by Jade Palmer
February 5th, 2025 is the fifteenth annual World Read Aloud Day, which promotes “the power of reading aloud to create community and amplify new stories, and to advocate for literacy as a foundational human right.” Montreal, with its vibrant history of reading series, strong literary community, and many avenues for innovation within these spaces, is the perfect place to participate and emphasize the importance of World Read Aloud Day’s mission.
Below, you’ll hear from four individuals with different perspectives on reading aloud and find out where you can enjoy the world beyond the written word.
JASON CAMLOT: SPOKENWEB
Jason Camlot is an English professor at Concordia University and director of SpokenWeb Montreal, a research group based out of Concordia that preserves recordings of literary events and researches the ways we interpret sound and performance. He offers historical context for the practice of reading aloud:
“In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as the study of modern literature was slowly becoming part of the university curriculum, reading aloud and listening were still integral to the practice of reading. Hundreds of books prescribing methods of elocutionary delivery, methods of recitation and oral interpretation were published, advising readers what they should be thinking and feeling when approaching a text to read aloud.
But that was then. As literary study became a legitimate discipline in its own right through the institutionalization of departments of English and other modern languages, new forms of criticism took hold that prioritized the reading of poems silently for the purpose of analysis in writing. So reading and listening to literature isn’t really part of the curriculum anymore, and we come to literary listening from a diverse range of positions, with little theory about how to do it, or preparation.”
The devaluation of reading aloud in our literary and educational lives is very much a product of the values of the current cultural moment. SpokenWeb puts the focus back on orality by presenting literary sound recordings on the SpokenWeb podcast and the CJLO radio show, Sonic Lit. Both of these projects are made for the general public, require no academic background, and aim to get everyone loving literature out loud again.
SUSAN GILLIS: QUEBEC WRITERS’ FEDERATION WORKSHOPS
Each session of Susan Gillis’ workshop for the Quebec Writers’ Federation beganins with the workshopped poet reading their draft aloud to the group. