ShortCuts as a series on The SpokenWeb Podcast feed is coming to an end. For the past five seasons, ShortCuts producer Katherine McLeod has been bringing you deep dives into the archives. Through this process, ShortCuts has asked the question of what it means to listen closely and carefully to short ‘cuts’ of audio. ShortCuts has become a sonic spa…

SUMMARY How can artists harness algorithmic processes to generate poetry, music, and dance? And what can we learn from the longer history of creative coding and early experiments in human-computer collaboration? In this live episode recorded during June's 2024 SpokenWeb Symposium, producers Nicholas Beauchesne and Chelsea Miya venture into the root…

Linda has been mulling over what an education is, what purposes it serves. She was so curious about it that she begin to reflect on the etymology of the word. The root of “educate” comes from educe, from the Latin, meaning "to lead forth" or "lead out of," which then led her to think, leading out of … what? From where and to where? And who is doing…

SUMMARY In this month’s episode of The SpokenWeb Podcast, ShortCuts is taking over the airwaves. ShortCuts is the monthly minisode that takes you on a deep dive into archival sound through a short ‘cut’ of audio. In this fifth season, ShortCuts producer Katherine McLeod has been presenting a series of live conversations recorded at the 2023 SpokenW…

Indigenous mothers, Indigenous children, Indigenous parents – Willie Poll sees you – and she wants you to know that you’re enough. In this episode of Getting Lit With Linda, Willie Poll (Metis Nation of Ontario) discusses with Linda why she wrote this children’s book, titled My Little Ogichidaa, and the source of inspiration for its creation – in l…

This month, we’re back with another Shortcuts Live, talking with researchers in person and starting those conversations with a short ‘cut’ of audio. These ShortCuts Live conversations were recorded on-site at the 2023 SpokenWeb Symposium held at the University of Alberta. In this conversation, Xiaoxuan Huang talks about hybrid poetics (and more) wi…

Linda begins this episode with a brief acknowledgement of the passing of Nobel Prize winner for the short story, Alice Munro – who died a couple of days before this episode was aired. It's a pertinent moment to take pause when the subject of this episode is, in part, about anniversaries - which often include remembering when a beloved person dies o…

For most people, the “poetry reading” conjures stuffy intonation styles, cheap wine in plastic cups, and polite clapping. But for a riotous underground scene in 1980s Montreal, the poetry reading was the site for radical experimentation in artistic performance. At the Ultimatum Urban Poetry Festival, which first took place in 1985, literary all sta…

In this -- the second live episode of Getting Lit With Linda held at the Blue Metropolis Literary Festival and co-sponsored by the Quebec Writers' Federation -- Linda speaks with Andrew Stobo Sniderman and Douglas Sanderson (Amo Binashi, Beaver Clan, of the Opaskwayak Cree Nation) about their book, Valley of the Birdtail: An Indian Reserve, A White…

As April is the month of poetry, we’ve taken a pause in this year’s ShortCuts Live conversations to listen back to one of the first episodes of ShortCuts, “ShortCuts 1.2 / Audio of the Month: Improvising at a Poetry Reading.” In the archival clip played in this episode, we hear Maxine Gadd pausing during a reading with Andreas Schroeder. She asks A…

What does the work of painter Renoir and his paintings of full-bodied women (2.15; 12.34), and tanning beds (2:30) have to do with the Quebecois author Marie Claire Blais (3:15) and La Belle Bette/Mad Shadows (3:20)? Have a listen to today’s episode to find out … In this episode, Linda looks at Blais’s Mad Shadows and its historical importance to Q…

In this episode, Linda and Bryn Turnbull discuss her new historical novel, The Paris Deception - and what it means to represent women's lives historically when there has been inadequate records or representation for them. Linda considers the Indigo Girls and their song about Virginia Woolf - and listening attentively to the voices of women through …

