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Stop! Look! Listen!

Stop! Look! Listen!

Stop! Look! Listen! is your one-stop destination for The Fiddlehead's cultural engagement.

Stop! Look! Listen! Nancy Freund's Listening Recommendation

Posted on February 11, 2025

My first shazam was a Stromae banger, Alors On Danse. I was at a red light hoping Shazam would find the tune before I had to drop my phone and drive. Success! Great beat, gorgeous voice, and content that made me feel something – all the more as I translated from the French. Someone on Youtube wrote, “Guy writes one of the most genius cynical takes about the false relief of clubbing. Ironically becomes one of the biggest club hits.” Exactly. 

Stop! Look! Listen! Kevin Irie's Reading Recomendation

Posted on February 6, 2025

I’ve been reading Rob Taylor’s poetry for years and have been looking forward to his latest, Weather (Gaspereau Press, 2024). Now, once again I’m struck by his poetry’s honesty, heart, and honed insights. That’s the thing about news-- / you’ve heard it before, Taylor wrote previously (in The News) but here his poetic updates are fresh with previously unreported advancements.  

Stop! Look! Listen! Beverly Harris' Reading Recommendation

Posted on February 4, 2025

I arrived at Laura Cumming’s beautiful book, Thunderclap: A memoir of art and life & sudden death, just before it won the 2024 Writers’ Prize for Non-Fiction. I had lovingly remembered her previous book, On Chapel Sands, a story of her mother’s life. In Thunderclap, she turns her close attention to the golden age of Dutch art in the 1600s, in particular the cataclysmic gunpowder explosion in Delft that killed the painter Carel Fabritius and destroyed many precious works of art.

Stop! Look! Listen! Aislinn Hunter's Listening Recommendation

Posted on January 28, 2025

My album on repeat right now (it’s true, we bought a record player in 2024!) is Bleachers’ ‘Gone Now’ from 2017. I’m not always very current with music (you can’t keep up with everything) so I missed the early boat on Bleachers as a talent, but of all his albums – including his 2024 ‘A Stranger Desired’ – I find this one the most interesting and joyful (even if a lot of the songs are sadly nostalgic).

Stop! Look! Listen! Thomas O’Grady's Reading Recommendations

Posted on January 14, 2025
In late January of 2018, my wife texted me from her parents’ home, where she was visiting for a few days, asking me for an update on the two kittens we had adopted back in November. Mostly it was her pleasure to give them their treats, but they had responded to the cue of my calling out to them by rubbing around my legs in high anticipation. I replied to her query with these impromptu verses: 
 

Stop! Look! Listen! Vivek Sharma’s Reading Recommendation

Posted on January 7, 2025

One of the poetry collections that I keep coming back to is a book of ghazals by Agha Shahid Ali, Call Me Ishmael Tonight. The beloved Kashmiri-American poet has been an absolute favorite of mine ever since I discovered him in my early twenties. His poems pave a path towards a level of lyric expansiveness with their tri-cultural — Hindu, Muslim, and for the lack of a better word, the Western — juxtaposition, which very few South Asian poets have ventured out to do. 

Stop! Look! Listen! Leah Rae’s Reading Recommendation

Posted on December 4, 2024

I was reminded of Niina Pollari’s stunning book of poetry Path of Totality when the solar eclipse occurred earlier this year. This ominous phrase–which describes the area of Earth where the eclipse could be seen–haunted the news cycle for days. I had COVID at the time, and was only able to view the phenomenon on YouTube from my couch in a stupor.

Stop! Look! Listen! Anca L. Szilágyi's Listening Recommendation

Posted on November 26, 2024

Only An Octave Apart, Anthony Roth Costanzo and Justin Vivian Bond 

While researching opera for my next novel, I was introduced to the marvelously uncanny voice of Anthony Roth Costanzo, a countertenor who made a splash starring in the Metropolitan Opera’s production of Philip Glass’s Akhenaten. Browsing Costanzo’s recordings, I came across his collaboration with cabaret star Justin Vivian Bond

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