| 00:09:55 |
Audio Recording, Robin Blaser |
A little respect here.
I always feel very peculiar introducing somebody that everybody knows. Actually, I kind of like–I very much like introducing Sharon. I’ve been watching her for a long time, and what fascinates me about this book of hers is–she’s going to read to us tonight.
She’s going to split it, she tells me, and she’s going to give it the rest in the middle, and she’s going to add to it.
One, two, three, newborn something. Anyway, whatever she decides, she wants to do. But Artemis Hates Romance fascinates me. One, Artemis– |
| 00:10:37 |
Sofie Drew |
Something that really stuck out to me about this part about his introduction of Sharon Thesen is probably the pronunciation of the word “romance.” It was quite unfamiliar to me, with this pronunciation putting emphasis on the “ants” at the end of it.
And really, that small change there, for me, conjured up ideas of “courtly romance” of knights in shining armour.
When Sharon Thesen then goes on to talk about her thoughts on the title, she says the word “romance” in a way that is more like how I would. How I’m used to it completely changed the meaning of romance to something a bit more informal, a bit more casual.
And I think it shows us how the recording as a whole does that kind of thing, opens up all these different interpretations that if you were just reading the collection of poems, or perhaps even if you were in the audience, you wouldn’t think too much about.
And I think that really sums up something that the whole reading does: the idea of these different available interpretations. Something Thesen also taps into when she talks about the context around each poem, her insight into them. |
| 00:11:42 |
Emily Chircop |
Yeah, the recording and the extra content we get from the introduction and Thesen’s explanations add something to the meaning of the poems.
What I found interesting about the introduction was that this man says that “I always feel very peculiar when introducing someone everyone already knows,” which highlights how social this reading was. And again, the intimacy we mentioned before kind of blurs the boundaries between what should generally be a public event or a book launch with the very private friendship group and household intimacy.
And it’s-it’s very interesting. It really adds something to the meaning of the poems. When you listen to them, you feel– |
| 00:12:23 |
Sofie Drew |
That everyone there is contributing to make this reading work. When people talk about–and they’re discussing whether to have the lights on and, yeah, you really get this feeling that although it is Sharon Thesen doing the reading, she has this supportive audience around her who are all helping to make this happen. |
| 00:12:41 |
Emily Chircop |
Sure. It becomes almost a collaborative performance when you hear the whole thing. You can hear the audience as well as Thesen reading. And it adds to the performance. It becomes one whole rather than a reading on its own. |
| 00:12:54 |
Sofie Drew |
Definitely. |
| 00:12:57 |
Emily Chircop |
When we first listened to this recording, I remember we talked about our first impressions. And a lot of the stuff that came up was about these kind of small background noises– |
| 00:13:11 |
Sofie Drew |
like underneath that of the— |
| 00:13:13 |
Emily Chircop |
Yeah. And interspersed throughout the whole recording. And I mean, there’s a wide range.
There’s a moment where a door opens. You can hear someone come into the room. There are cars in the background as well. We can hear cars on the street outside the house, as well as just an ever-present static behind it all. A child laughing in the introduction– |
| 00:13:39 |
Sofie Drew |
People clearing their throats, that kind of thing. |
| 00:13:42 |
Emily Chircop |
And I mean that really made an impression on me when I listened to it. It’s just something I wasn’t expecting at all. I was expecting it to be more of a formal kind of poetry reading.
