SoundBox Signals

University of Exeter undergraduates Sofie Drew and Emily Chircop carry out a close listening of a 1980 recording of Sharon Thesen reading from her first book Artemis Hates Romance at George and Angela Bowerings' house. Drew and Chircop's conversation focuses on the intimacy, sociality, and ambiguity of the recording, and how this shapes interpretation. The episode features multiple archival clips from the digitized cassette tape, alongside interview audio from Karis Shearer and George Bowering. “Sharon Thesen's Reading at the Bowerings’” was co-produced by Emily Chircop and Sofie Drew as part of the Press Play project. The SoundBox Collection is part of the SpokenWeb SSHRC Partnership Grant.

Sofie Drew is a Classical Studies and English undergraduate student at the University of Exeter who is particularly interested in creative writing and poetry. She is the current Head of Poetry of the University of Exeter’s creative writing journal, ‘Enigma’, and was recently elected as Journal Director for the next year. Having written and directed an audio drama as part of the BBC New Creatives scheme, and written another audio drama as part of the “United Kingdoms” series which aired on BBC Radio 4, she is looking forward to working on further writing projects. Follow Sofie on Instagram: @sofiefdrew

Emily Chircop is an English and Communications undergraduate student at the University of Exeter, who has been working on podcasts since 2020. She is the co-founder of Archives Abound, an online student-run publication. Her main interests include early modern theatre and digital humanities, and she enjoys exploring texts by considering medium, performance, and representation of identities. Follow Emily on Instagram: @e.chircop

Karis Shearer is Associate Professor of English at UBC's Okanagan campus, specializing in literary audio, poetry, and archives. She is UBCO lead researcher on the SpokenWeb SSHRC Partnership Grant and co-produces the SoundBox Signals podcast series. She is a guest contributor to this episode.

George Bowering was born in Penticton, B.C. and grew up in Oliver. At UBC, Bowering was one of the founding editors of TISH. Bowering is a prolific poet, novelist, essayist, and critic, who has written over 80 books and 35 chapbooks to date. Some of his honours include the Governor General’s Award in both poetry (1969) and fiction (1980), and the Order of Canada (2002). Bowering lives in Vancouver.

Sharon Thesen was born in Tisdale, Saskatchewan. She spent spent most of her early years in Kamloops and Prince George, eventually moving to Vancouver to study and teach. In 2005 she joined UBC Okanagan where she is now Professor Emerita. Thesen is the author of 11 books of poetry including a number of chapbooks. Her books have been finalists for a number of prestigious awards including the Governor-General’s Award and the Dorothy Livesay Prize; her book of poems A Pair of Scissors won the Pat Lowther Memorial Award. She currently lives in Lake Country, BC.

These readings helped inform our research and/or may be of interest to listeners of this episode.

“Side A: Sharon Thesen's Reading at [George and Angela] Bowerings'” from Sharon Thesen fonds, nd. 2019.002.002, SoundBox Collection, AMP Lab at UBC Okanagan, Kelowna, B.C. https://soundbox.ok.ubc.ca/sharon-thesens-reading-at-bowerings/

Sharon Thesen’s “The Fire”: Studio Reading of “The Fire.” Ed. Amy Thiessen.

https://sharonthesenthefire.omeka.net/reading

Thesen, Sharon. Artemis Hates Romance. Toronto: Coach House Press, 1980.

Thesen, Sharon. Refabulations: Selected Longer Poems. Ed. Erin Moure. Talonbooks, 2023.

https://talonbooks.com/books/?refabulations

SpokenWeb Podcast Season 1 Episode 1 “Stories of Spoken Web”:

https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/stories-of-spokenweb/

SpokenWeb Podcast Season 1 Episode 2 “Sound Recordings Are Weird”: https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/sound-recordings-are-weird/
 

The Capilano Review, The Sharon Thesen Issue. Spring 2008.

https://thecapilanoreview.com/issues/spring-2008-the-sharon-these-issue/

Specifically, Thea Bowering’s article “Sharon Thesen: Poem in Memory, and growing up there”

https://journals.sfu.ca/capreview/index.php/capreview/article/view/2674/2674

"Is Robin here?" On this episode, we ask what we can "know" about the dynamics of a space through listening. We listen to the "Charles Olson Memorial" recording and talk about mourning, spontaneity, relationships, authority, and poetry recitation.

Host Karis Shearer is joined by curator Amy Thiessen and special guests Hannah McGregor and Emily Murphy. Together they discuss Warren Tallman's introduction to the "Charles Olson Memorial Reading"  recorded at St. Anselm's Church (Vancouver) March 14, 1970 on the occasion of a memorial reading for American poet Charles Olson. Their conversation touches on mourning, levity, spontaneity, religiosity, relationality, poetry, and pedagogy.  Listen to find out if "Robin" is here. Episode 4 was co-produced by Karis Shearer and Nour Sallam.

Bios: 

Karis Shearer is Associate Professor of English & Cultural Studies and the Director of the AMP Lab. With Deanna Fong, she recently co-edited Wanting Everything: The Collected Works of Gladys Hindmarch (Talonbooks 2020).

Amy Thiessen is an Honours English student at UBCO where she is working on a digital edition of Sharon Thesen's poem "The Fire." She is a writer, an RA and project manager for the UBCO SpokenWeb project and an aspiring teacher.

