| 00:00:00 |
Jason Camlot |
Hi, I’m Jason Camlot, and I want to tell you about a new podcast series coming this fall from SpokenWeb.
It’s called Literary Listening, and it will feature me, my co-host Katherine McLeod, and a wide network of scholars and students who are interested in how sounds are made and especially how we summon, shape, and conjure sounds in the process of listening. |
| 00:00:27
|
Jason Camlot |
How do we listen as we create, perform, and study literature?
What does listening even mean?
Did you hear that?
I don’t know what that was. |
| 00:00:33 |
Jason Camlot |
We don’t even know what the theme music for the show is going to be. That’s how new this is.
Tune in this fall for a new spoken web podcast series called Literary Listening. |
| 0:00:44 |
Ali Barillaro |
Hi, this is Ali Barillaro, the voice of the SpokenWeb Podcast theme song. [Static noise] |
| 0:00:53 |
SpokenWeb Theme Song |
[Static noise] Activate non‑print scholarship.
[Harmonious singing with overlapping voices and audio clips] This game. Signatures on tape, listening to literary audio objects. Midnight complexity of literary history. |
| 0:01:27 |
Maia Harris |
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. |
| 0:01:40 |
Maia Harris |
My name is Maia Harris. [Audio cue plays softly in the background]
This very special live episode of the SpokenWeb Podcast presents a retrospective resounding of SpokenWeb symposia and institutes over the past six years. |
| 0:01:55 |
Maia Harris |
Drawing from archival sounds and images, Nick Beauchesne and Chelsea Miya curate a sonic celebration of past events, punctuated by interviews with SpokenWeb founders, past symposia organisers, and sound‑oriented performers. |
| 0:02:12 |
Maia Harris |
Ali Barillaro is the voice behind the SpokenWeb theme music. She recorded a special version for our show today.
Live panel guests include Jason Camlot, Katherine McLeod, Karis Shearer, and Klara du Plessis. |
| 0:02:28 |
Maia Harris |
Pre‑recorded interview segments feature Jordan Abel, Oana Avasilichioaei, Annie Murray, Jason Wiens, Cole Mash, and Erin Scott. |
| 0:02:41 |
Nick Beauchesne |
Thanks for joining us live at the SpokenWeb Institute 2025 at UBC Okanagan.
I’m Nick Beauchesne. |
| 0:02:49 |
Chelsea Miya |
And I’m Chelsea Miya, and you are our live studio audience. [Cheering from the audience] |
| 0:02:59 |
Nick Beauchesne |
Today we have a very special program for you—part lightning talk, part oral history, part sound showcase, part musical performance, and part dance‑off.
More on that later. This episode has it all. |
| 0:03:12 |
Chelsea Miya |
So sit back, relax, and enjoy the sounds as we revisit memorable moments from the SpokenWeb symposia and institutes.
We’ll also look to the future as our guests speculate on the legacies and possibilities of our research, creative performances, archives, and community. |
| 0:03:33 |
Audio Clip |
This is the SpokenWeb Manifesto. May 29, 2019, Burnaby, BC. I’m sound, spoke, spoke, spoken. Body vibrating, speaking double‑toned, accent acute. Regenerations of literary voices, sound, and minds through communities of practice. We respect the magic of the voices of the dead. Voice in all its power, our collection of queer, speaking out and listening, shadows. It sounds like this doesn’t matter. The tape falls in the forest—SpokenWeb hears. The SpokenWeb saves lives. [Laughter and cheering from the audience]
Transcriber’s Note: The audio clip has overlapping audio from various speakers mixed together. |
| 0:04:33 |
Nick Beauchesne |
We begin our retrospective journey with the pre‑recorded interview with Annie Murray and Jason Wiens.
Annie is a “Rare Books” and “Special Collections” Librarian at the University of Calgary, working on the digital preservation of audiovisual recordings from the EMI Music Canada archive. She may or may not still have a penchant for borrowing well‑worn Michael Ondaatje cassettes from public libraries. [Light laughter] |
| 0:04:57 |
Nick Beauchesne |
Jason is a professor of English, also at the University of Calgary. He was first drawn to SpokenWeb because of his interest in sound archives.
In his courses, he is known to send students out into the wild to record poetry readings at the Flywheel Poetry Series hosted by Pages Books, a local independent Calgary bookshop.
Students then segment their recordings and write essays about them. |
| 0:05:20 |
Chelsea Miya |
Not only are Annie and Jason invested in creating and preserving sound archives, they’re also long‑time members of the SpokenWeb Network and were involved in some of the very first SpokenWeb gatherings.
On the screen behind us is a photo of Annie and Jared Wiercinski back in 2011, presenting a paper about the Sir George Williams Collection website in Frankfurt, Germany. |
| 0:05:44 |
Chelsea Miya |
In a nostalgic—and, we think, very insightful—conversation we conducted over Zoom, they shared their memories of these formative communal gatherings, which have become incarnations of the spirit of the SpokenWeb projects, both then and now. |
| 0:06:00 |
Annie Murray |
Yeah, I remember this one. It was when we started doing ghost readings, and I think that might have been the 2013 one.
We were at Concordia, and Jason invited all these poets. They would come up on stage to read and confront their archival self. It was like George Bowering standing there, I think. And then they played George Bowering to George Bowering. And then he’s like, “Whoa,” and then he kind of responds. |
| 0:06:30 |
Annie Murray |
I also remember there was a little tent you could go into and say, “I was there, I remembered this or that.” There was just so much creativity in this approach to studying the history of poetry. Those first events were really great.
