The SpokenWeb Podcast

SummaryThis "farewell" podcast episode was recorded live at the SpokenWeb Institute on May 17, 2025, at the University of British Columbia Okanagan campus, Kelowna, BC. Producers Nick Beauchesne and Chelsea Miya, with host Maia Harris, lead an audio-visual journey exploring the roots and evolution of SpokenWeb's Symposia and Institutes from 2019 through 2025."The SpokenWeb Symposia Retrospective: Celebrating Sound Studies Since 2013" presents original voice, sound, and music from SpokenWeb collaborators (including Ali Barillaro, Nix Nihil, and Jason Camlot); clips from past Symposia manifestos; live panel guests (including Jason Camlot, Katherine McLeod, Karis Shearer, and Klara du Plessis); pre-recorded interview segments (including Jordan Abel, Oana Avasilichioaei, Annie Murray, Jason Wiens, Cole Mash, and Erin Scott); and a ShortCuts interlude featuring an "unarchiving" of Phyllis Webb combined with live flamenco dancing from Katherine McLeod--yes, you can dance in a podcast!Join us as we "re-sound" some memorable moments from the Symposia and Institutes of SpokenWeb’s past. We will also look to the future, as our guests speculate on the legacies and possibilities of our research, creative performances, archives, and community. TopicsIn this episode, producers Nick Beauchesne and Chelsea Miya interview various SpokenWeb members and reminisce about past Symposia and Institutes.IntroductionPre-Recorded Interview with Annie Murray and Jason WiensLive Panel with Jason Camlot and Katherine McLeodPre-Recorded Interviews and Soundscapes with Jordan Abel and Oana AvasilichioaeiShortCuts Interlude with Katherine McLeodPre-Recorded Interview with Cole Mash and Erin ScottLive Panel with Karis Shearer and Klara du PlessisConclusionCredits Show NotesThe SpokenWeb theme music was composed by Jason Camlot, with vocals performed by Ali Barillaro. She recorded a new version for this live show Redux, over a beat produced by Nix Nihil. In the ShortCuts interlude, Katherine McLeod danced to a remix by Jason Camlot of Phyllis Webb reading “Rilke” in Montreal in 1966.Myron Campbell hosted the “Draw by Night” event on the first night of the SpokenWeb 2025 Institute. UBC Okanagan student Evan Berg designed the SpokenWeb Logo. The design work and branding package for the Re-Sounding Poetries Conference is by Mikah Assaly. Conference illustration is by artist Reuban Scott, whose work you can find on Instagram at @roobtoons.Camlot, Jason, and Katherine McLeod, editors. CanLit Across Media: Unarchiving the Literary Event. McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1515/9780773559813.Camlot, Jason and Katherine McLeod. "Introduction: New Sonic Approaches in Literary Studies." ESC: English Studies in Canada, vol. 46 no. 2, 2020, p. 1-18. Project MUSE, https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/esc.2020.a903552.Camlot, Jason. “Listening Practice Guided by Jason Camlot – Disciplinary Listening: Does Literature have an Audile Technique?” The SpokenWeb [website], September 18, 2019, https://spokenweb.ca/events/listening-practice/.McFarland, Joe. “Schulich Professor Says Municipalities around the World Are Learning Lessons from Calgary's 2024 Water Feeder Main Break.” UCalgary News, January 7, 2025. https://ucalgary.ca/news/schulich-professor-says-municipalities-around-world-are-learning-lessons-calgarys-2024-water-feeder.McLeod, Katherine. “SpokenWeb Concordia Has Launched Ghost Reading Series” [blog post]. SpokenWeb Concordia, December 1, 2018, https://spokenweb.ca/spokenweb-concordia-has-launched-ghost-reading-series/. Murray, Annie, and Jared Wiercinski. “A Design Methodology for Web-based Sound Archives.” Digital Humanities Quarterly, vol. 8, no. 2 (2014), https://dhq.digitalhumanities.org/vol/8/2/000173/000173.html. Music and Sound Effects“Sounding Out!” by Jordan Abel, Conyer Clayton, Manahil Bandukwala, Liam Burke, and Nathanael Larochette, performed and recorded live at the SpokenWeb Symposium 2023 at the University of Alberta, May 2, 2024.“Operator” by Oana Avasilichioaei, performed and recorded live at the 2019 SpokenWeb Sound Institute at Simon Fraser University.Chalice by Blue Dot Sessions.“Culpable Tranquility” by Nix Nihil and Psyoptic. Used with permission from the artist.“Canadian Cicada (Okanagana canadensis)” by Wil Hershberger, Songs of Insects, https://songsofinsects.com/.“Sunwaves” by Nix Nihil and Psyoptic. Used with permission from the artist.Soundfx from freesound.org:“Creek Swimming,” by JazzyBay, (https://freesound.org/people/JazzyBay/sounds/435055/), licensed under Creative Commons. AcknowledgementsWe would like to thank our live and pre-recorded guests for sharing their stories and memories of the SpokenWeb: Annie Murray, Jason Wiens, Jason Camlot, Katherine McLeod, Jordan Abel, Oana Avasilichioaei, Cole Mash, Erin Scott, Karis Shearer, and Klara du Plessis.We are grateful for the support of the talented 2025 SpokenWeb Institute organizing committee and tech team: in particular, Erin Scott, Garth Evans, and Kailee Fawcett, who helped in countless ways behind the scenes to make the live show possible.

SummaryIn this episode, we reflect on the life of Kurtis Vanel, SFU's longtime audio engineer, and a fixture of Vancouver's music scene in his own right. Featuring archive recordings of Vanel, as well as an interview with SFU alumni Dr. Deanna Fong, we uncover the interesting relationship between the archive and those who helped build it.IntervieweeDr. Deanna Fong, postdoctoral fellow in English and History at Concordia UniversityArchival RecordingsDouglas Gyseman and Robert Denis, 1978, from the Simon Fraser University Archives"The Valley Dansrs" from the album Past Eroticism by bill bissettShow NotesPrevious mention of Kurtis Vanel in appears in this episode, and a full discussion of Vanel's work as an audio engineer can be found in this publication by Kate Moffatt, Kandice Sharren, and Michelle Levy, "Modeling the Audio Edition with Mavis Gallant’s 1984 Reading of 'Grippes and Poche'" (English Studies in Canada). Check out John Mackie's article, "A hidden treasure of 1960s Vancouver recordings resurfaces" (Vancouver Sun) for more about Vanel's story plus cool photos. For more on the ideas related to collection thinking explored in this episode, see this publication, Collection Thinking: Within and Without Libraries, Archives, and Museums(2023).  

Sonic Lit: A SpokenWeb Radio Show is a bi-weekly radio show on CJLO, the campus radio station of Concordia University (Tiohtià:ke/Montreal, Canada). On air since September 2024, the show features “sound recordings from 1888 to the present that document times when people have whispered, spoken, howled and screamed literature out loud” (“Sonic Lit”). Co-hosted by us – Jason Camlot and Katherine McLeod – the radio show is an extension of our collaborative and creative research about “new sonic approaches in literary studies” (McLeod and Camlot). Prior to stepping into the booth, we had imagined the show as a curation of audio recordings as catalogued by SpokenWeb researchers working with various community and institutional holdings of literary audio across the network. However, as the show began, we had to sort out how the definition of “spoken word” as understood by regulatory bodies in Canadian radio intersects with “spoken word” as understood by poets and scholars of poetry recordings. Making audio for radio turned out to be a vastly different experience than making audio for podcasts such as this podcast, The SpokenWeb Podcast. We soon realized that our radio show was a performative exploration of a set of research questions relating to the affordances of radio for “literary listening” (Camlot). For example, what are the affordances of radio as compared to a podcast when it comes to sharing and discussing literary audio? How does spoken word poetry register in relation to other discursive forms on the radio? How do we as hosts perform "talk radio" in talking about poetry? And what is our sense of audience when on air? What does listening sound like on the radio? We produced this audio, "Listening on the Radio," as a radio-show-as-podcast-episode to answer these questions and others – out loud. ReferencesCamlot, Jason. “Toward a History of Literary Listening.” ESC: English Studies in Canada, vol. 46 271.2, 2020 (published in 2023), p. 263-271. https://ojs.lib.uwo.ca/index.php/esc/article/view/17421Camlot, Jason and Katherine McLeod. "Introduction: New Sonic Approaches in Literary Studies."ESC: English Studies in Canada, vol. 46 no. 2, 2020 (published in 2023), p. 1-18. https://ojs.lib.uwo.ca/index.php/esc/article/view/17412“Sonic Lit: A SpokenWeb Radio Show.” CJLO 1690 AM, http://www.cjlo.com/shows/sonic-lit-spokenweb-radio-showSHOW NOTESThe audio of "Listening on the Radio" is currently presented as part of the digital gallery of Poetry Off the Page, Around the Globe (University of Vienna) in June 2025. Listen to the radio show Sonic Lit: A SpokenWeb Radio Show, on CJLO 1690 AM in Montreal on Mondays at 2pm EST, or check out past episodes online at cjlo.com.Recordings played during “Listening on the Radio” include the voices of poets Tawhida Tanya Evanson (Cyano Sun Suite), Maxine Gadd (from SGW Poetry Series), David Antin (The Principle of Fit, II”), FYEAR (FYEAR), A.M Klein (Five Montreal Poets), bpNichol (Ear Rational: Sound Poems 1970 - 1980), Allen Ginsberg (from SGW Poetry Series), and P.K. Page (The Filled Pen).Main narration audio recorded by Jason Camlot and Katherine McLeod at the AMP Lab, Concordia University. Audio excerpts from Sonic Lit: A SpokenWeb Radio Show, The Tommy John Show, and 514-Core were recorded on air at CJLO’s studio at the Loyola Campus of Concordia University. Mixing, mastering, and musical composition by Jason CamlotProduced by Jason Camlot and Katherine McLeod