Although, of course, it, you know, with it, with the setting, that isn’t how it is. But those extra background noises, they take that to a whole different level for me. |
| 00:14:03 |
Sofie Drew |
Yeah. I think the sound of the door opening or closing, especially. Especially as we don’t know if it is opening or closing, if someone’s leaving or entering. |
| 00:14:13 |
Emily Chircop |
It’s this constant reminder of the people in the room that the recording is. And that the performance is more than just the speaker. It’s more than just the reading of the poems. It’s a recording of the whole room. It’s a recording of the audience. It’s a recording of the whole event. |
| 00:14:29 |
Sofie Drew |
And in turn then you wonder where that line is between the actual reading and the performance as a whole. Including the audience, including the setting. |
| 00:14:39 |
Emily Chircop |
Yeah, I think that’s one of the main questions I have about this recording. Where is the line between what is performance and what is just coincidental noise picked up by the tape? |
| 00:14:51 |
Sofie Drew |
Yeah, definitely. And I guess having that constant awareness that the audience is there. When you’re listening to Thesen speak, you also know that you’re accompanied by all these other people also listening to her, and you feel as if you are part of that little community there. |
| 00:15:09 |
Emily Chircop |
Yeah. You almost get kind of sucked into the recording, sucked into the atmosphere of the tape, because it’s just so. It’s so tangible.
You can tell that they’re in a residential area because you can hear the cars on the road. You can know. You can hear the doors; you can hear the people. And it just really places you in the material surroundings of this recording.
Even though it was recorded 40 years ago, it still feels like it’s happening presently around us when we listen to it. |
| 00:15:43 |
Sofie Drew |
Yeah, yeah. You experience similar sounds, cars going past all the time. It’s things that we’re familiar with, even though it was that long ago. |
| 00:15:50 |
Emily Chircop |
Yeah, that’s definitely–It’s the familiarity. It pulls you into the recording makes you feel part of the audience, which, of course, you are part of the audience listening to the tape. |
| 00:15:58 |
Sofie Drew |
Yeah. |
| 00:15:59 |
Emily Chircop |
The original audience adds to the performance, but at the same time, you become part of that audience.
The way that it’s been recorded, being able to pick up on all those background noises, it’s not just a poetry reading. It’s a much bigger experience when you listen to it. |
| 00:16:14 |
Sofie Drew |
I think it’s a moment in time captured in a way. |
| 00:16:17 |
Emily Chircop |
Yes. |
| 00:16:17 |
Sofie Drew |
All these individuals are people you can make out little bits of what they’re saying and doing rather than just the focus being on. Although the focus is on decent speaking, you’re also very aware that there are all these other individuals who have all come together for this one moment. |
| 00:16:35 |
Emily Chircop |
Yeah, I like that. A moment in time. That’s a really interesting way of putting it. That’s definitely how it feels to listen to kind of like a poetry time capsule. |
| 00:16:45 |
Sofie Drew |
Yeah.
You will now hear the voice of George Bowering, the host of the reading and Thesen’s fellow poet and friend, who was interviewed by Karis Shearer. |
|
|
Karis Shearer’s Interview of George Bowering |
| 00:16:54 |
Karis Shearer |
George, one of the things I was thinking about when I was listening to this tape, I realized there is kind of a difference between reading in someone’s house amongst friends and versus, reading at a public library or launching a book at a bookstore.
One of the things that’s happening in this tape, especially in the second half, is that people are responding. People are laughing. People are–There’s twice in the reading, someone asks her [Thesen] to read the poem a second time. |
| 00:17:27 |
George Bowering |
Yeah. |
| 00:17:27 |
Karis Shearer |
And I wonder if you could say something about it. |
| 00:17:30 |
George Bowering |
Just used to do that a lot.
Well, when you’re at–in somebody’s house like that, especially somebody that you’re close to, right? And that you’re really good friends of, you feel a little bit like that thing that I said about Robin, that you’re not doing a performance, that isn’t that formal thing staying in front of you is rather that they know that you’ve been writing this work for a long time and you finally seem to have got it done.
And it’s almost as if they helped you. Right. It’s like a joint production, and they were there. I really do remember not enjoying it. It might not be the right word, but I felt as if it was important to my soul, you know because it was because of the continuity that I was talking about.
And sometimes, we would do something like work that was not finished and say, here’s where I’ve got so far. And people would read it and get familiar with it. And then later on, you know, when it was 3/4 finished, another one. In a sense, doing something that’s in your house, in somebody’s house. Well, you could have done it in a bookstore, or you could have organized it for, you know, the Western Front or something like that could have happened. But deliberately.
