"Collage With Jackhammer": James Reaney, the Art of Noises, and the Paraphonic Sound Collage

On 16 january 1969, Canadian poet and playwright James Reaney paid a visit to a classroom of students where he performed excerpts from, and discussed the aesthetic sensibility of, his celebrated 1967 play Colours in the Dark. Reaney’s classroom visit was recorded on reel-to-reel tape and has been digitized and preserved as part of the collection maintained by the University of Alberta (ua) partners in the SpokenWeb research network.1 The location of the recorded event is not indicated on the audio object. The spine on the original reel-to-reel tape box indicates “POETRY READING: James Reaney” in type with a corresponding ua Department of English media catalogue number; the back of the box includes a handwritten note “DEPT OF ENGLISH POETRY READING” in block capitals, and “James Reaney Jan 16, 1969” in a scripted, different hand; a third set of box “Collage With Jackhammer”: James Reaney, the Art of Noises, and the Paraphonic Sound Collage