And, you know, often Katherine McLeod would be doing something—maybe there was dancing. Flamenco tended to make an appearance. And I was just like, “Okay, if this is the little band of people I’ve joined, I’m very happy.” |
| 0:07:01 |
Jason Wiens |
I remember one of the first events I attended—sort of pre‑SpokenWeb, when we were gathering to prepare that initial SSHRC Partnership Grant application. We had a listening party where we all went up to a room in the Tower at Concordia and listened to a Robert Creeley recording from the Sir George Williams Series on a Friday night. That was quite a memorable moment. |
| 0:07:23 |
Chelsea Miya |
SpokenWeb symposia and institutes are really not your typical conferences, and not just because they’re so interdisciplinary. There are a lot of moving parts: talks, workshops, performances, exhibits. |
| 0:07:35 |
Chelsea Miya |
So when Annie and Jason teamed up to organise the 2024 symposium in Calgary, I’m sure they knew it would be a big undertaking. They were pleasantly surprised when, at first, everything went off without a hitch. |
| 0:07:50 |
Annie Murray |
There were two distinct parts. If it were a sonnet, there was a volta. And before the volta, it was so smooth. We had this nice little group—Jason, me, Kit, our superstar RA Leah. The SSHRC Connection Grant application went in. It was a big push, but it went in. It was awarded. We chose the rooms. Everything was happening. People were registering. And I remember saying to Kit, “This is the nicest conference‑organising experience I’ve ever had. It’s just so smooth.” |
| 0:08:30 |
Nick Beauchesne |
But then, just weeks before the conference, everything changed. At the time, students across Canada and the USA—including at the University of Calgary—were protesting the ongoing violence against Palestinian civilians by erecting encampments on university campuses. Quite suddenly, the University of Calgary administration called in the police to forcibly clear the student protest encampment. There were arrests and injuries. |
| 0:08:59 |
Annie Murray |
Everyone was just shocked at what had happened—wondering if everybody was okay. [Background audio briefly audible.] I was stunned. Then Jason Camlot called an extraordinary meeting—which is now my absolute favourite thing—where everyone in SpokenWeb got together to ask, “What are we going to do? Because it doesn’t seem right to have the conference in the same place on campus.” That’s when we went into another world. We had 19 days to go until the conference. Jason, you immediately called the hotel, and suddenly the hotel was our saviour. It was such a crazy blur. |
| 0:09:48 |
Chelsea Miya |
Annie and Jason were able to pivot and, with just weeks to go, find a new venue for the conference. But then, on the morning of the event—and I remember this well because I lived in Calgary at the time—the city’s primary water main broke catastrophically. This pipe, it must be said, was a major pipe. It supplied water to half the city. The City of Calgary ended up ordering water restrictions, and eventually a state of emergency was declared. |
| 0:10:13 |
Chelsea Miya |
For the SpokenWeb Calgary organisers, it was the ultimate “make‑it‑work” moment. |
| 0:10:19 |
Annie Murray |
I don’t remember much about the event at all. I remember being in a hotel and us running around a lot. I was selling T‑shirts out of my car. People tell me it was an okay conference, but I don’t really remember. It was just a complete blur for me because I was so concerned—like, no matter how many times we reassured ourselves, “We have this room, this room, and this room,” I kept thinking, “Do we have enough rooms? Will there be food?” |
| 0:10:46 |
Annie Murray |
And then there was the sound…the sound conference, but there wasn’t great sound. It was a brand‑new hotel, and the equipment was sort of basic. I had a lot of anxiety about that because everyone in the group is a total sound nerd. It was just so stressful. I think people had a good time, and the talks I went to I really enjoyed, but it was just crazy. |
| 0:11:14 |
Jason Wiens |
Yeah. Outside of graduate conferences, that was the first conference I’d been involved in as an organiser. I’d agree with Annie—it’s bizarre that I don’t remember as much as I thought I would. I certainly attended as much as I could, but while you’re listening to talks, you always have that thought in the back of your mind: Will the food arrive on time? Will the room hold enough people? Whatever it is, right? |
| 0:11:37 |
Chelsea Miya |
For the record, from the outside, whatever chaos the organisers were dealing with behind the scenes wasn’t apparent. We only have very fond memories of that event. |
| 0:11:47 |
Nick Beauchesne |
And on that note of memory, we wanted to ask Annie and Jason about cultural memory, going beyond that symposium to their experiences in information sciences and archival pedagogies.
We wanted to take advantage of their expertise to ask: in the future, what will SpokenWeb have meant from an archival perspective? What will future students, teachers, scholars, and artists think when they look back at the SpokenWeb Project and all the work that has been done since its official inception in 2019? |
| 0:12:19 |
Annie Murray |
[Soft ambient music begins.]