How does timestamping shape the preservation and curation of literary sound? This roundtable episode brings together four SpokenWeb researchers––Jason Camlot, Tanya Clement, and Mike O’Driscoll in conversation with moderator Michael MacKenzie––to explore this deceptively simple yet profoundly complex question. What emerges is a layered, multidisciplinary view of timestamping, not just as a technical task, but as an archival, aesthetic, and philosophical practice.In Part One, the conversation begins by situating timestamping in broader historical and intellectual contexts. Panelists reflect on the epistemology of time, from ancient timekeeping and annalistic history to modern digital temporality. What does it mean to mark time, and how does a timestamp compare to a page number, an index, or a narrative structure?Part Two asks what it means to think critically about timestamping. Here, the guests draw on their scholarly practices to examine the subjectivity of timestamps, the tension between precision and ambiguity, and the role of annotation. The discussion turns to digital media’s microtemporalities and how timestamps carry expressive, affective weight beyond their data function.In Part Three, the panel listens to an experimental performance by Jackson Mac Low and considers the challenge of timestamping layered or deliberately disorienting sound. What responsibilities do timestampers have in maintaining a balance between accessibility and artistic intention? Can timestamping illuminate without flattening?Part Four focuses on vocabulary. Why does it matter if we tag something as a “reading” versus a “performance”? How do controlled vocabularies shape what we can learn from large-scale literary audio corpora? This final section explores how even the smallest metadata decisions reflect theoretical commitments and institutional values.Ultimately, this episode makes one thing clear: timestamping is never neutral. It is an interpretive act, grounded in choices about meaning, representation, and access. From poetic performance to archival platforms, timestamping remains central to how we listen to—and understand—literary sound. Show Notes and Resources:Abel, Jordan. Nishga. McClelland & Stewart, 2021. pp.243-73Bernstein, Charles. “‘1–100’ (1969) .” Jacket2, jacket2.org/commentary/1%E2%80%93100-1969. Accessed 17 Apr. 2025.Though cut from the episode, this appeared as an example from O’Driscoll during the uncut roundtable and stands alone as a fascinating example of marking time. You can access a full performance of the short poem by Bernstein hosted at the above link, at Jacket2. O’Driscoll: “The numerological is itself potentially … not a neutral medium. It is potentially an expressive medium … so that timestamps can have an aesthetic, they carry value and meaning, they can shape the way that we think about things and that they're subject to a level of performance as well too.”“Charles Bernstein (Poet).” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 15 Feb. 2025, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Bernstein_(poet).Bolter, Jay David, and Richard Grusin. Remediation. MIT Press, 2000.One central point of departure for our research, though we had to cut our remediation questions due to time. “Eadweard Muybridge.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 10 Apr. 2025, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eadweard_Muybridge.Eliot, T. S. “‘Burnt Norton’ from Four Quartets.” Four Quartets - 1 Burnt Norton, www.davidgorman.com/4quartets/1-norton.htm. Accessed 17 Apr. 2025.“Gertrude Stein.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 28 Mar. 2025, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gertrude_Stein.“Hayden White.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 5 Mar. 2025, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hayden_White.“Jackson Mac Low at SGWU, 1971.” Edited by Jason Camlot and Max Stein, SpokenWeb Montréal, 17 Aug. 2015, montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/jackson-mac-low-at-sgwu-1971/#1.The full version of the recording shown during the episode can be found here. The portion shown during the episode begins at 1:09:35.“Jackson Mac Low.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 30 Mar. 2025, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackson_Mac_Low.“Susan Stewart (Poet).” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 14 Sept. 2024, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Stewart_(poet).Though cut from the episode, Stewart’s work on the “souvenir” appeared as an example from Camlot during the uncut roundtable helping bridge the gap between timestamp and annotation. Camlot: “I would probably want to think of it as a dialectical relation between the timestamp, sort of the demarcated moment and times unfolding, and then the larger narrative account within which the timestamp has significance … like Susan Stewart's work on the souvenir … this sort of partial representation of a whole that can only be supplemented by narrative.”“Wolfgang Ernst (Media Theorist).” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 12 Apr. 2024, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfgang_Ernst_(media_theorist).More information about our participants can be found at: “Jason Camlot.” Concordia University, www.concordia.ca/faculty/jason-camlot.html. Accessed 17 Apr. 2025.“Michael O’Driscoll.” English and Film Studies, University of Alberta, apps.ualberta.ca/directory/person/mo. Accessed 17 Apr. 2025.“Tanya Clement.” College of Liberal Arts at UTexas, liberalarts.utexas.edu/english/faculty/tc24933. Accessed 17 Apr. 2025.Music Credits:This podcast uses music from www.sessions.blue: For post-question pauses, we used Jemeneye by Blue Dot Sessions (www.sessions.blue).For framing the podcast itself, we used the song The Griffiths by Blue Dot Sessions (www.sessions.blue).For framing the roundtable and preceding questions, we used portions of the song “Town Market” by Blue Dot Sessions (www.sessions.blue).This podcast also uses these sounds from freesound.org:"Mechanical Keyboard Typing (Bass Version)" by stu556 ( https://freesound.org/people/stu556/sounds/450281/? ) licensed under Creative Commons 0"Monitor hotler", by iluminati_2705 ( https://freesound.org/people/iluminati_2705/sounds/536706/ ) licensed under Creative Commons 0"Monitor hotler", by tobbler ( https://freesound.org/people/tobbler/sounds/795373/ ) licensed under Attribution 4.0“aluminum can foley-020.wav”, by CVLTIV8R ( https://freesound.org/people/CVLTIV8R/sounds/800102/ ) licensed under Creative Commons 0“whoosh_fx”, by ScythicBlade ( https://freesound.org/people/CVLTIV8R/sounds/800102/ ) licensed under Creative Commons 0“ignite_dry_02”, by DaUik ( https://freesound.org/people/DaUik/sounds/798712/ ) licensed under Creative Commons 0“Dewalt 12 inch Chop Saw foley-049.wav”, by CVLTIV8R ( https://freesound.org/people/CVLTIV8R/sounds/802856/ ) licensed under Creative Commons 0“Electronic Soap Dispenser 5”, by Geoff-Bremner-Audio ( https://freesound.org/people/Geoff-Bremner-Audio/sounds/802734/ ) licensed under Creative Commons 0 Acknowledgments:We thank Jason Camlot, Tanya Clement, and Michael O’Driscoll for their contributions to the roundtable. Additional thanks to Michael O’Driscoll, Sean Luyk, and the SpokenWeb Podcast team for production support. Technical support was provided by the Digital Scholarship Centre, University of Alberta.

