Dr. Jason Camlot’s team captures the essence of verse recitals, weaving creativity and nostalgia into every recording.
The brain works in mysterious ways. It will sometimes get rid of crucial information, such as important notions for a test, but will vividly retain details about an ordinary day that took place a decade ago. Poems, lullabies and nursery rhymes seem to be a part of this second category—the brain likes to store them somewhere safe, and though you may not give these verses a thought for a long time, they will still be there, intact, in case you ever summon them. This phenomenon is what the team from the SpokenWeb lab dissects in its Poetry in Memory project.
The team set up a pop-up booth in the CJ building atrium on March 25 to gain some visibility and publicize their project, as well as to collect data. The project consists in interacting with people in various locations and getting them to recite a poem, a nursery rhyme or any other type of verses purely out of memory. The SpokenWeb team records these people’s songs or poems on authentic tape recorders from the mid-20th century, or “vintage reel-to-reel devices,” and then digitizes the product to preserve it. The team also makes sure to record the story behind how the participants learned the poems they recite. Since the team moves around a lot and meets people from various backgrounds, the recordings include recitals in many different languages.
Dr. Jason Camlot is the Principal Investigator and director of the Concordia University SpokenWeb team and is also the mind behind the Poetry in Memory project. He works closely with Isabelle Devi Poirier, undergraduate student, and Ariella Ruby, MA student, who were both present at the pop-up booth on March 25.
This project has been in the making since before the pandemic, and so far, Camlot’s team has amassed about 24 hours worth of recordings.
The SpokenWeb lab rallies scholar teams from all over North America who specialize in “the preservation of sonic artifacts,” meaning that they study and create projects based on recordings that have historical value. Camlot and his team set up booths in different locations and engage with people who are interested in their installation. They are hard to miss, owing to the authentic Sony tape recorder from 1959 that sits on their table.
“The portable reel to reel is one of a few we have in the lab for on-site projects,” explained Camlot. “It is a solid state portable recorded from 1959 by Sony. This kind of machine would have been affordable to people for everyday use, and is the kind of recorder that would have been brought to poetry readings to record them in the 1960.”
The Poetry in Memory project will soon become available to the public. “Some of this audio will be used by Prof. Camlot to produce a podcast on the memorized poem for the SpokenWeb podcast series,” said Ruby, “and all the audio will eventually be integrated into an audio exhibition that is planned for 2025.”
