SpokenWeb Podcast

My name is Hannah McGregor —

[Vocal instrumental music plays]

So it makes sense that when today’s episode producers, SpokenWeb researchers Jason Camlot and Katherine McLeod, first started making their radio show Sonic Lit, they anticipated an experience similar to that of making an episode of this very podcast.

Instead, making audio for radio turned out to be a vastly different experience—one that led them to begin asking about how making radio differs from making a podcast, especially when it comes to sharing and discussing literary audio.

This is Season 6, Episode 7 of the SpokenWeb Podcast: Listening on the Radio.

–But the conceit of this one is that we’re going to make a podcast in the spirit, or maybe even the form, of a radio show—so that we can reflect on the differences between our—at least our experience of—podcasting and radio.

[Soft vocalizing music starts playing]

We’ve been hosting a radio show on Concordia Campus Radio, CJLO 1690 on the AM dial, or streamed online at cjlo.com, and we’ve been hosting it since September. We’ve been playing recordings of poetry and talking about what we hear as we play those recordings. And we’ve created a bit of a body of work over these past months, and we’re starting to sort of get a sense of what kinds of themes are emerging through the show—but also some experience in making radio.

Neither of us had made radio before when we started this show, so it was not only a question of figuring out what were we going to play on the show and how were we going to talk about poetry, but also quite literally: how are we going to make the show?

Because when we sit in the booth at CJLO, we also work the board and sort of figure out how to come in and out of commercial breaks—what are we going to do to end the show, how are we going to begin the show, and how are we going to keep track of time while doing all of that?

Radio is really a very timed medium, as we found out.

Katherine opened by saying, “We’re live.” Right? And we are live and we’re speaking live—but you will not be hearing this live, in the same way that when we do our radio shows live.
People who happen to be tuned in to CJLO 1690 [brief hip hop beat] are hearing our shows. So we want to reflect on, you know, some of the differences—that would just be an example. And we’ll talk more about “liveness,” but we’re going to talk about—and just to give some of the themes that we sort of thought of in advance that might be interesting—to play examples of and reflect on:

• How we listen on radio
• Who we’re talking to
• What’s our imagined audience for radio
• This sense of liveness that we’ve been talking about already
• What to do with mistakes when they happen on the radio

Because, you know, what we do with the mistakes usually when we make podcasts is—we hide them. We cut them out. [Laughs]
We erase them. There are no mistakes in our podcasts. But on radio, there are mistakes. And in that sense, it’s a more spontaneous and possibly surprising medium.

So we want to talk about spontaneity and surprise. We want to talk about: what are some of the things we can do on radio that maybe we wouldn’t do in a podcast? And then I suppose also reflect on some of the larger frames of our show—like Katherine mentioned—one show being part of a larger body of work, but also that our own show plays or is heard among many other shows that are happening, that sound quite different from our show.

This is Jason and I listening to them together, but also imagining that we’re listening to them with you, our audience.

I mean, just to get things straight—usually on a radio show, we don’t play clips of ourselves talking. [Laughter]

And then it does make you think about all the different considerations—how the show gets put together and also just how that has changed over time as well.

So yeah, we’re making radio here—and also making this podcast episode.

Anyway, let’s move on into the show itself.

[Instrumental music continues for a while]

[Soft instrumental music begins]

Welcome to Sonic Lit, a spoken word radio show. I’m Katherine McLeod, and I’m here with —

We’re back with Sonic Lit. Before the break, we heard “America” by Allen Ginsberg. And while listening to that, we were — well, we were sitting here in the booth just laughing to ourselves, because we couldn’t believe that after almost every line there was a roar of laughter from the audience. [Audience laughter and cheering]
It almost sounded like we were listening to comedy. [Grand piano music fades in and out]

[Transcriber’s note: Unable to locate a definitive release under this title or artist.]
[Distorted instrumental music with overlapping heaving sounds]

So that was a collage of a variety of clips from our radio show. What are we listening to there, Katherine?

