When: November 22, 1:15pm – 4pm
Where: MB 3.445 (Room 3.445 John Molson Building, Concordia University)
55 years ago, on this exact date of November 22, a reading by bpNichol and Lionel Kearns took place at Concordia (what was then Sir George Williams University). That reading was recorded and that recording is now part of SpokenWeb’s SGW Poetry Series Collection. On November 22, this recording will be played as a Ghost Reading.
1:15pm-2:30pm – Tape 1, including curatorial intro & discussion
Pause
2:45pm-4:00pm – Tape 2, including discussion
This SpokenWeb Ghost Reading is held as part of Dr. Katherine McLeod’s Contemporary Canadian Poetry and Studies in Contemporary Literature courses.
All are welcome to join, for all or part of the listening.
What is a Ghost Reading?
A Ghost Reading is an event that explore this question: what would it be like to listen to a recording of a poetry reading — in its entirety — on the same day that it would have happened? That is what happens during a ghost reading. We gather to listen to a recording together — and talk about what we are listening to. To some extent we are re-staging the reading, but we are also deeply aware of our distance from it. The “ghostliness” is not necessarily that we are listening to a voice no longer here — and especially because, in some cases, the voices we are listening to very much are here in the world (even if not physically present at the reading) — but rather the “ghostliness” is in the machine that transports us to the past and in our own attempt to re-enact that past by undertaking a communal listening as a performative act. Listening can become performative during a Ghost Reading in a variety of ways but, to start with, listeners will be invited to record notes on how they are listening, to write, draw, create, or move while listening, and to reflect on how we are listening during the discussion.
Even more about a Ghost Reading, from the description of SpokenWeb’s Ghost Reading Series, 2018-2019
The term “ghost” used to describe this series refers to the voice that speaks in the present from the past through electronic archival media technologies. Scholarship, for example Jeffrey Sconce’s Haunted Media, has noted the historical preoccupation with connections between electronic media and spiritual phenomena.
Our tape machines and then our computers in effect resurrect the ghosts of poetry readings past to speak again in the present. Further, the “ghost” reading recognizes the peculiar kind of presence that the voice can produce through mediated sound, alone. Voices from the past that once spoke with physical bodies are now resurrected in the present as vocalic bodies, a term that Stephen Connor describes as a form of dream, fantasy, ideal, or hallucination of voice projecting a new way of having or being a body, without the physical presence of the speaker herself.
The Ghost Reading Series is designed to have us feel the presence of past literary events through the vibratory power of mediated voice. Recordings of literary events are often listened to in clips or in relation to specific poems; however, to change this kind of listener engagement, the Ghost Reading sets up an environment in which the recording can be played in its entirety.
Listeners may choose to listen to the entire reading, or come and go as they wish, as though it is a sound installation. Relax, read, stretch, write, or listen. Listeners who stay for the conversation are invited to respond to what they have experienced during the group listening session.
SpokenWeb’s Ghost Reading Series was held in 2018-2019: https://spokenweb.ca/tag/ghost-reading-series/
Contact Dr. McLeod with any questions: katherine.mcleod@concordia.ca
