]\nOh, are you? Are you talking about, I don’t know if I’m allowed to say this…\n\n(18:42):\tMountain\tOh, just say it.\n(18:43):\tLiza Makarova\tAre you talking about your body?\n(18:46):\tMountain\t[Soft piano music begins to play] Yes. I miss it a little.\n(18:50):\tLiza Makarova\tHardcover or paperback?\n(18:53):\tMountain\tWell, that’s a little personal. [Music ends]\n(18:54):\tLiza Makarova\tI’m, I’m sorry. So your body, your physical presence on earth. Would you consider that your home? Okay. Maybe a better question would be what about the present digital archive feels like home compared to the physical one?\n(19:07):\tMountain\tThe relationship is a little tense. I mean, my physical body is kept in a temperature controlled room in the Simon Fraser Special Collections. While my contents and consciousness have been bloated to a nebulous space. I really can’t tell which is more permanent, the internet or the real world. What I like about being in a digital archive, that I hope you humans listening can also appreciate, is how open it is. There are no clear boundaries about where I start and where I end.\nPlus maintaining a literary archive in the real world can be a lot of work. I mean, I can only imagine how hard it is to keep 50 books open at the same time, or even worse, to never be opened again. In the digital space, we keep ourselves alive, always ready. There is no rest for the digital archival poem. The internet is a busy place. Sometimes it’s nice to dissociate for a little and reconnect with my physical form. [Soft piano music begins to play] To feel the chill of my spine, to stretch out my pages when someone brushes by. Sadly, in a physical archive, I’m not relevant until someone needs something from me. [Music ends]\n\n(20:15):\tLiza Makarova\tThat’s not true. You’re an artifact. You’ve survived so much. We don’t need to be needed in order to be important. The fact that you still exist and people who didn’t even exist in the sixties can interact with you is really special.\n(20:30):\tMountain\tThank you for that.\n(20:31):\tLiza Makarova\tOf course, I don’t do this just because I like to keep the great universal archive organized. I’m also passionate about the preservation of literature.\n(20:41):\tMountain\tI actually have a question for you now.\n(20:43):\tLiza Makarova\tOkay. Go ahead.\n(20:44):\tMountain\tWhy do you have to put our dimensions and everything up on the digital archive? Do people really need to know how much I weigh, and how truthful is it to say that I’m 22 pages long when the PDF actually compresses me down to 20?\n(20:57):\tLiza Makarova\tWell, that’s metadata.\n(20:58):\tMountain\tData can be existential.\n(21:00):\tLiza Makarova\tNo, it’s data about data.\n(21:02):\tMountain\tThat’s kind of existential.\n(21:04):\tLiza Makarova\tI guess so. The reason why archivists and researchers need to collect and display metadata is so that it’s easier for users to find the information they’re looking for. The process of creating metadata from large and various sets of data is kind of like creating a dating profile.\nA person, just like a data set, is complex and often holds a lot of information at once. Metadata is specific details about information rich material that is formatted and categorized so it’s accessible, easy to find and descriptive.\n\n(21:36):\tMountain\tWell, when you put it that way, I can see how it reduces the amount of smalltalk I have to do when someone new comes to the site.\n(21:42):\tLiza Makarova\tExactly. By using the search bar, any user can just type in what they’re looking for in terms of genre, length, or collaborator, or all the information can be found just by looking at you.\n(21:53):\tMountain\tI gather slightly similar information about our users.\n(21:56):\tLiza Makarova\tOh, like what?\n(21:58):\tMountain\tWell, I know that you all have good taste. [Mountain and Liza laugh]\n(22:03):\tLiza Makarova\tWell, it has been an absolute pleasure to speak with you, Mountain 1967. Before I let you go, I have one last question to ask you. Can you describe existing in a digital archive in one or two words, even?  If you can, of course?\n(22:22):\tMountain\t[Mountain takes a deep breath] Freedom. [Soft piano music plays briefly and then fades out]\n(22:36):\tFred Wah, In Class Conversations – March 9, 1979\t[Sound effect of a tape being put into a tape player]\nAnd maybe you, maybe, maybe people have some opinions on, you know, paying for literature or poetry. Uh, I mean there, you know, there’s a pretty good argument for saying that poetry belongs, because it’s language, it belongs to everyone. It belongs to all of us. [Sound effect of a tape ending]\n\n(22:54):\tLiza Makarova\tUh, hello? um, com-computer voice?\n(22:58):\tComputerized Voice:\tHi.\n(22:59):\tLiza Makarova\tMay um, may I please speak to “Limestone Lakes Utaniki?”?\n(23:03):\tComputerized Voice:\tWell, does it wanna speak to you?\n(23:06):\tLiza Makarova\tOh, yes? It agreed to meet with me, so I think…\n(23:11):\tComputerized Voice:\tOkay, I see you on the list. “Limestone Lakes Utaniki” is loading.\n(23:15):\tLiza Makarova\tThank you.