Would you go to somebody’s house and do it? Because of the sense of community and to use it. We knew this poem was coming, right?? And we knew we. We had read quite a bit of the poem before that. We have it. So it wasn’t as if it was, oh, geez, there’s the poet, et cetera. It was so high. |
| 00:19:32 |
Emily Chircop |
Shared. |
| 00:19:33 |
George Bowering |
It’s shared. Right. Yeah. It was also because. Partly because Sharon, like, she and Angela were best friends at the time, at least, and they were.
They spent a lot of time at each other’s place. It was not just an extension of the poetry, but it was an extension of that friendship as well. |
| 00:19:59 |
Sofie Drew |
That was the voice of George Bowring. |
| 00:20:03 |
Emily Chircop |
So you were talking about the ambiguity and the different interpretations of the poems that are opened up by the recording. Could you tell me a bit more about that? |
| 00:20:14 |
Sofie Drew |
So, yeah, really, some of the most interesting moments of the recording for me were actually the bits where I couldn’t quite hear it.
I couldn’t quite make out what was being said. And I think it’s due to the sound quality, really, of something recorded. So Long ago. But really, I found that when there were moments where I couldn’t quite make out the words, I was, without really thinking, replacing those ambiguous moments with words that felt more relatable to me and, you know, things that perhaps I would have liked to have written about, that kind of thing.
So, one particular moment where I noticed this was something like meeting the sweetest sky at night, meeting the sweetest guy at night, or even sweeping the sky at night. And I thought it was that variety of interpretations that could be taken from the reading that really made it so fascinating.
There was another moment where, until we had access to the written versions of the poems, we listened to the recording quite a few times without any knowledge of the actual text.
Just what we had to hear Thesen speak about it and say because quite a few times, she adds in bits. And you can’t always quite tell where the poem starts and where the explanation ends. |
| 00:21:35 |
Emily Chircop |
Yeah, it all blends together. |
| 00:21:36 |
Sofie Drew |
And so there was one moment where there was a word, we realize now it’s “Creeley”, which is the name of an American poet, but we weren’t sure of that until recently. And so it was this moment where we just really had no clue what these lines were, but it really added to it. It felt like there’s this intimate audience that presumably understands that reference, and we’re almost outsiders to that, in a way, and yet.
So that just increases that idea of familiarity among the audience, among Thesen, that we, as listeners, are hoping to catch a glimpse into and join. So, in continuing on from the idea of the listener of this recording being somewhat of an outsider to the community of this reading, is when in one of her poems, she mentions stc, and it’s not explained within the poem, but then afterwards, she explains to the audience that it’s Coleridge.
And the audience reacts to this by laughing. They all burst into laughter, insane laughter. And so it’s like, oh, it must be some kind of inside joke. Must have perhaps expected that kind of thing from her. And yet. So we see that it’s an inside joke. And yet, as the outsider, in a way, we still don’t exactly know what the joke is. We’re not allowed in on it. |
| 00:23:06 |
Emily Chircop |
No, no. In a sense, yeah, definitely it is.
There is that barrier which, to me, amplifies that sense of the sociality and the intimacy of the reading. It really makes you feel the social atmosphere, that they’re all friends, and that they’re all close.
They all know each other. |
| 00:23:28 |
Sofie Drew |
You kind of want to get invited in, you know, you want to become one of them. |
| 00:23:32 |
Emily Chircop |
I guess listening to the recording, the fact that it was recorded and has been kindly given to the Amp Lab for us to listen to, is kind of like them inviting us into the moment, which is the only way they can. |
| 00:23:44 |
Sofie Drew |
Yeah, I like that. |
| 00:23:46 |
Emily Chircop |
In a way, the kind of ambiguity that you get through the recording, it both alienates us from that original recording context because it also reminds you that it is a recording and that’s why you can’t hear.
