The first Galway Kinnell Poetry Festival is in the books! Carolyn and I spent about 3 weeks going around Pawtucket, RI recording sounds for this special session for our workshop. It was a blast exploring places like McCoy Stadium and Slater Mill during our recording adventures. It was also an amazing chance to familiarize ourselves with Galway Kinnell’s poetry. We met a lot of great people along the way while preparing for this event. Carolyn and I were excited to share what we had come up with for the session!
The workshop did not disappoint. Participants filled all of the seats in the room, and we were able to generate great art along with an amazing discussion. We couldn’t have asked for more!
The session that we created for the Galway Kinnell Poetry Festival has 21 sounds in it. That is by far the most that we have ever included in one of our sessions. As I listened to the sounds that we had collected and thought about putting this session together, I realized that the sounds represented a wide swathe of time. I found it strange that these sounds that were collected in 2018 could represent 200+ years worth of time simultaneously.
An intensity emerged. Not unlike the poetry of Galway Kinnell that I had been reading. There were a lot of small details in his poems that, at face value, might seem off-putting or disturbing. But when I would read on, I understood that I was experiencing a representation of a life that can be both sad in those details and breathtaking in complexity and wonder.
I guess that’s what motivated me to pack so many sounds into this session. I wanted to catch those small details and smash the separate eras that somehow exist simultaneously in Pawtucket, RI together. To break them. To examine their pieces and to rearrange them.
What did I find?
I suppose you will have to be your own judge when you listen to the session. I’d say, there’s plenty of complexity and wonder lurking around the old mill buildings and on the quiet basketball courts of Pawtucket.
Sounds in the Galway Kinnell Poetry Festival Session
- Playground Slater Park
- Work Bell
- Frisby Golf Chains
- McCoy Excitement
- Paddle Boat
- Rapid Fire!
- Car Passing By
- Looff Carousel
- Dog Park
- Walking Across Bleachers
- Bags at the Dragon Boat Festival
- Slater Mill Drill
- Dam
- Connect 4 at Breaktime
- Skate Park
- Water Wheel Model
- Basketball
- Intense Drumming
- PawSox Rally
- Braiding Machine
- Take Me Out