\n(23:18):\tComputerized Voice:\t[Whirring noise begins] They have now been loaded. [Whirring noise ends]\n(23:20):\tLiza Makarova\tThey? [Music begins]\n(23:25):\tLLU x3\t[Three voices speaking at once] Hello?\n(23:26):\tLiza Makarova\tOh, am I speaking to “Limestone Lakes Utaniki?”\n(23:29):\tLLU x3\t[Three voices speaking at once] Yes.\n(23:30):\tLiza Makarova\tOh, hello. There are so many of you.\n(23:34):\tLLU x3\t[Three voices speaking at once] Yes, but…\n(23:37):\tLLU 1\tUh, yes, but we are not all the same.\n(23:41):\tLLU 2\tWe’re like identical twins with slightly different features.\n(23:45):\tLLU 3\tI like to think of myself as an individual, a lone wolf even, distant from the pack.\n(23:50):\tLLU 2\tOh, so you went from first to second person in 1987, and now you think you’re so different from us.\n(23:56):\tLLU x3\t[Three voices speaking at once] That’s not true!\n(23:58):\tLLU 3\tWow.\n(24:00):\tLiza Makarova\tWell, I’m still so excited to speak with all of you today. It completely slipped my mind that there are so many versions of this collection. My first question for all of you, I guess, is this: The Fred Wah Digital Archive is more than an archive, right? It also explores mapping a social bibliography. So from your perspectives, how does this mapping appear for you?\n(24:25):\tLLU 1\tSo the social bibliography is, well, like a list of everyone who has worked on a project with Fred. Each person is housed under us as either an editor, contributor artist, or as, uh,  someone who was published alongside Fred. However, archival materials are, uh, also housed under the contributor.\n(24:51):\tLLU 2\tOkay. Okay. You’re getting a little wordy. To summarize there’s—\n(24:55):\tLLU 1\tWordy! Aren’t you the one with three extra passages?\n(25:00):\tLLU 2\tTo summarize, you can’t search for information about a specific contributor without also learning about different archival material and vice versa.\n(25:08):\tLiza Makarova\tSo for you, being an independently published poem, as well as appearing in a few different publications means you’ve come across a lot of people.\n(25:16):\tLLU 2\tI’m not sure if “come across” is the right word to describe the relationship the social bibliography has with the literary bibliography.\n(25:25):\tLLU 1\tOh! Oh, I agree. Oh, we’re, we’re not just passing through. The poem is part of the community, just as much as the poets.\n(25:33):\tLiza Makarova\tHmm, I see. So perhaps you could say that you’re not only personally connected to each contributor, but you also make up the bonds that connect people in the Wah-verse.\n(25:42):\tLLU 3\tInside and outside of the Fred Wah Digital Archive.\n(25:46):\tLiza Makarova\tHuh? What do you mean?\n(25:47):\tLLU 2\tWell, think about yourself, for example.\n(25:49):\tLLU 3\tOr the cooler, [clears throat] I mean, cool people that worked on the Fred Wah Digital Archive before you.\n(25:55):\tLLU 1\tOh, we’re always meeting new and familiar researchers as the project gets new team members or when it moves to a different province.\n(26:05):\tLiza Makarova\tWait. So, like you, you know our location?\n(26:08):\tLLU 3\tUm, we weren’t created in a vacuum.\n(26:10):\tLLU 2\tOf course we have a sense of spatiality.\n(26:13):\tLLU 1\tYou could even say that, that spatiality is our specialty.\n(26:21):\tLLU x3\t[Three voices speaking at once] [All three laugh] Good one.\n(26:21):\tLiza Makarova\tOkay. So I know that one of the main features of the archive is to plot and display geographical metadata based on the framework of Fong and Fitzpatrick who revived the Fred Wah Digital Archive in the 2010s. We know how the text, you all, circulated throughout Canada in various time periods. In their words, this sort of research adds another layer of relational information that illuminates literary sociality in a spatial sense.\n(26:48):\tLLU 2\tRight.\n(26:49):\tLLU 1\tI think I know what you’re getting at.\n(26:52):\tLiza Makarova\tBut you’ve also developed a sense of present sociality.\n(26:56):\tLLU 3\tIn order to be in the Fred Wah Digital Archive, you have to have been outside of it at some point.\n(27:01):\tLiza Makarova\tHuh. So since your positionality is currently inside of the archive, how or in what ways are you connected to the um, I guess non-archival space?\n(27:13):\tLLU 2\tCapturing the present is also a way of capturing the past.\n(27:16):\tLLU 1\tI mean, couldn’t every space be considered an archival space?\n(27:21):\tLiza Makarova\tOh yeah, yeah. Right. Sorry. The great universal archive. Oh, okay. So let’s break it down a little bit. You’re all in the Fred Wah Digital Archive, like within the code that’s projected as a legible image in text. But you also exist in various library archives that are in British Columbia and Montreal, because Fred Wah donated his reel to reel tape collections and books to SFU, UBCO and Concordia. But you also absorb information in the homes of everyone who has ever bought, bartered or stole a copy of you- your material.\n(27:57):\tLLU 2\tThere’s a movie like that, right?\n(27:59):\tLLU 1\tLike, um… Everywhere…\n(28:01):\tLLU 3\tAt once.