Episode SummaryThis podcast episode performs a sound-media meditation on a live event based on a collection of printed scholarly articles. In May 2023 a triple-issue of English Studies in Canada (ESC) was published on the topic of “New Sonic Approaches in Literary Studies.” Edited by Jason Camlot and Katherine McLeod. The issue, designed to explore how sound, literature, and critical methodologies intersect, included thirteen scholarly articles, and an interdisciplinary forum on the place of listening as a methodology in a wide range of scholarly and artistic fields.As the editors considered what kind of “launch” would be best suited to this issue, they felt it should build on the printed scholarship, but also take it further – respond to it,  sound it, and perform it. They asked, “What would this journal issue sound like as a chorus or collage of voices?” They proceeded to organize an event to enact the idea of sounding and performing a scholarly collection as a kind of poetic reading of criticism. Each contributor was invited to select an excerpt to perform, and the performances unfolded in sequence within the 4th Space research showcase venue at Concordia University, and through the virtual participation of some contributors on Zoom. The performance event was also the object of an experiment in the multi-track recording of a spoken word event, with microphones of different kinds situated throughout 4th Space, and even outside the venue itself.The eight tracks of audio resulting from that recording session serve as the raw material, the bed tracks, for a podcast that playfully explores the affordances of sound design for the presentation of scholarly research about literary audio. Some of the simple yet profound possibilities of working in sound to think and argue about sound that are explored here are those of amplitude (playing with the relative loudness of sounds), temporality (the movement and mixing of historically-situated times), speed (the movement of sounds in time), space (the relationship of sounds to the places they happened), noise (the sounds we are supposed not to want to hear), intelligibility (the intention of sounding for meaning), positionality (from where and to whom one is sounding), timbre (the textural quality of sounds and what they do), among many others. The goal of this production has not been to deliver the content of the journal as one might grasp it from the print journal (read the special issue for that!), but to emphasize the possibilities and features of sound, sometimes apposite and sometimes in opposition to the intention and circumstances of the intended message. Archival voices and sounds haunt, taunt and disrupt the planned “Sounding New Sonic Approaches” event. Parallel temporal situations compete with each other. Time is sped and stretched. Speech and vocal timbre are mimicked and mutated by an occasional soundtrack scored for monotonic analogue synths. One mode of meaning is lost, while the potential for new kinds of meaning and feeling-making in sonic scholarly production are amplified for the listener’s consideration and pleasure.In-person and online performers: Jason Camlot, Katherine McLeod, Annie Murray, Michael O’Discoll, Mathieu Aubin, Julia Polyck-O'Neill, Jason Wiens, Klara du Plessis, Kandice Sharren, Kelly Baron, Nina Sun Eidsheim, Juliette Bellocq, Kim Fox, Reem Elmaghraby, Daniel Martin, Kristen Smith, Kristin Moriah, Mara Mills, Andy Slater, and Ellen Waterman.Live Recording Event produced by Jason Camlot, Katherine McLeod, James Healey, and Douglas Moffat.Podcast and Sound Design by Jason Camlot.

Episode SummaryA proprioception-enthusiast and a thespian walk into a podcast booth. Together, they engage with scholars from three different fields outside of those traditionally working with and through the sense of proprioception. From spatial music mixing, to arts education, to English literature, our hosts learn how these scholars understand and apply the sense of proprioception for their work. Through the engagement process, the proprioception-enthusiast and the thespian come to understand the affordances of proprioception for framing bodies in space and time and refigure how they understand the space between you and me. Works CitedMerrill, Gary. “Proprioception and Balance” from Our Intelligent Bodies. Rutgers University Press, 2021, De Gruyter academic publishing, pp. 68–89. https://doi-org.lib-ezproxy.concordia.ca/10.36019/9780813598550.Noë, Alva. Action in Perception. MIT Press, 2004.Oliveras, Pauline. “Rhythms (1996).” Deep Listening: A Composer’s Sound Practice, iUniverse, Inc., Lincoln, Nebraska, 2005, pp. 48–49.Works ConsultedHan, Jia, et al. “Assessing Proprioception: A Critical Review of Methods.” Journal of Sport and Health Science, vol. 5, no. 1, Mar. 2016, pp. 80–90. PubMed Central, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jshs.2014.10.004.Hickok, Gregory. The Myth of Mirror Neurons. W.W. Norton & Company, Incorporated, 2014.Starr, Gabrielle G. “Multisensory Imagery.” Introduction to Cognitive Cultural Studies, edited by Lisa Zunshine. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010.Show NotesMechanical Buttons (DaVinci Resolve Advanced Panel) by PixelProphecy -- https://freesound.org/s/497026/ -- License: Attribution 4.0End Credits Music by vibritherabjit123 -- https://freesound.org/s/738579/ -- License: Attribution 4.0Walk - Gravel.wav by 16FPanskaStochl_Frantisek -- https://freesound.org/s/499245/ -- License: Attribution 3.0snare 2 SMALLer.wav by Logicogonist -- https://freesound.org/s/209884/ -- License: Creative Commons 0right x small crash.wav by Logicogonist -- https://freesound.org/s/209870/ -- License: Creative Commons 0Magazine Rustle and Book Closing by Zott820 -- https://freesound.org/s/209577/ -- License: Creative Commons 0End of 78 Record Gramaphone Running Down .WAV by trpete -- https://freesound.org/s/627419/ -- License: Creative Commons 0Ragtime – https://pixabay.com/music/vintage-ragtime-193535/ Liscence: CC0 Licenserelaxation music.mp3 by ZHRØ -- https://freesound.org/s/520673/ -- License: Attribution 4.0celestial arp loop c 01.wav by CarlosCarty -- https://freesound.org/s/572560/ -- License: Attribution 4.0165 bpm - Broken Beat - Guitar.wav by MuSiCjUnK -- https://freesound.org/s/320630/ -- License: Creative Commons 0Synth Lead by EX-AN -- https://freesound.org/s/561505/ -- License: Creative Commons 0Shopping theme (90bpm).wav by Pax11 -- https://freesound.org/s/444880/ -- License: Attribution NonCommercial 3.0Sky Loop by FoolBoyMedia -- https://freesound.org/s/264295/ -- License: Attribution NonCommercial 4.0

Episode SummaryThis month, the SpokenWeb Podcast is happy to showcase an episode from our sister podcast, the SoundBox Signals Podcast from SpokenWeb at UBC Okanagan. SoundBox Signals is hosted and co-produced by Karis Shearer.In this episode, from Season 2, Episode 1 of the SoundBox Signals Podcast, University of Exeter undergraduates Sofie Drew and Emily Chircop carry out a close listening of a 1980 recording of Sharon Thesen reading from her first book Artemis Hates Romance at George and Angela Bowerings' house. Drew and Chircop's conversation focuses on the intimacy, sociality, and ambiguity of the recording, and how this shapes interpretation. The episode features multiple archival clips from the digitized cassette tape, alongside interview audio from Karis Shearer and George Bowering. “Sharon Thesen's Reading at the Bowerings’” was co-produced by Emily Chircop and Sofie Drew as part of the Press Play project. The SoundBox Collection is part of the SpokenWeb SSHRC Partnership Grant.Episode NotesThese readings helped inform the episode and/or may be of interest to listeners:“Side A: Sharon Thesen's Reading at [George and Angela] Bowerings'” from Sharon Thesen fonds, nd. 2019.002.002, SoundBox Collection, AMP Lab at UBC Okanagan, Kelowna, B.C. https://soundbox.ok.ubc.ca/sharon-thesens-reading-at-bowerings/Sharon Thesen’s “The Fire”: Studio Reading of “The Fire.” Ed. Amy Thiessen. https://sharonthesenthefire.omeka.net/readingThesen, Sharon. Artemis Hates Romance. Toronto: Coach House Press, 1980.Thesen, Sharon. Refabulations: Selected Longer Poems. Ed. Erin Moure. Talonbooks, 2023. https://talonbooks.com/books/?refabulationsSpokenWeb Podcast Season 1 Episode 1 “Stories of Spoken Web”: https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/stories-of-spokenweb/SpokenWeb Podcast Season 1 Episode 2 “Sound Recordings Are Weird”: https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/sound-recordings-are-weird/The Capilano Review, The Sharon Thesen Issue. Spring 2008. https://thecapilanoreview.com/issues/spring-2008-the-sharon-these-issue/Specifically, Thea Bowering’s article “Sharon Thesen: Poem in Memory, and growing up there”https://journals.sfu.ca/capreview/index.php/capreview/article/view/2674/2674Sharon Thesen was born in Tisdale, Saskatchewan. She spent spent most of her early years in Kamloops and Prince George, eventually moving to Vancouver to study and teach. In 2005 she joined UBC Okanagan where she is now Professor Emerita. Thesen is the author of 11 books of poetry including a number of chapbooks. Her books have been finalists for a number of prestigious awards including the Governor-General’s Award and the Dorothy Livesay Prize; her book of poems A Pair of Scissors won the Pat Lowther Memorial Award. She currently lives in Lake Country, BC.