SpokenWeb allowed work to happen at specific archives that never could have happened without the network being involved. We would never have the same level of description for the recordings in Calgary without SpokenWeb and the funding it provided to hire a research assistant to listen to every single recording and describe it in such depth. I think it made a lasting and perpetual contribution to the depth of description in our archival holdings in Canada. |
| 0:12:49 |
Annie Murray |
To be able to influence institutions is significant. And SpokenWeb was good at archiving itself by creating so many outputs. I think there’s a good chance that it will survive the ravages of time because of all the podcasts, publications, and the depth of the collections. I feel like we have a fighting chance of surviving. |
| 0:13:18 |
Jason Wiens |
I think the scholarly legacy is impressive—in terms of both the edited collections and the special journal issues that Jason and others have been editing, and the contributions members of the SpokenWeb Network have made to those collections and elsewhere—librarians, archivists, and literary scholars alike. |
| 0:13:39 |
Jason Wiens |
Another enduring legacy is that we’re all emerging from this project better versed in sound studies and archival studies, with new ways of thinking and teaching with audio recordings. I’m also thinking about the postdocs and graduate students—how students trained in Canadian literature and contemporary poetry in the 1990s compare to those trained in the last decade. That new generation will have a literacy in these areas that my generation didn’t have. I think that’s an important legacy. |
| 0:14:15 |
Nick Beauchesne |
Next, we’ll begin the first of our two live panel discussions. We call to the stage Jason Camlot and Katherine McLeod. Dear friends in the audience, please give them a warm welcome. [Audience cheers] |
| 0:14:34 |
Nick Beauchesne |
That was pretty good, but in my script I have rapturous, delirious applause. So can we try again? [Audience cheers louder] All right. |
| 0:14:45 |
Chelsea Miya |
Jason Camlot hardly needs an introduction. He’s really the heart of this organisation, with his relentless dedication to the project and his rock‑star charisma. Everybody here, I think, has good memories with Jason and has been touched by him in some way. |
| 0:15:02 |
Nick Beauchesne |
Katherine McLeod, also at Concordia, is an assistant professor in English, a podcast producer, the voice behind the SpokenWeb ShortCuts series, and—as Annie Murray mentioned in her interview—a flamenco dancer extraordinaire. |
| 0:15:17 |
Nick Beauchesne |
You’d better believe this podcast recording won’t be properly concluded until we see some dancing in a special ShortCuts interlude coming up. Thank you, Jason and Katherine, for joining us today in beautiful Kelowna, BC. |
| 0:15:29 |
Jason Camlot |
Thank you. It’s great to be here. |
| 0:15:31 |
Katherine McLeod |
It sure is. |
| 0:15:31 |
Chelsea Miya |
Our podcast episode first begins with a montage from the 2019 SpokenWeb Manifesto, which was recorded at SFU. Jason, I think these have become a staple of these gatherings, and you’ve been a part of that. Can you tell us a bit about the manifestos and what they mean to you? |
| 0:15:52 |
Jason Camlot |
Yeah. We did our first one in 2019 at SFU. The idea of the manifestos is part of the larger approach we’ve taken with this network to explore different ways of sharing knowledge with each other. |
| 0:16:04 |
Jason Camlot |
I thought of a kind of hybrid open‑mic manifesto performance reading at the end of each of our institutes and symposia as a way for people to reflect on what had just happened after we’d spent intensive time together, and to articulate it in a way that was different from being purely expository or critical. It was also about really manifesting something—so that at the end of our time together, we could put together a thought or a statement, almost parable‑like or spell‑like. The hope was that by saying it now, we might make it happen down the road. That’s why we’ve tried to do manifesto readings at the end of each institute—and we’ll be doing one at the end of this one as well. |
| 0:16:55 |
Chelsea Miya |
We also wanted to ask you about the pre‑history of SpokenWeb, even before the first official symposia and institutes. When we did our pre‑interviews back in March, you shared some great memories from the CanLit Media Event in 2015, which took place during the Grand Prix weekend in Montreal. Jason, can you share—and Katherine, too—some memories from that event and take us, and the audience, back to that moment? |
| 0:17:24 |
Jason Camlot |
That weekend, we’d been thinking about ways to bring archival materials out in new creative forms. We were also thinking about what happens when an event is recorded. Often, events happen and people remember them—and those memories are transmitted through stories. But when you record them, you’re doing something else to them. |
| 0:17:50 |
Jason Camlot |
At that point, I was interested in recording an event a little differently. I started thinking about how the placement of the microphone had a lot to do with what the afterlife of the event would be. We organised a poetry reading called All the Poets in Town—which really meant all the Anglophone poets in town—and we had over 30 poets show up. |
| 0:18:09 |
Jason Camlot |
I had a student in the electroacoustic music program set up microphones in all different places. We recorded the event in eight‑track as well as on a reel‑to‑reel tape machine. We had mics on stage, mics under the seats in the room, mics outside recording all the Ferraris that people were driving around the city that weekend, and more. The idea was to present a multi‑track interface for experiencing that reading—where you could, for example, bring up one fader and listen only to the engines of the cars outside, or bring up the voices of the poets on stage, or hear a mix depending on which mics you selected. |
| 0:18:53 |
Katherine McLeod |
And in a recent “sounding”—that’s what we called it—it was also a launch for the English Studies in Canada journal issue that Jason and I co‑edited, called New Sonic Approaches to Literary Studies. At that sounding, which we held at Concordia, we did something similar: we recorded from multiple places in the room as well as outside. It felt like an event that harkened back to that 2015 All the Poets in Town event. |
| 0:19:22 |
Katherine McLeod |
That event was also our first collaboration, and since then we’ve gone on to collaborate on so many projects. It was also the start of the book CanLit Across Media: Archiving the Literary Event, which many people in this room contributed chapters to. At that time, when we were organising the conference, we started thinking deeply about the word unarchiving—about whether it should have a hyphen or not. We ultimately made it one word: unarchiving. It strikes me now how many SpokenWeb events, performances, and listening practices engage with this act of unarchiving. So thank you for the opportunity to reflect on some of these beginnings. |
| 0:20:02 |
Nick Beauchesne |
Our next questions are for Katherine. Much of the work we do with SpokenWeb relates to sound, but your practice is at the intersection of sound and movement. How does your background in movement and dance influence your approach to sound studies? And could you share one favourite moment of a dance performance at a past symposium or institute—whether it was part of Words and Music or another show? |
| 0:20:24 |
Katherine McLeod |
When you ask about embodiment—specifically how dance has influenced my work as a researcher and teacher—I have to say ShortCuts. ShortCuts has been a series on this podcast where I take listeners on a deep dive into the archives through a “shortcut” of audio. Before starting ShortCuts back in the first season, I’d spent a lot of time listening to women poets who had read on the radio or who had made radio. But I didn’t yet know how to make audio myself. What I did know was that I wanted to create a sonic experience for listeners—one that would do a feminist act of unarchiving. |
| 0:21:08 |
Katherine McLeod |
