In the Archive: The Charles Olson Memorial Recording

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In the Archive: The Charles Olson Memorial Recording

by Megan Butchart (Undergraduate Research Assistant, SpokenWeb)

 

One of the primary challenges in compiling metadata for recordings within the SoundBox collection is the informal and amateur nature of most of the recordings. Unlike an official reading series containing complete and professional recordings with appropriate metadata, the SoundBox collection primarily consists of sets of poets’ and professors’ personal recordings. Given the tendency for such tapes to be erased and reused, the metadata connected to such artifacts is not always accurate; this makes listening a central imperative to the processing of the collection.

For example, one reel within the SoundBox collection contains a recording of a memorial event for American poet Charles Olson held on March 14, 1970 at the St. Anselm’s Church on the UBC campus in Vancouver. The recording was digitized in June 2019 by Craig Carpenter (UBCO MA candidate) and features a series of primarily Vancouver-based poets giving readings in honour and memory of Olson. While the accompanying contextual material to the Olson Memorial recording is remarkably complete, based on the metadata included, the tape only contains the first and last 30 minutes of the recorded event at St. Anselm’s Church. Whether the middle section of the memorial was erased from this tape, never dubbed, or was contained on another reel which became separated from the one now in the SoundBox collection is a question we are still exploring.

“Charles Olson Memorial” recording. Tallman fonds, SoundBox Collection, UBC Okanagan

Last week, however, SpokenWeb PI Jason Camlot shared a table containing SFU’s metadata for their copy of the Olson Memorial at St. Anselm’s Church. It reveals in more detail those sections missing from the UBCO copy and what poems the missing poets read. Yet, based on the UBCO recording, the SFU copy is also a partial recording. Specifically, the UBCO copy contains an introduction by Warren Tallman and readings by three additional poets after Roy Kiyooka which are not indicated within the metadata on the SFU tape.

The metadata for the SFU and UBCO copies is included below, as well as SFU’s table of contents for the recording with additions in red based on the metadata associated with the UBCO recording. While such additions would need to be confirmed by listening to SFU’s recording, what this comparative reconstruction of the event based on two surviving recordings exemplifies is the fruitful potential of sharing metadata and resources across collections. As the metadata contributed to Swallow—SpokenWeb’s custom metadata ingest system—continues to grow, the ability to fill in such gaps will no doubt continue.

For more information about his recording, listen to the SoundBox Signals podcast episode “Is Robin Here?” in which Karis Shearer (Associate Professor, UBCO), Amy Thiessen (BA Honours English), Emily Murphy (Assistant Professor, UBCO) and Hannah McGregor (Assistant Professor, SFU) discuss Warren Tallman’s introduction to this event.

 

SFU metadata:

  1. Title of Series:   St. Anselm Memorial Service
  2. Accession Number:  12
  3. Donor:  Randy Enomoto
  4. Person(s) reading:  see below
  5. Date:  Mar. 14, 1970
  6. Location:  Vancouver – St. Anselm Church
  7. Number of tapes: 1
  8. Reel to reel:       x              Size:       5”           Speed:  1 7/8. 1 ½ hr./side @900 ft., one hour 30 min. side 1
  9. Cassette:
  10. Other information:  Of the many writers who read on this occasion, only a number of them identified themselves.  Thus, the following list of poems and readers will remain tentative until further identification is possible.

 

UBCO SoundBox Collection metadata:

 

  1. Collection:  Warren Tallman collection
  2. Accession number:  2012.002.006
  3. Donor:  Jodey Castricano
  4. Date:  March 14, 1970
  5. Location:  St. Anselm’s Church, Vancouver B.C.
  6. Number of Tapes:  1
  7. Reel to reel:  x    Size:  7”  Tape Brand:  Charter Magnetic Tape 1.5 Mil Mylar
  8. Other Information:
    1. Writing on front of box: “Roberts Tape Recorders. Speakers AR3 not AR3A. Commercial Elect: Sony Integrated Amplifier – 300/400. Consumers report for [illegible] on Speakers – Apr-May – 70. Richard Sommer [address] Montreal, Quebec.”
    2. Written on back of box: “Charles Olson Memorial Poetry Reading – 14 March 1970 / (Recorded: Richard Sommer) St. Anselm’s Church, Vancouver Readers: Judy Copithorne, Peter Quartermain, Lionel Kearns, Jim Brown, George Stanley (San Francisco), Stan Persky, Roy Cartlidge (England), Brian Fawcett, Scott Lawrence, Ralph Maud, Richard Sommer, Doug Walker, Maxine Gadd, Mark Cacchioni, Ebbe Borregaard (San Francisco), Roy Kiyooka, Roger Field, Jon Furburg, Robin Blaser”

 

 

Side Track No. Comments
      [3 min of introductions by Warren Tallman]
One B 000 Robin Blaser reading scripture from St. John [KJV Revelations 1:4-20]
      Tape recording of Charles Olson reading As the Dead Prey Upon Us – extract from his reading at the Vancouver Poetry Conference in 1963 [Referenced by Tallman, but cut from UBCO recording]
      Judith Copithorne reading:
      [Judith Copithorne:] “On the roof the ferry…” [“Bush in town…[?]”, “Get up white stove…”, “Sit beside the quick, silver sea…”]
      [Peter Quartermain:] “What happens when the father…”
      Lionel Kearns reading Language Dreams
      Reader ? [Jim Brown:] – “The garden was unguarded and they went in at the gate…”
      [George Stanley:] “An Ode for Garcia Lorca” [by Steve Jonas]
      [George Stanley:] “Love, the poem, the sea and other pieces examined by me…” [by Steve Jonas]
      [UBCO recording cuts] [Missing all following recordings until Roy Kiyooka reading]
      [Stan] Persky reading from Maximus Poems-Bk ii chapter 37*
      Reading Saturday Feb. 14 [?]
      [Roy Cartlidge] Roger Cartledge reading “When you heard he’d died…”
      Brian Fawcett reading from Maximus Poems*
      Reading “Maximus Letter # Whatever”*
      Reading A Story Told To Me
      Reading Is It These White Bones
      Scott Lawrence? Reading The Day Before Christmas
      Reading Anima
      Ralph Maud reading “Maximus to Gloucester”*
      Re-reads it*
      [Richard Sommer?, Doug Walker?] Reading Honey
      [Richard Sommer?, Doug Walker?] Reading The Trouble
      [Richard Sommer?, Doug Walker?] Reading Sycamore
      [Doug Walker?] Reading “A man opens a door, steps out…”
      Maxine Gadd reading “Apollo is also dead…”
      [Mark Cacchioni?] ? reading “Charles Olson, I want to know you…”
      [Either Mark Cacchioni or Ebbe Borregaard?] ? reading “We are Olson’s children…
      [Either Mark Cacchioni or Ebbe Borregaard?] ? Reading?
      [Ebbe Borregaard?] ? Reading “How to be a poet”
      [UBCO recording resumes]
      Roy Kiyooka reading Olson’s “At Yorktown”*
      Roy Kiyooka reading [“Merce of Egypt.”*]
      Roy Kiyooka reading Margaret Avison’s poem “The Earth That Falls Away”
      [Roger Field: “A Poem on a Yellow Envelope.”]
      [Jon Furburg: “Olson with his eien[?] in the rock…”]
      [Robin Blaser: “In Cold Hell, In Thicket”*]

* Charles Olson’s poems