| 00:00:03 |
SpokenWeb Podcast Theme Music |
[Instrumental overlapped with feminine voice] Can you hear me? I don’t know how much projection to do here. |
| 00:00:18 |
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.
[Music fades]
My name is Hannah McGregor, and– |
| 00:00:37 |
Katherine McLeod |
My name is Katherine McLeod.
Each month, we’ll bring you different stories that explore the intersections of sound, poetry, literature, and history created by scholars, poets, students, and artists across Canada. |
| 00:00:51 |
Katherine McLeod |
In this episode of the SpokenWeb podcast, producer Andrew Whiteman invites listeners to step into an arena of collaboration between poetry and sound. The episode features the playing of newly created works of “sonic poetry,” along with recordings of sonic poetry that inform and inspire this type of sound work that reactivates audio archives.
Let the sounds wash over you as you listen, and maybe even start dancing. Plus, along with all of this sound, this episode announces the creation of Siren Recordings, a new multi-platform collaborative venture co-directed by Andrew Whiteman and Kelly Baron.
Siren is a record label, a digital academic hub, and a stable audio-visual archive for a growing database of sonic poetry in many forms. A place for people obsessed and interested in this kind of sonic art making that sounds like us.
Here is episode one of season six of the SpokenWeb podcast: “Invitation to Sonic Poetry Demarcations, Repositories, Examples.” |
| 00:02:00 |
Andrew Whiteman |
[Sound of voice recorder] At the dawn of 1976, during the New Year’s Day marathon poetry reading given at The Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church in New York City, Ed Sanders began his reading with the following lines– |
| 00:02:18 |
Audio Recording of Ed Sanders, 1976 |
This is the age of investigation, and every citizen must investigate. |
| 00:02:25 |
Andrew Whiteman |
Forty-seven years later, I raided the UbuWeb Sound archives, listening through all the incredible Giorno poetry systems albums that are digitized and archived there, and I discovered this work. |
| 00:02:38 |
Andrew Whiteman |
I wanted to make a birthday present for Sanders, who turned 83 this past August. I altered his poem, attending to its syntax and cadences and nuances and its energies, supplying whatever skills my training as an indie rock musician affords me. |
| 00:02:55 |
Audio Recording of Ed Sanders’s reading, edited by Andrew Whiteman |
[Piano plays in the background] This is the age of investigation, and every citizen must investigate. For the pallid tracks of guilt and death, slight as they are, suffuse upon the retentive electromagnetic data retrieval systems of our era. And let the investigators not back away one micro unit from their investigations. And this is the age of investigative poetry when verse froth again will assume its prior role as a vehicle for describing history. And this will be a golden era for the public performance of poetry when the Diogenes Liberation Squadron of Strolling Troubadors and Muckrakers will roam through the citadels of America to sing opposition to the military hitmen who think the United States is some sort of corpse firm. And this is the age of left-wing epics with happy endings. [Upbeat music starts playing]
This is the poet’s era, and we shall all walk crinkle toes upon the smooth, cold drill of Botticelli’s show.
Happy New Year.
And this [Distorted voice] Is the age of the triumph of beatnik messages of social Foeman coded in videos the clatter of the mass media over 20 years ago. Oh, how we fall to salute with peels of that the beats created change without a drop of blood.
In 1965, it was all it could do to force cajole the writers for Time magazine not to reinforce the spurious and slinger synapse that pot puff leads to the puppy field. But now the states are setting hemp free. Ten years of coding romance yesterday, the freeing of bursts today, pot tomorrow, free food in the supermarket, and finally, [Distorted voice] haha.
Let us never forget that this is the age of–ha ha ha. He is such a valuable tool, haha. He will set you free from worm farm haunts. Ha ha. He outvotes the warrior cast, haha. He peels out through all the cosmos mandarlid with poet angels, holding Plato’s seven single syllables in a tighter harmony than the early beach boys. |
| 00:06:25 |
Andrew Whiteman |
That was the track. Happy birthday, Ed Sanders. Thank you. A piece of sonic poetry from last year. |
| 00:06:32 |
Andrew Whiteman |
This is a podcast about sonic poetry and announcing a new project called Siren Recordings, designed to create, distribute, promote, archive, and discuss it in all of its myriad forms.