I wanted to create sound that would let us share a space where we could listen closely and carefully, really exploring the feelings evoked through the sounds—listening as bodies. As ShortCuts evolved into ShortCuts Live, it became about listening as bodies together. You’ll hear more from ShortCuts later in this podcast—and yes, I plan to dance to it. Yes, you can dance in a podcast. |
| 0:21:41 |
Jason Camlot |
In addition to dancing, there’s a lot of listening. Listening practices have become a SpokenWeb staple for sharing archival audio, sharing scholarship, and listening and speaking together. From these listening practices emerged the genre of performance now called “ghost readings.” |
| 0:21:58 |
Jason Camlot |
This genre was mentioned just a few moments ago by librarian Annie Murray in one of our pre‑recorded interview clips. Can you explain further what a ghost reading is and how they’re performed? Are there other artistic possibilities in working with these archival ghosts? |
| 0:22:15 |
Katherine McLeod |
Yes—let me tell you all about ghost readings. I have three points before I dive in. One, which I’ve written down, is that I have an article coming out on the SpokenWeb blog that tells many stories about the beginnings of ghost readings. Today I’ll give you the very short version. |
| 0:22:39 |
Katherine McLeod |
Secondly, Jason and I came up with the description of “ghost reading” together, so it’s very apt that I’m not sitting next to him while explaining it. |
| 0:22:48 |
Katherine McLeod |
Third, the ghost reading is really part of a spectrum. On one end are the “performing the archive” events we mentioned earlier, where a poet listens back to their past self; on the other end are other kinds of archival performance. There are many ways SpokenWeb performs the archive—ghost readings are just one of them. |
| 0:23:12 |
Katherine McLeod |
A ghost reading is a collective listening event. You gather to listen to a recording from the archives on the same day—or as close as possible—to the original date of the reading. This timing brings a level of re‑enactment to it. Then you listen to the entire recording. |
| 0:23:33 |
Katherine McLeod |
While listening, you think about what you’re doing. Are you sitting? Taking notes? Drawing? Thanks to Aurelio Mesa, a graduate student at Concordia in 2018, when the ghost readings began, we even tried book‑making while listening—creating books using archival objects or ephemera connected to the readings. |
| 0:23:59 |
Katherine McLeod |
After listening, we discussed the experience and recorded our reflections. What did we notice? How were we listening? You can see how the ghost reading format led to many other kinds of listening events, like the SpokenWeb Listening Practices. Those began in 2019, continued online during the pandemic, and are still happening—and will continue far into the future. |
| 0:24:28 |
Katherine McLeod |
So I’ll say that the ghost reading really set the stage for listening practice to become a practice of listening to listening. |
| 0:24:38 |
Nick Beauchesne |
Thank you so much, Katherine, and thank you so much, Jason, for joining us. And let’s hear it for our guests! [Applause] |
| 0:24:52 |
Audio Clip |
[Overlapping voices and audio clips.] SpokenWeb Manifesto, 2022, Montreal, QC.
Here we have a jumble of audio, attempting to be organised, changed, and alive. All your tapes are belong to us—ethically. Care as a core value. Thinking out loud together. Continually learning to listen better. Building blanket forts at 2:00 AM to the great amusement of your cats in order to capture that perfect voiceover. Conceiving sound carefully together to gather sound. Web is research family. Transforming data into lore—the files beneath and the metadata above—and the flash drive of audio, video, and love transcripts. SpokenWeb echoes Canada’s literary audio history and seeks to preserve, share, and build its future recollection community. Comedy. Recording, reordering, listing, listening, likening, lightning, lightning. Inviting. Exciting. Inciting. Metadata. Orchestras of communities, past and present. A long life of days spent listening to the past, present, and future with my friends.
Transcriber’s Note: The audio clip has overlapping audio from various speakers mixed together. |
| 0:26:06 |
Chelsea Miya |
One of the thrills of working on the SpokenWeb Project is experiencing the live performances—like the poetry reading last night, which was incredible. We have multiple Governor General’s Award winners who are members of our sound community, including Jordan Abel and Awadewan Iskwew. |
| 0:26:28 |
Nick Beauchesne |
Jordan, together with a quartet of Ottawa‑based poets and musicians—Manahil Bandukwala, Liam Burke, Conyer Clayton, and Nathaniel Larochette—teamed up to perform Sounding Out at the SpokenWeb 2022 Symposium, hosted at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. |
| 0:26:47 |
Nick Beauchesne |
I recently had the opportunity to interview Jordan in the podcast recording booth at the Sound Studies Institute on our home campus. I asked him how Sounding Out came into being, and what came to mind as he saw and heard it on video for the first time. Let’s listen to an excerpt. |
| 0:27:25 |
Jordan Abel, Audio Recording |
[Piano plays softly.]
Deep, narrow chasm. Black rocks. The river lies still on those black rocks a mile above. There is a tumbling. There is a moment. At this very moment, there is a tumbling in the air a mile above us that runs straight through the open heavens and into some other place. A deep hollow—no shape, no consistency, no breaking. Some 100 feet in the air. Some places are softer than others—some 100 feet up in the air. Some right angles enter into narrow passageways. Some right angles break off a mile in the air above us. These rocks are full of cracks. Water has worked through some deep hollows, breaking here, wearing there, breaking and wearing until the chasm separates into two caverns.
Transcriber’s Note: The audio clip has overlapping audio from various speakers mixed together. |
| 0:28:34 |
Jordan Abel |
That performance happened right before my book Empty Spaces came out. I was collaborating with these four incredible artists and musicians from Ottawa—Conyer, Manahil, Nate, and Liam. I’ve been thinking about them recently and thinking about this performance because I’m going back to Ottawa in April to accept the Governor General’s Award for the book that performance would eventually become part of. I hadn’t seen that clip—or that performance—since we did it. It was a really special moment. It was really cool. |
| 0:29:05 |
Nick Beauchesne |
I asked Jordan to comment on his style as a performer, writer, live reader, and also as a DJ and turntablist. How does sound inform his practice in these multifarious roles? |
| 0:29:17 |
Jordan Abel |
I have to talk about it as a problem‑based performance, where the text I produce for the page is actually the “problem.” I think about it as a kind of challenge. I primarily write for the page and often think about how things look visually. [Nature sounds and piano music fade in.] So when it comes time to perform or present my work, I’m often thinking about how to move it into a sound‑oriented space—how to translate it from the page into sound. That’s been my core practice, and I think it’s a really creative, interesting way to approach difficult kinds of texts. |
| 0:30:03 |
Nick Beauchesne |
As a recurring guest at SpokenWeb symposia sound showcases, Jordan has been involved with the network and its events. At the risk of sounding cliché, I couldn’t help but ask him what SpokenWeb has meant to him over the years. Perhaps I deserved his initial glib remark—but a sincere reflection followed. |
| 0:30:21 |
Jordan Abel |
It’s been life‑changing. [Laughs.] I love SpokenWeb. The thing I find most interesting is how generous the organizers and everyone involved are with the kinds of sounds they want to include in a symposium. It’s not only critical, scholarly, and academic work—it’s also performance‑based. My own work tends to be very performance‑based, so I appreciate being included in that space. It’s really opened up a lot of interesting thought pathways for me—and yeah, it’s been really, really cool. |
| 0:30:58 |
Chelsea Miya |
Another frequent SpokenWeb collaborator is Oana Avasilichioaei, who performed alongside Jordan at the 2019 symposium.