We wanted to extend a practice we’ve been calling “listening practices” — something we’ve been developing here at Concordia as part of the SpokenWeb team since 2019.
We’d gather in a room and a “listening guide” would bring a sound or sonic concept for us to listen to. As that evolved — and continued online during the pandemic — the focus was still on bringing a sound and then talking about it, listening together.

And I think this radio show has really continued that. When we play something on the show, we usually don’t prepare how we’re going to respond to it. We just respond to what we’ve heard and ask ourselves what it was we were really listening to.
I think you can hear that in the clips — that moment where we’re still figuring it out, thinking on our feet. You can hear us listening live and responding in real time. It’s rooted in that idea.

For the radio, we barely prepare. Katherine and I will meet like 20 minutes before and say, “Which CD are we going to listen to today?” Sometimes we haven’t even pre-listened — which can cause problems, but usually creates some very exciting moments. It also allows our audience to hear us listening — to experience listening modeled by listening with us.

But seriously, doing the show every two weeks — it’s amazing we’ve kept that up, given everything else going on: teaching, research, life. If we were making a podcast, there would be so much planning involved. But for this, you have to improvise. It’s almost like training for… I don’t know, not a marathon, but something long-term. It’s about sustaining it. You don’t have to make one polished, research-heavy podcast episode — you’re making something every two weeks. So we can try new things, experiment, and not overthink it.

With podcasts, we at least draft a script, sometimes fully write it out, and then read it. But here, it’s talk-thinking. Thinking aloud in response to sound. It’s all part of the same continuum of listening practices — like those group listening sessions we’ve done. We’ve even listened to full-length readings and modeled that on the show. But again, radio feels different from sitting in a room with people.

We gave the space and time to reflect. And honestly, there have been moments on the radio show that feel just like that — which has been a really wonderful thing. But unlike the podcast, we can’t assume the audience is ready for a deep dive. Radio has a wider, more general audience — and truthfully, we don’t know who’s listening at all.

For me, audience is one of the biggest differences between podcasting and radio. With a podcast, it’s a bit like writing a poem or an academic essay — I imagine a reader or listener in mind, and that’s enough for me to move forward. But when I’m live on air — when I’m actually on the air — someone might be listening to me right then. That changes everything. It summons a completely different sense of audience.

So… who are we talking to on our radio show?

And then of course, the show streams online too — and we can archive episodes. That version of the show maybe feels closer to a podcast, but the radio experience still feels a lot more unknown.

But that’s not the point. The point is: when we’re on the air, it creates a sense of urgency, because if there’s dead air then we’re not being responsible.
Some of the things you mentioned, like playing the station ID—I like to say, “It’s 1690 on your AM dial”—you know, playing the station ID, playing the advertisements that we’re required to play during the course of the hour that we have on the air, is all part of a kind of responsibility to the station and to the audience.

But I have to say, the fact that we don’t know who’s listening to us creates a kind of potential—in my mind, anyways—for an actual listening audience. And it allows me to summon them, you know?

And I want to give you an example. So we’re on a college radio station, so it’s probably fewer listeners than, say, larger radio stations—either commercial or the CBC. But, you know, I was on the CBC just yesterday morning to promote a show that’s happening at the Blue Metropolis Festival this Friday–

Montreal-based literary group The SpokenWeb is back at the Blue Metropolis Literary Festival. They work out of Concordia University to save the audio history of poetry across Canada. They preserve recordings that date back as far as the 1950s. Their event on Friday: Not Your Mother’s Poetry Reading…

And I won’t go into the details of promoting it because this is a podcast, so there’s no point. But yesterday I was on CBC at 7:30 in the morning–

–Jason Camlot is the director of the SpokenWeb podcast. He’s also a professor of English Literature at Concordia University and joins us on the line.