SUMMARYFrom medieval itineraries to modern livestreams, Christian pilgrimage is often, if not always experienced through an imaginative transposal from a physical reality to a spiritual truth. In this episode, hosts Lindsay Pereira and Ella Jando-Saul explore the concept of virtual pilgrimage through conversations with two guests: Michael Van Dussen, a professor in the Department of English at McGill University in Tiohtià:ke/Montreal, teaches us about the medieval experience of pilgrimage in the British Isles while Simon Coleman, a professor in the Department for the Study of Religion at the University of Toronto teaches us about the modern reconstruction of pilgrimage to Walsingham in Norfolk, England.Simon Coleman's latest book, Powers of Pilgrimage: Religion in a World of Movement, can be found here.*VOICE AND SOUND CREDITSInterviewees:Dr. Michael Van Dussen, Professor of English Literature, McGill University.Dr. Simon Coleman, Professor of Anthropology and Religion, University of Toronto.Theme music:“Ai Tal Domna”: composed by Berenguier de Palou, recorded by Zep Hurme ©2014. Licensed under Creative Commons BY-NC. Available at https://ccmixter.org/files/zep_hurme/38429Voice credits:Stephen Yeager, voice of the HostGhislaine Comeau, voice of the MillerAndre Furlani, voice of the Reeve, drunkard, beggar, and donation collectorSound credits:Magical Minstrelsy: Where Medieval Meets Modern Through Mimesis, Season 1 Episode 1: Virtual Pilgrimage uses sounds from Freesound. All sound samples that were used in this episode are licensed under CC0 1.0:Footsteps on dirt: https://freesound.org/people/lzmraul/sounds/389454/Birds: https://freesound.org/people/MATRIXXX_/sounds/519110/Water: https://freesound.org/people/BurghRecords/sounds/415151/Cows: https://freesound.org/people/Nontu_Lwazi00/sounds/541920/Sheep: https://freesound.org/people/rent55/sounds/709921/Horse on dirt: https://freesound.org/people/Ornery/sounds/233345/Horse with cart: https://freesound.org/people/bruno.auzet/sounds/538438/Footsteps on cobblestone: https://freesound.org/people/SpliceSound/sounds/260120/Medieval city: https://freesound.org/people/OGsoundFX/sounds/423119/Church bells: https://freesound.org/people/Audeption/sounds/425172/Coins: https://freesound.org/people/husky70/sounds/161315/Blacksmith: https://freesound.org/people/Emmaproductions/sounds/254371/Music: https://ccmixter.org/files/asteria/2615Church coins: https://freesound.org/people/scripsi/sounds/335191/Gregorian chant: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ecce.lignum.Crucis.oggCrowd gasping: https://freesound.org/people/craigsmith/sounds/480774/Baby crying: https://freesound.org/people/the_yura/sounds/211527/Breath: https://freesound.org/people/launemax/sounds/274769/Heartbeat: https://freesound.org/people/newlocknew/sounds/612642/Works Cited and ConsultedAhmed, Sara. The Cultural Politics of Emotion. Routledge, 2015.Arsuaga, Ana Echevarría. “The shrine as mediator: England, castile, and the pilgrimage to Compostela.” England and Iberia in the Middle Ages, 12th–15th Century, 2007, pp. 47–65, https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230603103_4.Arvay, Susan M. “Private passions: The contemplation of suffering in medieval affective devotions.” (2008).Bailey, Anne E. “Reconsidering the Medieval Experience at the Shrine in High Medieval England.” Journal of Medieval History, vol. 47, no. 2, Mar. 2021, pp. 203–29. DOI.org (Crossref), https://doi.org/10.1080/03044181.2021.1895874.Beckstead, Zachary. “On the way: Pilgrimage and liminal experiences.” Experience on the Edge: Theorizing Liminality, 2021, pp. 85–105, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-83171-4_5.Beebe, Kathryne. Reading Mental Pilgrimage in Context: The Imaginary Pilgrims and Real Travels of Felix Fabri’s “Die Sionpilger.” West Virginia University Press, 2009.Benjamin, Walter. “The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction.” Modern Art and Modernism: A Critical Anthology, 2018, pp. 217–220, https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429498909-39Cassidy-Welch, Megan. “Pilgrimage and embodiment: Captives and the cult of saints in late medieval bavaria.” Parergon, vol. 20, no. 2, 2003, pp. 47–70, https://doi.org/10.1353/pgn.2003.0101.Coleman, Simon, and John Elsner. “Tradition as play: Pilgrimage to ‘England’s Nazareth.’” History and Anthropology, vol. 15, no. 3, 2004, pp. 273–288, https://doi.org/10.1080/0275720042000257430.Coleman, Simon, Ellen Badone, and Sharon R. Roseman. “Pilgrimage to ‘England’s Nazareth’: Landscapes of Myth and Memory at Walsingham.” Intersecting Journeys: The Anthropology of Pilgrimage and Tourism, University of Illinois Press, Urbana, IL, 2004, pp. 52–67.Coleman, Simon, and Marion Bowman. “Religion in Cathedrals: Pilgrimage, Heritage, Adjacency, and the Politics of Replication in Northern Europe.” Religion, vol. 49, no. 1, Jan. 2019, pp. 1–23. Taylor and Francis+NEJM, https://doi.org/10.1080/0048721X.2018.1515341.Coleman, Simon, and John Elsner. “Pilgrimage to Walsingham and the Re-Invention of the Middle Ages.” Pilgrimage Explored, edited by J. (Jennie) Stopford, York Medieval Press, 1999. WorldCat Discovery Service, https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&scope=site&db=nlebk&db=nlabk&AN=16637.Díaz-Vera, Javier E. “Exploring the relationship between emotions, language and space: Construals of awe in medieval English language and pilgrimage experience.” Studia Neophilologica, vol. 88, no. 2, 2015, pp. 165–189, https://doi.org/10.1080/00393274.2015.1093918.Foster, Elisa A. “As You Came from the Holy Land: Medieval Pilgrimage to Walsingham and Its Crusader Contexts.” Crusading and Ideas of the Holy Land in Medieval Britain, edited by Kathryn Hurlock and Laura J. Whatley, Brepols, Turnhout, Belgium, 2022, pp. 91– 114.Gertsman, Elina, and Marian Bleeke. “The Eve Fragment from Autun and the Emotionalism of Pilgrimage.” Crying in the Middle Ages: Tears of History, Routledge, New York, NY, 2013, pp. 23–41.Grazia Di Stefano, Laura. “How to be a time traveller: Exploring Venice with a fifteenth-century pilgrimage guide.” Making the Medieval Relevant, 2019, pp. 171–190, https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110546316-008.Gregg, Melissa, and Gregory J. Seigworth. The Affect Theory Reader. Duke University Press, 2010.Hill, Joyce. “Rome in Ripon: St Wilfrid’s Inspiration and Legacy.” History, vol. 105, no. 367, 2020, pp. 603–25. Wiley Online Library, https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-229X.13027.Hill‐Smith, Connie. “Cyberpilgrimage: The (virtual) reality of online pilgrimage experience.” Religion Compass, vol. 5, no. 6, 2011, pp. 236–246, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1749-8171.2011.00277.x.Hundley, Catherine. “Pilgrims in the Parish: A Method and Two Herefordshire Case Studies.” Peregrinations: Journal of Medieval Art and Architecture, vol. 8, no. 3, Oct. 2022, pp. 40–87.Hurlock, Kathryn. “Virtual Pilgrimage.” Medieval Welsh Pilgrimage, C1100-1500, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, NY, 2018, pp. 145–174.Jenkins, John. “Replication or Rivalry? The ‘Becketization’ of Pilgrimage in English Cathedrals.” Religion, vol. 49, no. 1, Jan. 2019, pp. 24–47. DOI.org (Crossref), https://doi.org/10.1080/0048721X.2018.1515327.Kempe, Margery, and Anthony Paul Bale. The Book of Margery Kempe. Oxford University Press, 2015.Kuefler, Mathew. The Making and Unmaking of a Saint: Hagiography and Memory in the Cult of Gerald d’Aurillac. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014.Langland, William, and Schmidt A. V. C. Piers Plowman: A New Translation of the B-Text. Oxford University Press, 2009.Nickell, S. A. The Limits of Embodiment: The Implication of Written and Artistic Portrayals of Mary at the Foot of the Cross for Late Medieval Affective Spirituality, Graduate Theological Union, United States -- California, 2011. ProQuest, https://lib-ezproxy.concordia.ca/login?qurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.proquest.com%2Fdissertations-theses%2Flimits-embodiment-implication-written-artistic%2Fdocview%2F875240824%2Fse-2%3Faccountid%3D10246.Ousterhout, Robert. “‘Sweetly Refreshed in Imagination’: Remembering Jerusalem in Words and Images.” Gesta, vol. 48, no. 2, Jan. 2009, pp. 153–68. www-journals-uchicago-edu.lib-ezproxy.concordia.ca (Atypon), https://doi.org/10.2307/29764905.Powell, Hilary. “Saints, Pilgrimage and Landscape in Early Medieval Kent, c. 800-1220.” Early Medieval Kent, 800-1220, Boydell Press, 2016, pp. 133–53.Sinnett-Smith, Jane. “Ætheldreda in the North: Tracing Northern Networks in the Liber Eliensis and the Vie de Seinte Audree.” Late Medieval Devotion to Saints from the North of England: New Directions, edited by Christiania Whitehead et al., Brepols, Turnhout, Belgium, 2022, pp. 285–303.Wynn, Mark. “God, pilgrimage, and acknowledgement of Place.” Religious Studies, vol. 43, no. 2, 2007, pp. 145–163, https://doi.org/10.1017/s0034412506008778.