But then at the same time, it kind of brings you back into that potentially because you are acting more as an audience than ever and trying to understand. |
| 00:24:10 |
Sofie Drew |
Yes, definitely. |
| 00:24:13 |
Emily Chircop |
I think it does both, which is very interesting as a listener. It’s a very strange experience to be both pulled into the recording and pushed out of it at the same moment.
Because I don’t think that’s something you experience when you’re listening to something live. |
| 00:24:31 |
Sofie Drew |
Yeah. |
| 00:24:31 |
Emily Chircop |
And you miss something, you don’t feel like you’re being pushed out of the experience. |
| 00:24:36 |
Sofie Drew |
And you could even make a point that today when we’re listening to something, there’s subtitles available or, you know, there’s the whole Internet out there ready to explain it to you, but when you’re looking at something from a while ago, you know, you do lack that. |
| 00:24:55 |
Emily Chircop |
Yeah, yeah. The prevalence of captions and transcriptions, I think it definitely changes the way we listen to things. We kind of expect to be able to hear every word and know what the correct word is. |
| 00:25:08 |
Sofie Drew |
In fact, when I went through the written versions, I had a completely different insight really, to some of the poems that I just read. I wouldn’t have gotten just from listening to it. |
| 00:25:20 |
Emily Chircop |
Yeah. Listening to poetry being read is a completely different experience. And listening to a recording of a reading, I would say is even a different experience to that. When we’ve been talking about this recording, the way we talk about the recording versus the way we talk about listening to a reading of a poem, it’s completely different. It brings so much more to it.
I mean, all the things we’ve been talking about today are things we would never really consider in a live reading. We wouldn’t be talking about how the door opens at this point or there’s a car in the background, or we can hear laughter.
Because of it being recorded makes all of those things more obvious and noticeable. |
| 00:26:03 |
Sofie Drew |
Yeah.
And I think, live, your brain probably automatically filters out those background sounds like doors opening and cars driving past.
But when you’re listening to a recording, it’s all there at the same level, really, as each other, and you have to work a bit harder to figure out which bits to filter out and which bits to focus on. |
| 00:26:22 |
Emily Chircop |
Yeah. And, I mean, personally, I think none of it should be filtered out. While a lot of those noises might not be intentional, they’re still part of the recording. They add to the art and add to the performance. And I think if you cut out all of those background noises, it would be a completely different reading. The impressions we get from it, and the emotions and ideas that are conveyed.
The audience has such a huge hand in portraying that to us, and you wouldn’t get it if you cut out all that background noise. It’s interesting. I wonder if they recorded the whole room because that’s the technology they had available or if they recorded the whole room because they wanted to hear their friend’s reactions to their friend reading a poem. In our interview, Karis Shearer had some really insightful comments about this, which we’ll now play for you. |
| 00:27:11 |
Karis Shearer |
Yeah, I think that is such a great question. And it’s something that I find I listened to a lot, actually, and I have a research assistant who works on the project, Megan Butchart.
We both do a lot of listening for intention. Like, what did people think they were recording? What did they think the occasion was, and what did they think the purpose of the tape was? The recording captures bookends in some ways that exceed the intended purpose of the event.
So the sort of sociality, the, you know, George Bowering says, “oh, I gotta have to get another beer from the fridge.”
Probably not, you know, an intended part of the recording, but nevertheless something that tells us a lot of information about the kind of conviviality of the setting and the way in which people were, you know, food and drink flowing. |
| 00:28:05 |
Sofie Drew |
So another area of the reading that we wanted to focus on was the poem Kirk lonergren’s home movie, taking place just north of Prince George, with sound. |
| 00:28:14 |
Emily Chircop |
And you can hear a clip from that play, now. |
| 00:28:18 |
Audio Clip, from N/A |
This one is a prose piece. It’s a description of a movie that a student of mine brought to class. Instead of an essay, they had that choice.
It was one of those kinds of classes. You could do something else. So this kid brought this movie, and he had bright red hair. He was a Sagittarius, and he was into archery completely and thought that archery had a lot more integrity going forward as far as killing things and guns and so on.
