Wordplay: William Matthews

Sebastian had a trove of old cassette tapes of his father, William Matthews, reading his work, so I digitized them and made a selection for last Sunday's show; were Bill still living, it would have been his sixty-fifth birthday, so it seemed a more than appropriate moment to listen to his work.

Given the limits of our thirty minute format, we wound up favoring the more formal readings Bill made for his 1984 cassette collection Days Beyond Recall, just because that choice allowed us to include more poems. We closed the show, though, with two poems from a live reading Bill had given at The Poet's House in Ireland in 1992, complete with the "amiable banter" that provided settings of the poems for that audience.

I'd worked with Bill in the late 60s on the little magazine Lillabulero, and have though ever since that he was one of the most gifted of my contemporaries; it was great to hear his voice again, preserved on these thin charged strips of polyester film.

Give him a listen.

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Cross-posted at the Wordplay blog.

And a happy birthday to Jessica Smith

Today was Jessica Smith's birthday; she's now twenty eight. Through Sunday of this week she reads from her book Organic Furniture Cellar and talks about her work on the archived edition of Wordplay.

If all goes well over the next couple of days, this Sunday we'll be featuring another Scorpio poet, though one who worked very differently: William Matthews. If you're curious about what Bill was up to, much of his third book, Rising and Falling, is online. Sebastian had some CDs and older cassettes I've now digitized; all we have to do now is select what we want to play from the literal hours of recordings.

Not too far down the road ... well, let me just say for now that it's likely we'll be able to play somewhat more of the material we have available on any given Sunday, get deeper into our interviews, and give our poets more room to stretch out. But more on those changes when we get closer to introducing them.

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Jessica's photo via Facebook.

Update: It was also the birthday of Albert Camus, so Jessica's in some interesting company.