SUMMARYIn this first episode of Season 6, producer Andrew Whiteman invites listeners to step into an arena of collaboration between poetry and sound. We all know it when we hear it, and we have mixed feelings about it. Why does the archaic meeting place of music and poem hit such a nerve? Is this art form literature or is it music? Surely, it’s not song, is it? And if poems already carry their prosodic intentions within themselves – why bother supplementing them with extraneous audio?" These questions are answered by Siren Recordings, a new digital-DIY sonic poetry label run by Kelly Baron and Andrew Whiteman.*SHOW NOTESAudio played in the episode“Happy Birthday Ed Sanders Thank You!”, written and performed by Edward Sanders ( from "This is the Age of Investigation Poetry and Every Citizen Must Investigate” part of the “Totally Corrupt Dial-a-Poem Series by John Giorno. Found at https://www.ubu.com/sound/gps.html ) and Andrew Whiteman. Unreleased track. Audio clips of Amiri Barak, Helen Adam, and the Four Horseman from Ron Mann’s 1980 film Poetry in Motion. found at https://vimeo.com/14191903.“The Great Reigns” written and performed by Erica Hunt ( from Close Listening with Charles Bernstein at WPS1 Clocktower Studio, New York, June 20, 2005, available at https://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Hunt.php ), and Andrew Whiteman. “#7” by Alice Notley and AroarA. Unreleased track. Text taken from Notley's book “In The Pines”, Penguin Books. 2007.“ Pinbot” and “Abu Surveillance” by Anne Waldman and Andrew Whiteman. Unreleased track. Text taken from Waldman’s book “Iovis: the Trilogy”, Coffeehouse Press. 2011.“How I wrote Certain of my Books” by David UU and the Avalettes.  from the casette Very Sound (Sound Poems By David UU). Underwhich Audiographic Series, No.18. 1984.  "whn i first came to vancouvr” by bill bissett. from the cassette Sonic Horses. Underwhich Audiographic Series, No.19.1984. "From The Life & Work Of Chapter 7 (For Steven Smith)” by Tekst. from the cassette "Unexpected Passage”.Underwhich Audiographic Series – No. 15. 1982. “ Canto One” by Andrew Whiteman featuring Robert Duncan, Ezra Pound, Richard Sieberth, Al Filreis. buried somewhere at Penn Sound. https://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/. Unreleased track.*PRODUCER BIOAndrew Whiteman is a founding member of the indie-rock collective Broken Social Scene, and a PhD student at Concordia University investigating the confluence of mythology and experimental poetics. He is a musician, producer and sound artist with special interest in Sonic Poetics, and has collaborated on recordings with Alice Notley (In The Pines, 2013) and Anne Waldman (IOVIS, 2023) among others. This work has led directly to the creation of Siren Recordings, a boutique sonic poetry label, hub and ever-growing archive he runs with Kelly Baron and Brandon Hocura.  His divinatory practice is located at https://intarotgate.com.

Hold onto your hats, because the SpokenWeb Podcast is back!This season, we'll continue to bring you episodes exploring the archive and the ever-changing landscape of literary sounds with all new stories from researchers across the SpokenWeb network.Subscribe to The SpokenWeb Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you find your podcasts. And don’t forget to rate us and send us a shout.Cheers to Season 6 ~

ShortCuts as a series on The SpokenWeb Podcast feed is coming to an end.For the past five seasons, ShortCuts producer Katherine McLeod has been bringing you deep dives into the archives. Through this process, ShortCuts has asked the question of what it means to listen closely and carefully to short ‘cuts’ of audio. ShortCuts has become a sonic space to practice of feminist listening, and that listening has informed continued audio-based research, performances (including performances based on ShortCuts audio) and publications (such as “Archival Listening” and “The Kitchen Table is Always Where We Are: Podcasting as Feminist Self-Reflexive Practice”).For this final ShortCuts, we listen to Brandon LaBelle in a conversation recorded on-site at Errant Bodies Press in Berlin. Listen to hear a reading from LaBelle’s “Poetics of Listening” (as published in ESC “New Sonic Approaches in Literary Studies”), to hear about Errant Bodies Press and what it sounds like to be there, and to hear the open door as a way of listening. That open door listening will continue even after ShortCuts ends.Stay tuned for what is next!*SHOW NOTESMore about Errant Bodies Press and The Listening Biennal. LaBelle, Brandon. "Poetics of Listening." ESC: English Studies in Canada, vol. 46 no. 2, 2020, p. 273-277. Project MUSE, https://doi.org/10.1353/esc.2020.a903562.McLeod, Katherine. "Archival Listening." ESC: English Studies in Canada, vol. 46 no. 2, 2020, p. 325-331. Project MUSE, https://doi.org/10.1353/esc.2020.a903565.Copeland, Stacey, Hannah McGregor and Katherine McLeod. “The Kitchen Table is Always Where We Are: Podcasting as Feminist Self-Reflexive Practice.” Podcast Studies: Theory into Practice, eds. Dario Linares and Lori Beckstead, Wilfrid Laurier UP, forthcoming in December 2024. *APPLAUSEA round of applause for all who have been part of the production-side of ShortCuts, from 2019 to the present: Stacey Copeland, Hannah McGregor, Manami Izawa, Judith Burr, Kate Moffatt, Miranda Eastwood, Ella Jando-Saul, Kelly Cubban, Zoe Mix, Yara Ajeeb, James Healey, Maia Harris, and of course ShortCuts producer Katherine McLeod. 

