This month, it is April – the month of poetry. The audio we will be listening to is a poem by Canadian poet Phyllis Webb. In fact, it is a series of poems from Naked Poems, poems that open up space and that leave room for the listener to listen – to listen quietly, or to fill up that space with their listening. How is a poem held in the space in which it is spoken, and what happens to desire in this speaking? How are they held in the archives?
A fresh take on sounds from the past, ShortCuts is a monthly feature on The SpokenWeb Podcast feed and an extension of the ShortCuts blog posts on SPOKENWEBLOG. Stay tuned for monthly episodes of ShortCuts on alternate fortnights (that’s every second week) following the monthly SpokenWeb podcast episode.
Producer: Katherine McLeod
Host: Hannah McGregor
Supervising Producers: Judith Burr and Stacey Copeland
AUDIO SOURCES
Archival audio clips for this ShortCuts minisode are cut from this recording of Phyllis Webb’s reading in Montreal on November 18, 1966. The entire recording can be accessed here.
RESOURCES
Collis, Stephen. Almost Islands: Phyllis Webb and the Pursuit of the Unwritten. Talonbooks, 2018.
McGregor, Hannah. “The Voice is Intact: Finding Gwendolyn MacEwen in the Archive.” The SpokenWeb Podcast, 6 April 2020, https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/the-voice-is-intact-finding-gwendolyn-macewen-in-the-archive/.
McLeod, Katherine. “Listening to the Archives of Phyllis Webb.” In Moving Archives. Ed. Linda Morra. Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2020. 113-131.
---. “Poetry on TV: Unarchiving Phyllis Webb’s CBC-TV Program Extension (1967).” CanLit Across Media: Unarchiving the Literary Event. Eds. Jason Camlot and Katherine McLeod. McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2019. 72-91.
Webb, Phyllis. Naked Poems, Periwinkle Press, 1965.
Webb, Phyllis. Peacock Blue: The Collected Poems. Ed. John Hulcoop. Talonbooks, 2014.
00:10
Music:
[Piano Overlaid With Distorted Beat]
00:10
Hannah McGregor:
Welcome to SpokenWeb ShortCuts. Each month on alternate fortnights (that's every second week following the monthly SpokenWeb Podcast episode) join me, Hannah McGregor and our minisode host and curator Katherine McLeod for SpokenWeb's ShortCuts mini-series. We'll share with you specially curated audio clips from deep in the SpokenWeb archives to ask: what does it mean to cut and splice digitally? What kinds of new stories and audio criticism can be produced through these short archival clips? An extension of the ShortCuts blog posts [Sound Effect: Wind Chime] on SPOKENWEBLOG, this series brings Katherine's favourite audio clips each month to the SpokenWeb Podcast feed. So, if you love what you hear, make sure to head over to spokenweb.ca for more. Without further ado, here is Katherine McLeod with SpokenWeb ShortCuts, mini stories about how literature sounds.
01:10
SpokenWeb Podcast Theme Music:
[Instrumental Overlapped With Feminine Vocals]
01:17
Katherine McLeod:
Welcome to ShortCuts, a monthly minisode in which we listen closely and carefully to a shortcut [Sound Effect: Scissors Cutting] from the SpokenWeb archives. Our last minisode ended up being the most interactive so far. It was a collaborative listening that ended with a conversation, trying to figure out what was happening in a confusing moment in archival listening. It was one of those moments that you wish you could go back and talk about. That’s what we did, and we’ll be talking about more of those moments in future ShortCuts.
01:46
Katherine McLeod::
What kinds of moments might we be revisiting? One of _SpokenWeb_’s audio collections held by Simon Fraser University is called the Gerry Gilbert radiofreerainforest collection. It’s a series of recordings of a radio program called radiofreerainforest that produced by Gilbert in the 1980s. Coming up in future minsodes we’ll dive into that audio collection, especially to talk about some of the spaces where the recordings take place. One reading happens on a bus, yes, it was recorded on a bus travelling through Vancouver’s downtown streets. Another recording has Dionne Brand and Lee Maracle reading and talking together on a panel, but where did the panel take place? And what was it like to hear this panel on the radio?
02:28
Katherine McLeod:
We’ll try to figure all of this out. Plus, we've been diving into audio collections from the past, but coming up we'll be listening to recordings of literary events that took place much ore recently. That’s what we’ll be listening to next month. Subscribe to The SpokenWeb Podcas_t if you haven’t already to stay tuned for that, along with, of course, the full episodes of _The SpokenWeb Podcast on the first Monday of each month. This month, it is April, the month of poetry. The audio that we will be listening to in this ShortCuts is a poem by Canadian poet Phyllis Webb. It is in fact a series of poems from Naked Poems, poems that open up space, that leave room for the listener to listen – to listen quietly, or to fill up that space with their listening. The space is audible in her reading of the poems and it is visible on the page, as Webb comments on when she introduces Naked Poems to her Montreal audience in 1966…
03:30
Audio Recording, Phyllis Webb, 1966:
I want to move on now to my latest book, which is called Naked Poems, in which one of your local critics – or at least you vote for the Montreal Star at this particular point – exclaimed of the price – because there are so few words in the book [Audience Laughter]. It's $2.25. [Audience Laughter]. These poems are very small and therefore very expensive [Audience Laughter] and and came at a bitter price. I may say, to me. They came quite as a surprise. I didn't know what I was doing when I wrote them – the first 14 or so. I thought, my goodness, what are these little things doing here? And I couldn't quite take them seriously. And then I began to see the order that really was intrinsic, in them. And realized that here was something – almost a new form for me to work on. And it's very bare, naked, undecorated. And I wanted to get rid of all my affectations. And so I decided to write oh a couple of hundred of them. And I wrote about a hundred and then got hung up on a technical problem and finally reduced them to, I don't know, 40 or so that are in this book. So this is a distillation let's say. I'm going to read the first14, which comprise the total poem– in a sense, the whole book is a poem. And then I'll read a few more, as long as my voice and your patience will hold out.