\n(28:02):\tLLU 2\tAt once everything is…\n(28:04):\tLiza Makarova\tEverything Everywhere All At Once-, anyway, what I’m trying to understand is how you feel about your positionality as digitized archival material. In the many places where you are at the moment you are simultaneously in the digital archive, which is a very dynamic place in terms of temporality. How does this huge angle inform your sense of self and how you feel about all the places and people you are connected to?\n(28:29):\tLLU 3\tThe Fred Wah Digital Archive is just like any other place that’s been passed down over time. You always know what kind of person lived prior to you based on how they left the space, and you’re going to be aware of the contributions you personally make in the space.\nSame thing goes for an archive. The research group in Vancouver at SFU are very different from you all in Montreal. They have access to material you don’t, and vice versa. We take note of these distinctions quite literally since it affects how we are presented, but also how people interpret us\n\n(28:57):\tLLU 2\tBy working on the Fred Wah Digital Archive with someone in the same position as you from Vancouver in 2016, automatically makes you affiliated to them in some way, even if you’ve never met before. Internally, we see that by comparing your organization of metadata, use of punctuation, and what information you think should and shouldn’t appear in the archive.\n(29:18):\tLiza Makarova\tHmm. There is definitely a connection between how you track the variation of archival interaction and how we track the development of Fred Wah’s work and community as he moved within different literary milieu’s.\n(29:29):\tLLU 1\tYes, exactly! So to go back to the question about the social bibliography, it is a list of people, but it also represents a network, one that spans across generations and miles, genres and styles, friendships and camaraderie.\n(29:51):\tLiza Makarova\tSo there is an archive of contemporary interconnections within so-called Canada inside of the archive of Fred Wah’s collected works.\n(29:58):\tLLU 3\tIt’s super layered. It’s not exactly clear where the archival text ends and where the social bibliography begins.\n(30:05):\tLiza Makarova\tWhat are your thoughts on being in conversation with so many different people, texts, and environments?\n(30:10):\tLLU 2\tIt’s exciting.\n(30:11):\tLiza Makarova\tI’m so glad. Personally, I think I would feel a little overwhelmed. It’s a lot of information that overlaps. I would be scared of getting lost.\n(30:19):\tLLU 2\tI would say that’s why it’s important to be precise, specific and to display a variety of labels in the way you organize things. An editor of Fred’s work could also show up as an artist. As part of the collected work taxonomy, we became accustomed to being called “Limestone Lakes Utaniki” without any note about us being different versions.\n(30:39):\tLLU 3\tFor the longest time we were just listed as the same poem.\n(30:42):\tLLU 2\tAnd in some ways we are, different variations of it.\n(30:47):\tLLU 1\tBut it’s important to track these changes over time.\n(30:51):\tLiza Makarova\tWe actually found out through an audio recording from March 9th, 1979 that the reason why there are so many versions of the same poem is because Fred Wah edited them before sending them off for publications.\n(31:03):\tLLU x3\t[Three voices speaking at once] Oh, we know!\n(31:05):\tLiza Makarova\t[Liza laughs]  I wonder if there are any other versions that we don’t know about that were specifically edited for readings.\n(31:10):\tLLU x3\t[Three voices speaking at once] Oh, we wouldn’t know.\n(31:12):\tLiza Makarova\tWait, you have never heard yourself be read aloud?\n(31:16):\tLLU x3\t[Three voices speaking at once] Nope.\n(31:16):\tLiza Makarova\tWell, would you like to?\n(31:18):\tLLU x3\t[Three voices speaking at once, talking amongst themselves]\nI, I’m not sure. Like… I think it’d be, I think we could…\n\n(31:22):\tLLU 2\tLet’s do it.\n(31:25):\tLLU 1\tThe thing is… I don’t think there is a recording of us being read.\n(31:28):\tLLU 2\tWe actually haven’t ever heard an audio recording of Fred read before. Like at all.\n(31:36):\tLiza Makarova\tHmm. Okay, let me see. [Sound effect of someone typing on a computer]\nOh, here. Let’s listen to this clip of Fred reading “What does Qu’ Apelle mean?” for the 1985 TISH celebration. A bunch of poets like George Bowering, Frank Davey, David Dawson, Gladys Hindmarch, Lionel Kearns, Peter Auxier and Warren Tallman were there reading as well.\n\n(32:02):\tFred Wah reading in “TISH: A Celebration (1985)”\tI was in, uh, I was in, uh, Fort Sand this summer, Fort Qu’ Apelle and, uh, a few poems out of that. This was a letter, a letter back home.\nWhat does Qu Apelle mean?/ Did you know I watered the Japanese cherry out front?/ The manchurian plum too./ How late did Jennifer sleep on Sunday?/ I talked to my mum about using the wormy cherries for wine./ Tell her about the worm in the tequila./ What did Erica do at Gray Creek?/ I picked two cocoon-like burs off the apricot tree./ What do you think they are?