• CBC Host: Good morning.
• Jason: Good morning.
• CBC Host: What kind of audio archives is your group trying to preserve?
• Jason: These are like–

Then, as soon as I got off the air, my phone [phone notification ding sound] was off the hook with texts. I don’t know if that metaphor makes sense anymore, but I was getting a lot of messages from friends.

I was literally thinking to myself, as I got off the air, “Oh no, I’m going to be so tired today. Why did I even do this?” And then all these friends were texting me saying, “I just heard you on the radio!”

It took me aback. First of all, I was like, what are you doing up listening? I mean—it’s not even that early… Sorry, this is making me sound like a real slacker. [Laughs]
But it was a surprise. I got about five texts—that’s five people within my inner circle who had heard me.

So that made me think, “Wow, there were probably a lot of listeners out there.” And then if we think of college radio in relation to the CBC—maybe it’s only 5% of the CBC audience, but still, that means there are actually people tuned in to that station, listening. So, oh my God—it’s a huge difference.

Over the weekend, I was at a party, talking about our radio show. And in fact, I think I’ve attracted three new audience members from that.

It was a party full of poets—so, you know, maybe this came from that. But when I was telling them about the radio show, one person replied, like, they responded, they were like:

“Oh, you know, even if your audience is reaching, like, that 17-year-old listening to the radio in that moment…”

[cryptic sound plays and fades]

“…it’s going to change his life.”

And I was like—yes! You know, that’s our imagined audience. If we want to have one of many possible versions out there. But really, if someone’s tuning in, there’s a real potential to change their life. And it’s—it’s—yeah. The possibility is there.

We’re running out of time for audience. So that’s the other thing. [Laughter]

You know, we’re working with a time limit—both with the podcast and the radio show—but the urgency of time is much more dramatic in a radio show, because you literally are the clock–

He was an avant-garde poet, and he used to sort of create poems by going before an audience and just starting to talk.

I came here with an intention to do a piece relating to something I’ve been thinking about, and because I don’t come unprepared to do pieces.

On the other hand, I don’t come prepared the way one comes to a lesson. I haven’t studied the material very carefully, but I had in mind to consider what I was calling the principle of fit—the way in which there is a certain fit, a kind of adjusted togetherness that comes in certain socially structured events.

He would talk for 45 minutes to an hour, and then he would record them, and then he would turn them into print poems as well. And the poem existed across all these different media—live performance, tape, in a book.

I was doing a sort of email interview with him and preparing an article about him. He had done some radio, you know, so I asked him a little bit about what’s the difference between performing a talk poem on the radio versus performing a talk poem in a classroom before a bunch of people who showed up to hear you?

And his response was that when you’re on the radio, you’re just speaking into a black hole. It’s as though your words are just evaporating as soon as you speak them. And there’s no sense of reception.

But that’s not been my experience at all of speaking on the radio. I—somehow, even though I can’t see anyone listening—have a very tangible sense that there are people listening. I mean, big myth perhaps, but you know, that’s how I feel.

And also, that responsibility to put on the show and not have silence, not have that dead air happen. You feel like not only are the listeners depending on you, the station’s depending on you. There’s—again—a sense of responsibility for the sound.

And because we were both big CBC Radio 2 listeners, if we could be connected by both having heard that piece of music at that point in the day, there was something very special about both having listened to the same thing at, you know, the same time in our day. [Instrumental music starts playing]

So radio — connecting across really vast distances — is something that’s really quite, again, special about the medium–

• Katherine McLeod [distorted archival recording]

And we’re here on September 30th, which is the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. And here on Sonic Lit, we’re bringing you all Indigenous sounds. You just heard—

[Audio glitch/cut]

• Jason Camlot [distorted archival recording]
  So what happened today, Katherine, in the USA?

• Katherine McLeod [distorted archival recording]
  Not sure. Weirdness is about to happen in the USA. Trump’s inauguration?

• Jason Camlot [distorted archival recording]
  We don’t know what’s going to happen in the USA, do we?