T. S. Eliot’s poem The Waste Land is arguably not a poem at all. To some readers and critics, it’s more like a play: a collection of voices thrown together without quotation marks or speaker tags. That’s how Eliot himself saw it; his working title was He Do the Police in Different Voices. The work comes alive in performance, where each reader must …

This ShortCuts presents one of the ShortCuts Live! conversations recorded at the University of Alberta as part of the 2023 SpokenWeb Symposium. Recorded on site by SpokenWeb’s Kate Moffatt and Miranda Eastwood, the conversations often took place in spaces where the sonic environment of the symposium is audibly present. As always on ShortCuts, we be…

Michael V. Smith is a deeply loving, insightful poet and performer – who uses intimacy and humour as tools to explore pain. In this interview, Linda chats with him about power dynamics and bullying, as they address his poetry collection, Queers Like Me (published by Book*hug in 2023) Here are some of the subjects we covered: on the nature of creati…

In February 1952, Barbara (Cohen) Holdridge and Marianne (Roney) Mantell, two recent graduates of Hunter college, founded Caedmon records, the first label devoted to recording spoken word. In this episode, producers Michelle Levy and Maya Schwartz revisit the early history of Caedmon records. They pay tribute to Holdridge and Mantell by re-listenin…

Eloise Marseille is the first guest for Season 5 - yes, season 5! - and, this time, it's English AND French (starting at the 31.55 mark for the French interview). Marseille is a wonderful Quebecoise graphic novelist, whose candid and humorous book, Naked: The Confessions of a Normal Woman / Confessions d'une Femme Normale examines sexuality and sel…

Linda wishes her listeners a very happy holiday - and offers a hint about what to expect for at least the first episode of Season 5! Have a restful, joyful period. Getting Lit With Linda returns on March 1, 2024. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode, Linda chats with Dr. Katherine McLeod about her role in the SpokenWeb Podcast, particularly Short Cuts. The conversation covers so much ground in such a short period! We discuss the following: The Short Cuts podcast (6.20, 9:21, 14.05, 18:47) Women poets, such as Gwendolyn MacEwan, Phyllis Webb (15:27), Muriel Rukeyser, Maxine Gadd…

In this crossover episode (Episode 7, Season 2), Linda begins with the sound of her father's old espresso machine, to explain how she sees -- or hears -- sound working in Magnetic Equator (published by McClelland & Stewart) by international poet, novelist, and sound performer Kaie Kellough. You can hear a sample of his sound poetry here. This episo…

Linda is thrilled to have been able to conduct this interview with one of the foremost feminist scholars in Canada right now—Erin Wunker. They speak about her book Notes from a Feminist Killjoy, published by book*hug, and the important work it undertakes in relation to the labour of being a “feminist killjoy.” Don’t know what a feminist killjoy is?…

This ShortCuts presents the first of many conversations recorded at the University of Alberta as part of the 2023 SpokenWeb Symposium. Recorded on site by SpokenWeb’s Kate Moffatt and Miranda Eastwood, the conversations often took place in spaces where the sonic environment of the symposium is audibly present. As always on ShortCuts, we begin with …

In this episode -- recorded live in Tiohtià:ke in the DeSeve Cinema at Concordia University -- Linda interviews award-winning authors, Catherine Hernandez and Eva Crocker. Linda begins by thanking celebrated Montreal-based author, Christopher DiRaddo, who is the director of the Violet Hour and who opens the event with a territorial acknowledgement …

This episode navigates this question using an associative method which links stories and sounds, forming a non-linear audio collage. Listeners are invited to tune in to their affective and embodied responses to end time stories including Lulu Miller’s podcast and Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s horror film, and stories of endurance, with Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner’s …

Welcome to Season 5 of ShortCuts. ShortCuts started out on the podcast feed as a ‘minisode’ during our first season and it soon took on a life of its own. ShortCuts host and producer Katherine McLeod would take you on a deep dive into the SpokenWeb archives through a short ‘cut’ of audio. What did it feel like to hear archival audio? And how could …