Emily Murphy is Assistant Professor of Digital Humanities at UBCO's Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies. She is also Assistant Director of UBCO's AMP Lab. She researches technology and cultural memory. 

Hannah McGregor is an Assistant Professor in Publishing at SFU where her research focuses on podcasting as scholarly communication, systemic barriers to access in the Canadian publishing industry, and the history of middlebrow periodicals. She  also hosts a number of podcasts including Secret Feminist Agenda and the SpokenWeb Podcast. 

Links: 

The SoundBox Collection: https://soundbox.ok.ubc.ca/

Amy Thiessen's Honours Project / Digitial Exhibition on Sharon Thesen's "The Fire": sharonthesenthefire.omeka.net

The Real Vancouver Writers' Series: https://realvancouver.org/

Episode 7 of the SpokenWeb Podcast featuring Hannah McGregor: https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/the-voice-is-intact-finding-gwendolyn-macewen-in-the-archive/

Secret Feminist Agenda podcast: https://secretfeministagenda.com/category/podcast/   

Christine Mitchell's "Can You Hear Me?":  https://amodern.net/article/can-you-hear-me/ 

Due to COVID-19, both the Tech Talk Series and the Inaugural Sharon Thesen Lecture by John Lent mentioned at the end of this episode were unfortunately cancelled or postponed. 

Host Karis Shearer is joined by curator Amy Thiessen and special guest-poets Nancy Holmes and Sharon Thesen. Together they talk about a November 1986 recording on which Sharon Thesen visits Warren Tallman's English 205 class on November 14th, 1986. The podcast features two archival clips: in the first, Tallman introduces Thesen to the class; in the second, Thesen reads "Chrysanthemum Perfume" from a manuscript she calls "The Landlord's Flowerbeds" on this recording but ultimately publishes as her book The Beginning of the Long Dash (Coach House Press, 1987). 

Bios:

Amy Thiessen is an Honours English student at UBCO where she is working on a digital edition of Sharon Thesen's poem "The Fire." She is a writer, an RA and project manager for the UBCO SpokenWeb project and an aspiring teacher.

Sharon Thesen is a poet, editor, and writer who was based in Vancouver before moving to the Okanagan, where she now lives in Lake Country   After receiving her MA degree from Simon Fraser University in 1975, she taught English and Creative Writing at Capilano College (now University) in North Vancouver, and joined UBC Okanagan’s ’s Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies as professor of Creative Writing in 2005.  She is the author of thirteen books, the most recent, The Receiver, Oyama Pink Shale, The Good Bacteria, and A Pair of Scissors.

Nancy Holmes has published five collections of poetry, most recently, The Flicker Tree: Okanagan Poems (Ronsdale Press, 2012), a collection of poems about the place, people, plants and animals of the Okanagan valley in the southern interior of British Columbia.  She is also the editor of Open Wide a Wilderness: Canadian Nature Poems (Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2009).

Links:

The SoundBox Collection: https://soundbox.ok.ubc.ca/ 

Inaugural Sharon Thesen Lecture (by John Lent): https://www.facebook.com/events/633541527437750/ 

Sharon Thesen's Pinecone Writing Workshops: https://www.sharonthesen.com/ 

Laisha Rosnau's Little Fortress: https://bookstore.wolsakandwynn.ca/products/little-fortress 

The Receiver: https://www.newstarbooks.com/book.php?book_id=1554201403 

Host Karis Shearer, guest curator Megan Butchart, and poet Daphne Marlatt have a conversation about Daphne Marlatt's 1969 archival recording of leaf leaf/s and her experience of performing poetry with the archive in 2019. This episode was co-produced by Karis Shearer and Nour Sallam.

Visit our website at soundbox.ok.ubc.ca. See what our UBCO SpokenWeb team is up to by following us on Instagram at @amplab_ubco and be sure to check out the larger SpokenWeb network at @spokenweb.

For the shout-outs mentioned at the end of this episode, please visit the links below:

John Lent's A Matins Flywheel:

https://www.thistledownpress.com/html/search/genre/Poetry/a_matins_flywheel_p656.cfm

David R. Loy's Nonduality in Buddhism and Beyond:

https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Nonduality/David-R-Loy/9781614295242

Daphne Marlatt's Ana Historic:

https://houseofanansi.com/products/ana-historic

Inspired Word Cafe:

http://www.inspiredwordcafe.com/

Host Karis Shearer, curator Mathieu Aubin and guests do a "close listening" of a recording of bill bissett’s previously unpublished poem from circa 1966. "Is that Me?" features guests Mathieu Aubin, Lauren St. Clair, and Nour Sallam. This episode was co-produced by Karis Shearer and Nour Sallam.

You can find the full-length recording of the bill bissett clip at soundbox.ok.ubc.ca. See what our UBCO SpokenWeb team is up to by following us on Instagram at @amplab_ubco and be sure to check out the larger SpokenWeb network at @spokenweb.

For the shout-outs mentioned at the end of this episode, please visit the links below:

bill bissett's Breth (Talonbooks): 

https://talonbooks.com/books/breth

bill bissett on PennSound:

 https://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/bissett.php

Cut and Run Podcast by Brady Marks: 

http://furiousgreencloud.com/wordpress/blog/author/furiousgreencloud/

Sarah Tolmie's The Art of Dying (MQUP):

 https://www.mqup.ca/art-of-dying--the-products-9780773552715.php

Ian Ferrier at the Inspired Word Cafe:

 http://www.inspiredwordcafe.com/