Abstract

In this Audio of the Week, you are listening to the voice of poet Gwendolyn MacEwen reading in Montreal on November 18, 1966. The reading took place at Sir George Williams University (now Concordia) and it was a joint reading with Phyllis Webb. After an introduction by Roy Kiyooka (an excerpt of which is the first Audio of the Week) Webb reads, followed by MacEwen. Webb jokes that she has “the Toronto plague” (having travelled from Toronto for the reading) and MacEwen too starts her reading by wondering if her voice might “go out” during it and that, if that happens, they can put on the album that they have just recorded for CBC. Thankfully, her voice does not go out, or, as she says, “the voice is intact.” That phrase is the title of an episode about MacEwen on The SpokenWeb Podcast: “The Voice is Intact: Finding Gwendolyn MacEwen in the Archive.” Early on in this episode, producer Hannah McGregor and guest Jen Sookfong Lee listen together to MacEwen reading the poem “The Zoo” from this 1966 recording. As we listen to them listening on the podcast, we hear a gasp and even an exclamation: “Melodious!” What was it in her voice that they were responding to? To try to answer this question through your own experience of listening, this Audio of the Week selects another poem of MacEwen’s in this same 1966 recording: “I Should Have Predicted,” published in The Shadow Maker (1969).