It’s difficult to define. Here is one attempt I made.
“Sonic poetry” is the collaboration space between contemporary poetry and music. It occupies an aesthetic space of its own making, neither coldly conceptual nor dramatically declamatory. It gathers people who are both passionate and curious about such workings. The poets give their full attention to the soundscape that compasses their words. The musicians arrange their elements in accordance with the materials of the poem.
It’s a bit stiff. At least that’s what Anne Waldman told me, and she ought to know, having contributed a vast amount of poetry, sonics, activism, and knowledge to the contemporary poetry scene over the past 50 years. |
| 00:07:27 |
Andrew Whiteman |
More from Anne later.
I was trying to delineate aesthetic boundaries for the sonic poetry I wanted to hear and make. I wanted to cut out what I found to be lazy or ill-prepared artistic responses to the call of sonic poetry. The most obvious being either the single-note synthesizer drone, which provides a vague sense of eno-esque atmosphere to a reader. Or the quote: “my friends are great jazz musicians in their killer improvisers approach.”
Yes, I’m sure that’s true, but have your friends read Susan Howe, Percy Shelley, Anne Carson, or Jordan Abel. |
| 00:08:04 |
Andrew Whiteman |
I want sonic poetry where both elements are scrupulously thought out and then allowed their free reign. Jazz and poetry might seem cliched, but listen to Langston Hughes with Charles Mingus or Kenneth Patchen with the Al Neill quartet, and you might have a different opinion.
I need to remember that Brandon Hokura is the founder and creative director of the record label and publisher Séance Centre. His research intersects with experimental poetics and ethnography, exploring the complex relationships between music, language, technology, geography, and culture. He is also a part of the vulnerable media lab at Queen’s University, where he’s engaged with audio and video preservation.
He puts the distinction of sonic poetry in this for me: There are only two categories of sound sonic poetry, really: “acoustic” and “electric.” The “naked voice” and what “sounds the body can produce,” and those transformed by electronics. I suppose you could call the former “sound” and the latter “sonic.”
Still, I see them as almost historical distinctions since recorded sound is, by necessity, transformed by electrical electronic recording processes. |
| 00:09:30 |
Andrew Whiteman |
I’m interested in the liminal space between the human voice and sonic technologies, language and expression, and body and media. This is what makes the work so important to me. These murky, definitional waters, along with my obsession to make such art, led Brandon, myself, and Kelly Barron to decide to build Siren Recordings.
Here is a blurb we wrote for a recent grant proposal. So yes, this is going to be a little dry as well.
[From the grant proposal] Siren Recordings is a digital, multimodal platform that operates as a community hub, boutique, studio and archive. We seek to connect scholars, artists, and lovers of sonic poetry in an online community. Following Edward Sanders, we believe that perfection comes in the poetic, the spoken text, the text as beauteously presented on the page, and the text as performed.
We incorporate elements of sound and music into recordings of poetry performances to emphasize the effective social experience of poetic work. We value experimentation in form, both contemporary and modern. We renew older poetic works by treating the archive as a participant in our work. Archival play ensures that our releases blend contemporary technology with influential poetry. These values seek to serve one ultimate goal: to contribute to the siren call that warns of the diminishing time we spend in the archaic situation of gathering to hear someone speak. [Prposal ends] |
| 00:11:01 |
Andrew Whiteman |
What that doesn’t mention is Kelly’s essential grasp on the importance of building a specific, stable archive. “Sonic poetry” has always suffered from the taxonomic impulse. Where does it belong, literature or music? People often answer this differently; so much of it slips through the cracks and becomes forgotten.
