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:
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Episode 1: Sharon Thesen’s reading at the Bowerings’
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…
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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.
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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.