• Katherine McLeod [distorted archival recording]
  It feels very, very uncertain — and a bit weird.

[Audio glitch/cut]

• Jason Camlot [distorted archival recording]
  It feels a bit weird.

• Katherine McLeod [distorted archival recording]
  And so today’s Sonic Lit show is basically going to be American weirdness.

[Fast instrumental music continues briefly, then fades]

• Jason Camlot [live recording, clearer]
  Welcome back to Sonic Lit, the radio show.

• Katherine McLeod [live recording]
  Today we’re listening to poetry by memory — poems that people carry with them in their minds and in their hearts.

In some ways, what you’re saying makes me think that speaking on the radio is closer to doing a live performance — you know, a live poetry reading — than making a podcast is. You know, there’s a liveness, and it’s about the sort of simultaneity in time, as time is unfolding in the present, that really makes it special.

Zen Ship sounds from Tanya Evanson — that’s “Qutb,” or “Qutb (the search for the bull),” from her album Zen Ship.

And I mentioned earlier that Katherine McLeod can’t be in the studio with me today. Unfortunately, she had to stay home because little Clara, her daughter, was having some…well, just not having the best day. And I think it was a teething thing. And you know, teeth are important — they’re all part of this oral performance art that we’re highlighting on the show.
But since she can’t be with us in studio, we’re gonna try to see if we can get her on the phone. So I’m interested to hear what Katherine thinks of the Tanya Evanson stuff we’ve been playing so far.
Katherine, are you there? Can you hear us?

So one of the— we’ve been talking about some of the different qualities of liveness in radio, and one of the, in some ways most terrifying and yet also most— it’s become for us most enjoyable, funny, comical, I don’t know, humiliating yet pleasurable— elements of liveness and radio is that when you make mistakes, they just happen. And they’re there. And they’re not going to go away.

We’re going to be listening to, first of all, some tracks from her new albums. You know— Sun Suite. [Disappointed “womp womp” sound effect plays]

Alright, we’re back—Sonic Lit.

While we were off-air, Katherine sent me a text. And Katherine and I have a little bit of a running gag going, at least between ourselves, where we correct each other’s pronunciation or knowledge on the things that we’re playing on air.
And I’ve had a good run. I’ve been—I’ve been able to correct her on a few things over the last few shows. But this time, Katherine texted that I’ve been saying the title of Tanya’s newest record, which I’ve been saying *CNO*, as though it’s *Cyrano*—like the Bergerac—*CNO Sun Sweet*, but it’s actually *Cyano Sun Sweet*.

So—chalk up a point for Katherine.
And I did want to make that correction: cyanosis.

Stumbling over–

[Deep voice saying: Now, if you’ll open your book, I’ll begin.] *A Child’s Introduction to the Novel Oliver Twist*, as adopted by J.K. Ross, captures the true spirit of an old England in much of Dickinson’s—Dickens—sorry, in much of Dickens’s own words.

Or the CD player not working—

–and I’m going to pause that. [Audio playback fails]

I knew I couldn’t get it on the first try.

Here, let’s try that one more time.

[Audio playback resumes successfully: “Stories of snow…”]

Alright, here we go.

[Audio continues: “Those in the vegetable rain—”]

Or your microphone not working, and realizing that you have to just figure that out on the fly and try to, you know, make it work— and sometimes have the help of our very wonderful station manager, Cameron McIntyre, who sometimes will fly into the booth and, you know, turn the CD player on.

Oh yeah, one of our most common errors is we get too ambitious. We want to— there’s like five more songs before the show is over, but we only have time for one of them. So we actually list all the songs that we hope to play, but then we only play half of one of those songs or poems–

And I should say that actually— radio, CDs—this is like the best forum for playing poetry. Because on a podcast, you can’t necessarily— you know, you can’t really play commercial recordings. Or if you do, you can just play a clip and talk about it, and all those things about rights.