Siren Recordings has three distinct archiving, creating, and hosting options, and I’ll discuss each of them. But before I do that, I’ll first give a genealogy of how I came to this art form, how it shaped me, and some of the work I’ve done. |
| 00:11:38 |
Audio Clip, Unknown |
His work is about the universe. [Echo] |
| 00:11:39 |
Andrew Whiteman |
In the mid-1980s, late-night television provided a welcome respite to the Reagan Mulroney-saturated daytime, fortunate enough to have stumbled multiple times onto Toronto filmmaker Ron Mann’s incredible documentary poetry in motion, which put the oral or the page poetries of that specific moment upfront—witness– |
| 00:12:00 |
Audio Clip, Presenter |
Amiri Baraka. [Cheers] |
| 00:12:15 |
Audio Clip, Amiri Baraka’s Performance |
It’s a poem for Larry Neal and Bob Marley, two [pause] black cultural workers we lost in 1981. [Beat music starts] |
| 00:12:37 |
Audio Clip, Amiri Baraka’s Performance |
Well, as a week, we know we don’t get scared. Nothing is happening, way out nothing is happening but the positive unless. |
| 00:12:54 |
Audio Clip, Amiri Baraka’s Performance |
You the negative whalers, we whalers, yeah. Whale, we whalers we whale we whale we could dig Melville on his ship confronting the huge white man beast speeding death cross to see the wheat but we whalers, we can kill whales we can get on top of a whale. |
| 00:13:17 |
Andrew Whiteman |
Or listen to Helen Adam in her apartment, singing an updated ballad of the times. |
| 00:13:21 |
Audio Clip, Helen Adam |
Times, cheerless junkie’s song, seeking love upon a day, a day of summer’s pride. I left Long Island suburbs for the Lower East Side. The train roared and thundered, and I sang above its scream. There’s a cockroach coming towards me, but it cannot spoil my dream. Love, love and LSD. It shall not spoil my dream. Or the four horsemen cantering toward an unknown destination. |
| 00:14:26 |
Andrew Whiteman |
Toronto was having a reggae music boom, and the dub poet Lillian Allen could be heard at the Bamboo Club. Around that time, I fell into a job at the Coach House Press, a place SpokenWeb listeners need no introduction.
In addition to making money for rent, I received an informal education in contemporary canlet and some of the people responsible for dragging canlett into what we could loosely call “postmodernism.”
Some of these writers were experimenting with sonic poetry. As Mann’s film documented, BP Nicoll was one of the four horsemen we just heard, and Coach House co-founder Victor Coleman was making long-playing records. This is from one called “Nothing too fragile or heavy.” [Soft music starts playing] |
| 00:15:14 |
Audio Clip, from BP Nicoll |
I only think of–I only think of breaking–I only think of breaking down–I only think of breaking–I only think of breaking down–I only think of breaking–I only think of breaking down–I only think of breaking down the door–I only think of breaking down the door–I only think of breaking down–I only think of breaking down the door because I only Think of breaking down the door–I only think of breaking down the door because there’s–I only think of breaking down the door–I only think of breaking down the door because there’s nothing–I only think of breaking down–I only think of breaking down the door because there’s nothing–I only think of breaking down the door–I only think of breaking down the door because there’s nothing here behind it–I only think of breaking down the door because there’s nothing there behind it–nothing good in the distance, three fates wave signals BP– |
| 00:16:19 |
Andrew Whiteman |
Nicoll died suddenly in 1988, and Coach House began a short-lived talking book cassette project with the Toronto Music Gallery the next year.
That same year, Hal Wilner produced a record by Allen Ginsberg called “The Lion for Real,” which burned into me and has remained an imprint of what sonic poetry might achieve if the elements are precisely attended to. The musicians with Ginsburg were all people from the downtown New York scene, the secret location that had fostered so much critical writing, art, music and activism since the beginning of the 20th century. I wanted to participate in that communal and poetic world. |
| 00:16:57 |
Audio Clip, Unknown |
Death needs time for what it kills to grow in, for our book, sweet sake, you stupid, vulgar, greedy, ugly American death site. |
| 00:17:07 |
Andrew Whiteman |
As I mentioned, I’m a musician, producer and performer by trade. In the early 2000’s, I began touring relentlessly, playing indie rock and spending an inordinate amount of time in vans, buses, and planes.
I had been very slow to embrace computers, but when the iPhone came out, I took to podcasting instantly, and very quickly, I discovered both UbuWeb and PenSound, and my inner world exploded here.