Oana is an artist and poet whose work explores, among other things, the intermediary spaces between words, sound, and image.
We talked about her approach to performance and how she brings the page to the stage—and vice versa. |
| 0:31:24 |
Oana Avasilichioaei, Audio Recording |
The subject for the most part sits now and then. The subject stands, stretches the neck, loosens in the shoulder, states that he turns its back, and you need people reflecting a convex white light data. The subject keeps vigil over deviation. Watches to be. He has been coming by, rapid fire, nearby. |
| 0:32:26 |
Oana Avasilichioaei |
On the page, I work very architecturally. I approach the page in a very layered way, and I want to create those same layers when I bring text into sound as well. |
| 0:32:43 |
Oana Avasilichioaei |
My approach to the book is very material. I’m also really interested in sound as a material thing. That’s a very important aspect of my practice. I use a lot of physical tools to create sound. Sometimes I use software, but that’s not my first go‑to. I use different types of pedals, electronics, objects—different ways of capturing sound with different microphones. |
| 0:33:17 |
Oana Avasilichioaei |
A lot of my work consists of structured improvisations. There is always a composition that I work hard to figure out—the sonic vocabulary it will have, the tools I will use to create it. But within that framework, there’s a lot of space for listening to the moment—hearing what’s happening with the sound and with the space, in that specific place, at that specific time, with that particular audience. |
| 0:33:47 |
Oana Avasilichioaei |
I’m very interested in that live space and in how listening works within it. I feel it’s a very hyper‑present type of space—very embodied and very responsive. |
| 0:34:01 |
Chelsea Miya |
That reminds me of your 2022 performance at ACUTE, because it had many of those elements you’ve just described. I remember the room being a little dark, and you came in with a camera, pretending to take pictures of the audience—it was such a great opening. You used all these different objects in really interesting ways. |
| 0:34:23 |
Oana Avasilichioaei |
Actually, I wasn’t really taking pictures—the lens cover was on. I was using the camera for the sound of taking pictures of the audience, and of course for turning the camera back on them. That piece was about surveillance, but I didn’t actually want to surveil people in that moment. So I just used the camera clicks as sonic material. [Ambient music plays.] |
| 0:35:00 |
Chelsea Miya |
Are there certain textual or visual works that you create with performance in mind? Or works that remain better on the page? |
| 0:35:11 |
Oana Avasilichioaei |
Yes, I’ve definitely written texts that I think from the start will eventually work as performances. But I also write texts that are just for the page. Sometimes I write texts that engage with sound and performance but that I never intend to perform—they’re meant to stay on the page. |
| 0:35:43 |
Oana Avasilichioaei |
For example, in TRACK, there’s a radio drama I’ve never actually performed or broadcast. I’m not sure it needs to be performed—it was always meant to bring the feel of that kind of space into the text itself. In that piece, sound is almost a character. The sound descriptions have affective qualities: they interrupt, emphasize, or draw attention to certain moments. I use sound as a kind of character in the text. |
| 0:36:29 |
Oana Avasilichioaei |
I like to work with situations where it’s unexpected—where something is being translated or transmuted, and an in‑between place is created between the page and a live, sonic, embodied situation. |
| 0:36:51 |
Nick Beauchesne |
At this point, we invite Katherine McLeod back to the stage for a Shortcuts interlude.
Katherine will be performing a live dance duet with her past archival self. [Applause] |
| 0:37:10 |
Katherine McLeod |
Welcome to Shortcuts. On this Shortcuts, we’ll be listening to audio by—or performed by—the poet Phyllis Webb. |
| 0:37:22 |
Katherine McLeod |
On Shortcuts, we do a deep dive into the archives through a “shortcut” of audio.
Today: Phyllis Webb reading “Rilke” in 1966. |
| 0:37:37 |
Katherine McLeod |
This audio hasn’t been on Shortcuts before, but it has been unarchived as a dance remix. Yes—the audio was remixed by Jason Camlot, and I danced. That was in 2019. |
| 0:37:53 |
Katherine McLeod |
Jason used sounds from the archival recording to make a flamenco soundtrack. You’ll hear some of that soundtrack clipped from the recording of our unarchiving, as well as a short clip from a Shortcuts episode on Phyllis Webb. |
| 0:38:08 |
Katherine McLeod |
But among all these echoes, you’ll also hear something new. [Overlapping voices]
Listening to Webb’s voice taught my past self that I was exploring a feminist place—making an audible room, an audible space, for women’s voices from the archives, allowing them to take up sonic space. I became interested in how that related to my role as producer—curating this space. How much does one hold up voices by framing them? Or does one simply press play? One tries—or rather, I try—to strike the right balance between supporting the voice with care in how it is introduced, why that voice has been pulled from the archives, and then letting the listener and the voice embark on their own dance. |
| 0:39:03 |
Audio Clip of Phyllis Webb Performing “Rilke,” 1966 |
Rilke.
I speak your name.
I throw it away with your angels, your angels, your statues and virgins, and a horse in a field held at the hoof by wood.
I cannot take so much tenderness—tenderness, snow falling like lace over your eyes, year after year, as the poems receded.
Roses, the roses sinking in snow in the distant mountains.
Go away with your women to Russia, or take them to France, and take them—or don’t.
The poet is in you, the spirit they love.
I met one in Paris, her death leaning outward—death in all forms.
