The tape consists of an amateur home recording of a private reading among poets and friends hosted by George and Angela Bowering on August 16, 1986. Guest readers include Sharon Thesen and Robin Blaser. Other poets are unconfirmed.
Peter Quartermain’s fonds consists of 196 cassette tapes (initially 180, with an accrual of 16 additional tapes in winter of 2022). These recordings were donated to the SoundBox Collection by Peter and Meredith Quartermain. Peter Quartermain recorded many of his lectures as a professor of English at UBC Vancouver, as a means of making lecture/seminar content accessible to students long before this became a mainstream practice through online learning management systems. The tapes in this fonds were recorded over a span of more than 40 years, from 1961 to 2003, and many relate to Quartermain’s research on poet Basil Bunting, including radio broadcasts, interviews, events, and a graduate course on Bunting. Quartermain’s collection includes far more than just lectures, however. There are also home recordings of Peter Quartermain reading fiction, recordings of sound poetry performances, book launches, radio performances, and poetry readings. There are also several lectures given by other poets and professors who are Quartermain’s contemporaries, some specifically kept for class use, as well as many tapes of the New Poetics Colloquium of the Kootenay School of Writing (KSW) featuring lectures and readings by various poets. His focus on accessibility both in the classroom and in poetry as an art form through his work on queer poetics and marginal poetry can be found in the hundreds of hours of recordings here.
Due to the sheer volume of this collection, subjects are many. They include: Basil Bunting, Gertrude Stein, T.S. Eliot, Susan Howe, Steve McCaffery, Lyn Hejinian, William Carlos Williams, Charles Olson, Robert Duncan, Louis Zukofsky, Kathleen Fraser, Joan Retallack, Beverley Dahlen, Rachel Blau Du Plessis, Rae Armantrout, Susan Gevirtz, Rosemarie Waldrop, Robin Blaser, Jerome McGann, Marjorie Perloff, Nathaniel Mackey, Joseph Conte, Jenny Penberthy, Ezra Pound, P.G. Wodehouse, Meredith Quartermain, Daphne Marlatt, Don Byrd, John “Jack” Clarke, Burton Hatlen, Gael Turnbull, Judith Draycott, Bruce Andrews, George Bowering, Miriam Nichols, Douglas Oliver, Tom Raworth, Geraldine Monk, Nicole Brossard, Diane Ward, Myung Mi Kim, Gary Snyder, Allen Ginsburg, Robert Creeley, Joanne Kyger, Stan Persky, Colin Stuart, Brian Fawcett, George Stanley, Gerry Gilbert, Lorine Neidecker, John Cage, Stephen Cummings, Allen Fisher, Sharon Thesen, John Hulcoop, Joe Rosenblatt, Bill Bissett, David Bromige, Tony Baker, Harry Gilonis, Bob Perelman, Lorraine Weir, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Roy Fisher, Jonathan Williams, Theresa Clark, Carletta Wilson, Peter Courtemanche, Scott McLeod, G.P. Skratz, Bob Davis, Fel Santos, Douglas Oliver, Marc Karlin, Helen Adam, Charles Stein, Jackson MacLow, François Dufrêne, Geraldine Monk, Jack Spicer, James Joyce and Hugh Kenner.
Okanagan writer George Bowering donated this fonds to the SoundBox collection in 2019. Made up of 19 cassette tapes, Bowering’s recordings range from the public (radio interviews and events) to the private (life with his young daughter Thea), making the contents unique. These cassettes were recorded between 1968 and 1987, and they contain interviews with poets, readings and events, and audio documentation of historically relevant events. Of particular interest, due to its historical importance and its dissimilarity to other items in the SoundBox Collection, is a recording of several writers watching the 1969 moon landing on television. There is also an audio collage created by George Bowering including excerpts from television, radio, and portions of conversations, and a conversation between authors.
Subjects include: Angela Bowering, Thea Bowering, Warren Tallman, Louis Dudek, Sheila Watson, Wyndham Lewis, Sharon Thesen, Robin Blaser, Gerry Gilbert, and Roy Kiyooka (as well as others in the recording collage who are unidentified).
The tape consists of an amateur home recording of a private reading among poets and friends hosted by George and Angela Bowering on August 16, 1986. Guest readers include Sharon Thesen and Robin Blaser. Other poets are unconfirmed.
The Frank Davey fonds, donated to the SoundBox Collection in 2014, is made up of 18 cassette and reel-to-reel recordings. The dates of these recordings range from the early 1960s to the late 1980s, with a focus on poetry readings and poetics lectures. Davey was an editor and co-founder of the Canadian poetry newsletter TISH, and many of the recordings reflect this by featuring TISH co-editors and collaborators. Of special interest is a 1970 interview with the donor, Frank Davey, about his then-recently-published book, Weeds.
Subjects include: Robert Creeley, Charles Olson, bpNichol, Daphne Marlatt, Anne Waldman, Frank Davey, Robert Duncan, Jack Spicer, Earle Birney, Robin Mathews, Victor Coleman, Allen Ginsberg, Basil Bunting, Charles Olson, Judith Fitzgerald, George Bowering, Warren Tallman, Al Purdy, George Young, Jim Andrews.
Fred Wah is responsible for many of the recordings we have of West Coast poetry. In May, 2022 Fred Wah donated this fonds, which consisted of 103 reel-to-reel tapes, to the SoundBox Collection. Between 1961 and 1978, Wah made home recordings, as well as creating personal recordings of events and collecting professional recordings related to the West Coast poetry scene in the 1960s through to the 1980s. While all of the items in this collection have much to tell us about TISH and related poetry scenes, this fonds is distinct due to the focus on the 1960s and 1970s. Recordings of note include a ‘wedding gift’ recording of Robert Duncan’s poetry reading, which Duncan gave to Pauline Bunting and Fred Wah at their wedding in 1963, and a lecture on psychedelia made by Charles Olson in Linwood, New York in the same year. The fonds includes the original tapes from the 1963 Vancouver poetry conference. While most of the readings recorded here were made in Vancouver, several are international, ranging from Buffalo, NY to Wisconsin and San Francisco.
Subjects include: Warren Tallman, Ellen Tallman, Fred Wah, Pauline Butling, Margaret Avison, Gladys (Maria) Hindmarch, Robert Duncan, Charles Olson, Ken Tallman, Allen Ginsburg, Ed Dorn, Daphne Marlatt, Robin Blaser, Jack Clarke, Stan Persky, Laurens Van der Post, Ralph Maud, John Wieners, Jack Spicer, Thomas Parkinson, Robert Creeley, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Gael Turnbull, Louis Zukofsky, Witter Bynner, George Stanley, Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, Gerry Gilbert, Edward Marshall, Field Dawson, Gary Snyder, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Cid Corman, Michael McClure, George Butterick, Ron Loewinsohn, Joanne Kyger, Lew Welch, Kurt Schwitter, Jim Boyack, Robin Eichele, Victor Coleman, Robert Hogg, Steve Rodefer, David Franks, Kenneth Rexroth, Philip Whalen, Lionel Kearns, Robin Mathews, George Oppen, Basil Bunting, Robert Creeley, Denise Levertov and Margaret Avison.