But on the radio, playing a commercial recording of a poet is a terrific way of playing the work and then being able to, you know, have it count towards Canadian content on air and everything like that. So we’ve really done some good deep dives into Canadian poets who have made CDs. And I think some of the times that we’ve just really dwelled in one disc have been some of the most generative and enjoyable.

The other thing they really have in common is they’re both off of albums, which I just think is so fascinating. So we really, when thinking about the Montreal sounds to feature on today’s show, we thought: well, why not? Why not feature two albums? But two albums from really different periods… [Voice fades]

And yeah, there is almost a kind of inclination to just talk less, comment less. So it’s less about our intervention, you know, in the pieces we’re playing as illustrations of something, and more of a kind of sharing and collaborative listening with whoever else might be listening at that moment.

[Audio cuts into a previous podcast episode]
[Maxine Gadd archival recording]

I remember the bell— Some of us are to be half-inch diameter crystal. If there is crystal—Leary—I should have mentioned—was Timothy Leary. I should—I should have explained that before, you know?

And then I would suddenly realize: oh wait, now we’re in a poem. And it felt like just her voice kind of carried us through both— again, from the commentary into the poem itself. And then even at the end there, when she says like, “Leary, I should have mentioned it was Timothy Leary,” it almost was like— oh right, now we’re out of this poem. And it again felt like kind of part of the poem.

But I was also just thinking— Jason, I don’t know if you’re noticing this too, but like— when she was talking about the poem, either before or after, it felt so improvised. And like, we kind of— I think when we were sitting here, we felt like, oh, we feel like we can just imagine her talking to us. And it felt very informal. But we really liked that element of it, because it just felt, again, like we were sitting down with her, hearing her talk about her poems in a very casual way— and then read them. And the improvisational quality of it was just— it felt very live.

And it’s probably not a good point. It’s not necessarily about, you know, disseminating our ideas about these recordings as research. It’s about listening again with other listeners who are tuning in.

[Piano instrumental begins]

It’s so embarrassing. I hear myself speaking that way and I just can’t help myself when I’m in the studio. I was like, “And Jason Camlot,” you know? Like, who am I? Who is that?

But I think it’s interesting to think about how we speak on the radio and what forms of talk are happening, you know, on our show. Like what forms of talk are happening to us on our show? What forms of talk are we performing on the show? What forms of talk are we listening to on the show? Because there are a lot of different forms of literary talk and performance, but then also our show happens within a much wider context of other forms of discourse and talk.

Again, so this could be a disaster— an absolute disaster— for the Carolina Hurricanes. And so what do you do if you don’t think you can get a deal done? So you try and get something for him. And there’s going to be teams that would be interested— absolutely— it’s Rico Ratman— but not necessarily a team he wants to sign with. A team that’s going to try and win a cup. So I would not be surprised. A team like Winnipeg, Edmonton. Because you know what they’re gonna have to do— Carolina— they’re gonna have to retain some of the salary to make it—

And—

That was “Arizona” by Wunderhorse off their newest album “Midas,” which I’ve been a huge, huge fan of lately. It’s not doing anything necessarily reinventing the genre or doing anything particularly special, but it’s just like— I’ve— sometimes I’m in the mood for just some really, really well-made indie plays, you know?

Local Montreal artist talks about local events and also has a really distinct unique sound to that show as well. And across— again, look across the shows on the station— very diverse sounds of the show across the spectrum of radio. A lot of differences.

And yet there’s something about, like, the radio voice that we kind of know when we do it. And you know what? What is that? And, I do it too. And I often, sometimes even on the radio— I’ll notice when I go from sort of a hesitant thinking or like, is the microphone working? Is this working? Is this working? And there’s lots going on in my head.
And then suddenly, in a moment when we’re talking about something we’ve just heard, I’ll realize I’m really just like in the zone of thinking about what we heard and what I’m talking about. Even right now— I’m now gesturing with my hands, whereas I wasn’t before. And my voice changes then. And that’s another kind of, I guess, radio voice.

