In the Margins |
Breaking Into the Mainstream: Sarah Campbellby Michael J. Sherry |
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Believe it or not, there is more on the radio these days than free gas giveaways and Kelly Clarkson. Just Buffalo Literary Center, striving to provide writing programs for the eight counties of Western New York and to create awareness about local and visiting authors, recently plunged its literary fingers into the radio pie with “Spoken Arts”, hosted by Sarah Campbell on WBFO 88.7 FM.
“I feel like this is the perfect medium,” says Campbell, whose show airs twice a month during WBFO’s “Weekend Edition” on Sunday mornings at 8:35, and during “Morning Edition,” Mondays at 6:35 and 8:35. “There are moments when I know I couldn’t do this just on paper.”
“Spoken Arts” presents readings and interviews with poets and authors featured through Just Buffalo’s reading series. Because of its slot within National Public Radio’s news programming it reaches a far greater number of Western New Yorkers than other programs on the arts, such as “Fresh Air” and “Selected Shorts.”
“There’s hardly any air time given to hearing poetry or fiction on the air, so that to me is a real priority,” says Campbell.
“Spoken Arts” itself is actually quite old, dating back to the 1970s when it was much longer and broadcasted half-hour long readings before losing its funding. The current four-minute edition was made possible by a First Niagara Bank grant that will cover the show through next July. This allots a full year for Campbell’s interviews with poets and novelists, featuring visiting authors on one hand while additionally offering a cool breath of exposure for WNY’s indigenous writers.
Campbell, who produces and hosts the show, is a Ph.D. candidate at the University at Buffalo’s poetics program, and teaches writing. Radio, she says, was not a format she anticipated for her work, but the transition was seamless for the writer, sound artist, and editor/founder of the journal P-Queue.
Campbell’s recent work has appeared in the literary journals Golden Handcuffs Review and Kiosk, including the audio piece “HAP” in which she explores perspectives on coincidence. “I wanted to interview people and make audio projects and I wasn’t sure what form it would take,” she says. Her efforts ultimately became an experimental collection of stories fused with environmental sounds, such as a train whistle or someone walking. “Many coincidences require movement or travel by people, and without that kind of movement out in the world and seeing things and putting yourself in motion, it’s harder for coincidence to happen.”
So far, Campbell has been pleased by the degree of freedom she has been granted to develop the show as she sees fit. “Just Buffalo was very encouraging that I do with it what I want, and that I feel at liberty to experiment and not have it just be an interview-based format.” The show initially kicked off in August before any writers were scheduled, so Campbell covered the launching of Literary Buffalo’s website (www.literarybuffalo.org), a one-stop inventory for all readerly happenings in the area, and offered a retrospective on Buffalo’s literary history. The debut efforts also highlighted the continuing importance of literature as both a private and public activity, whether as a quiet personal hobby or a crowded book fair.
These efforts may well be one of the more important attributes to come out of a show like “Spoken Arts,” especially at a time when popular media has relegated much of the arts to secondary web links and C-SPAN2. “There is no one talking seriously on TV about books,” says Campbell. “And everyone’s reading. People read all kinds of stuff. But where do people ever talk about it in popular media?” There’s plenty of morning talk-show clones on the dial, not to mention pseudo-crooners and the living cadaver of rock music, but “Spoken Arts” is also a rare opportunity for writers to read and talk about lit to people on their way to work.
“For me, that is so exciting to be part of something bringing poetry and fiction into someone’s car,” Campbell says.
Such a literary outlet should be attractive to readers who are used to being strictly proactive in expanding their literary exposure. “I’m talking with writers about their work, but in front of everyone. It’s not for a specific or very readerly audience. I would hope that anyone listening would find a way of feeling interested or excited about something that was said.”
Also important to Campbell is the opportunity to combine her interests in sound art and literature into a single creative project, though the time dimension can tend to slap a lid over total exploratory freedom. The episodes to date have featured a variety of sound bytes, including background music from The Beach Boys. But Campbell is not interested in sonic scenery alone. In fact, the vocal clips that make the cut are drawn from much longer readings and interviews. The irony is that she spends a lot more time selecting a few good sound bytes than might be necessary for a longer show, and the words themselves are not always the only criteria for what makes it in.
“Sometimes you choose a clip not just because of the content, but because of the way it was delivered, or the clarity of articulation, or the intensity of the way the speaker is talking about the thing,” Campbell explains. This makes radio seem like a potentially beefy gizmo for promoting literature. It is not always easy to gauge what to expect from an author simply by reading a brief synopsis or review. Radio has the unique and significant ability to transmit a writer’s sound, particularly in poetry.
“The way you hear a poem or the way poetry sounds… it’s a sound that needs to be out in the world more,” Campbell says.
“Spoken Arts” has featured several visiting writers to date, including James Thomas Stevens, Sesshu Foster, Paul Auster, and John Ashbery. Each show draws on a recurring theme from the writing itself. Stevens, for instance, deals heavily with the concepts of mapping and direction, and suggests that such things are richer and less objective than they seem. Foster pursues the idea that reality must go beyond the perspective of someone caught in early morning traffic and uses his forthcoming book, Atomic Aztec, to create an alternate reality wherein Aztecs are thriving and even subjugating much of Europe. Recently, the poems and essays of WNY writers Kazim Ali and Ethan Paquin were spotlighted.
But theme is only where it begins for Campbell. “I want to feature the language of the work, and not just have it be an interview with the person and about them biographically, but really try to focus on the work and on the language that’s at play in their writing,” she says. “What happens when writers speak, and can we learn anything about literary writing by thinking about how it is different from speech, or like speech?”
Whatever the answer to that question, the important thing is to get literature out there. There is a strong writing and reading scene in Buffalo, and an unmistakable desire to bring a more public aspect to this traditionally private hobby. Take a look at JustBuffalo.org or LiteraryBuffalo.org to see it in action. Unfortunately, in terms of mainstream avenues, there’s precious little offered that accommodates this. Even in four-minute increments, “Spoken Arts” provides a few kilowatts of substance for both avid and casual readers alike.
“There’s this huge, untapped reservoir of voices, and ideas, and political expression, I think, in poetry and fiction,” Campbell says.
It may be untapped, but on the other hand — what an opportunity.
The next installment of “Spoken Arts” features author Nancy Logamarsino on November 27.
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