SUMMARY How can artists harness algorithmic processes to generate poetry, music, and dance? And what can we learn from the longer history of creative coding and early experiments in human-computer collaboration?In this live episode recorded during June's 2024 SpokenWeb Symposium, producers Nicholas Beauchesne and Chelsea Miya venture into the roots and future directions of algorithmic art.Thank you to interviewees Michael O’Driscoll, Kevin William Davis, and Kate Sicchio, as well as the live studio audience.*SOUNDFX & MUSICThe score was created by Nix Nihil through remixing samples from Kevin William Davis and Voiceprint and adding synthesizers and sound effects. Additional score sampled from performances by Davis and Kate Sicchio.Davis, Kevin William. “Elegia.” On Remembrance. Created with the Murmurator software in collaboration with Eli Stine. SoundCloud audio, 5:25, 2020, https://soundcloud.com/kevinwdavis/elegia.Davis, Kevin William. “From “From ‘David’”” From Three PFR-3 Poems by Jackon Mac Low for percussion quartet and speaker; performance by UVA percussion quartet. SoundCloud audio, 4:13, 2017, https://soundcloud.com/kevinwdavis/from-from-david.Pixabay. “Crane load at construction site.” Pixabay, https://pixabay.com/sound-effects/crane-load-at-construction-site-57551/.Sherfey, John, and Congregation. “Nothing but the Blood.” Powerhouse for God (CD SFS60006), Smithsonian Folkways Special Series, 2014. Recorded by Jeff Titon and Ken George. Reproduced with permission of Jeff Titon.Sicchio, Kate. “Amelia and the Machine.” Dancer Amelia Virtue. Robotics: Patrick Martin, Charles Dietzel, Alicia Olivo. Music: Melody Loveless, Kate Sicchio. Vimeo, uploaded by Kate Sicchio, 2022, https://vimeo.com/678480077.ARCHIVAL AUDIO & INTERVIEWSAltmann, Anna. “Popular Poetics” [segment]. “Printing and Poetry in the Computer Era.” Voiceprint. Dept. of Radio and Television and CKUA, 20 May 1981.Davis, Kevin William. Interviewed by Chelsea Miya for The SpokenWeb Podcast. 25 Oct. 2022.Jackson, Mac Low. “A Vocabulary for Sharon Belle Mattlin.” Performed by Susan Musgrave, George Macbeth, Sean O'Huigin, bpNichol, and Jackson Mac Low, 1974. PennSound, http://media.sas.upenn.edu/pennsound/authors/Mac-Low/CDs/Doings/Mac-Low-Jackson_09_Vocabulary-for-Mattlin_Doings_1982.mp3.O’Driscoll, Michael. Interviewed by Chelsea Miya for The SpokenWeb Podcast. 23 Aug. 2022.Onufrijchuk, Roman. Performing “Tape Mark I,” a computer poem by Nanni Balestrini. “Printing and Poetry in the Computer Era.” Voiceprint. Dept. of Radio and Television and CKUA, 20 May 1981.Sicchio, Kate. Interviewed by Chelsea Miya for The SpokenWeb Podcast. 4 Nov. 2023.WORKS CITEDBalestrini, Nanni. “Tape Mark I.” Translated by Edwin Morgan. Cybernetic Serendipity: the Computer and the Arts. Studio International, 1968.Davis, Kevin William. From “From ‘David’” [score]. 2017. http://kevindavismusic.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/From-From-David.pdf.Dean, R. T., and Alex McLean, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Algorithmic Music. Oxford University Press, 2018.Higgins, Hannah. Fluxus Experience. University of California Press, 2002.Mac Low, Jackson. Vocabulary for Sharon Belle Mattlin. Instructions. 23 January 1974. Mimegraphed sheet, 28 x 22 cm. Bonotto Collection, 1.c, Fondazione Bonotto, Colceresa (VI), Italy. https://www.fondazionebonotto.org/en/collection/poetry/maclowjackson/4/3091.html.Mac Low, Jackson. Vocabulary for Sharon Belle Mattlin. Instructions. 19 September 1974. Mimegraphed sheet, 28 x 22 cm. Bonotto Collection, 1.d, Fondazione Bonotto, Colceresa (VI), Italy. https://www.fondazionebonotto.org/en/collection/poetry/maclowjackson/4/3091.html.Johnston, David Jhave. “1969: Jackson Mac Low: PFR-3” [blogpost] Digital Poetics Prehistoric. https://glia.ca/conu/digitalPoetics/prehistoric-blog/2008/08/26/1969-jackson-mac-low-pfr-3-poems/.Mac Low, Jackson. A Vocabulary for Sharon Belle Mattlin. 1973. Ruth and Marvin Sackner Archive of Concrete and Visual Poetry, University of Iowa Libraries, Iowa City, CC-47567-68576.Mac Low, Jackson. Thing of Beauty, edited by Anne Tardos. University of California Press, 2008. https://doi-org.libaccess.lib.mcmaster.ca/10.1525/9780520933293.O’Driscoll, Michael. “By the Numbers: Jackson Mac Low's Light Poems and Algorithmic Digraphism.” Time in Time: Short Poems, Long Poems, and the Rhetoric of North American Avant-Gardism, 1963-2008, edited by J. Mark Smith. McGill-Queens University Press, 2013, pp. 109-131.Russo, Emiliano, Gabriele Zaverio and Vittorio Bellanich. “TAPE MARK 1 by Nanni Balestrini: Research and Historical Reconstruction.” The ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, June 2017. https://zkm.de/en/tape-mark-1-by-nanni-balestrini-research-and-historical-reconstruction.Stine, Eli, and Kevin William Davis. “The Murmurator: A Flocking Simulation-Driven Multi-Channel Software Instrument for Collaborative Improvisation.” International Computer Music Conference (ICMC), 2018. https://elistine.com/writing-blog/2018/4/14/the-murmurator.FURTHER READING / LISTENINGHiggins, Hannah, and Douglas Kahn, eds. Mainframe Experimentalism: Early Computing and the Foundations of the Digital Arts. University of California Press, 2012, https://doi.org/10.1525/9780520953734.Noll, Michael. “Early Digital Computer Art at Bell Telephone Laboratories, Incorporated,” LEONARDO, vol. 49, no. 1, 2016, pp. 55-65.Reichardt, Jasia, ed. Cybernetic Serendipity. 1968. 2nd edition. Studio International, 1968.Rockman, A, and L. Mezei. “The Electronic Computer as an Artist.” Canadian Art, vol. 11, 1964, pp. 365–67.*BIOS Chelsea Miya (she/her) is a Postdoctoral Fellow with the Sherman Center for Digital Scholarship at McMaster University where her research focuses on questions of ethics, gender, and sustainability in the context of digital cultures and design. She is a Research Affiliate with the SpokenWeb Network, and she has also held research positions with the Kule Institute of Advanced Study (KIAS) and the Canadian Writing Research Collaboratory (CWRC). You can hear her other co-produced episodes "Sounds of Data," "Drum Codes," and “Academics on Air" on the SpokenWeb Podcast.Nicholas Beauchesne (he/him) completed his PhD in English Literature at the University of Alberta in 2020, specializing in twentieth century occult literary networks and modernist “little magazines.” He is currently teaching at the U of A. Nick is an aspiring skáld, a teller of runes. He is also a vocalist and synthist performing under the pseudonym of Nix Nihil. His visionary concept album, Cassandra’s Empty Eyes, was released on the spring equinox of 2022 (Dark StarChasm Noise Theories Records). For a comprehensive overview of Nick’s and Nix’s academic, professional, mystical, and musical services, with links to his various social media, see: www.nixnihil.net.