I must confess that my obsession with poetry has always held itself separate from my love of music, an aloof, almost higher state, nearly an inverse of Louis Zukovsky’s famous poetic statement, where in my case, music is the lower limit and speech the higher.
The discovery of PenSound and Ubu and the tendrils they put out to other locations and activations ignited a second, more profound wave of poetic thrill-seeking from which I have yet to recover. I discovered the incredible storehouse of recorded North American poetry that exploded from the 1950s onward. The archive, I realized, is a hive.
I began to digitally flip through the lists of poets, listening to their speeches and eventually making sonic poetry. This is Erica Hunt’s poem, The Great Reigns, from her appearance at Charles Bernstein’s Close Listening on June 20, 2005. |
| 00:18:34 |
Audio Clip, Erica Hunt’s poem, The Great Reigns, from her appearance at Charles Bernstein’s Close Listening on June 20, 2005. |
[Eerie music starts playing] A row of xs appeared overnight on windows across the street. We on this side wondered what they knew, what we weren’t being told. The sun shined through the taped windows and made geometric shadows on the floor. On this side, we learned that the sun did not shine that way for us. We did not know what they were doing with their days or nights. And there were photos. The family across the street taped photos onto the windows. After we put up our x’s, which was, after all, only one letter of the Alphabet, their family would never be broken. We on our side wondered what was coming to hurt us. Would our windows break into shards? Would our windows become weapons against us? We wondered who would protect us from the people across the street. Who would protect us from what they knew and that we didn’t know? We wondered what they meant to us. Were the families marked by x related to us? When would they come to occupy our apartments? What were they hiding, hiding behind the x? What did X stand for? Was it really for protection against possible flying glass? Or was it something else? Was the x a sign for the angel of death? Was it a cock? And what was it a code word for? What did the x exempt them from? Into? What did it enlist them? What did we leave out when we didn’t leave our ex? What hadn’t we joined? And what had we said yes to? |
| 00:20:42 |
Andrew Whiteman |
I developed a rough technique for making sonic poetry related to how I used the archive. I would select a poem based on listening. Indeed, many of the works were difficult to access and print, but listening’s advantages were manifest, as Bernstein’s excellent introduction to the volume known as close listening points out that sound enacts meaning as much as designates something meant—end quote.
When backgrounding a poem, I decided firstly to avoid the two situations I mentioned earlier, the default into a textural or drone-like atmosphere created by synthesis, or its opposite, the live musician improvising to poet reading style. My second move was to develop constraints based on the un, as an Alypian might. These constraints might take any form, melodic, harmonic, rhythmic, or in the choice of instruments used. The formal qualities of the piece might be closer to d, song, or something else, depending on what I heard in the poet’s voice and understood in the poem’s text.
I’ll demonstrate how two very different examples. Interestingly, neither of these sonic poems use the archive as the Sanders and the Hunt pieces do, though it remains the greatest resource for creators and scholars. And I plan to make a record based on HD’s reading of “Helen in Egypt.”
In 2007, I bought books at Book Soup in Los Angeles. Alice Notley’s “In the Pines” had just come out. While reading it, I noticed her dropping quotes into the poems from a source I knew, the famous Harry Smith folk anthology records, which were legendary, and I knew because they had been re-released on CD.
I felt instantly that I should take Alice’s numbered poems 1 through 14 and retranslate them back into faux folk songs, taking special care not to attempt any authentic folk or acoustic sound or structure which would have frozen them to death, but rather by using midi and the rough recording situation my partner Arielle and I had set up at home.
I wanted to create a sepia sound and Dust Bowl sonics. I applied erasure to the poems and shaped them into semi-ballad forms. After securing Alice’s kind permission, we made a record.