/ I think we should plant more flatter sugar peas from now on./ I cook that halibut with some veggies in the leftover burnt brown rice./ I’m trying to remember a particular and specific rotten two by four on the deck or a blemished shingle/. So I can take us there by mentioning to you like that piece that’s soft to the touch of my foot when I turn to the left on Slant Trans Canada./\n\nYou can’t swim in the lake here because of the algae./ I don’t have a printer for my computer, so I’m using a typewriter./ There’s a girl here who was an old Smith Corona portable of her mother’s, which is just like yours only in better shape./ This place is full of noise because it’s a band camp and there’s a black lab right outside my window howling all night, every night./ When I flew over Invermere, the fires were really chugging out. Huge smoke stacks./ So you could tell the mountains were in control./ They have mosquitoes here./ Is life work?/ Where’s my olive green tank top?/ I don’t know if my grandmother’s ever talked to one another./ Do you know that idea about if you image something, it will be true?/ There are probably images in our lives which will never be actualized, particularly ones above the north./ Information is definitely not narrative or maybe narrative isn’t narrative./ Could someone, and I don’t mean in the Japanese sense at all, clean out the culverts on the road in case it’s a real deluge./ The food’s mediocre./ I’m too academic./ This worries me, but I, but maybe it’s okay./ Like I don’t think it’s a serious problem./ But if it becomes part of a life force blow, I’ll really wonder./ Don’t forget to check the water in the batteries in this hot weather/ What does Qu’apelle mean?\n\n(34:22):\tLiza Makarova\tWhat did you think?\n(34:25):\tLLU 2\tI could feel the air flowing through the spaces between each letter, the warmth of breath propelling us towards the microphone and seeping into the tape.\n(34:34):\tLLU 1\tI felt like I was there. As soon as you played it, I was transported to 1985. Being inhaled [LLU 1 inhales] and exhaled,[LLU 1 exhales]  riding each sound wave to the present.\n(34:51):\tLiza Makarova\tRecording poetry readings was really important for Fred Wah’s generation in the sixties all the way into the eighties. It wasn’t just for the sake of preserving or capturing the work of prolific poets on tape, but it’s also a way for work to be shared or even gifted.\n(35:05):\tLLU 2\tThat isn’t to imply that we were some commodity either. A huge part of sharing tapes was keeping the contemporary writing ecosystem alive. Poets from the west could hear poets from the east read and vice versa. After this exposure, writers from one side of the country could respond to the work of their distant peers, and it would also circulate throughout their local literary communities.\n(35:27):\tLLU 3\tThe Digital Archive is similar in that way. Instead of being transferred from the hands of one artist to the next, we’re easy to access for the entire world. Obviously, we don’t wanna compete with people buying books, but for some people it’s hard to find copies of older material, especially if a bookstore doesn’t carry our publisher.\n(35:44):\tLiza Makarova\tHmm. I hope there’s a time when literature on the public domain and independent publishers can work together. Literary artists and editors deserve to be paid for their work, but Digital Archives shouldn’t be neglected in the process.\n(35:57):\tLLU 1\tEspecially one like the Fred Wah Digital Archive. It’s a homage to all the care that goes into creating a generative literary community with a lot of significance placed on the people who made it possible.\n(36:14):\tLLU 2\tHaving one’s memory and work be celebrated and sustained is an important non-monetary contribution to a writer’s career.\n(36:22):\tLiza Makarova\tI feel like that’s the reason why the legacy of this specific archive is so vital to the Canadian literary scene. It isn’t just about the bibliography and access to Fred’s work, but it’s also about the possibility of interacting with people in literature you otherwise wouldn’t be exposed to. Do you think that this sort of openness or convenience affects the personal connections between writers and their work?\n(36:44):\tLLU 3\tMm, I can speak on that, I guess. I would argue that putting these relationships into context is a way to preserve their intimate nature. Fred Wah widely wrote for his community and vice versa. Making sure the users of the archive know who these people are, where they’re from, and how often they’re connected is a great way to situate them in a closed network.\n(37:02):\tLiza Makarova\tTo clarify, are you saying that us as users of the archive and researchers are situated as outsiders? From this position we can view this network but not really consider ourselves as part of it.\n(37:14):\tLLU 1\tMm, no. That would be a little harsh. I guess it has more to do with ensuring that the network of writers and artists and editors and others are represented in the temporal and spatial realm when and where they had strong ties. The beauty of mapping a social bibliography is that these connections are only framed by our knowledge of them. Rather than thinking of them as a box, someone who is not, well, let’s say a part of the network, someone who grew up in a different setting or time period has a different perspective and sociality.