But I want to say— when we first— or when I first heard the Tommy John Show, because we wait outside before we go in— so it’s playing in the larger studio— I was amazed at how he never says “umm,” you know?
And when I listened back to the first few shows we did, I’m like “umming” every 3 seconds. And I was like— how does he do that? You know? How do I not?
I think I’ve gotten better at it, actually. And not even thinking about it. It’s just sort of gradually becoming a little more fluid— without “ums.” There’s a good one. I’m definitely going to keep that one there.

But Matteo, who does the show after us—who does kind of a local music show and bands that are in town, who’s in town—his whole approach is more like, “I love this band,” you know? And basically, the entire approach to the show is, “This band I’ve been listening to like, you know, for 30 years.” He’s only like 20 years old. “And I love them, and they’re great, and they’re in town, and they’re playing here. I remember I last saw them last summer here,” or whatever. And it’s all very personal, you know?

And so even just the bookends to our own show have very different— like, when Tommy John’s speaking, you have a sense of a hardcore sports audience who knows as many stats as he does, and he can just rattle them off like nonstop. And is a fan of every sport and can talk extensively about every player, every trade, every—everything. He has a very clear sense of who he’s talking to. And so does Matteo. And I think that’s— that we’re still coming into our own. Like we talked about audience before, but I think we do have that. And—and I suppose the way we talk is going to change as we gain a clearer sense of who we’re talking to.

It’s probably like the least commercial kind of show imaginable, right? You know, we’re not doing a sports show or one on, like, recent music that’s been through town like the shows before and after ours. And it’s been obvious to me that even at a college station, radio is functioning within a very commercial framework—commercially minded. There are ads we have to play.

One of the lions ladies left behind to scratch coloured gods on rocks.
Late production. We’d have “Freak, in collaboration with TD Bank Group presents…

For the shows that are topical, maybe are supposed to draw in audiences. It’s as though our show is designed to drive audiences away. Almost. No—just kidding! It’s a great show and you should all listen to it. But yeah, I don’t know—what do you think about this element of radio—that it really is sort of functioning within a kind of commercially minded framework?

But I think that what we’ve noticed is—then realizing, “Oh yes, radio is inevitably influenced by the commercial,” and trying to sort that out when thinking about poetry, which is often not thinking about the commercial. And even things like from the station, getting reminders—because we’re in Canada—to play Canadian content to a certain percentage, or a list of top songs for the week.

I know we just got an email saying that our show was part of the days that will be audited next week, so that means that we’ll have to submit a very elaborate playlist where it really identifies which content is Canadian. And often on our show, most of our content is Canadian, but it’s recordings of poets—not necessarily recordings of the latest Canadian singers. So it’s a different kind—it feels like a different kind of Canadian content.

It’s also made us think a lot about poetry itself—like, say, playing the poetry, talking about the poetry. Is our show talk radio? That category doesn’t quite feel right for our show, but we are talking about the material. Or is our show more like experimental sound-folk something? You get leaning into more of the recordings, and even the record labels that some of the poets are on. Is it some mix? It feels like it doesn’t quite fit in any of those categories.

But it’s been interesting to try to apply one of those categories onto our show and sort of see: how does that work? In what ways do we kind of exceed those boundaries or just not quite fit? Which is, it’s funny—for, again, college radio, where everyone’s pushing boundaries—but just this show…it’s a mix.

There have been a couple of times where Cam has come in from his desk into the studio and said like, “Are you still on air? Or is there something going wrong with the signal?” or whatever. But it’s just because we’re playing a sound poet, you know, or an experimental sound piece.

There have been more commercially minded moments of our shows—like when we play Tanya Evanson’s new record or Kaie Kellough’s new record, and we want to promote it.

In the future it’s ache. Strive. A natural continuity.