Here is number seven: |
| 00:23:17 |
Audio Clip, Andrew Whiteman’s Sound Work on Alice Notley’s Writing |
Everyone said not to destroy time. We can’t have evolution, we can’t have the mind-body problem, we can’t have compassion, but I am losing mine because in the pines enchants and fortune in love once I had now I don’t in love there is no because your self-identification of the night is hard enough for identification. The night was hard enough, so in order to make the night hard enough, I slept all night. The pines as I offered to, I heard that ooh down moaning, but I’ve never heard that my defect is so beautiful. Now, it’s all that I have. My closet is on fire; turn up the clothes and shoes the closets are on fire to burn up the clothes and shoes, the closet’s on fire to burn up the clothes and shoot the closets on fire to burn, the closet’s on fire to burn up the clothes that shoes, the closet’s on fire to burn off the clothes. |
| 00:25:52 |
Andrew Whiteman |
I’m happy to say that Siren Records will be re-releasing “In the Pines” in 2025 with extra poems read by Alice. |
| 00:26:00 |
Andrew Whiteman |
The second example I’ll play is my collaboration with Montreal-based poet and theorist Michael Nardone last year. From Metatron’s digital zine glycophorin, we chose his poem “Tower One, Tower Two” from the book thug titled The Ritualites.
The poem centers around an Italian American Sunday family dinner filled with loud, disjunctive conversation, plates being passed crosswise, and background noises of TV and the radio. Here, the constraint provided all the creative impetus needed, given that the song “Hotel California” gets referenced more than once, though interestingly, nobody at the table seems to be able to name it. I decided to scour YouTube for versions of this ubiquitous song, limit my sound choices to what I could find, and then manipulate all sounds other than the poet’s voice coming from other people’s ideas of what “Hotel California” is. |
| 00:26:57 |
Audio Clip, Andrew Whiteman’s Sound Work on Michael Nardone’s Writing |
[Distorted voices with background instrumental] Oh, the pepper. The pasta. Pasta.
Oh, I hope we hear the one about Calvin. Such a lovely song. Such a lovely place. The crushed pepper. At Grossman’s. My dentist. At eight, I caught a commercial on his television for that concert on the national channel.
Well, we wait until the sauce starts to simmer.
It’s nearly time.
Add sugar and your tooth, Helen. How to ache.
But it doesn’t hurt to eat. It does. But Bob, with all this good food, how could I not help but eat? Sue, this crab dips. My aunt Louise was in California, and she sneaked.
The recipe for her favourite.
How much sugar should I use, sue?
Two tablespoons.
Add a pinch of pepper to the pasta.
Oh, Joe. Television. Past the pasta.
Wait, wait, wait, wait. I can’t hear one word of what you’re saying.
The pasta, the television.
Turn it down.
Joe. Why must he eat adult television? Please pass the. Please, Joe.
It’s no use. We’ll have to wait till we have his attention. |
| 00:28:24 |
Andrew Whitman |
Well, I faded that out. As it is a longer piece clocking in at nine minutes, I’d like to move on to Siren Records’s first release, which is slated for the fall of 2024. It’s an album based on a single book, Laois, by Anne Waldman.
Laois is a thousand page, 30 year meditation on the patriarchy and Anne’s observations of them…uh, us [laughs].
Hal Wilner is responsible for introducing us, and back in 2009, I attempted to get him to produce an album for Anne, who largely relies on her son, Ambrose Bay, to produce her sonic poetry. “After all,” I said, “Hal, you made records for Burroughs and Corso and Ginsburg. Why not for Anne?” |
| 00:29:08 |
Andrew Whiteman |
[Andrew imitating Hal Wilner] “This is in the eighties,” Hal drawled, “I can’t get that money anymore.”
I thank Hal immensely for slyly shifting this job onto my shoulders.
“What kind of Anne Waldman record do you want to hear, Andrew?” He dropped into my ear one day. Originally, I had wanted a Plastic Ono-style band featuring Cibo Matto founder Yuka Honda to back Anne up. Stark, minimal three-chord pieces, with Anne’s powerful moan reduced to a whisper. But I couldn’t get the money either. So during COVID I assembled the strongest pieces and began stitching Laois together.
[Instrumental/techno music starts playing] I’ll play two tracks from the upcoming album.