And he and all these other archers would go up to a place just outside of Prince George every year and hunt for bears with their bows. And this movie was a–they took up their little movie camera, and they made a movie of one of these little trips, these little hunting trips that they took.
This is a description of the movie. And it was very artistic, the movie, the beginning. Some landscapes and words about nature. That particular landscape and what it harbors. Shots of woodpeckers, porcupines, the swamp lilies, bears and moose. And the three archers, one old guy, one medium guy, one young guy, Kirk.
This is called “Kirk Lonergan’s Home Movie.” Taking place just north of Prince George, with sound. That was another thing that was really interesting about it. It was sound. Okay, so.
And one young guy, Kirk, all dressed in camouflage clothing, like those green– |
| 00:29:53 |
Sofie Drew |
So something that really stuck out to us was the introduction to this, in which Sharon Thesen uses quite intimate, small details about this Kirk Lonergan, saying he’s got red hair, that he’s a Sagittarius. Quite unusual details.
You can kind of get an insight into her mind that these are the specific details. Not the common details you’d use to describe someone, but those are the ones that stick with her. |
| 00:30:18 |
Emily Chircop |
Yeah. |
| 00:30:19 |
Sofie Drew |
And it’s that kind of thing as well that I think perhaps lots of people can relate to. When something’s quite personal to you, you do remember those small, perhaps unusual details.
And so you get this feeling that what she’s about to read is definitely an insight. |
| 00:30:36 |
Emily Chircop |
And it’s humorous, of course, mentioning that he’s a Sagittarius and then describing all of this archery.
You can really get that insight into the humour that’s present throughout this whole reading as well.
The bit I find most interesting is what she said–She says the film is very artistic, and the room laughs at this. And you just–I just don’t know, does she mean it seriously? Does she mean it’s an artistic movie, or is she saying it’s sarcastic? |
| 00:31:06 |
Sofie Drew |
We have no clue what face she’s making as she says this. Or if people just naturally get from the context that it’s meant in a humorous way. |
| 00:31:16 |
Emily Chircop |
I think either way, whether it’s sarcastic or genuine, it’s a really wonderful moment. |
| 00:31:21 |
Sofie Drew |
It’s great to see the audience engaging with the poem like that. |
| 00:31:25 |
Emily Chircop |
Yeah. |
| 00:31:27 |
Sofie Drew |
And she continues to engage with the audience.
Halfway through reading it, she decides to go back to the title, give a bit more description, context for the poem. |
| 00:31:37 |
Emily Chircop |
Yeah. The way she reads this poem is really interesting because in most of the poems, she reads the title, and then she reads the whole poem.
Some of the poems don’t have titles in this collection. But in this one, she explains what the prose piece is about, and she explains the context behind the movie and the fact that it was a submission to her as a teacher, but she doesn’t give the title.
She starts reading the piece and gets to the name “Kirk.” Then, she has to interrupt herself because she realizes, or at least we presume she realizes, that the audience does not know who Kirk is. She interrupts and says, “oh, this is called Kirk Lonergan’s Home Movie.”
And then she goes back and repeats herself, “Kirk,” and continues with the reading. And it’s really–I find it really fun, a very different way of reading poems, but it brings it back to just the presence of the audience in the intimate setting. |
| 00:32:32 |
Sofie Drew |
Definitely. |
| 00:32:35 |
Emily Chircop |
The fact that that interruption to put the title halfway through the poem is likely a necessity of just the way she was reading it and in the context of the moment rather than a deliberate decision. And yet it’s a really lovely way to read the poem because you don’t need to know the title until you get to that part where you mentioned Kirk. And the way it flows, I think, is actually–It flows really well. I think it’s a really good way of conveying that to the audience. |
| 00:33:08 |
Sofie Drew |
And in fact, by not introducing it with the title initially, it is almost as if what Thesen is speaking is actually just her thoughts she decided to share with the audience.
