Youth hostelling with Chris Eubank

I had a feeling that my first name John was given to me after my Dad or Granddad although I wasn't certain. This wasn't the part that I wanted answered when I Trevor and Ify got me to ring my Mam. It was more about why exactly she called me John Smith!

Why Did You Call Me John Smith ? - CBC's Now Or Never

All rights belong to the owner. This is for promotional use only. I hereby declare that I do not own the rights to this track.

[Not On Label] 2007

Mala - Alicia [Not On Label] 2007

* Prix Marulic - 3rd prize, Short Works, 2021
* Transom's "Small, Random & Meaningful" Collection 2023
* HearSay Audio Arts Festival - Finalist, 2019 

“The Collector” is a meditation on aging, isolation, and the comforts of the human voice.

When you make an audio documentary, you spend days listening to the same recorded voice. Listen on headphones and the distance between the voice and your ear is as a close as a whisper. You savour the subtleties. You revel in the intimacy. Then one day you realize you’ve come to depend on it. How did that happen?

Produced by Neil Sandell

Music performed by: André Moisan, clarinet; Louise-Andrée Baril, piano
From the album “Impressions de France” (ATMA Classique)
Used with generous permission of ATMA Classique

The Collector

Embedded Content Excerpt

This week’s episode of Keywords is guided by the keywords ‘By Nature’.

Beginning with an early morning walk, rich with birdsong, Zoe Comyns introduces us to the world around us. We’re all living at very close quarters with the Lockdown and we’re possibly getting more familiar with the natural world on our doorstep.

In her story ‘Loft’, the writer Nuala O’Connor has her characters carry bird’s eggs from a loft onto a busy bus. ‘We put the eggs into our pockets, white specked and warm, no larger than stones.’

Actor and writer Jody O’Neill takes her inspiration from the quiet roads in Dublin city and the underground network of trees coming to life in the absence of human life.
‘And now that the people were gone, they could finally get on with their lives.’

Writer Alexi Francis considers the state of being lost in a forest full of myth and magic in her story ‘Let me dream, let me forget that I’m lost’. 

Paying attention to the smaller things around him is something that Bill Geraghty does in his garden. Recorded by his son, radio producer Liam Geraghty, we hear Bill pottering around his crop of onions and tomatoes and hear how he encounters a young robin redbreast.

In her Berlin apartment writer Emma Flynn records her diary as she attempts to grow plants from seeds. She compares her efforts with her mother in Ireland over a video call and observes the plants growing on her neighbour’s balcony.

Regan Hutchins and Kevin Donovan take early morning walks in the Phoenix Park which is close to their home. The sight and sound of skylarks fills them with joy and amusement.

John Smith is an Irish radio producer living in Canada and he has recorded the poet and academic Tim Lilburn. Tim lives on Vancouver Island and speaks about his struggles to feel a sense of place when he moved there. Tim found his way through language and the sounds of words describing nature. ‘Land is the language in linguistic form.

04. By Nature

This week Zoe Comyns is guided by the keyword: Common Ground.

We’re maybe more conscious now of the spaces we’re sharing with others. We’re told to stand 2 metres apart, we’re stepping off the pavement to let people by or we’re concerned if we feel that someone hasn’t given us enough distance. We’re also dwelling in the virtual world of cyberspace and sharing many experiences online that we never imagined doing only a few months ago.

Writer and broadcaster Fionn Davenport is based in Manchester and he brings his bike - and us - on his daily exercise route - a route which now demands extra negotiations, compromise and some cheerful greetings. 

Poet Victoria Kennefick has written a poem called Hedgehog for this episode of Keywords. A slight departure from the well-beaten path ends up in a tangle of briars and reeds. It’s a meditation on what makes us different, but also, what can bring us together. 

Neil Hegarty is a writer and he tells the story of a Sunday morning walk in his area in Dublin where he and his partner indulge in a bit of guerilla gardening. Neil describes the pleasure of planting poppy seeds and also notes that ‘these days it feels more essential than ever to cultivate a dialogue between our human civilization and all that surrounds us.’

Kate Packwood writes about how a woman’s body is not common ground and how one woman’s experience of sexual assault left her bereft ‘as truth and invention parted company’.

Journalist Bairbre Flood visited the migrant camp at Moria in Greece and spoke to people there days after a boy was stabbed to death. The common ground shared here is one fraught by anxiety, deprivation and fear. 

Radhika Iyer is a journalist whose journal entry ‘Am I?’ explores how she has been made feel different. In a supermarket queue she realises that she is not in common ground. She’s the only brown person in line and her piece reflects on how the question ‘Where are you from?’ isn’t always an invitation to explore similarities between us all.

Judy Meg Ní Cinnéide is a radio producer - her great-grandfather fought in the First World War.  The common ground he shares is in an unknown grave with thousands of soldiers who died in battle in Belgium. Through one surviving letter he left behind, Judy-Meg and her brother (who visited Ypres) recall the life of a man no one alive today ever knew.

05. Common Ground

A journey along a short spate river in Co. Mayo, in the words of those who live along its course and in sounds that they hear, from the Nephin Beg Mountains to Black Sod Bay.

Abhainn Dú

Independent Audio Producer & Sound Designer making broadcast and branded content.

Why Did You Call Me John Smith ? - CBC's Now Or Never

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