\n(38:05):\tLLU 2\tSo you’re not outsiders. Actually quite the opposite. You’re insiders! By using the archive and inspecting the relationship network, you’re getting an in on the details, which develops your understanding of the archival material you are trying to analyze. It brings you closer to us.\n(38:22):\tLiza Makarova\tI definitely feel closer to all of you after this interview. Thank you so much for inviting me into your space.\n(38:29):\tLLU 1\tThank you for having us.\n(38:31):\tLLU 2\tIt was a pleasure.\n(38:32):\tLLU 3\tIt was nice to have someone different to talk to— Someone like me—\n(38:34):\tLLU 1 and LLU 2\t[LLU 1 and LLU 2 speak over each other.] Oh. Oh, Come, come on, on you. This is the last time we’re oh, oh, this. Why are you making such a scene? Jeez! [Music begins to play and then quickly ends]\n(39:00):\tFred Wah reads “Don’t Cut Me Down”\t[Sound effect of a tape player starting plays ] So I’ll read a few poems from the book, Tree.\nDon’t Cut me down/ I don’t want any of this tree poetry shit from you/ You don’t know what a fucking tree is/ If you think it’s only in your head, you’re full of shit/ Trees is trees and, and the only thing they’re good for is lumber, so don’t give me any crap about them being something else/ For Christ’s sake, you think the rest of us don’t know sweet fuck all all compared to you/ But you don’t know nothing until you go out there and bust your back on a set and chokers break your so fast, you wouldn’t even wanna look at a tree, let alone and write about it/ Then you’d know what a tree was ‘stead of yapping about it.\n\nThat’s essentially what was said to me in a bar, obviously, when I said I’m a writer and I write, I’m writing poems about trees.\n\n(39:37):\tClip of Fred Wah speaking  “In For Instances – Literary Arts Program on CJSW” \tLanguages, I see language as quite an organic, uh, moving thing. We really don’t have, uh, you know, individually, uh, a lot of control over what language does. Um, and I, I’m, I’m a believer in the notion that really the poem writes itself or the poem writes me. [Sound effect of tape player stopping]\n(40:01):\tLiza Makarova\tHello? May I please speak to, “Don’t Cut Me Down” from Tree?\n(40:06):\tComputerized Voice\tAre you sure?\n(40:08):\tLiza Makarova\tUh, yes? It will be my last interview, I promise.\n(40:14):\tComputerized Voice\tAll right. If you’re sure. [Sound effect of whirring begins] “Don’t Cut Me Down” has now been loaded. [Whirring ends] [music begins and ends]\n(40:27):\tLiza Makarova\tHi, my name is Liza and welcome to the podcast.\n(40:30):\tDCMD\tHuh? What the hell is a podcast?\n(40:32):\tLiza Makarova\tOh, it’s like a radio show.\n(40:34):\tDCMD\tAll, right. Then why don’t you just call it a radio show?\n(40:36):\tLiza Makarova\tI mean, it’s not technically a radio show since we’re not on air.\n(40:40):\tDCMD\tWell then what the hell are we breathing?\n(40:43):\tLiza Makarova\tUh, no. To be on air means-\n(40:45):\tDCMD\tDon’t explain to me what a radio show is. I know what a radio show is. So in 2022, you have no radio shows and no sense of humor. Typical. What do you wanna talk about?\n(40:56):\tLiza Makarova\tI would love to know what a day in a life of a digital literary archive looks like. What do you usually get up to?\n(41:02):\tDCMD\tSit around. Mind my business. Load once in a while, if I feel like it.\n(41:07):\tLiza Makarova\tWould you say you sit around more in a digital archive or in a material archive?\n(41:11):\tDCMD\tMaybe we’d be sitting around more if you’d bother to code some damn chairs.\n(41:15):\tLiza Makarova\tOh… I’m not the web developer.\n(41:18):\tDCMD\tWho do I talk to to get a chair around here?\n(41:21):\tLiza Makarova\tI’ll let our web developer know as soon as possible. Okay. Here’s a question I think you’ll like. What are some things digital archive poems don’t appreciate? I’m talking, boundaries.\n(41:33):\tDCMD\tJust don’t talk to me about feeling complete.\n(41:35):\tLiza Makarova\tYou don’t feel complete? Do you feel like a draft?\n(41:38):\tDCMD\tDidn’t you hear me? Do you feel complete? Aren’t you sort of a draft? See? Don’t go asking things if they feel complete, you’re gonna get in a lot of trouble.\n(41:49):\tLiza Makarova\tOkay. Fair. Noted. I’m sorry.\n(41:51):\tDCMD\tIn terms of boundaries, I’ll narrow it down to two. Number one is close your damn tabs. I know you’re reading, researching, rambling, but be mindful of those tabs. You have me open in three different browsers and you don’t even realize, and then you complain that I’m slow. Then you refresh, refresh, refresh. It’s hard to keep up.\nNumber two, don’t forget about that Fred blog, new updates thing, on the site. You people are digging deep into the archives, but forget what’s happening in the present. If you do, then you’re really not grounding yourself. It really grinds my metaphysical gears, tightens my syntax. I don’t like it.\n\n(42:27):\tLiza Makarova\tWell, thank you for bringing that up. [Music begins] Another aspect of the Fred Wah Digital Archive that’s very unique is that it informs users on what Fred Wah is doing in the now, as well as the creative contemporary writing that is inspired by him, his older works, and even the archive itself.\n(42:43):\tDCMD\tAnd that’s what I like to see people exploring. I know what Fred has done, but I wanna know what he’s doing right now. Hopefully not writing any more tree poems.