There’s that sense that she feels comfortable around them. Comfortable enough to interrupt a poem in the middle of it to add on to it more. |
| 00:33:26 |
Emily Chircop |
It feels very organic, I think, I would say. |
| 00:33:29 |
Sofie Drew |
And you had some interesting ideas about the form of it. |
| 00:33:33 |
Emily Chircop |
Yeah, yeah.
I think this section really showcases the medium of the recording because you have this prose piece which already stands out in a poetry collection, but that prose piece is a visual, written-down rendition of an audio-visual medium of the home video itself. Then we receive it in an audio format with no visual element. The descriptions are still so immersive and striking, even when you take away the visual aspect that you would expect to be central to a description of a video.
And I think it’s a really. It’s a really interesting experience to be able to convert what was written visually about a visual medium into purely audio. And how that–Then we’re listening to it now, and we can visualize that movie, and I think we get something from it that we wouldn’t get from seeing it written down in the way that she describes it, the way her voice sounds and the way the audience responds. |
| 00:34:41 |
Sofie Drew |
And I think the fact that in the title, it’s added on at the end “with sound,” I think that really highlights element of the different forms merging together. |
| 00:34:52 |
Emily Chircop |
Yeah. So, considering the medium and the fact that it is purely sound-based, how do you think it interacts with the imagery in the poem? |
| 00:35:02 |
Sofie Drew |
Well, the images are quite disturbing; some of them, especially in the last few lines, talk about how there’s blood on the hunter’s hands but not on the bear. And I think the fact that these images are so vivid, again, contributes to the idea of the different forms of media kind of coming together there. |
| 00:35:23 |
Emily Chircop |
Yeah, there’s convergence of the different elements. |
| 00:35:26 |
Sofie Drew |
Exactly. The descriptions, the–some of the disturbing simile metaphors that she uses are when she compares things: Cuddling their dead teddy bears. |
| 00:35:35 |
Emily Chircop |
Yeah. |
| 00:35:38 |
Sofie Drew |
But I think the fact we get almost, perhaps a better description, a more emotional description of these things in the video than we perhaps would get from actually just watching the video.
We do get that sense that there is emotion behind it for either the people in the video or for Thesen watching it. |
| 00:36:00 |
Emily Chircop |
Yeah, definitely.
And I think it is because we feel quite pulled into the audience because of the way the recording is formatted, the way that the listening experience–You feel like you’re part of that audience. You feel very kind of taken and potentially like, shaken by what she’s saying. And it’s very–It is quite off putting, but in a very mesmerizing way. |
| 00:36:28 |
Sofie Drew |
Yeah, definitely.
It’s almost like we’re–You feel that…
Well, yeah. In the gruesomeness of the imagery, Thesen is being forced to watch the video, in a sense, as–I mean, if these people have submitted it– |
| 00:36:43 |
Emily Chircop |
Yeah– |
| 00:36:44 |
Sofie Drew |
As work, then she is forced to watch it, in a sense.
And it’s like she’s taking the audience along, us along with her, into being forced to see these gruesome images. It’s almost– |
| 00:36:56 |
Emily Chircop |
See, I don’t know if this is the right word.
The way we’re listening to this is almost voyeuristic, as the content of this video is viewed through the very, like, opinionated lens of Sharon Thesen’s work. And to see someone’s home video through that lens, it’s–I think it definitely changes the meaning. We might feel the same way if we were to see that video or just read a less opinionated description. But the nature of it being prose poetry, really, it just adds that extra level of vividness, that extra level of, like the grotesque metaphors that she uses similes. |
| 00:37:34 |
Sofie Drew |
And we really get the feeling that it is something personal, even to Kirk Lonergren, because his full name is in the title of this poem.
I wonder if he knew that he would have a whole poem. |
| 00:37:46 |
Emily Chircop |
I wonder. |
| 00:37:47 |
Sofie Drew |
And the fact that it’s a home movie.