The letters you’d sent her, she said, stolen from a taxi.
Rilke—clowns and angels held your compassion.
You could sit in a room saying nothing, nothing.
Your admirers thought you were there, your presence a wisdom.
But you had to leave everyone once—once.
At least that was your hardness.
This page is a shadowed hall in Duino Castle.
Echoes, the echoes.
I don’t know why I’m here. |
| 0:40:51 |
Audio Clip |
[Same Phyllis Webb audio clip continues, now accompanied by the sound of live flamenco-style tap dancing.]
[Overlapping voices and reverberated remix effects]
Rilke… Rilke, I speak your name… with your angels… your angels…
Is that…?
I cannot take so much tenderness…
Softness in the field…
Clowns and angels… ancestor…
You could sit in a room… saying nothing…
The poet is in you…
This is a shadowed hall…
Her death leaned forward…
The letters… the sentence, she said…
Stolen from the taxi…
Your compassion…
This page…
You could sit in a room saying nothing… nothing…
Your admirers thought you were there—presence, wisdom.
But you had to leave everyone once. Once.
At least, that was your hardness.
This is a shadowed hall in Duino Castle.
Echoes. The echoes.
I don’t know why I’m here.
[Soft music plays.] |
| 0:42:47 |
Nick Beauchesne |
Thank you, Katherine, for that spectacular dance. [Clapping] |
| 0:43:03 |
Nick Beauchesne |
We knew that was going to be cool from watching the rehearsals, but—man—that was really cool. |
| 0:43:09 |
Chelsea Miya |
One of the highlights, I think, of the SpokenWeb Institutes are the open mic nights. This year’s event, as we all know, was hosted by Cole Mash and Erin Scott—who are just brilliant. They’re the co-founders of the Inspired Word Café, which is one of SpokenWeb UBCO’s community partners. Cole first joined SpokenWeb as a graduate student and worked with Deanna Fong to organize the first official Sound Institute and Symposium, which took place at Simon Fraser in 2019. |
| 0:43:42 |
Chelsea Miya |
He talked to us about how the live performance nights have become a staple of the SpokenWeb gatherings and how they brought the community together—even during the pandemic quarantine of 2020. |
| 0:43:54 |
Cole Mash |
The open mic part of it—I’m not sure who did that the first time—but there was one during the pandemic for sure. That was like a Words and Music Show event as part of one of the symposia or institutes.
Erin and I both performed underneath our cherry tree out back, with our little computer setup, which was really nice. It was one of the fun parts of the pandemic-era events, you know—getting to perform in these strange kinds of spaces that you otherwise wouldn’t have.
They’ve been some of my favourite events. There’s this really fun way that so many of us are poets and performers. And I… I also just love an open mic. I love moving through people really quickly and seeing a lot of different performers and different styles—and knowing and connecting with those people. As always, it’s a joy for me.
Erin and I both performed underneath our cherry tree out back, with our little computer setup, which was really nice. It was one of the fun parts of the pandemic-era events, you know—getting to perform in these strange kinds of spaces that you otherwise wouldn’t have.
They’ve been some of my favourite events. There’s this really fun way that so many of us are poets and performers. And I… I also just love an open mic. I love moving through people really quickly and seeing a lot of different performers and different styles—and knowing and connecting with those people. As always, it’s a joy for me. |
| 0:44:50 |
Nick Beauchesne |
The Inspired Word Café started out as a pop-up mic at coffee shops and quickly gained a loyal local following. Now in its 15th season, there have been over 90 poetry events in the past year alone. |
| 0:45:04 |
Erin Scott |
There’s kind of a real vibrancy here that I think people are often quite surprised by—even just in the numbers you see in attendance at various poetry events. You know, hundreds of people coming out for poetry readings in a town of 200,000… that’s a lot of people, proportionally.
So I think there’s going to be this really kind of exciting—both smaller and yet robust—scene that’s inclusive of a wide range of communities. |
| 0:45:37 |
Unknown |
We always like to end the night by acknowledging this amazing energy that we really foster in this space.
And we foster it because of each and every one of you who shows up—for yourself, and for everyone else in the room.
This line was created by the founder of Inspired Word Café, who is no longer with us—Forrest James—but we carry it forward because it means everything.
OK, ready?
Be gentle with yourself so you can be gentle with someone else.
Thank you so much, and have a wonderful night. |
| 0:46:13 |
Chelsea Miya |
You might not know that Erin and Cole were also chosen as the City of Kelowna’s 2025 Artists in Residence. Their current project, Go Gentle, centres on climate-based writing and video literature workshops. The title is a riff on Dylan Thomas’s famous poem Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night and instead invites us—in their words—to “tread gently as we engage the problems of climate crisis as a way of both healing our grief and approaching environmental issues with care, love, and community.” |
| 0:46:45 |
Chelsea Miya |
In keeping with that theme, we asked Erin about the sounds of the region that are meaningful to her and where she would take us on a sound walk. |
| 0:46:56 |
Erin Scott |
One of the things that I think of is cicadas. I just learned this fact recently—that actually all cicadas across North America are named after an Okanagan type of cicada. Their actual genus name is like Okanagana or something like that because we have so many cicadas living here. |
| 0:47:20 |
Erin Scott |
And so, in the summertime, you hear them. You hear them when you’re in the woods—even if you don’t know that that’s what you’re hearing. So I think about that sound a lot. [Piano begins to play softly.] |
| 0:47:31 |
Erin Scott |
I would maybe take you to Woodhaven as well, which is actually a really cool spot that UBC has in relationship with the regional district here. There are a couple of really cool studios and labs out there. It’s quite magical on the outskirts of town. |
| 0:47:47 |
Erin Scott |
And then water—I mean, water is everywhere. The lakes are interconnected underground. And so there’s this really intense sound of river water, lake water, [sound of running water], waterfalls all over the place. Those would maybe be the areas where I would start. |
| 0:48:11 |
Chelsea Miya |
For our final live panel, we’ll invite to the stage two of the co-organizers of this year’s SpokenWeb Institute—Karis Shearer and Klara du Plessis.
