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SpokenWeb Podcast Theme Music: |
[Instrumental Overlapped With Feminine Voice] Oh boy. Can you hear me? I don’t know how much projection to do here. |
| (00:18) |
Hannah McGregor |
What 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. [SpokenWeb theme music fades]
My name is Hannah McGregor. |
| (00:36) |
Katherine McLeod |
And my name is Katherine McLeod, and each month we’ll be bringing you different stories that explore the intersections of sound, poetry, literature, and history created by scholars, poets, students, and artists from across Canada. |
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Hannah McGregor |
We have a very special episode for you this month. We’re doing a crossover with friend of the podcast, Linda Morra. I call her ‘friend of the podcast’ because she’s friend of ours, Katherine. |
| (01:03) |
Katherine McLeod |
She is. Linda Morra is a Canadian literature scholar. She does research on Can Lit and archives. And the episode that we’ve chosen for this crossover episode is an early episode from her podcast called Getting Lit with Linda, the Canadian Literature podcast. And it’s an episode that really does a deep dive into a new work of Canadian literature. She does a deep dive into the book, Magnetic Equator, a book of poetry by the Montreal based poet Kaie Kellough. And on this podcast more recently, she’s been speaking with the authors and doing interviews with them and Getting Lit with Linda has become more live.
But here we really see her and hear her diving into the work itself and really listening to it, listening to the book, and listening to the sound of the language. When I spoke to Linda about which episode we might choose for this podcast, she recommended we take a listen to this one and I’m really glad that she did because it really is an episode that’s immersed in sound, not only in the sounds of Kaie Kellough’s book, but also in Linda Morra’s sonic world. And the episode actually starts with some terrific sounds of Linda’s coffee maker. |
| (02:24) |
Hannah McGregor |
[Hannah laughs] It does, and also with the gorgeous sound of Linda’s voice I was really struck when you pointed out to me, Katherine, that this, that Getting Lit with Linda started as a pandemic project. So the podcast started in 2020. As you said, it has grown and developed into conversations with authors about their books. But I really think you hear in this episode that sense of the role that podcasts played for so many of us in the pandemic of creating these threads of connection from our spaces of isolation.
You can hear how embedded Linda is in the domestic space from which she’s speaking and she invites you into the sonic landscape of that space with this kind of intimacy and this closeness for, you know, down to everything from the sound of the coffee maker to the sound of her voice, her proximity to the microphone. It feels so intimate, almost cozy, and then sets you up so beautifully to really come with her into this collection of poetry and into the kinds of sonic landscapes that Kaie Kellough is also navigating. |
| (03:43) |
Katherine McLeod |
Yes, I think that Linda would be terrific on the radio. |
| (03:47) |
Hannah McGregor |
[Hannah laughs] Absolutely. |
| (03:49) |
Katherine McLeod |
I’m saying it on record right here and now. So, yeah, let’s have a listen to this crossover episode, an episode of Linda Morra’s podcast, Getting Lit with Linda, the Canadian literature podcast. |
| (04:05) |
Hannah McGregor |
And this is season two, episode seven, “The Languages and Sounds That are Home; Kaie Kellough’s Magnetic Equator”.
[SpokenWeb theme music swells and then fades quickly] |
| (04:24) |
Intro to Getting Lit with Linda plays: |
Lit! Canadian Lit, that is! Join Linda as she talks about authors in Canada and sometimes with them. Using her expertise to shed light on recent and not so recent writers. And now, get set for Getting Lit with Linda! |
| (04:40) |
Linda Morra |
Hi, this is Linda Mora, the host and writer of Getting Lit with Linda. I’m sipping an espresso this morning, one that was made from my father’s old espresso machine. It’s a fairly unwieldy, almost Victorian era piece of equipment that whistles and groans as it produces my morning coffee. If you’ve been following me on Twitter, you’ll know what I’m talking about. There’s no reason to use or even to love this particular machine. I’m an espresso aficionado and therefore I have several contemporary machines from which I could choose, but I’m really partial to this one because it’s dialect and its rhythms, however clunky they may seem to others, remind me of when my Italian father was still alive and he loved this machine and he loved his espresso. So I do too. And by the way, in case you wanna know, I take my espresso with a teaspoon of raw sugar and a hint of cinnamon.
The machine used to take up a lot of space on his kitchen counter, the very house I also grew up in, although that house is gone now too. Still, the morning espresso wasn’t something we just shared. It provided us with a ritual, a context, meaning, a tacit understanding. So what I have now is the language of this machine, the memories it evokes as it grinds and moans and the comfort it offers me.