Yeah. We’re seeing something that’s very personal to this guy, Kirk. What’s, then, very personal to Thesen becomes personal to us. |
| 00:37:57 |
Emily Chircop |
Yeah, It’s. It’s just. It’s also intimate, isn’t it? |
| 00:38:01 |
Sofie Drew |
And yet, while we see the intimacy of this reading as a positive thing, very friendly, comfortable.
The intimacy that we see in the. Well, see, in the reading of this poem of the home movie, it’s very disturbing.
Definitely not a comfortable. Definitely not comfortable for the reader or the audience. |
| 00:38:24 |
Emily Chircop |
The next clip we’re going to play for you is from near the end of the recording. And it is the start of the poem, “The Shifting Sands Motel.” |
| 00:38:35 |
Audio Recording, Sharon Thesen reading “The Shifting Sands Motel” |
The Shifting Sands Motel.
Some transients for you, Robin.
Close your eyes and pretend your bath is the Mediterranean.
I get this blue stuff from the Safeway called intensive care.
Baths and the mineralmakend it makes the water just Mediterranean blue.
It’s wonderful. |
| 00:39:06 |
Audio Recording, Sharon Thesen reading “The Shifting Sands Motel” |
Close your eyes and pretend your bath is the Mediterranean.
You are soon to have lunch with a movie star.
Open your eyes and pretend your bath is the Arctic Sea.
You are soon to eat your companion in the rowboat. |
| 00:39:24 |
Sofie Drew |
So, from the very start, you seemed quite interested in this poem in her description at the start of it. Why is that? |
| 00:39:32 |
Emily Chircop |
Yeah, this part of the recording really was one of my favourite parts. I find the way that she pauses her reading of the poem really intriguing. She says the first two lines, “close your eyes and pretend your bath is the Mediterranean.”
She then explained that the bath beads she got from Safeway make the water really blue.
And then, she goes back and repeats the first two lines. And in doing that, the explanation, that additional context, becomes part of the poem.
When you’re listening to it, it becomes part of the performance. And it brought a lot of extra meaning to the poem for me. And I just. I just think it’s a really interesting concept, especially the explanations throughout this whole recording.
But I think this really exemplifies it. Well, the way the explanations are presented and the audience’s reaction. You can hear them laughing when she provides the content, the way that it kind of works its way seamlessly into the performance itself. |
| 00:40:31 |
Sofie Drew |
Yeah. I mean, do you feel like it, at least, I think, possible?
I feel like when she’s describing it, it almost feels like she’s talking to you as a friend, you know, like, “oh, check out these great bath bombs that I get.” |
| 00:40:44 |
Emily Chircop |
It’s very casual, isn’t it, outside of just the intimacy that’s so prevalent in this recording. And it’s both an interruption to what you would expect to be quite a, like, formal, straight-through-the-poem kind of performance.
It’s both an interruption to that aspect, and also it slots right in and makes the poem a lot more, I would say, tangible.
It makes it more tangible because you can imagine just how blue that water is.
And by rooting it more in the home, it really picks up on that idea of, like, imagine your bath is the Mediterranean. Not just imagine you’re in the Mediterranean. Imagine your bath in the Mediterranean. And by describing the bath beads that she buys herself, I think it really amplifies that aspect of it, being your bath and the location. Yeah. |
| 00:41:33 |
Sofie Drew |
She’s trying to connect to her audience on that kind of level. |
| 00:41:36 |
Emily Chircop |
That’s exactly it. It connects to you.
So, just to finish off now, I’ve got to ask, what is your favourite part of the recording? |
| 00:41:45 |
Sofie Drew |
I think for me, it’s probably within the first poem, “Japanese Movies.”
I just–I really loved the image created there, especially of death, really. But the main line is where a cold snow lady waits with blackened teeth to cure you of the fear of life. And it’s something that throughout the rest of the recording, that image from the very start really stayed with me.
I love the representation of death there, really. The idea is that if you trust death long enough, you end up risking more, and death will come down on you twice as hard.
