Tags Archive

ShortCuts Introduction: Canadian Poetry of the 1930s and 1940s—Listening to Literary History (Post)

Posted

ShortCuts on SPOKENWEBLOG is a series of critical commentaries about short clips selected from audio collections across the SpokenWeb network. This post introduces a three-part series by Teddie Brock, all based on a 1978 panel discussion with Dorothy Livesay, Anne Marriott, and Irving Layton, as recorded on audio preserved at the Simon Fraser University Archives. […]

ShortCuts, SPOKENWEBLOG | , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Dorothy Livesay introducing and reading “Bartok and the Geranium” (Post)

Posted

A previous Audio of the Week featured one of Livesay’s most song-like poems “The Unquiet Bed” and this Audio of the Week features another musical poem by Livesay from that same reading in Montreal on January 14, 1971. The poem is “Bartok and the Geranium,” a poem that is often anthologized and, in fact, you may have studied it in a course on Canadian poetry. But do you know how Livesay wrote it? In this Audio of the Week, along with hearing the poem, you will hear Livesay telling her own story of how the poem began.

Audio of the week, ShortCuts, SPOKENWEBLOG | , , ,

Dorothy Livesay reading “The Unquiet Bed” (Post)

Posted

Dorothy Livesay’s poem “The Unquiet Bed” has appeared on the pages of many Canadian poetry anthologies, but what cannot be heard fully on the page is the sound of this poem as a ballad. It is an “unquiet” poem. The refrain – “The woman I am / is not what you see” – suggests that both the speaker and the poem are not what you see, though perhaps they are what you hear.

Audio of the week, ShortCuts, SPOKENWEBLOG | , , ,