SUMMARY In this month’s episode of The SpokenWeb Podcast, ShortCuts is taking over the airwaves. ShortCuts is the monthly minisode that takes you on a deep dive into archival sound through a short ‘cut’ of audio. In this fifth season, ShortCuts producer Katherine McLeod has been presenting a series of live conversations recorded at the 2023 SpokenWeb Symposium – and in this full episode, we’re rolling out the last of those recordings. You’ll hear from Moynan King, Erica Isomura and Rémy Bocquillon. You’ll also hear the voices of our then-supervising producer Kate Moffatt and our then-sound designer Miranda Eastwood, who was there behind-the-scenes recording the audio and who joins in the conversations too.  Listening is at the heart of each conversation, and each conversation ends with the question: What are you listening to now? That ends up being quite an eclectic playlist and do check the Show Notes below for links. If you like what you hear, check out the rest of Season Five of ShortCuts for conversations with Jennifer Waits, Brian Fauteaux, and XiaoXuan Huang. And, of course, this month’s episode with the longest ShortCuts yet: “ShortCuts Live! Talking about Listening with Moynan King, Erica Isomura, and Rémy Bocquillon.”*SHOW NOTES TRACE at Theatre Passe MurailleSteve Roach, Quiet Music 1False Knees, Montreal-based graphic artist drawing birds talkingÉliane RadigueKishi Bashi, “Manchester.” (Did you catch that this song is about writing a novel and Erica had just talked about novels? Not to mention the bird references. There are many more Kishi Bashi songs to listen to, but linking this since we played a clip from this one in the episode for these serendipitous reasons!) *BIOS Moynan King Moynan King is a performer, director, curator, writer, and scholar. She was the recipient of a 2020 Canadian Screen Award for her writing on CBC’s Baroness von Sketch Show on which she also made regular appearances as an actor. She is the author of six plays, and the creator of many performances including TRACE with Tristan Whiston. Moynan was the co-founder and director of the Hysteria Festival, the co-director of the Rhubarb! Festival (for four years), and has been the curator of multiple cabaret events including Cheap Queers. As an Assistant Artistic Director and Associate Artist at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre for a total nine years, they developed such works as The Beauty Salon and Bathory among many others. Moynan holds a PhD in Theatre and Performance Studies from York University. Her critical writing on theatre and performance is widely published and they are the editor of Queer Performance: Women and Trans Artists (CTR 149), Queer/Play: An Anthology of Queer Women’s Performance and Plays, and co-editor of Sound & Performance (CTR 184) with Megan Johnson. As of September 2022, Moynan will be post-doctoral fellow at the University of Western Ontario working with Dr. Spy Dénommé-Welch on a sound-based research project entitled Queer Resonance.Erica IsomuraBorn and raised on the west coast, Erica H Isomura is a poet, essayist, and multi-disciplinary artist, exploring graphic forms and mixed-media art. Her work speaks to a complex relationship with land, politics, and yonsei 四世 Japanese and diasporic Cantonese identity. Erica's writing has appeared in Canadian literary and independent magazines, including ArtsEverywhere.ca, ROOM Magazine, Briarpatch, The Tyee, XtraMagazine.com, The Fiddlehead, Vallum, and carte blanche, among others. In 2023, Erica was artist-in-residence at The Blue Cabin Floating Artist Residency in Steveston Village, BC. Erica is a recipient of ROOM magazine's Emerging Writer Award and won first prize in Briarpatch’s Writing In The Margins contest for creative non-fiction. Erica currently resides in Tkarón:to/Toronto, ON. https://ericahiroko.ca/Rémy BocquillonRémy Bocquillon is a Postdoctoral researcher and Lecturer in Sociology at the Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt, Germany. His research interests revolve around epistemic practices bridging the gap between arts, science, and philosophy, which he explores through his own creative work as a sound artist and musician. His latest projects include the publication of his book “Sound Formations. Towards a sociological thinking-with sounds” and the sound installation “Activating Space | Prehending the City”.https://remybocquillon.eu/*Kate Moffatt (interviewer) is a PhD student in the Department of English at Simon Fraser University. Her research interests include British Romanticism, women’s authorship, walking and pedestrianism, and print culture. She is the former supervising producer of The SpokenWeb Podcast, and she is the current co-host of The WPHP Monthly Mercury podcast.Miranda Eastwood (sound recording) is a game writer and interdisciplinary artist based in Montréal. Miranda holds a master’s degree in English Literature and Creative Writing at Concordia University, where they passionately pursued works of many forms, including the development of a radio drama, several ongoing comics, and the release of a full-length audiobook, and made audio as the sound designer for The SpokenWeb Podcast. https://mirandaeastwood.com/Katherine McLeod (producer) is an Assistant Professor, Limited Term Appointment, in the Department of English at Concordia University. She is the principal investigator for her SSHRC-funded IDG project “Literary Radio: Developing New Methods of Audio Research.” She has co-edited with Jason Camlot a recent special issue of English Studies in Canada, “New Sonic Approaches in Literary Studies.” She co-hosts The SpokenWeb Podcast and produces ShortCuts as a series for the podcast feed.

This month, we’re back with another Shortcuts Live, talking with researchers in person and starting those conversations with a short ‘cut’ of audio. These ShortCuts Live conversations were recorded on-site at the 2023 SpokenWeb Symposium held at the University of Alberta.In this conversation, Xiaoxuan Huang talks about hybrid poetics (and more) with then-supervising producer Kate Moffatt. The audio that informs this conversation is a clip from an audio-visual poetry collage by Huang called “the way we hold our hands with nothing in them.”  The audio of this collage beautifully sets the sonic environment for this conversation. Listen, and find yourself turning towards the sound. *EPISODES NOTESA fresh take on sounds from the past, ShortCuts is a monthly feature on The SpokenWeb Podcast feed. If you are a SpokenWeb RA with an archival clip to feature on ShortCuts, do write to us at spokenwebpodcast@gmail.com with your pitch.Host and Series Producer: Katherine McLeodSupervising Producer: Maia HarrisSound Design: James HealeyTranscription: Yara Ajeeb*AUDIOHuang, Xiaoxuan.  “the way we hold our hands with nothing in them.”*RESOURCESRead “Vibrate in Sympathy,” a poetic reflection on the 2022 SpokenWeb Symposium written by Xiaoxuan Huang, 

For most people, the “poetry reading” conjures stuffy intonation styles, cheap wine in plastic cups, and polite clapping. But for a riotous underground scene in 1980s Montreal, the poetry reading was the site for radical experimentation in artistic performance. At the Ultimatum Urban Poetry Festival, which first took place in 1985, literary all stars like William Burroughs, Kathy Acker, John Giorno, and Herbert Huncke performed alongside obscure Quebecois poets, all while embracing new technologies and a punk ethos to push poetry to its limits. The event—which ultimately dissolved into financial near-ruin and briefly required one of its organizers to flee the country to escape his creditors—broke boundaries in poetry and performance that have hardly been paralleled since.Until recently, recordings from the Ultimatum Festival were mostly kept in personal archives, and considered lost to many of the people who were part of the events. This episode recovers some of these recordings, made newly available for research since their digitization by a team at SpokenWeb. Featured alongside these recovered recordings are oral history interviews conducted by the “Listening Queerly Across Generational Divides” team—led by Principal Investigator Mathieu Aubin and researchers Ella Jando-Saul, Sophia Magliocca, Misha Solomon and Rowan Nancarrow—whose unique approach to archival study considers what it means to reconstruct a literary  event from the margins.This episode was produced by Frances Grace Fyfe, with support from Mathieu Aubin and the Listening Queerly Across Generational Divides team. Mastering and original sound by Scott Girouard.ARCHIVAL AUDIOAll archival audio played in this episode is from SpokenWeb’s Ultimatum collection—including interviews conducted by Mathieu Aubin and Ella Jando-Saul with Alan Lord, Fortner Anderson, Sheila Urbanoski and Jerome Poynton, as a way of building this archival collection—with the exception of one clip of Alan Lord sourced from here. WORKS CITEDSchulman, Sarah. The Gentrification of The Mind: Witness to a Lost Imagination. University of California Press, 2013. Aubin, Mathieu. "Listening Queerly for Queer Sonic Resonances in The Poetry Series at Sir George Williams University, 1966 to 1971." ESC: English Studies in Canada, vol. 46 no. 2, 2020, p. 85-100. Project MUSE, https://doi.org/10.1353/esc.2020.a903543.FURTHER READING / LISTENINGLord, Alan. High Friends in Low Places. Guernica Press, 2021. Stanton, Victoria and Vince Tinguely. Impure, Reinventing the Word: The Theory, Practice and Oral history of Spoken Word in Montreal. Conundrum Press, 2001."What's that noise? Listening Queerly to the Ultimatum Festival." Produced by Ella Jando-Saul. The SpokenWeb Podcast, 19 June 2023, https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/whats-that-noise-listening-queerly-to-the-ultimatum-festival-archives/ 

As April is the month of poetry, we’ve taken a pause in this year’s ShortCuts Live conversations to listen back to one of the first episodes of ShortCuts, “ShortCuts 1.2 / Audio of the Month: Improvising at a Poetry Reading.” In the archival clip played in this episode, we hear Maxine Gadd pausing during a reading with Andreas Schroeder. She asks Andreas if he would like to improvise with her for the poem, “Shore Animals.” Listening now, we can ask: what does it feel like for archival listeners to encounter a moment of improvisation? It is a truly memorable moment of listening and worth returning to now in this fifth season of ShortCuts. EPISODE NOTESA fresh take on sounds from the past, ShortCuts is a monthly feature on The SpokenWeb Podcast feed. Stay tuned for monthly episodes of ShortCuts on alternate fortnights (that’s every second week) following the monthly SpokenWeb podcast episode. If you are a SpokenWeb RA with an archival clip to feature on ShortCuts, do write to us at spokenwebpodcast@gmail.com with your pitch.Host and Series Producer: Katherine McLeodSupervising Producer: Maia HarrisSound Design: James HealeyTranscription: Yara Ajeeb ARCHIVAL AUDIOListen to the entire recording of Maxine Gadd reading at Sir George Williams University (now Concordia University) here. 