Let’s give them a hand. [Applause] |
| 0:48:30 |
Chelsea Miya |
Karis is an English and Cultural Studies professor—I’ll give you the bio for listeners who might not know. She’s also the director of UBCO’s AMP Lab, which generously provided all the gear that you see on stage today.
Klara is a poet, performer, curator, and postdoctoral fellow at UBCO. She’s also a multi-time SpokenWeb Institute organizer—this is actually her third institute event that she’s organized. Amazing. [Clapping] |
| 0:49:05 |
Nick Beauchesne |
So Karis—like Cole and Erin—you’re also situated here in the Okanagan. Can you elaborate on the location of this year’s event and tell our future listeners what makes the space of UBCO and the Okanagan region such a unique and special part of this year’s SpokenWeb Institute? |
| 0:49:23 |
Karis Shearer |
Yeah, thanks so much. We’re organized here at UBC Okanagan, which is on unceded Syilx Okanagan territory. One of the things that makes the campus special is that it’s also celebrating a birthday—it’s the 20th anniversary of the campus. |
| 0:49:38 |
Karis Shearer |
It was founded in partnership with the Syilx Okanagan Nation. Another thing that makes it really special is that the sponsoring faculty is the Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies, which is quite unique as far as organizational structures in universities go. Typically, you’d have an English department and a Creative Writing department—or creative departments in separate faculties—so they don’t structurally get a chance to meet. |
| 0:50:03 |
Karis Shearer |
One of the really special things about this campus is that faculty and the proximity and relationships we have between creative and critical disciplines. We’ve really tried to surface that and bring it through in this institute. |
| 0:50:21 |
Karis Shearer |
I think that’s also something special about SpokenWeb—that those proximities and relationships have created new collaborations and new works. |
| 0:50:32 |
Nick Beauchesne |
Karis and Klara, the theme for this year’s institute is Resounding Poetries. Can you tell us a bit about the theme—how you conceptualized it and what it means to you? And don’t be afraid to really lean into those mics. |
| 0:50:45 |
Karis Shearer |
You know, after seven years of all the collection processing that we had done, we really wanted to think about what it meant to resound sound for the first time in 50 years, in some cases. To resound the tapes and the recordings in both critical and creative ways—or sometimes in research-creative ways that are unique, provocative, celebratory, but also critical. We wanted to take a critical lens on who is being resounded, who is not being resounded, and who was never recorded in the first place. So it was always about thinking critically about that work. |
| 0:51:25 |
Chelsea Miya |
Another thing we wanted to ask you about—SpokenWeb is an audio-centric project, but visual art and design are also a really important part of the organization’s story. We’ve seen that with some of the great programming you’ve brought. Some listeners might be surprised to know that the design work for the original SpokenWeb logo was done right here at UBC Okanagan. The logo—distinct and iconic—shows a series of concentric circles that evoke a radar sweep, a radio tower, or a spinning record. |
| 0:52:06 |
Chelsea Miya |
Karis, can you share a bit about the artists and designers behind SpokenWeb and how they’ve been involved in this year’s event? |
| 0:52:14 |
Karis Shearer |
It was such a privilege for me when I first brought together the team at UBCO. Myron Campbell, my colleague in Creative Studies, is a designer—he does graphic design and book covers—and he’s been an amazing mentor. He mentored two students: Caitlin Bowes, who was a student in the Master of English program, and Evan Berg, who was doing his BFA. That duo worked together and did all the designing for the first SpokenWeb logo. |
| 0:52:47 |
Chelsea Miya |
This year, Myron also mentored Micah Asali, who did the design work for the entire Resounding Poetries conference. That included the logo, posters, and social media assets. It’s been really special to have Myron—working with Bachelor of Media Studies students and BFA students—bring them into SpokenWeb through the visual arts. |
| 0:53:21 |
Chelsea Miya |
To follow up on that, we’ve been talking about the various ways that SpokenWeb events have been archived and documented—not only through sound recordings, but also through illustrations. Ruben Scott, who was sitting at the front on the first day of the conference, is a local artist and UBCO graduate who was commissioned to sketch the conference panels. When I first heard that, I pictured almost like a courtroom sketch—but it wasn’t like that. He kindly gave us a sneak peek of his work. On the screen, you can see his illustration of the panel on Institutions, Archives, and Data, which I thought was very cool. |
| 0:54:02 |
Chelsea Miya |
Both Karis and Klara, you’ve described this year’s institute as an “immersive summer camp.” Can you explain how that inspired your approach? What activities and events at this year’s institute really captured that summer camp vibe for you? |
| 0:54:19 |
Klara du Plessis |
I’ve actually never been to a summer camp—I was going to ask you about that! So I’ll out myself. I was a summer camp counsellor for four years. |
| 0:54:26 |
Karis Shearer |
In case you can’t tell, I do love a good T-shirt. Somebody else said that “summer camp” was a term that’s been used in the past to describe some of our sound institutes. For me, like summer camp, there’s a kind of intimacy about spending time together in a concentrated way—whether you’re… |
| 0:54:45 |
Karis Shearer |
…spending time together, doing activities together. We wanted workshops where people could learn from each other, make something, and just embrace the fun. I think Cole called it “fun activity”—the joy that’s really at the heart of SpokenWeb. |
| 0:55:06 |
Klara du Plessis |
Yeah, we really wanted to emphasize community. That was at the forefront of our planning the entire time—making sure there was enough space for us to socialize. We wanted everyone to think together, but also just be together—having fun and learning from each other in a more informal way. Almost the entire program has been collective, with everyone together at the same time. |
| 0:55:37 |
Chelsea Miya |
