The SoundBox Collection 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.
Sharon Thesen reads from Artemis Hates Romance at George and Angela Bowering’s house. Robin Blaser is heard in attendance.
On Side A, Thesen reads: “Japanese Movies,” “Choice,” “Jack & Jill,” “Being Lost, As Usual,” “Thanks for the Party,” “Day Dream,” “Kirk Lonegren’s Home Movie Taking Place Just North of Prince George, with Sound,” “Mean Drunk Poem,” “Artemis Hates Romance,” “On an Island, Swinging at Night on a Rope that Hangs from a Tree,” “Easter Sunday,” “It Being Over, There Being No Other Way,” “Postscript to Duncan McNaughton,” “The Shifting Sands Motel,” “July 1st, 1979,” and part of “Getting on With It.”
On Side B, Thesen reads: second part of “Getting on With It,” “After Joe Clark Winning the Federal Election,” “Dedication,” “Japanese Movies 2,” [intermission], “Wilkinson Road Poems,” “Po-It-Tree,” Parts of Speech: 12 Poems: “1. The,” “2. To See,” “3. This & That,” “4. Confession,” “5. Usage,” “6. Person Place or Thing,” 7. The Argument Begins With A,” “8. Grinning Away in Paradise,” “9. After Spicer,” “[rereads by request] 9. After Spicer,” “10. Magic,” “11. Echolocation,” “12. The End,” “Loose Woman Poem.” [end of Artemis Hates Romance] [reads from new work-in-progress, introduced as, “Radio New France Radio”] “The Fable [?],” “Carre St. Louis,” [re-reads by request] “Carre St. Louis,” “Here.”
Sharon Thesen reading from The Beginning of the Long Dash manuscript. Class visit to Warren Tallman’s ENGL 205, 14 November 1986; UBC Vancouver.
Thesen, Sharon. Artemis Hates Romance. Toronto: Coach House Press, 1980.
—. The Beginning of the Long Dash. Toronto: Coach House Press, 1987.
—. The Fire: A Critical Digital Edition. Ed. Amy Thiessen. Hons English Thesis, UBC Okanagan, 2020.
—. Refabulations. Ed. Erín Moure. Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2023.
Thesen, Sharon, guest contributor. “Challenging, Beautiful Bioregion.” Listening to Fire Knowledges in and around the Okanagan Valley, podcast. Judith Burr, Interdisciplinary Graduate Studies, University of British Columbia (Okanagan Campus). July 20, 2022. listeningtofirepodcast.ca/items/show/8.
Thesen, Sharon, guest. “Only the Imagination Carries Forward.” SoundBox Signals, podcast. Karis Shearer and Nour Sallam, Simplecast. March 9, 2020. soundbox-signals.simplecast.com/episodes/only-the-imagination-carries-forward.
Thiessen, Amy. Interview with Sharon Thesen. in The Fire: A Critical Digital Edition. Ed. Amy Thiessen. Hons English Thesis, UBC Okanagan, 2020.
Sharon Thesen is a Canadian-born and B.C.-raised poet. She has studied and taught poetry in Vancouver, as well as working as a professor of Creative Writing at UBC’s Okanagan campus in Kelowna. As the smallest fonds in the Soundbox Collection, the Sharon Thesen fonds is made up of only two cassette tapes. These cassettes contain a home recording of Sharon Thesen reading from her book, Artemis Hates Romance (1980), at George and Angela Bowering’s house in 1980, and two interviews of Sharon Thesen discussing both her work and the Vancouver poetry scene of the 1980s. This fonds is valuable not only for the content it provides, including other notable poets George Bowering and Robin Blaser, but also for its size. How do different poets archive themselves, and why?
EPISODE NOTES 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: Little Fortress The Receiver: https://www.newstarbooks.com/book.php?book_id=1554201403 SHOW CONTRIBUTORS Nancy Holmes Nour Sallam Amy Thiessen Karis Shearer Sharon Thesen