This story does actually have something to do with today’s poet Kaie Kellough, which I’ll return to by the end. I’m happy to let you know that I have an audio clip by Kellough too today. I’ve actually met him in person at a writer’s event in Montreal, Quebec. I had already heard about his work and I was sufficiently impressed by him as a person to invite him on the spot to come and speak to my students at Bishop’s University. |
| (06:29) |
Linda Morra |
He agreed. And so he came as part of this inaugural event for a Student Writing Weekend in the Eastern Townships, what we were calling SWEET, at which he would perform before about 60 students and faculty members.
Now, I often have no idea what writers will be like when I invite them to the campus. I do love good writers, of course, but that doesn’t mean I know what to expect for events for the Morris House Reading Series, that’s a literary program that I’ve coordinated for over 14 years. I’ve even learned to be rather cautiously optimistic about which writers I invite because some past experiences were … well, to put it gently, underwhelming. Not all writers feel comfortable presenting their work in public venues – it simply requires a different skill set than, say, writing poetry or a novel in private.
The other thing is … well, Lennoxville has its own culture. It’s a fairly English speaking community in a French speaking city in a French-speaking province –Lennoxville is a borough of Sherbrooke – so I never know what I can expect on that side of things either. I just hope I’ve made the right choice and that everyone’s happy.
So: back to Kellough in Lennoxville. He apparently meandered about the town before the event and found himself near the train tracks just off campus. And so, at the event proper, he held up a discarded, misshapen steel peg that he found nearby the tracks – it was bent in such a way that it looked like the letter “J” – and then he riffed off that “J” in ways that were completely astounding. The students were mesmerized; the very instant Kellough completed his performance, the students were drawn up and out of their seats; they leapt up together as one and erupted into sustained applause. |
| (08:20) |
Linda Morra |
Kellough was the point toward which they were all magnetically drawn. I’ve never seen anything like it. Now anyone who has seen him perform the alphabet – yes you heard that right, the alphabet – will have a very good idea of what I’m talking about – if you’re out there wondering what I mean by that, I’ve included a link to one of his performances in the show notes. One of the comments on that page suggests that this particular video is “dope” – and it really IS pretty “lit.”
The moment documents the fact that Kellough is, among other things, a practitioner of sound poetry – an adaptation of the expression “word sound power” that comes from Jamaican dub poetry. Sound poetry relies upon the phonetic aspects of human speech, its acoustic properties, and it enjoys these lexical distortions and contortions that draw attention to the sounds of language rather than its meaning—it can, at times, take on singsong-like properties, sometimes sounding rather musical (think of nursery rhymes, but without the recognizable diction), and it certainly makes for a rather rhythmical and fascinating performance. In terms of the Canadian poets, the most famous of these include bp Nichol, Bill Bissett, and Steve McCaffery. Now I know I’m over-simplifying a rather vast body of work: I just want to allude to it briefly, because Kellough is one of its practitioners, although it’s not the focus of my discussion today.
Why? Because if we narrow our view to just this aspect of Kellough’s literary production, we’ll greatly limit our understanding of his accomplishments, and of his extraordinary talent and range. Kellough writes poetry and prose – and he’s already published three books of poetry, one novel, and one collection of short stories. Indeed, he sees these genres as informing each other. Even so, it’s not just the range of his output, but the real quality of it too – and in all genres. |
| (10:38) |
Linda Morra |
I’ve said it before in previous episodes that I don’t allow awards to determine what I think about works of literature, but I do think in this case the sheer number of awards that Kellough’s work has attracted are indeed merited. His novel, Accordéon, was shortlisted for the Amazon.ca First Novel Award, and his short story collection Dominoes at the Crossroads won or was shortlisted for so many – include the Grand Prix du Livre de Montreal and the Scotiabank Giller Prize – I just stopped counting.
The book I’m focusing on today, however, is Magnetic Equator (and in case you’re interested, It did actually win the 2020 Griffin Poetry Prize, but that’s not why I chose it). You’ll see why in a moment. Magnetic Equator is divided into 10 parts, which draw upon elements of Kellough’s life—it is at least semi-autobiographical. He was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, moved to Calgary, where he spent his adolescence, and in adulthood relocated to Montreal, Quebec, where he’s lived since 1998. But the collection doesn’t begin with Vancouver –it reaches back to his ancestral roots, to Guyana, South America, the place from which his maternal grandparents emigrated.