T. S. Eliot’s poem The Waste Land is arguably not a poem at all. To some readers and critics, it’s more like a play: a collection of voices thrown together without quotation marks or speaker tags. That’s how Eliot himself saw it; his working title was He Do the Police in Different Voices. The work comes alive in performance, where each reader must decide for themselves where one voice gives way to another, and what characterizes each voice. As a result, each reading is unique.In this podcast, Adam Hammond asks if computers can help us to decide which readers are best at “doing” the voices in the poem. Looking at performances by such readers as Viggo Mortensen, Fiona Shaw, and Alec Guinness, and using tools such as Drift and Gentle, he asks whether Eliot’s own reading of the poem — dry, monotonous, and hopelessly formal to the human ear — might sound more interesting to a computational listener.*Adam Hammond is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Toronto. He is the author of The Far Shore: Indie Games, Superbrothers, and the Making of Jett (Coach House, 2021) and Literature in the Digital Age (Cambridge UP, 2016). His is editor of Cambridge Critical Concepts: Technology and Literature (Cambridge UP, 2023) and The Cambridge Companion to Literature in a Digital Age (forthcoming, Cambridge UP, 2024). He co-edits the series Cambridge Elements of Digital Literary Studies. His work has appeared in The Globe and Mail, The Walrus, and Wired.*Works CitedMarit J. MacArthur, Georgia Zellou, and Lee M. Miller, “Beyond Poet Voice: Sampling the (Non-) Performance Styles of 100 American Poets,” Cultural Analytics 3.1 (2018): https://doi.org/10.22148/16.022

This ShortCuts presents one of the ShortCuts Live! conversations recorded at the University of Alberta as part of the 2023 SpokenWeb Symposium. Recorded on site by SpokenWeb’s Kate Moffatt and Miranda Eastwood, the conversations often took place in spaces where the sonic environment of the symposium is audibly present. As always on ShortCuts, we begin with an audio clip from the archives, but this time the interviewees are the ones bringing an archival sound to the table. What will we hear? And where will these sounds take us?*Brian Fauteux is Associate Professor of Popular Music and Media Studies. He holds a PhD in Communication from Concordia (Montreal) and has completed a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellowship in Media & Cultural Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He studies music industries and music radio, often from the interrelated perspectives of cultural studies, history, and policy and is currently a co-investigator on a SSHRC-funded research project that investigates copyright and cultural labour in the digital music industries. His book, Music in Range: The Culture of Canadian Campus Radio (Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2015), explores the history of Canadian campus radio, highlighting the factors that have shaped its close relationship with local music and culture. The book traces how campus radio practitioners have expanded stations from campus borders to surrounding musical and cultural communities by acquiring FM licenses and establishing community-based mandates.*Show NotesFauteux, Brian. Music in Range: The Culture of Canadian Campus Radio. Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2015deWaard, Andrew, Fauteux, Brian, and Selman, Brianne. "Independent Canadian Music in the Streaming Age: The Sound from above (Critical Political Economy) and below (Ethnography of Musicians)." Popular Music and Society 45.3 (2022): 251 - 278. [open access]

In February 1952, Barbara (Cohen) Holdridge and Marianne (Roney) Mantell, two recent graduates of Hunter college, founded Caedmon records, the first label devoted to recording spoken word. In this episode, producers Michelle Levy and Maya Schwartz revisit the early history of Caedmon records. They pay tribute to Holdridge and Mantell by re-listening to two poems from the Caedmon Treasury of Modern Poets Reading, first released in 1957 from and now held in SFU’s Special Collections. Michelle discusses Robert Frost’s recording of “After Apple Picking” with Professor Susan Wolfson, of Princeton University, and Maya chats with Professor Stephen Collis, of SFU’s English department, about William Carlos Williams’ reading of “The Seafarer.” As they listen to the poems together, they debate what it means to listen to as opposed to read these poems, with the recordings providing what Holdridge described as a “third-dimensional depth, that a two-dimensional book lacked.”Featured graphic credit: photographs by Phillip A. Harrington, courtesy of Evan Harrington*Works CitedOnion, Charlie. “Caedmon Spoken-Word Recordings go Digital.” Wag: a magazine for decadent readers, June 2002, http://www.thewag.net/books/caedmon.htm. Accessed 14 Nov. 2023.“Caedmon: Recreating the Moment of Inspiration.” NPR, December 2002, https://www.npr.org/2002/12/05/866406/caedmon-recreating-the-moment-of-inspiration. Accessed 14 Nov. 2023.“Caedmon.” HarperCollins.com. https://www.harpercollins.com/pages/caedmon. Accessed 14 Nov. 2023.“Caedmon Treasury of Modern Poets Reading: Gertrude Stein, Archibald MacLeish, E.E. Cummings, Marianne Moore, William Empson, Stephen Spender, Conrad Aiken, Robert Frost, William Carlos Williams, Richard Eberhart, Ezra Pound, and Richard Wilbur reading #604.” n.d. Sound recording. MSC199 #604.. Simon Fraser University Sound Recordings Collection, Simon Fraser University Archives, Burnaby, B.C. November, 2023.“Mattiwilda Dobbs – Bizet: FAIR MAIDEN OF PERTH, HIgh F, 1956 ” Youtube, uploaded by Songbirdwatcher, June 14, 2020, https://www.youtube.com/clip/UgkxZZtxM8ykam-Rml9Q7ij4J2OIWLrx3lUB. Etude 8 Dimitri by Blue Dot SessionsFrost, Robert. “After Apple-Picking.” Poetry Foundation, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44259/after-apple-picking. Accessed 30 January 2024.“File:Mattiwilda Dobbs 1957.JPEG.” Wikipedia, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mattiwilda_Dobbs_1957.JPG. Accessed 14 February 2024.Harrington, Philip A. “[Marianne Roney and Barbara Cohen of Caedmon Publishing Company pushing a wheelbarrow full of boxes of their recordings of modern literature in New York City]”. December, 1953.“How two young women captured the voices of literary greats and became audiobook pioneers.” Writers and Company. CBC, July, 2023. https://www.cbc.ca/radio/writersandcompany/how-two-young-women-captured-the-voices-of-literary-greats-1.6912133. Accessed 14 Nov. 2023.“January 20, 1961 - Poet Robert Frost Reads Poem at John F. Kennedy’s Inauguration.” Youtube, uploaded by Helmer Reenberg, January 15, 2021, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AILGO3gVlTU.“Oread.” H.D. Poetry Foundation, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48186/oread. Accessed 30, January 2024.“The Caedmon Treasury of Modern Poets Reading 2LP Caedmon TC 2006 Vinyl Record.” Boundless Goodz, https://www.ebay.com/itm/374791681072?itmmeta=01HPJMRA2M8G311HNSS83Q5Z2G&hash=item5743533430:g:ESgAAOSwdLVkomcL&itmprp=enc%3AAQAIAAAA8OcrOX8GrjGcCKd73gETrLCg9HgtTomQcdBFQsfuKIbZJCerwOPQAP8v95zLuLDTLfzKCEpHr6ciRZXXlKA1iJKJQIZBNBP68Ru6LBfSoa%2FfPEP7%2Fa%2BIRslUZ5i2RDM4SZwOC2l6XlwBx5qb9ihywjJIDK71WKdGDo8mhOnddK0NPBgnn26N5JH6N9DSuSkFkjy7BoQeE7hzXcLV76vAmN2Q6IKkpjLN5l%2B4M36eDSYpXhiFfxsmyok%2Bn1aYfEds46k8%2FfPX0doDJv7qXPKwVi5g99nrSnyZ95AdrCWpR3Tj3%2FkxYp0wlrb2dQ%2F%2FuEaktQ%3D%3D%7Ctkp%3ABFBMwHh1LRj. Accessed 14 February 2024.Williams, Williams Carlos. “The Seafarer.” University of Washington, http://www.visions05.washington.edu/poetry/details.jsp?id=18. Accessed 30 January, 2024.

In this crossover  episode (Episode 7, Season 2), Linda begins with the sound of her father's old espresso machine, to explain how she sees -- or hears -- sound working in Magnetic Equator (published by McClelland & Stewart) by international poet, novelist, and sound performer Kaie Kellough. You can hear a sample of his sound poetry here. This episode includes a small excerpt read by Kellough himself (with permission by Kellough). In the "take-away" section, Linda talks about a biography she recently read by Sherrill Grace, about Canadian author Timothy Findley (published by Wilfrid Laurier University Press). If you'd like to know more about sound poetry, and about Kaie Kellough as a sound poet, check out Adam Sol's blog post about Kellough on "How a Poem Moves."Get this episode and more by following Getting Lit with Linda - The Canadian Literature Podcast on all major podcast platforms.*Linda Morra is Professor of Canadian and Indigenous literatures, a former Craig Dobbin Chair of Canadian Studies (2016-2017) at UCD, and the Farley Distinguished Visiting Scholar (2021-2022) at Simon Fraser University. Her book, Moving Archives, won the Gabrielle Roy Prize in English (2020) and her podcast, Getting Lit With Linda, won in the category of Outstanding Education Series in the 2022 Canadian Podcast awards. Getting Lit With Linda is entering its 5th season.