March 22: Impossible Islands and Hockey Poems
Meet the Zoom H4
For more than a year the Zoom H4 recorder has been a constant companion of Art Bar nights. Most of the readings and interviews that have turned up in our podcasts were recorded by this intrepid, although occasionally glitchy little machine. The Zoom H4 appeared centre stage this week, as I had a go at recording readings from the front of the stage.
Jeffery Donaldson believes that Hamilton is Southern Ontario’s best-kept secret. He says past the “dark satanic mills” seen from the Burlington Skyway are the Niagara Escarpment along with other natural wonders. As a professor at McMaster University’s Department of English, Donaldson has a concern with the mechanics and hidden implications of words and etiquette towards the days you leave behind. But his soul reaches for hockey, as imagined by both amateur athletes and Shakespeare.
While pregnant with their first child, Vancouver poet and novelist Pamela Porter and her husband travelled to Nicaragua and Guatemala to document the experiences of people caught in the Contra war and the government-sponsored terror against Guatemalan teachers and aid workers. Later, with two children, they worked in Angola and Ghana, where Pamela taught English during the day, and at night they delivered food to homeless children. These experiences inform her collection of poems Cathedral .
Note: Thanks to gremlin-like activity, the audio file of Pamela’s reading was corrupted (fume, curse). Luckily the interview survived.
Listen to the interview with Pamela Porter
Jacob McArthur Mooney writes about place. Not particular places, necessarily, although he has a lot to say about a neighbourhood in Mississauga. Place is an idea, almost a fiction for Jacob. Even when places are real they become history less than they become folklore.
Listen to Jacob McArthur Mooney