\n(42:52):\tLiza Makarova\tI can assure you he’s doing a lot of interesting writing and revisions since your publication. Bringing up tree poems and the theme of experimenting with the temporal clash of digital archives and material archives, I’m wondering about your thoughts on immortality. You were written and published in 1972, but you’ve honestly not aged a bit.\n(43:09):\tDCMD\tI want everyone to know that I’ve gotten zero work done, by the way, and I say that because you can’t say the same for some of these revised poems.\n(43:18):\tLiza Makarova\tGetting some touch ups isn’t a bad thing.\n(43:20):\tDCMD\tYou know what I don’t like?\n(43:21):\tLiza Makarova\tWhat’s that?\n(43:22):\tDCMD\tInstall updates. I hate moving, migrating, whatever you call it. We’re not birds, we’re poems. We belong somewhere. We need to be treated with more respect Now, everything’s a mess. We have duplicated poems, couplets, if you’re trying to be all fancy, all these new functions. But, oh, don’t you dare marvel at new technology because once you blink, there’s something out there that’s newer. And that’s what I’m talking about. Who is paying for all of these moves? Are we really getting that popular? That’s what I wanna know.\n(43:51):\tLiza Makarova\tYes, actually! You are. I can completely understand how migrating can be tough, especially after experiencing two big overhauls. Maintaining and updating a digital archive is both a very slow, yet simultaneously overwhelming process.\n(44:05):\tDCMD\tMhm, I hate being hurried and I also hate feeling stuck.\n(44:08):\tLiza Makarova\tStuck? Do you feel stuck in the Digital Archive?\n(44:11):\tDCMD\tDon’t put words into my mouth.\n(44:12):\tLiza Makarova\tI just wanna know your thoughts on what it means for a piece of literature to end up in a literary archive.\n(44:18):\tDCMD\tEnd up?\n(44:20):\tLiza Makarova\tYeah. There’s a general misconception, I feel, in the public opinion that an archive, digital or not, is a place where old books are left to collect dust or take up space.\n(44:31):\tDCMD\tAnd who are you? Some hero? Why do you feel the need to prove them wrong?\n(44:34):\tLiza Makarova\tBecause I think there’s a lot of value to preserving the work of our predecessors. It’s a way to be a part of the conversation and interact with media we wouldn’t have been able to interact with otherwise.\n(44:45):\tDCMD\tSo you think you can just waltz into any old archive and listen to a couple of tapes and you’re just like the greats?\n(44:51):\tLiza Makarova\tNo, it isn’t a hierarchy. Without getting too stoic, I, I think it’s a duty of contemporary writers, artists and academics to be critical of, listen to, and take care of archival material, their future is our future. Plus we as researchers wouldn’t have this deep connection to prolific writers from the past if  archives like this one weren’t maintained.\n(45:12):\tDCMD\tYou don’t know what an archive is.\n(45:14):\tLiza Makarova\tHuh?\n(45:15):\tDCMD\tYou’re pulling all this nonsense out of the website’s backend. I’ll do you a favor by telling you some difficult truths by asking you some questions now. How do you decide what makes it onto the digital archive and what doesn’t?\n(45:25):\tLiza Makarova\tSelection criteria is subjective.\n(45:27):\tDCMD\tWell, that’s what I’m asking you, subject!\n(45:30):\tLiza Makarova\tOkay. Well, personally, I don’t think I’m the one to say. This isn’t my body of work, but in general, I think that everything deserves to be preserved one way or another. Either through a library, a special collections room, in art, a digital archive, or even in memory.\n(45:47):\tDCMD\tYou know, not everything is up on that archive.\n(45:50):\tLiza Makarova\tI know that. We can’t track down everything Fred Wah has ever written.\n(45:54):\tDCMD\tAnd you’re okay with that?\n(45:56):\tLiza Makarova\tI mean, no. Call me a perfectionist, but I love the satisfaction of knowing there are no gaps when I’m looking at a bibliography, especially in the sense of mapping out a social sphere. No interaction, inspiration or contribution is too small.\n(46:11):\tDCMD\tMm, interesting.\n(46:13):\tLiza Makarova\tWhat, what is it?\n(46:19):\tDCMD\t[Music begins] Did you really think that you could preserve everything? [Music ends]\n(46:49):\tClip from “Fred Wah In Class Conservations – March 9,1979”\t[Sound effect of a person’s footsteps and a tape player being started]\nFred: It’s a line printer, so it only prints out how many copies are requested. They don’t have to print a whole edition.\n\nAudience Member: Well, all this stays in the computer, in other words.  Say, I’d like a copy, it would run one off whatever edition it is now. Second, second draft, or whatever.