But at the same time, I do feel like the stuff we play on our show is kind of in tension with all the other forms of talk that are expected to be heard on the radio. And I find that really exciting and fun, actually—that like, even though it’s all talk, like you were saying—or music, right? Music is the go-to, really—but of all the talk shows, the fact that we’re playing talk shows that doesn’t register as the correct kinds of radio talk seems to me very exciting.

And I think that wouldn’t, again, be a feeling I would have if it wasn’t within the radio context. The fact that it’s actually open to anyone hearing it. The fact that people who probably don’t want to be hearing it are hearing it, because it’s on somewhere or whatever—for me, is very exciting. Because it feels like a discursive intervention of some kind.

Still, when you think about it, for all that talk about how fringy our show is, it is still a radio show. And as Hannah McGregor, our co-producer of the SpokenWeb Podcast, pointed out, there are differences in access to being able to produce shows between podcasting and radio. And the bar—even on a college radio station—may be higher than starting your own podcast would be. So I think it’s important. It’s an important point that Hannah raised, and that we’ve been thinking about surrounding the question of access to the medium, and being able to use it to make interventions of the kind that we’ve just been talking about.

And so the idea that we were going to do something that others who we have admired have also done—at first, I didn’t think about it so much as about access. It was more like, “oh, we’re getting to do that thing that we’ve always wanted to do.” But then to realize, “oh, right, we’re getting to do that because there’s a degree of access that we have”—to be able to say, like, pitch our show to the station and be trained.

But it was only when I went to CEGEP—which is like after high school—that I got to see inside a radio booth. And even then, as a first-year CEGEP student, I couldn’t get on the roster of DJs at CEGEP, which was only broadcasting within the building. It didn’t even have a band. So yeah, there was a kind of allure due to the barriers that were set up from using that medium.

Which is cool. I don’t know what that was, but I was just listening and looking. Which is the lake of the island, and it’s freezing.

And right now, we don’t even have a year’s worth, but we’re sort of reflecting on how this show was evolving. Also thinking about maybe things that, you know, we wouldn’t have known—like doing a deep dive into, say, a CD, or actually just kind of stepping back and listening with listeners would be the way to go.

And I think that that was something that we only developed while doing the show. And so it makes me think of almost this show as a space to experiment—or almost kind of like a lab, to use a buzzword—but even more than a lab, almost like—like going back to listening practices—like an opportunity to practice, but also like, it is a performance. Listeners are listening, but it’s evolving. It’s like we’re continuing to practice listening with listeners. And there’s not a conclusion. It’s continuing.

But this phase of listening, and then of thinking about connections live as they’re happening, is incredibly generative. And I think interesting in its own way to listen to, actually, because you’re sort of hearing those connections be heard as they’re perceived—and hearing the initial reflections on what those connections might mean right when they were perceived.

So it is—and I like the idea of—you know, so you have a bad show, right? You make a lot of mistakes or something goes wrong. I like falling back on that argument that—I think it was our colleague Elena Razlogova said to you—is that, well, it’s just, it’s a body of work. Right? So it’s sort of like, you know, OK, that was a bad show, but there’ll be another show.

You’ve been listening to the SpokenWeb Podcast. This episode has been about Sonic Lit, a spoken word radio show. My name is Katherine McLeod and I’m here with—

I couldn’t—I got distracted by your radio voice. [Laughter] Well, that’s good.

[Audio: Thanks for tuning in—and keep it locked to 1690 AM.]
[Soft instrumental music plays and fades]

You’ve been listening to the SpokenWeb Podcast, 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.

The SpokenWeb Podcast team is supervising producer Maia Harris, sound designer TJ McPherson, transcriber Yara Ajeeb, and co-hosts Katherine McLeod and me, Hannah McGregor.

If you love us, let us know—rate us and leave a comment on Apple Podcasts, or say hi on our social media.Plus, check social media for info about our listening parties and more.

Until next episode, thanks for listening.