Here is “Pinbot.” |
| 00:30:01 |
Audio Clip of “Pinbot” |
He chokes me. He chose me. He chokes me. He chokes. He chose. He chose me. Pinbot. He shows me comet. He plays me Genesis. He plays TX sector. He shows me punched out Sega Turbo he needs more coins two tigers pole position two Gyrus Metro Cross Double Dribble action Circus Centipede he needs more coins Taito ten yard fight feature Spy Jailbreak super contra he shows me Wonder points Flicky Distron he plays Radical Ninja Galaga give me a break spy Hunter Ring King hat trick he shows me he shows me he shows me twin Cobra ikari warriors after burner danger zone Koban xy bots rampage silkworm Shinobi gorilla or xenophobe as the quest for freedom continues I can’t even carry or travel with this book, let alone read from it. I need a I need a roadie I need a roadie to carry it around and hold it out for me. |
| 00:32:34 |
Andrew Whiteman |
“Abu Sus Valens.” |
| 00:32:41 |
Audio Clip of “Abu Sus Valens” |
To never have enough Canada never have enough being up Canada never to have enough be enough get enough have enough be enough yet enough never to have enough be enough yet do the election shuffle do it in our Anthropocene death wish do the election shuffle do it in our Anthropocene death wish unmitigated, concealed our actual colour never be enough get enough never have enough be enough get enough never to have enough be enough get enough to never have enough be enough get enough over in Iraq, over in Afghanistan, over in Pakistan where next?
That’s why we do it at night never have brown paper bags portrait death to never have enough never have enough one out of five to the crippling form of p t s d or suicide Eddie paid certainly slabs never have enough people to never have enough body slumber exultant civvies wild laughter turned on what drug area distorted by the marines where to hide set teeth to knuckles in combat wincey Lindy brutality o ever revert Abu surveillance never have enough be never again never have enough be enough or thumbs up never have a blow to the stomach cold savage beatings more brown bodies atrocity plus silence equals more atrocity Abraham not enough to never have enough link your memory to energy sleeping to never have the hungry ghost ever have enough to never have a hungry ghost more valiant have it all by itself between our realms hungry ghost that dwells in consciousness torments our desire never have a hungry ghost to never have a hungry ghosts never have enough be enough to never have enough be enough get enough never to never have enough be enough get enough to never have enough be enough yet to never have enough be enough get enough to never have enough be enough get enough to never have enough be enough get enough to never have a get enough be enough get enough get enough. |
| 00:36:19 |
Andrew Whiteman |
I’d like to return to the specifics of Siren Recordings’s three-part project as it is unfolding right now. |
| 00:36:26 |
Andrew Whiteman |
First, the archive of Brandon’s work on the Underwhich Editions’s legacy, which informs our first acquisitions, includes most of the sonic poetry made and recorded by the likes of critical members of the Canadian avant-lit scene from 1977 to 1988.
In the words of our managing director, Kelly Baron, art needs to be additive, not iterative, for it to advance.
We need access to art that comes before us to learn from it and create something new. That access is incredibly limited when it’s originally on vulnerable forms of media, where it was never digitized and where it was originally given limited releases. I want to democratize that access and make it available. Opening up access to the sonic poetry of the past can show new artists how the boundaries between music and literature can be placed, and I hope it will inspire new art. |
| 00:37:17 |
Audio Clip, Unknown |
There are those who can tell you how to make Molotov cocktails, flamethrowers, bombs, or whatever you might be needing. Find them and learn. Define your aim clearly. Choose your ammo with that in mind. |
| 00:37:29 |
Andrew Whitman |
Our first two archival tasks are the Underwich audiographic editions and the Coach House talking books series. Neither have been archived in their totality.