\n\nFred: To a certain extent, I agree with you except that, that I also like, uh, I like books. I like the feeling of something, uh, of a statement, um, of a, I like monuments too, but I like the possibility that monuments can be, uh, destroyed. [Sound effect of tape player stopping]\n\n(47:42):\tKatherine McLeod\tSpokenWeb is a monthly podcast produced by the SpokenWeb team as part of distributing the audio collective from and created using Canadian literary archival recordings found at universities across Canada. Our producer this month is Liza Makarova, undergraduate student at Concordia University and research assistant on the mapping social bibliography in the Fred Wah Digital Archive Project. Our supervising producer is Kate Moffatt and our sound designer and audio engineer is Miranda Eastwood. Kelly Cubbon is our production manager and transcriber. And I’m your host, Katherine McLeod.\nSpecial thanks to Deanna Fong, the principal investigator of the Fred Wah Digital Archive and the entire Fred Wah Digital Archive RA team. And an extra special thanks to Fred Wah for giving us permission to use his recordings, text, and the overall support he has provided us through the creation of this podcast episode.\n\n[SpokenWeb theme music begins] 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 at SpokenWeb Canada. Stay tuned to your podcast feed later this month for shortcuts with me, Katherine McLeod: Short stories about how literature sounds.\n\n[SpokenWeb theme ends]"],"score":2.5099764},{"id":"9671","cataloger_name":["Ella,Hooper"],"partnerInstitution":["Concordia University"],"collection_source_collection":["SpokenWeb AV"],"source_collection_label":["SpokenWeb AV"],"collection_contributing_unit":["SpokenWeb"],"source_collection_uri":[""],"collection_image_url":["https://archiveofthepresent.spokenweb.ca/_nuxt/img/header-img_1000.fd7675f.png"],"collection_source_collection_description":["SpokenWeb Audio Visual Collection"],"collection_source_collection_id":["ArchiveOfThePresent"],"persistent_url":["https://archiveofthepresent.spokenweb.ca/"],"item_title":["SpokenWeb Podcast S4 Trailer, Welcome to Season 4!, 19 September 2022, Moffatt, Eastwood, McGregor, McLeod"],"item_title_source":["SpokenWeb Podcast web page."],"item_title_note":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/welcome-to-season-4/"],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Podcast"],"item_series_title":["The SpokenWeb Podcast"],"item_series_description":["Series of podcasts by the SpokenWeb network."],"item_subseries_title":["The SpokenWeb Podcast Season 4"],"item_series_wikidata_url":["https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q117038029"],"item_series_uri":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/spokenweb-podcast/"],"item_identifiers":["[]"],"rights":["Creative Commons Attribution (BY)"],"rights_license":["Creative Commons Attribution (BY)"],"access":["Streaming and download"],"creator_names":["Katherine McLeod","Kate Moffatt","Hannah McGregor","Miranda Eastwood"],"creator_names_search":["Katherine McLeod","Kate Moffatt","Hannah McGregor","Miranda Eastwood"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/44156495389117561605\",\"name\":\"Katherine McLeod\",\"dates\":\"1981-\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Producer\"]},{\"url\":\"\",\"name\":\"Kate Moffatt\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Producer\"]},{\"url\":\"\",\"name\":\"Hannah McGregor\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Producer\"]},{\"url\":\"\",\"name\":\"Miranda Eastwood\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Producer\"]}]"],"contributors":["[]"],"Publication_Date":[2022],"material_description":["[]"],"digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://cdn.simplecast.com/audio/28a9da1f-8cca-410c-b5d7-8165a73f9394/episodes/aa749423-c429-48b9-8aaf-c150b5c0a869/audio/a0e73918-a5b1-4e35-aa6e-320e73a87208/default_tc.mp3?nocache\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"s4-trailer.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"44.1 kHz\",\"duration\":\"00:03:37\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"3,484,987 bytes\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"MP3 audio\",\"title\":\"s4-trailer\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/welcome-to-season-4/\"}]"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"2022-09-19\",\"type\":\"Publication Date\",\"notes\":\"\",\"source\":\"\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"venue\":\"Simon Fraser University Maggie Benston Centre\",\"notes\":\"\",\"address\":\"8888 University Drive, Burnaby, BC, V5A 1S6\",\"latitude\":\"49.276709600000004\",\"longitude\":\"-122.91780296438841\"}]"],"Address":["8888 University Drive, Burnaby, BC, V5A 1S6"],"Venue":["Simon Fraser University Maggie Benston Centre"],"City":["Burnaby, British Columbia"],"Note":["[]"],"Related_works":["[]"],"_version_":1853670549795897345,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:54.290Z","contents":["Hello and welcome to another season of The SpokenWeb Podcast! We’re back with a new line-up of exciting episodes created by researchers across the SpokenWeb network. The SpokenWeb Podcast asks, “What does literature sound like? What stories do we hear when we listen to the archive?” In this season, we have episodes that dive into the lives of archival objects—university poetry events—what it means to read an audiobook—and so much more. This season has something for everyone from lovers of literature and history to sound studies scholars, so come and join us as we continue listening to literature and the archives.