Eight Track

By Oana Avasilichioaei

Poet and intermedia artist Oana Avasilichioaei’s Eight Track is a transliterary exploration of traces. Sound recordings, surveillance cameras, desert geoglyphs, drone operators, refugee interviews, animal imprints, and audio signals manifest moments of inspired wonder, systems of power, slippages, debris. In “the great era of seeing” when the boundary between tracking agent and monitored subject is worn thin by politics and commerce, Eight Track assembles a set of discordant melodies, polyphonic voices, transcriptions, theatres, and images in a struggle to hold on to agency and awe. Stirring from languages of oppression to languages of resistance, Eight Track echolocates the nameless, the noisy, the scattered, and the voiceless. This is ultimately a book of relations—of each of us to each other, to other life forms, to environments, to cultures, to the obsolete and the absolute, to the animal vitality we share.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Talonbooks
• Release date: Oct 15, 2019
• ISBN: 9781772014921

Oana Avasilichioaei

Oana Avasilichioaei interweaves poetry, sound, performance, photography, and translation to expand and trouble ideas of language, histories, polyphonic structures, and borders of listening. She has published six collections of poetry hybrids, including Eight Track (Talonbooks, 2019, finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award and A. M. Klein Prize for Poetry) and Limbinal (Talonbooks, 2015), created many performance/sound works that mix electronics, ambient textures, noise, and vocal play, and written a libretto for a one-act opera Cells of Wind (FAWN, 2022). She has also translated many books of poetry and prose from French and Romanian, including Martine Desjardins’s Medusa (Talonbooks, 2022), Catherine Lalonde’s The Faerie Devouring (Book*hug 2018, QWF’s Cole Foundation Prize for Translation), and Bertrand Laverdure’s Readopolis (Book*hug, 2017, Governor General’s Literary Award for Translation). Based in Montréal with forays into New York, Avasilichioaei frequently performs her work in Canada, the United States, and Europe. See www.oanalab.com. Eight Track Finalist 2020 The A. M. Klein Prize for Poetry Finalist 2020 Governor General’s Literary Award for Poetry Wigrum Runner-up 2014 Alcuin Award for Book Design in Canada Winner 2012 Grafika Grand Prize Winner (Typography)

Book preview

liner notes

track n. a section of a phonograph record, cassette tape, compact disc, etc., containing one song, etc.

Voices (remix) Side A

> > one VOICE imagines speaking but chooses to remain silent > > > > > >

in the next room, a VOICE is restless, jittery > > > > > > > > > on the second

floor, a VOICE refuses to get down on all fours while another VOICE drools with the promise of submission > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > >

> out in the courtyard, a VOICE can be heard proclaiming, attempting to end

the embargo > > > > > > VOICES are given over to VOICES then given over to covert tunnels, indirect routes, whispered innuendoes, labyrinthine tracks

> > > > > > > > down the hallway, a VOICE lurches in the staccato rhythm of heels clicking on tiles > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > >

> > > > > > > > > > > one VOICE denies it all; one VOICE confesses everything; while the BEDROOM VOICE of another sugar-coats the impasse > > > > > >

If this were theatre, voices would be cells veins cataracts

If this were a symphony, voices would be unwanted intrusions

If this were a meditation, voices would be interior

If this were advertising, voices would compete for who got paid the most

If this were war, voices would be wounded, hard to bear

If this were research, voices would plead the fifth

If this were an inquisition, voices would grow secretive

in the pantry, a VOICE sounds to never be sated > > > > > > > > > > > > > >

the attic hides VOICES starting a revolution or resigning themselves to a night

of board games > > > > > > > > > > > VOICES rise up, get swallowed whole, then cause indigestion > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > >

> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > if to recap does not mean to repeat but rather to understand through synthesis, a VOICE passes over > > > > > > > > > > > >

VOICES are given over to conflicts they refuse to comprehend because that would deny their pitch and volume > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > >

> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > arguably, VOICES have been known to throw tantrums when under too much pressure

> > > > > > > > > > > if to deny a VOICE is to deny existence, a VOICE falters

If this were a demonstration, voices would clamour with one tongue

If this were a vision, voices would speak prophetically about the past

If this were history, some voices would be forgotten ignored rewritten

If this were telepathy, a voice would be mystically multiplied

If this were a melodrama, voices would babble hiccup sob

If this were a circus, voices would show off