You know, the idea that the poem just conveyed, I really loved it, and I think it set a tone for the rest of the poems.
So what about you? What was your favourite part of this reading? |
| 00:42:29 |
Emily Chircop |
I think we’ve honestly talked about most of my favourite parts so far. The “hunting piece” and the “Shifting Sands Motel” poem are two of my favourites.
But one part we haven’t talked about yet is the poem from which the title of the collection, “Artemis Hates Romance,” comes. And I love this part of the recording.
Besides, it is just a wonderful poem; you also get this interruption of Thesen talking about the inspiration from COVID-19, which I loved hearing. I loved getting that extra insight into the whole collection, especially with it being a book launch.
I think getting that kind of extra information about COVID and about the process behind not just writing these poems and reading them but shaping the text into the book form that we end up hearing. Being read from, I think, is something extra special that we get from this recording. |
| 00:43:24 |
Sofie Drew |
It’s something that we probably don’t really think about the majority of the time.
You know, you see, like a collection of poems– |
| 00:43:30 |
Emily Chircop |
Yeah– |
| 00:43:30 |
Sofie Drew |
You take it; those poems are as they are. You don’t think about how they came to be put together, how you choose the title, that kind of thing. |
| 00:43:38 |
Emily Chircop |
Yeah. |
| 00:43:38 |
Sofie Drew |
This really reminds me of when Thesen reads her poem, “It Being Over, There Being No Other Way,” when at the end she says how she hates it and that she only put it in the collection because Robin Blaser told her to.
And I think that just really highlights that collaborative element of this collection of poems.
There’s a personal insight there from Thessa and the people around her. All these individuals have come together to create the collection and create the reading. |
| 00:44:08 |
Emily Chircop |
I think that idea that you touched on about taking the poems as they are is really key in the way we listen to this recording because we’re not taking the poems just as they are.
We’re getting so many other layers of meaning and layers of interpretation from the audience, from the recording, from listening to her speak them aloud, and from the fact that it was recorded in the past. That kind of temporal shift. All of it just adds layer upon layer upon layer to the point that you’re not just taking the poem as they are, you’re taking the recording as it is. And that’s, to me, what makes this recording so special. |
| 00:44:47 |
Sofie Drew |
You’ve been listening to the SoundBox Signals podcast with Sophie Drew and Emily Chircop from the University of Exeter. |
| 00:44:53 |
Emily Chircop |
I study English and Communications, and I’m particularly interested in podcasting and how different mediums can influence texts. |
| 00:45:00 |
Sofie Drew |
I’m studying Classical Studies in English, I’m pursuing writing poetry, and I’ve written and directed a couple of short audio dramas with the BBC. |
| 00:45:07 |
Emily Chircop |
You can check out the full recording we discussed today on the SoundBox website.
The link can be found in the show notes. |
| 00:45:13 |
Sofie Drew |
If you enjoyed this podcast, you can read more of Sharon Thesen’s work in her newest book, Refabulations. |
| 00:45:20 |
SpokenWeb Podcast Theme Music |
[Instrumental music] |
| 00:45:45 |
Katherine McLeod |
This month’s episode was a guest appearance by our sister podcast, SoundBox Signals. It featured producers Sophie Drew and Emily Chircop. |
| 00:45:54 |
Katherine McLeod |
The SpokenWeb Podcast team is supervising producer Maia Harris, sound designer TJ McPherson, transcriber Yara Ajeeb, and co hosts Hannah McGregor and me, Katherine McLeod. |
| 00:46:05 |
Katheryn McLeod |
To find out more about SpokenWeb, visit spokenweb.ca and subscribe to the SpokenWeb podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you may listen. |
| 00:46:14 |
Katheryn McLeod |
If you love us, let us know, rate us and leave a comment on Apple Podcasts or say hi on our social media. |
| 00:46:21 |
Katherine McLeod |
Plus, check social media for info about our listening parties and more.
For now, thank you for listening. |