This shifting of geographical contexts matters, generally of course, but also specifically when we look at this collection. The multiplicity and complexity of geographical contexts, their respective cultures, at turns, impress and oppress their subjects—how much we take on the colours of our context, that then intermingle when we relocate and migrate, creating new palettes, new hues and tones. It means, of course, that questions of belonging also become more complicated – less easily resolved – and sometimes rendering one’s sense of place in more precarious ways that highlights one’s vulnerability.
As one might expect, the cultural influences of Guyana mark Kellough’s upbringing, so that, as he says in an interview with CBC books, he remembers how much it affected so many facets of his life. |
| (12:53) |
Linda Morra |
how his grandparents in Canada, for example, prepared Guyanese meals – how “there were pictures and maps of Guyana. There were books by Guyanese authors. Guyana was something that was discussed. It was real, it was an important presence.” Within the collection, he thus speaks about being “inside a narration contrived / to read like non-fiction,” how “one word emigrat[es] from another’s vowels” (11).
He draws attention to the connection and intersections between people and language, their lineages and migratory patterns, how we are birthed, not only through biology, but also through inherited narratives and stories.
The title is in part a reference to the equator, above which Guyana is only marginally north. If you’re thinking right about now that the title magnetic equator is therefore somehow related to Guayan’s proximity toward the equator, you’d be right. Most of you will know about the earth’s magnetic field lines, the North Magnetic Pole and the South Magnetic Pole, and how the north end of a compass will point downward in the northern hemisphere – that’s called positive dip; when it points upward in the southern hemisphere, that’s called negative dip. However, when the locus of points have zero dip, it is called the magnetic equator. Guyana.
The title is suggestive, therefore – that pull towards that equator, toward Guyana, but metaphorically–toward finding one’s cultural lineage or one’s sense of home where the gravitational pull is zero. You won’t be pulled in any direction, when you’re at home. But how do you find home, when you’ve been displaced, or when its physical counterparts and markers have moved or removed?
In part, Kellough is reimagining Guyana as one source of his identity – and more broadly speaking, to apprehend those matrices that offer a deeper, richer understanding of identities because, as he observes in interview, “you had all these different cultural groups that came to Guyana and then mixed there.” |
| (15:16) |
Linda Morra |
In an interview about this particular collection, Kellough has said that he sees the multifaceted, complex language of the text itself as offering a kind of context: “language as landscape.” He remarks on its playfulness, its vastness, “a language that holds a variety of different registers at the same time — from more formal English, to slang, to bits of patois and to French.” The collection is above all else about language that’s been marked by diaspora, occasioned by different contexts and experiences, by different cultural lineages and identities.
He charts family histories, personal and political, and geography to show how the “density of times past” acts on and produces who we are: “the assemblages of others who are you, a being made of beings.” In reading this part, I immediately thought of the episode on Madeleine Thien and the means by which our bodies are an accumulation of memory, familial, cultural, and political. The interweaving, however, goes beyond that – he even remarks on how “nocturnal insects” intertwine with “our breathing, continuous and shifting, supple, they never stiffen into strict metre, but always evolve.” Of course, this is a reflexive remark that has a bearing on the shape of poetry, that also never stiffens into strict metre, but rather is fluid, allusive, and in flux.
The first section is a clear and direct reference to the country: the opening section, in fact, is titled “kaieteur falls,” a direct reference to the tallest single drop waterfall, 226 metres or 741 feet high (that’s about four times higher than Niagara Falls, if you want a point of comparison in Canada and the US). Located in Kaieteur National Park, and a section of the Amazon rainforest, it is clearly also related to Kellough by virtue of his first name – there is a fascinating link to be made here, between person and place, between Kellough and Guyana proper.
In the first few poems of the second section, titled “mantra of no return,” Kellough explores the legacies of slavery and of the human cargo carried in ships across the Atlantic, using the holds of these ships as a starting point for larger considerations (as a kind of aside, it made me think of Zong!, that’s the work of another poet whose work I love, M. NourbeSe Philip, and I’ll probably dedicate an entire episode to her in the future): So he observes, “The world is itself a cargo carried in the hold of this verse.” End quote. |
| (18:14) |
Linda Morra |
He suggests here how his verse is both a means of conveyance, and a means of communication—and his subject, not just Guyana, but the globe. His poetry is both indictment and tribute, both memory and record, both personal and collective.
