In her opening remarks, poet Muriel Rukeyser asks her audience to raise their hands if they have ever written a poem. We hear a murmur and bits of laughter and, presumably, hands are raised. She thanks them, explaining that she has begun asking every audience this question and that “there’s always the moment of silence, and looking around first, and generally, quite slowly, almost all the hands go up.” Before reading a single poem, she manages to create a community of listeners and of poets. As Jane Malcolm has argued, if Rukeyser’s goal is “to occupy the room with poetry,” then, even without knowing how many raised their hands, “we are now listening to a collective, to one mere poet in a room of poets.” We start to hear the room as collectively invested in the questions of what a poetry reading is and why poetry readings as live events are worth seeking out – questions that we may also ask ourselves while seeking out and listening to these recordings today.

After reading for about 45 minutes, BC poet Maxine Gadd invites host Richard Sommer to improvise on her flute to the poem “Shore Animals.” Starting with the negotiation between Gadd and Sommer about what to read and how to perform together, a process that constitutes its own audible improvisation, this clip includes the first two minutes of a six-minute improvisation, which ends with a crescendo into a raucous shout. Their improvisation is a singular moment when an audience member formally performs in the SGW Poetry Series. Though, at the same time, this recording reminds listeners that the audience is always present – ready to improvise, interject, and even interrupt – and that the audience is also what we are listening to as archival listeners.