In this episode, Linda reflects on Dionne Brand's magnificent A Map to the Door of No Return: Notes to Belonging, reprinted by Vintage (a division of Random House) in 2023 - but initially published over twenty years ago. That's the staying power of this particular volume - the "Door of No Return" is a particularly harrowing metaphor and, as Linda n…

Ghislaine Comeau is a PhD student in the English department at Concordia University. Her SSHRC funded doctoral project, inspired by the recent Global Middle Ages movement, focuses on re-examining texts from the early medieval period to further investigate direct references and allusions to “Saracens.” In addition to her more “traditional” approache…

Linda speaks with Métis playwright, actor, and director, Keith Barker about his play, This is How We Got Here (Playwrights Canada Press) It is a moving interview, as Barker explains the origins and shape of this play. Their discussions touch on the following subjects (among others!): current and past productions of the play (3.00; 28.15; 34.10, 36.…

In this episode, Linda begins by speaking about the kinds of assumptions made about her because of her Italian-Canadian immigrant background - and then expands that consideration to show how making such assumptions can actually be harmful. Case in point? The Christie-Pitts riot on August 16, 1933. There have been two graphic novels written about th…

The SpokenWeb Podcast is back for another season as we continue our quest to uncover "what literature sounds like." With a whole new line-up of episodes created by researchers across the SpokenWeb network, we’ll explore the sounds of translation, the act of uncertain listening, audio pedagogy, the intersection of computing, voice, and poetics, and …

This episode focuses on Amy Jones (2.13), author of Every Little Piece of Me (2.27), We're All in This Together (2.27), What Boys Like (2.37), and Pebble & Dove (2.45), published by McClelland & Stewart -- and the focus of this episode. We also discussed Amy’s appearance at Word on the Street (.39 and 9.08) and her forthcoming appearance at the Ede…

In this episode, Linda first celebrates with her co-producer, Marco Timpano, that the podcast has been named a Finalist for the People's Choice Podcast Awards. Then she chats about the new Barbie movie around which there has been so much hype. She differentiates between change and transformation in relation to gender, and then applies this to the w…

SUMMARY “Though staff turnaround is a challenge for student-run publications, community support remains when people love it. Let’s revive the love for Headlight.” This was the sign-off of an application for managing editor for Headlight, Concordia University’s graduate student-run literary journal. Carlos A. Pittella’s application was accepted shor…

Erum Shazia Hasan’s We Meant Well (ECW Press) – Linda raves about this debut novel by Erum Shazia Hasan. In this novel, Maya’s colleague, Marc, has been accused of assaulting a local girl in Likanni, and so Maya is called from Los Angeles to deal with the crisis. The pressures are mounting for Maya as she tries to contend with this situation, grapp…

SUMMARY Have you ever heard a sound on a recording and weren’t sure if it was intentional? That’s what happened to the Listening Queerly research team when they were listening to a recording of the Ultimatum Festival (Montreal, 1985). This team works under the direction of Dr. Mathieu Aubin as part of a SSHRC-funded Insight Development Grant. They’…

Linda and Lisa Moore converse about her most recent novel, This is How We Love (House of Anansi). Their conversation traverses various subjects, including the formal aspects of the novel, the job of the novelist (5.40), questions of genre (6.40), the use of Audible, the importance of editors (with a nod to Melanie Little, Lisa's editor, 10.30)and t…

During the Covid pandemic, before she had ever set foot in a classroom dedicated to learning about libraries, Maia Trotter discovered a YouTube video titled "Library Ambiance." This video didn't contain the typically fabricated sounds of a library that someone had layered over each other like book pages turning and a fireplace crackling in the back…

As a fellow endo-patient, Linda makes herself vulnerable in this episode, talking frankly with the author, Tracey Lindeman, by whom she was so inspired. Lindeman, who authored Bleed: Destroying Myths and Misogyny in Endometriosis Care (published by ECW Press in 2023), uses personal experience, interviews, and research to take a deep dive into the h…