What’s interesting about the summer camp experience is that it feels nostalgic even in the moment. This event felt nostalgic too—probably because we care so much about this network, and it feels so precious to us. So, I wondered if you both could share some memories that you’re going to take home with you from this event. |
| 0:56:01 |
Karis Shearer |
Yeah. There’s so many—I’m having a hard time choosing. |
| 0:56:06 |
Chelsea Miya |
Too many. |
| 0:56:09 |
Karis Shearer |
The banana bread is going to be a snack that I will share with everyone later. I think really walking into the IWC open mic and seeing all of the people—and that we were over capacity. Should I say that? Am I allowed to say that? Sorry, sorry. |
| 0:56:26 |
Chelsea Miya |
We can edit it out. Don’t think you edit that out. |
| 0:56:30 |
Karis Shearer |
You know, just the people—people wanting to spend time together, wanting to be generous with each other, patient with each other. It’s not a single thing or a single moment so much as a feeling, I think. And that event really captured that for me. |
| 0:56:46 |
Klara du Plessis |
It’s been unbelievably special. But as an organizer, I’ll say that everything that went wrong happened on the sidelines, and I’m very grateful for that. |
| 0:56:59 |
Nick Beauchesne |
None of us noticed, I’m sure. So, yeah—great job, both of you, for the organization of this. I’m sure we all had a wicked time. Thank you so much for coming up here to talk to us. Say thanks to our special guests. [claps] |
| 0:57:22 |
Nick Beauchesne |
Thank you very much. All right—now for the conclusion. We laughed, we cried. What a heck of a ride. The future of SpokenWeb remains uncertain. Will we secure that next coveted SSHRC Partnership Grant and carry on our preservation, documentation, activation, and creation? Time will tell. But there is one thing I do know—the past is secured and will be well preserved. We are alive in the archive, and our achievements and our community will thrive. We hope you all enjoyed hearing this celebration of the culmination of our collective efforts as much as we did producing it. |
| 0:57:57 |
Nick Beauchesne |
We had a blast attending all the talks, exhibits, and workshops this week—meeting new friends and reconnecting with old ones too. Farewell for now, I bid you—would you? |
| 0:58:08 |
Chelsea Miya |
As the past catches up to the present, we’re going to leave you with a montage of last year’s SpokenWeb Manifesto. Please stick around after the credits to help us and Jason Camlot record what could be—but won’t be—our final manifesto ever. |
| 0:58:25 |
Chelsea Miya |
And thanks so much to everyone for attending this live podcast recording. We really couldn’t have done it without the amazing organizers and team here at UBC Okanagan. We want to give a special thank you to Garth Evans, Keeley Fossett, and especially Erin, who helped us find this space, who cheered us on—and honestly, Erin is everything. Without her, this whole live podcast could not have happened. So thank you so much. |
| 0:58:59 |
Audio Clip |
[Overlapping voices and mixed audio clips]
SpokenWeb Manifesto, 7 June 2024, Treaty 7 Territory, Calgary, AB. SpokenWeb is the bell you can’t unread. The SpokenWeb Network is a network hydra that can help rebuild the collective ability and understanding for mythological thinking. Human sound desire translated among genres and machines. SpokenWeb is the love of sound—and the sound. SpokenWeb is an expansion, exploration, remembering, remediating, reconnecting strands of the web. SpokenWeb is an affect. SpokenWeb is more fun. SpokenWeb is the gold rush of metadata mining. We are a fun support to poets, archives, and their users, and we must keep the love alive. SpokenWeb is breaking new ground—interdisciplinary. SpokenWeb is sound. Amplified sound. Relationality lies. Affective electricity is concerned with morality. SpokenWeb can play a significant role in indigenized research and pedagogy. SpokenWeb is support, and I feel very lucky to be here. SpokenWeb is reminding us of the importance of listening and conserving water. SpokenWeb ticks and hums and helps us to tick and hum. SpokenWeb is our sound relationships—reading, breathing, sounding together, and then applause, listening to the chaos with each other and listening to each other. SpokenWeb is speaking to the future. Every voice from the past is captured, protected, and brought to life for future generations—tomorrow for undertaking large-scale, distributed, and collaborative literary research. Echoes echo across the machine, across time—each echo a new variation, a new wave setting off the next. SpokenWeb is your path to sound literacy. |
| 1:01:06 |
Maia Harris |
You’ve been listening to the SpokenWeb Podcast.
The SpokenWeb Podcast is a monthly podcast produced by the SpokenWeb team as part of distributing the audio collected from—and created using—Canadian literary archival recordings found at universities across Canada.
This month’s episode came to you live from the 2025 SpokenWeb Institute at UBC Okanagan, on the unceded land of the Syilx Okanagan Nation.
It was written, produced, and performed by Nick Beauchesne and Chelsea Miya. |
| 1:01:49 |
Chelsea Miya |
We again thank our guest contributors, both live and pre-recorded: Maia Harris (that’s me), Annie Murray, Jason Wiens, Jason Camlot, Katherine McLeod, Jordan Abel, Oana Avasilichioaei, Cole Mash, Erin Scott, Karis Shearer, and Klara du Plessis.
The original SpokenWeb podcast theme song was composed and performed by Jason Camlot. |
| 1:02:20 |
Maia Harris |
The vocals for the SpokenWeb theme were performed by Ali Barillaro, with production and harmonizations by Nick Beauchesne from the SpokenWeb Theme Redux used in this episode. |
| 1:02:32 |
Maia Harris |
The original soundtrack for this episode is by Nick Beauchesne, a.k.a. Nix Nile, with PsyOptic. Other original sound and music clips have been sampled from SpokenWeb’s archival recordings of past symposia sound showcases from Jordan Abel and Oana Avasilichioaei. Earlier, we heard the song of the cicada, whose scientific name is Okanagana canadensis. That recording was made by Will Hershberger. You can check out Reuben Scott’s illustrations of the SpokenWeb conference on Instagram at @rubestunes. |
| 1:03:08 |
Maia Harris |
The SpokenWeb Podcast team is supervising producer Maia Harris, sound designer TJ McPherson, transcriber Yara Ajeeb, and our usual co-hosts Hannah McGregor and Katherine McLeod. Find out more about SpokenWeb at spokenweb.ca. And again, many thanks to our live sound tech team—Erin Scott, Garth Evans, and Keeley Fossett. Thank you so much! |