The next section, titled, “high school fever,” is poignant, tracing his adolescence experienced in the Canadian prairies, and the misery of the boy who contemplated suicide in the back seat of a car, quote “breathing carbon monoxide as exodus” end quote; he reminds us that, however much we may be “in” a place, we are not necessarily “of it,” no matter how long we might live there. This is a period that involves Desert Storm, and the Oka crisis, and apartheid, and dance me outside, and Yasser Arafat. It is a time of confusion, anger, experimentation; a time that is interspersed with racial, social ,and political injustices. But it’s also a time when the poet becomes attentive to racial inequities and injustices, keenly listening to, quote “their black mouths [that] opened over my ears.” End quote.
In a section after this, titled “Zero”—strategically located in the centre of the collection—the poet has clearly made his way to Montreal, with its “babel” of voices, the “languages spilling out the summer windows,” although the section really takes a wider view—and not just a perspective that is personal, embracing the totality of experience from BC, to Calgary, to Montreal. No, the view is much wider than that. Here is Kellough, reading a small part from this section: |
| (20:06) |
Audio clip of Kaie Kellough reading: |
“The Athabasca Glacier recedes into prehistory, dinosaur ice trickling into time’s crystal and wink, reception weakening the further we from the city, clear static between stations.” |
| (20:22) |
Linda Morra |
Listening to the mellifluous voice of Kellough is part of the pleasure, I think. The Athabasca glacier is part of the Columbia Icefield, located in the Rockies; and this is therefore an invitation for us to consider a much wider perspective, one that’s expansive, that invites us to go back in time, so that we may assume a broader view. The fact that this section is titled “zero” is pertinent, in view of the title of the collection. Remember: when the locus of points have a zero dip, we are at the magnetic equator. But how do we arrive there? How do we produce the “unity of worlds,” to quote the title of the last section of this book? How does Kellough arrive there – when there are multiple story lines and histories and contexts, geographical and otherwise? In the case of this collection, through his own language—the magnetic centre point.
And more broadly, through a language that is textured, that resonates and nudges at the conscious and unconscious mind, that provides us with story, history, lineage, context, a sense of belonging even in physical displacement, our magnetic equator—even if it does just happen to be, in my case, an old, clunky old espresso machine that whispers about a life and a memory that remain a part of who I am.
[Upbeat jazz music fades in and fades out when Morra begins to talk]
This is the takeaway section of the episode. I want to recommend to you today a biography I’ve been reading. It’s about novelist Timothy Finley, and it’s titled Tiff by Cheryl Grace. I’ve been reading several biographies of late because of my own research to write the biography of Jane Rule.
So the first thing that I can tell you is that this book is beautifully researched and written. A good biography needs to tell a well-researched story, and so the second part of that equation, the story also needs to be well-crafted as it is in this case. The story’s well told because Grace clearly cared about her subject, not just about Finley’s work and contributions as a writer, although those are also foregrounded. She weaves in these great details about Finley’s life, his real love for the environment, his engagement with human rights and his own personal struggles with depression, which consistently held my attention.
Hope Against Despair was one of his mottoes, and it’s one that I’ve personally been carrying around with me ever since I read it. Generally, Grace has created this evocative portrait of Timothy Finley, a writer who’s left a legacy in literature in Canada. [Theme music begins to play quietly in background]
That’s it for today’s episode. Please join me in two weeks time when I speak about Lorena Gale’s, Je me souviens. Thanks for joining me. |
| (23:16) |
Outro to Getting Lit with Linda plays: |
That was Getting Lit with Linda, hosted by Linda Morra. If you have a topic you would like to see covered, write to us at gettinglitwithlinda@gmail.com. Until next time, we hope you continue to get lit! |
| (23:43) |
Katherine McLeod |
[SpokenWeb theme music begins to play and fades] The SpokenWeb Podcast is a monthly podcast produced by the SpokenWeb team as part of distributing the audio collected from and created using Canadian literary archival recordings found at universities across Canada. |
| (23:57) |
Hannah McGregor |
This month we’ve featured episode seven from season two of Getting Lit with Linda, written and hosted by Linda Morra and co-produced by Marco Timpano. Our supervising producer is Maia Harris. Our sound designer is James Healy, and our transcription is done by Zoe Mix. |
| (24:12) |
Katherine McLeod |
To find out more about SpokenWeb, visit spokenweb.ca and subscribe to 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 SpokenWebCanada.
Stay tuned to your podcast feed later this month for ShortCuts with me, Katherine McLeod. Short stories about how literature sounds out. |
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SpokenWeb Podcast Theme Music: |
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