\n\nWe would love to hear your reactions and ideas to our stories. If you appreciate the podcast, leave us a rating and a comment on Apple Podcasts or say hi on our social media @SpokenWebCanada.\n\n00:00\tHannah McGregor:\tWhat does The SpokenWeb Podcast sound like? [Start Music: Acoustic Strings] In our third season, we revisited Myra Bloom’s episode about Elizabeth Smart from Season 1—\n \n\n00:11\tMyra Bloom, S3E1 “Podcasting Literary Sound: Revisiting ‘The Agony and the Ecstasy of Elizabeth Smart’”\tIt suddenly occurred to me that I actually never heard her voice. (Underlaid Archival Audio of Elizabeth Smart: “I thought, if it was agreeable to you, that I’d read a chapter from By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept.”\n \n\n00:17\tHannah McGregor:\t— heard the voices of poets and writers across Canada —\n \n\n00:21\tArchival Audio, Phyllis Webb, in S3E10 “‘starry and full of glory’: Phyllis Webb, in Memoriam”:\n \n\n…stars, stars, stars! [Repeats, fading out]\n \n\n00:23\tInterview Excerpt, S3E2 “Lisa Robertson and the Feminist Archive”:\tIs it the glimpse of mortality that makes you feel a bit differently about it?\nWell, it’s quite literally seeing your friends die.\n\n \n\n00:29\tFaith Paré, S3E5 “The Show Goes On: Words and Music in a Pandemic”:\tThis is not the poem I wanted / It is the poem I could.\n \n\n00:33\tHannah McGregor:\tAnd thought about how we listen.\n \n\n00:36\tStéphanie Ricci:, S3E6: “Listening, Sound, Agency: A Retrospective Listening to the 2021 SpokenWeb Symposium”:\n \n\nHow do we discuss the sounds of human beings\n \n\n00:38\tHannah McGregor:\tWe asked, what does scholarship sound like? and revisited last year’s virtual SpokenWeb Symposium—\n \n\n00:46\tStéphanie Ricci:, S3E6: “Listening, Sound, Agency: A Retrospective Listening to the 2021 SpokenWeb Symposium”:\n \n\nHow do we listen virtually?\n \n\n00:48\tMathieu Aubin, S3E6: “Listening, Sound, Agency: A Retrospective Listening to the 2021 SpokenWeb Symposium”:\n \n\nHow do you listen virtually to a conference about listening?\n00:52\tHannah McGregor:\t—and the 1983 Women and Words conference held in Vancouver.\n \n\n00:56\tArchival Audio from S3E7 “The archive is messy and so are we”:\t“[…]our subject this morning is women facing traditional criticism, criticizing criticism.” (Clip continues under Hannah and resurfaces, underlaid with the next clips)\n \n\n01:01\tHannah McGregor:\tWe explored how collaboration and conversation are central to the research and work that we do.\n \n\n01:07\tKelly Cubbon, S3E9 “Talking Transcription: Accessibility, Collaboration, and Creativity”:\tKelly: Well, the process of transcription sounds like collaboration, like a conversation\n \n\n01:12\tKatherine McLeod, S3E9 “Talking Transcription: Accessibility, Collaboration, and Creativity”:\n \n\nIt is a process that invites access to content through multiple voices and multiple senses.\n01:18\tKate Moffatt, S3E7 “The archive is messy and so are we”:\t[Warped Archival Clip Plays With Some Words Audible] And it’s funny, cuz you can almost hear it. Like you can almost hear something being said.\n \n\n01:26\tHannah McGregor:\tThis past season took us to new places and spaces, from the plains of Northern Alberta–\n \n\n01:32\tMichelle, S3E3 “Forced Migration”:\t[Michelle and a low, gravely voice recite simultaneously] But the bull dragged the man, and the rope lacerated his hands, cutting to the bone.\n \n\n01:37\tHannah McGregor:\t–back to the 80s, to the student-run campus radio shows of the CKUA network.\n \n\n01:44\tTerri Wynnyk, S3E8 “Academics on Air”:\n \n\nWe once found a boa constrictor that had escaped. Because up above us was all sorts of science labs and buildings and rabbits and cockroaches […]\n01:52\tHannah McGregor:\tMy name is Hannah McGregor, and I’ve been the host of the SpokenWeb Podcast since its inception. But I’m stepping out of this role for the next year, and I have the pleasure of passing the mic to this season’s host: Katherine Mcleod.\n \n\n02:08\tKatherine McLeod:\tThank you Hannah! [Music Swells to Atmospheric Chords] My name is Katherine McLeod, and I am so excited to host this new season of the SpokenWeb Podcast. You’ll recognize my voice from ShortCuts – our deep dive into the SpokenWeb archives that you can find right here on the same podcast feed.\n \n\nThis season on the podcast, we have a line-up of episodes that we can’t wait to share: we’re going to hear more about the “Drum Codes” we listened to in Season 2; we’ll be thinking about audiobooks as a literary medium: what is it like to read an audiobook? What is it like to teach with an audiobook in the classroom?\n\n \n\nWe’ll be re-listening to university poetry events, diving into the archives to converse with the archival objects themselves. We’re going to experience environmental sound with an episode on fire and ecopoetics; and we’ll be thinking about literary environmental sound, and even exploring the soundscapes of libraries. Whether you’re a lover of literature or a sound studies scholar, this podcast has something to share with you. Subscribe and join us for Season Four of the SpokenWeb Podcast, coming to your podcast feeds on October 3rd."],"score":2.5099764}]