In this episode, in honour of Mother’s Day, Linda considers four different books that feature discussions about mothers, in whatever form they assume. She tackles four different genres -- non-fiction, the short story, poetry, and a novel/thriller -- to consider how loving and caring actions are given and received - or withheld. The four works inclu…

Her guest, Bil Antoniou - Toronto theatre actor and podcast host of Bad Gay Movies and My Criterions - discusses with Linda a series of Canadian and Indigenous novels that have been adapted to the screen, including the most recent Oscar award-winning movie, Women Talking, directed by Sarah Polley (original novel by Miriam Toews). They also discuss …

What does it mean to “read” an audiobook? What happens when we think about the audiobook pedagogically? Featuring a round-table conversation with graduate students at Concordia University and an interview with Dr. Jentery Sayers from the University of Victoria, this episode by Dr. Michelle Levy and SFU graduate student Maya Schwartz thinks through …

SUMMARY This month, ShortCuts presents another ShortCuts Live! Producer Katherine McLeod talks with Annie Murray about the EMI Music Canada Archives at the University of Calgary, and their way into these archives begins with a cassette tape. And not just any cassette tape. Listen to find out which tape and why this tape unfurls a story of recording…

Linda begins by taking up The Hockey Jersey (1.48; 3.15; 3.22) by Jael Richardson (1.58; 4.45; 26.17; 28.38), whom she interviews in this episode.The Hockey Jersey is a kind of response to The Hockey Sweater by Quebecois writer, Roch Carrier (4.18; 10.15; 14.55). Written in collaboration with the Toronto-based hockey player, Eva Perron (31.37), and…

In the summer of 2022, research assistants Don Shipton and Teddie Brock took part in a roundtable discussion that explored the archival work of student researchers involved with the audio archives of Canadian poet, Fred Wah. Alongside his literary and academic work, Wah has had a longstanding practice of recording poetry readings, lectures, and con…

In this episode, Linda interviews Jason Camlot about his new collection of poetry, Vlarf - and it includes references to all manner of Victorian writing/writers, such as the following: Oscar Wilde Samuel Taylor Coleridge John Ruskin While there is much play and whimsy in this episode, it takes a deep dive into what went into making this collection …

SUMMARY This month, ShortCuts presents another ShortCuts Live! It is a conversation with Ariel Kroon, Nick Beauchesne, and Chelsea Miya about their collaboration in producing “Academics on Air” (May 2022) for The SpokenWeb Podcast. That episode became a paper that Ariel, Nick, and Chelsea co-presented at the 2022 SpokenWeb Symposium and Institute. …

Linda doesn't care if she has to take less sunscreen when she goes on vacation - if it means she gets to pack an extra couple of books. What five books would she recommend?: Timothy Taylor's Stanley Park (Vintage/Random House, 2.00) Rawi Hage's Stray Dogs (Knopf, 4.11) Neil Smith's Bang Crunch (Vintage, 7.54) Marilyn Dumont's A Really Good Brown Gi…

What is sound design? This is the question Miranda Eastwood, current Sound Designer of The SpokenWeb Podcast, is looking to find out. Exploring soundscapes of all shapes and forms, Miranda draws from interviews with friends, colleagues, and academics, as well as Caroline Levine’s Forms: Whole, Rhythm, Hierarchy, Network to tackle this particularly …

Season 4 opens with Linda's announcement of the podcast's new website and then shifts to a discussion about her literary journey - how she came to focus first on Canadian literature and then Indigenous literatures, which all started with a vital conversation. Her first book in the latter field was Eden Robinson's Monkey Beach - and it was a game-ch…

SUMMARY This month, ShortCuts presents another episode of ShortCuts Live! This month’s episode was recorded as a live conversation on Zoom with the current curator of the Atwater Poetry Project, Faith Paré. As a former SpokenWeb undergraduate RA, Faith’s SpokenWeb contributions have included editorial and curatorial work on Desire Lines; an intervi…