The cassettes and reels from the Underwich audio, graphic series and Coach House talking books were given limited releases. There is limited time remaining to digitize them. Digitizing these works will provide widespread access to early, otherwise unseen and unheard works from significant poets in Canadian literary tradition, such as BP Nicoll, Paul Dutton, Steve McCaffrey, Penny Kemp, David W., and Bill Bissett. |
| 00:38:10 |
Audio Clip, Unknown |
[Distorted voice] Sewers go into the water instead. Where does it go from the train onto the tracks? Everyone said. My doctor told me cattle ship. That’s what the cows alongside the tracks are waiting for when the trains pass through an English bay in the waters. We could have cows dying. They would be washer cows. People could go into the water again and rob the cows on the dirt, out of the boats, or to the university. I remember a place in Nova Scotia called Cow Bay. |
| 00:38:44 |
Andrew Whiteman |
This is David W’s “How I Wrote Certain of My Books.” |
| 00:39:05 |
Audio Clip from David W’s “How I Wrote Certain of My Books” |
Crowd out, crowd out. Crowd out. |
| 00:39:18 |
Andrew Whiteman |
Listening closely, we hear the voice of Gertrude Stein and notice that David W himself is mining the archive to create new forms of sonic poetry. Finally, this is the text from the life and work of chapter seven of Stephen Smith. |
| 00:39:56 |
Audio Clip, from Stephen Smith |
When they turned out to be inferior to their reverse heroes, silver’s reign, the poise was the burning beauty being allowed to become holy Balsam. His dignity clouded me possessed by being like an absolute cap sometimes about unloose the full ambition. But there was a person who was certain. Latency in the way of Slosha. With all his regard for the point. Departure stiff places disappeared became gloss fit to a little reveal something a new conscious purpose beyond humanity, having originality and ancient thought while there was still echoing a mighty Asian empathy born incapable of destruction, it became easy to recognize as if sorrow to divide outside. He had known the avoiding drama Asian. |
| 00:41:25 |
Andrew Whiteman |
Languages would have awakened an age, Kelly continues. Our archival approach is also special. A few Underwich audio graphics series recordings are currently available on Pen Sound.
Still, the presentation of this archive is such that each piece is just a link, and it becomes a disembodied audio source. The original materiality of that artifact is lost. This materiality is significant, as these works were handmade with unique artwork associated with each release. Our archival process ensures that everything associated with the release is documented and scanned, rather than just the audio itself. We will then describe the images via text, making this work fully accessible for people with visible disabilities. |
| 00:42:15 |
Andrew Whiteman |
Describing the material ephemera of the tapes will allow the blind community to experience the artwork in its original form more fully. Beyond better serving the blind community, this archival approach also helps to narrativize the work, showing the conditions and artistic context in which it was made. Indeed, Siren seeks to become the standard repository for all forms of sonic poetry, creating a stable archive where the work can be accessed easily and indexed efficiently.
The second function of Siren Recordings is the label itself. Depending on the project, we will release three or four full-length albums per year in multiple formats. There are a lot of artists experimenting with sonic poetry at this moment, to name just a few: Kaie Kellough, who has an album coming out on Constellation Records this year, and Fan Wu from the Toronto Experimental Translation Collective is working with Tom Gill on a full-length.
Gary Barwin has been a tireless exponent of sonic poetry since the Toronto small press fair days. Jordan Abel performed at a recent SpokenWeb conference with a crew of two musicians and two readers, and he DJ-ed recording voices during his performance.
From phonograph editions in Portland, Oregon, comes records by Douglas Kearney, featuring the incredible Haitian Vodou electric composer Val Gentil and author Harmony Holliday, under the moniker Bright Moments, creates incredible lo-fi mixes of African American speeches, poetry, interviews, and then mixes everything from Jazzenhe as to Rasta Nyabinghi sounds underneath, something I would love to archive. |
| 00:43:44 |
Andrew Whiteman |
So here is where I would like to formally call anyone listening. Siren solicits new works, archival manipulations, and interart collaborations involving poetry and sound. We are dedicated to the sonic poets of the present. Our goal is to provide a specific venue for these poets to publish their works.
Right now, there’s no clear venue for doing this in Canada, but there are venues doing this elsewhere. Examples include recital records from the United States, which started in 2012, and nymphs and thugs and culture recordings. Both British labels begin in the mid two thousand ten s and blank forms from the US. It’s a nonprofit arts organization that began in 2016. Our poets deserve the same opportunities as the American and English poets. We’ll give them that opportunity in science. |
| 00:44:35 |
Audio Clip, Unknown |
I don’t believe in any of your gods or powers. It’s all bullshit. I don’t even believe in my powers or gods. |
| 00:44:44 |
Andrew Whiteman |
The third effort of the Siren is perhaps the most important and follows directly on the productive actions of establishing the archive and running the label.