05:46
Katherine McLeod:
In that clip, we hear that Naked Poems has recently been published around the time of that reading. It’s an example of hearing time in the archives, coming back to a theme running through this season. As for how we can hear in this minisode and in the archive of podcasts it is creating, we can think this month of April and what this time brings to our listening to Webb’s poem and to Webb herself. April is the month of Webb's birthday, and I hope that the sounds of this minisode travels through the airwaves to her on Saltspring Island in British Columbia. I was able to meet with her there a couple years ago while working on articles about her poetry and she graciously made time for a visit. I had hoped to meet again but the sound of this minisode may make it there first before I can travel from Montreal to BC. And so, it is with this spirit of sending the sound across from Montreal to Saltspring Island that I cut the audio of this ShortCuts and make it into a gift, crafted with deep respect and gratitude for your art, Phyllis Webb.
06:54
Katherine McLeod:
Let’s now hear Webb read from Naked Poems. The reading was recorded in 1966 in Montreal at Sir George Williams University, now Concordia. At that reading, the second reader was Gwendolyn MacEwen. Imagine hearing Phyllis Webb and Gwendolyn MacEwen reading in person on the same night. MacEwen would be sitting in the audience listening to Webb read. Here is Webb reading “Suite I” and “Suite II” from _Naked Poems_…
07:26
Audio Recording, Phyllis Webb, 1966:
"Suite 1" Moving to establish distance between our houses. It seems I welcome you in. Your mouth blesses me all over. There is room. And here. And here. And here. And over. And over. Your. Mouth. Tonight, quietness in me and the room. I am enclosed by a thought and some walls. The bruise. Again, you have left your mark. All we have. Skin shuttered secretly. Flies. Tonight in this room, two flies on the ceiling are making love quietly or so it seems down here. [Audience Laughter]. Your blouse. I people this room with things, a chair, a lamp, a fly. Two books by Mary Ann Moore. I have thrown my gloves on the floor. Was it only last night? You took with so much gentleness, my dark. Sweet tooth. While you were away, I held you like this in my mind. It is a good mind that can embody perfection with exactitude.
09:36
Audio Recording, Phyllis Webb, 1966:
The sun comes through plum curtains. I said, the sun is gold in your eyes. It isn't the sun. You said. On the floor, your blouse. The plum light falls more golden, going down. Tonight, quietness in the room. We knew. Then you must go. I sat cross-legged on the bed. There is no room for self pity, I said. I lied. In the gold darkening light you dressed. I hid my face in my hair. The room that held you is still here. You brought me clarity. Gift after gift I wear. Poems naked. In the sunlight. On the floor.
10:59
Katherine McLeod:
In that reading, we hear the space of the poem and we feel the presence of that space. We see the sunbeam shining through the air, we see the blouse sitting on the floor of the room, we feel the air thick with eros, between objects, between people, between the poet and subject. What would it be like to hear this in the room in 1966? This expression of female desire, to be contained within the archives of this reading series –
11:32
Audio Recording, Phyllis Webb, 1966:
While you were away. I held you like this in my mind.
11:38
Katherine McLeod:
We hear this holding. The quietness of each page ...
11:43
Audio Recording, Phyllis Webb, 1966:
Quietness. In the room. We knew...
11:48
Katherine McLeod:
We hear the turning of the page. The room–
11:51
Audio Recording, Phyllis Webb, 1966:
The room that held you. Is still here...
11:55
Katherine McLeod:
We are listening to desire in the making, every time we press play on this recording, as though we were returning to the same room, the room of the poem, the room of the reading, the voice moving…
12:09
Audio Recording, Phyllis Webb, 1966:
You brought me clarity. Gift after gift, I wear. Poems naked, in the sunlight, on the floor.
12:26
Katherine McLeod:
The room that held you is still here.
12:29
Music:
[Piano Overlaid With Distorted Beat]
12:37
Katherine McLeod:
My name is Katherine McLeod, and this ShortCuts minisode was produced by myself, hosted by Hannah McGregor, and mixed and mastered by Judith Burr and Stacey Copeland. It was recorded in the city of Montreal, or what is known as Tio'tia:ke in the language of the Kanien'kehá:ka Nation. Head to SpokenWeb.ca to find out more about The SpokenWeb Podcast and tune in next month for another deep dive into the SpokenWeb archives.