Hold onto your hats, because the SpokenWeb Podcast is back!
This season, we’ll continue to bring you contemporary treatments of the archive and the ever-changing landscape of literary sounds with all new stories from researchers across the SpokenWeb network.
Subscribe to The SpokenWeb Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you find your podcasts. And don’t forget to rate us and send us a shout.
Cheers to Season 6 ~
| (00:00) | SpokenWeb Podcast Theme Music | [Instrumental overlapped with feminine voice] Can you hear me? I don’t know how much projection to do here. |
| (00:14) | Hannah McGregor | What does the SpokenWeb Podcast sound like? Or should I say — when? [Theme music fades] |
| (00:21) | Music | [Futuristic, electronic music starts playing] |
| (00:26) | Hannah McGregor | Because in season 5 of the SpokenWeb Podcast, we travelled through time– |
| (00:32) | Katherine McLeod | First, we paid a visit to the medieval period [choral music starts playing] where we attempted to textually and orally translate the old English poem “The Ruin.” |
| (00:42) | Audio clip from episode 1 of SpokenWeb Podcast, Ghislaine Comeau reciting “The Ruin” | [Sound effect of fire crackling begins] num geheapen felon/ grimly ground/ It shone/ |
| (00:52) | Music | [Upbeat pop music starts playing] |
| (00:54) | Katherine McLeod | Then we jumped to the 1950s, where we revisited the fascinating early history of Caedmon records. |
| (01:02) | Audio clip from episode 4 of SpokenWeb Podcast, Barbara Holdridge, Writers & Company Interview, 2002 | The idea was that we were not supplanting the printed book; we were augmenting it and giving it a depth, a third-dimensional depth. |
| (01:13) | Music | [Grunge guitar music starts playing] |
| (01:16) | Katherine McLeod | We travelled to the 1980s and listened to recovered recordings from the boundary-breaking Ultimatum Festival. |
| (01:24) | Audio clip from episode 6 of SpokenWeb Podcast, Frances Grace Fyfe | The question: How did this experimental poetry festival come to be in the first place? And why has there been nothing like it since? |
| (01:32) | Music | [Pop-esque, upbeat music starts playing] |
| (01:35) | Hannah McGregor | We “crossed over” to 2021 and checked in with Linda Morra to hear about Kaie Kellough’s “Magnetic Equator.” |
| (01:43) | Audio clip from episode 3 of SpokenWeb Podcast, Linda Morra | Kellough was the point toward which they were all magnetically drawn. I’ve never seen anything like it. |
| (01:53) | Katherine McLeod | [Pop-esque upbeat music continues] And we revisited the 2023 SpokenWeb Symposium to ask academics and artists big questions. |
| (02:02) | Audio clip from episode 7 of SpokenWeb Podcast, Kate Moffat | What are you listening to? |
| (02:03) | Audio clip from episode 7 of SpokenWeb Podcast, Rémy Bocquillon | “What are you listening to?” Ho, that’s a hard question. |
| (02:07) | Music | [Eerie echo music starts playing] |
| (02:10) | Hannah McGregor | We also explored how our bodies experience time, by asking how “not-knowing” feels and how it sounds. |
| (02:20) | Audio clip from episode 2 of SpokenWeb Podcast, Nadège Paquette | Does the sound you hear interrupt your breathing? [Music fades, sinister sound from Pulse’s soundtrack rises and falls] Does the voice you reach toward make you move your gaze? [Crickets singing and sound of footsteps] |
| (02:29) | Katherine McLeod | And then, [Sci-fi music starts] we looked to the [echo] “future.” |
| (02:36) | Hannah McGregor | We heard from the artists harnessing algorithmic processes to generate poetry, music, and dance in a live episode. |
| (02:45) | Audio clip from episode 8 of SpokenWeb Podcast – Audio From “A Vocabulary for Sharon Belle Mattlin” By Jackson Mac Low; Performance by Susan Musgrave, George Macbeth, Sean O’Huigin, BpNichol, and Jackson Mac Low, 1974. |
[Overlapping voices] nation share name, nation share name, belly Battle, battle Bay, west Marsh, marble Linen, melon, melon, noble, bitter liberal meat bite, bite meat. |
| (02:52) | Katherine McLeod | We also asked computers to help us decide which oral performers are the best at “doing” the voices in the Waste Land. |
| (03:01) | Audio clip from episode 5 of SpokenWeb Podcast, MacOS text-to-speech voice, “Fred,” reading The Wasteland | Twit twit twit Jug jug jug jug jug jug So rudely forc’d. |
| (03:07) | Hannah McGregor | And we looked ahead to a future without our mini-series Shortcuts, bidding it a fond farewell. |
| (03:13) | Audio clip from SpokenWeb Shortcuts Season 5, Episode 6, Katherine McLeod | As always, thank you for listening. |
| (03:18) | Hannah McGregor | The SpokenWeb Podcast is a monthly podcast that showcases audio from archival literary recordings across Canada. [Theme music starts playing] But while we’re fascinated with how audio archives can help us understand the history of literature in Canada, we’re not just a history podcast. |
| (03:37) | Katherine McLeod | The SpokenWeb Podcast covers the “then,” the “when,” and the “now” – contemporary treatments of the archive and the ever-changing landscape of literary sounds. |
| (03:49) | Hannah McGregor | This season, we’ll continue to look back at the past and explore the future with new stories from researchers across the SpokenWeb network. |
| (03:58) | Katherine McLeod | Season 6 will be our last season, at least in this current form. The podcast will evolve into a new series, on this very same podcast feed, so don’t go anywhere! |
| (04:10) | Hannah McGregor | In the meantime, as always– |
| (04:13) | Katherine McLeod | –My name is Katherine McLeod– |
| (04:14) | Hannah McGregor | –And I’m Hannah McGregor. And we are back as your co-hosts. |
| (04:19) | Katherine McLeod | The podcast production team is supervising producer Maia Harris, sound designer James Healy, and transcriber Yara Ajeeb. |
| (04:27) | Hannah McGregor | Subscribe to The SpokenWeb Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you find your podcasts. And welcome to season 6! |
| (04:37) | SpokenWeb Podcast Theme Music | [Electronic music fades away] |
