SoundBox Signals

SoundBox Signals is a podcast that brings literary archival recordings to life through a combination of curated close listening and conversation. Hosted and co-produced by Karis Shearer, each episode features a conversation with a curator and two special guests. Together they’ll listen, talk, and consider how a selected recording signifies in the contemporary moment and ask what listening allows us to know about cultural history. Full-length versions of these archival recordings are available here on our website, linked below.

Episodes

  • Episode 4: Is Robin Here?

    “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.

  • Episode 3: Only the Imagination Carries Forward

    Host Karis Shearer is joined by curator Amy Thiessen and special guest-poets Nancy Holmes and Sharon Thesen. Together they talk about a November 14, 1986 recording featuring Sharon Thesen’s visit to Warren Tallman’s English 205 class at UBC’s Vancouver campus.

  • Episode 2: Performing the Archive

    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.

  • Episode 1: Is That Me?

    Host Karis Shearer, curator Mathieu Aubin and guests do a “close listening” of a recording of bill bissett’s previously unpublished poem from circa 1966.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.