These two activities will generate the need for responses from our wider community. Essays, interviews, reviews, reports, and other writing will be hosted, shared, and discussed on the Siren Records hub by those obsessed and interested in sonic poetry.
Strange as it may sound to those of you who have never left the university and might be a bit worn out by the institutional setting, as a latecomer to academia, I have been energized and excited by meeting scholars and students and deepening my study of poetry in an incredibly profound way. Indeed, I found it somewhat of an initiation, something Robert Duncan speaks of in a lecture he gave in 1969, describing when he was a young man, how desperate he was to find his way into Pound’s just released 1st 30 cantos. |
| 00:45:41 |
Audio Clip from Robert Duncan’s Lecture, With Sound Edits |
When I went to the library here, I discovered something about this intellectual community: its total interest in Mister Ezra Pound seems to have faded. I want to go back to my initiation in the cabinet. How did I come to hear it?
[Audio starts getting distorted] Forth, on the godly sea, we set up mast and sail on that swart ship, bore sheep aboard her and our bodies also heavy with weeping August and terrifying presence of a lady bluestocking who knew the entire modern scene, Aphrodite and in my belt on Telegraph Avenue, Elliot and the and pound, the 30 cannons. What was then the avalanche, the whole very confused domain of something one might call voice, which in pound one doesn’t know whether the voice is sort of actual metaphorical and then went down to the ship and I said, I can’t bear it, and then went, one week I went around with that on the godly sea.
We set up the mast and sailed on that swart ship. But what do you do when you read a poem? How do you find the rhythm of a poem that is not written? You find it the way they find it in music. Cadaverous dead brides of youths and the old born, many souls stained with the recent tears, girls, tender men, many more found out something we could not know when we were reading the thirties, the forties and so forth.
And that is that pound intoned. And if you hear the record, you will find he has a contour of a singing intoning to the line. And then went down the ship, battle spoil bearing and. And these many crowded with bronze lands, many mauled. I mean, just our American trouble with men, many mauled. The word ” min men ” is already tricky enough when you get that many in there: men mauled with brand land.
And so the Kirkheim. So I don’t always find, you know, Ava Hess’s husband as a Brit says, well, sounds like, you know, you never got out from under the impress of Yates or something like this, you know, and the next day reads in a completely different fashion, much more original. And you have the two readings there took it to heart, making them overlap so that the thing plays a double role.
Now, I took it to heart. It’s exciting. The first high Yeatsian reading and the following much more casual and intimately superior reading. It’s exciting. Right. And where did you find them? She sent them to me. Oh, fantastic. They have not heard since, you know, they made them back in 59 for a German rating. I wonder if other stuff will start to sound. If you don’t find the music, you have not found the elegant solution. If you don’t find the music, you have not found the elegant solution. |
| 00:49:05 |
Andrew Whiteman |
Thanks for listening.
I’m Andrew Whiteman, creative director of Siren Recordings; looking forward to hearing from you soon. |
| 00:49:13 |
Katherine McLeod |
You’ve been listening to the Spokenweb podcast.
The SpokenWeb podcast is a monthly podcast produced by the SpokenWeb team to distribute audio collected from and created using Canadian literary archival recordings found at universities across Canada. |
| 00:49:32 |
Katherine McLeod |
This month’s episode was produced by Andrew Whiteman.
Siren Recordings is a project co-directed by Andrew Whiteman and Kelly Baron. The SpokenWeb podcast team supervises producer Maia Harris, transcriber Yara Ajeeb, co-hosts Hannah McGregor and me, Katherine McLeod. Our sound designer James Healy of season five will be making an exit this season, but we have a new sound designer: TJ MacPherson, who is ready to come aboard. |
| 00:50:02 |
Katherine McLeod |
If you love us, let us know. Please rate us, comment on Apple Podcasts, or say hi on our social media. Also, check social media for our listening parties and more for now.
Thanks for listening. |
