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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! Alex Boyd's Book Recommendation

Posted on June 6, 2023

I’m a worrier. I worry when I see someone holding a smart-phone up to a baby rather than endure a little fussing, and I worry when another Dad says he puts his kids to bed telling them to amuse themselves with the iPad until they’re tired. Algorithms appear to be designed to give people more of the same, so that we become more entrenched, both in terms of the arts and our political views, even aside from the way scrolling wrecks our ability to concentrate and, you know, read a book.  

Stop! Look! Listen! Chelsea Peters' Music Recommendation

Posted on May 24, 2023

I often listen to the same album on repeat when I’m engaged in intense writing sessions – the rhythmic familiarity seems to provide the perfect level of inspiring-but-not-too-distracting background noise. The album I’ve listened to the most over the past couple of years, and that I always recommend to others, is my fellow Winnipegger, Begonia’s, Fear, which she released in 2019.

Stop! Look! Listen! Nicole Boyce's Music Recommendation

Posted on May 16, 2023

Every few years, I become fixated on an album and listen to it on repeat until my husband, children and cat are all desperate for reprieve. During the winter of 2021, Lotta Sea Lice was that album. A collaboration between speak-singing indie darlings Kurt Vile and Courtney Barnett, it’s a subtle, well-crafted album that’s perfect to write to — it plods along pleasantly in the background until, one day, you realize that the songs are sneaky earworms and you never feel like listening to anything else.

Stop! Look! Listen! Conor Kerr's Book Recommendation

Posted on May 9, 2023

Was it a coincidence that Jason Purcell’s debut poetry collection Swollening arrived in the mail two hours before I tested positive for COVID19? I’d like to think that this was their way of easing me into a week of fever/hacking cough/burning throat and making things just a little bit better. I’m not a person who isolates easily. I thrive in constant companionship and surrounding myself with people who have to put up with my inane ramblings about writing. That’s where Swollening became my friend.

Stop! Look! Listen! Dafna Izenberg's Music Recommendation

Posted on April 11, 2023
Peter Gabriel has described his song “Here Comes the Flood” as being metaphorical, about a washed-over, infiltrated state of mind more than an actual natural disaster. Nearly fifty years after its release on his self-titled 1977 album, and in the immediate wake of deadly mudslides in southern B.C., it seems like a literal prophecy. I first heard it while watching the TV series The Americans, in which it plays behind—and steals—a heartbreaking season-ending scene.

Stop! Look! Listen! Kyra Smith's Music Recommendation

Posted on March 28, 2023

A year ago, I moved to another continent just as COVID-19 was finding its feet (sorry, Mum and Dad). Stuck indoors for months and unable to connect to my new surroundings, I found myself seeking out and appreciating Canadian content more than I had when I was home. I began listening more and more to young Canadian artists – Faouzia and Scott Helman, in particular.  

Brian Bartlett's Reading Recommendation

Posted on March 17, 2023

For many years I’ve immediately re-read poetry books. Some collections pull me back for a deeper appreciation of their language, music and structures; others I find disappointing and frustrating, yet I remain curious enough to give them a second go. Immediate re-reading, however, rarely carries over into my experiences of novels or books of non-fiction (now and then I do read back through short-story collections right away).

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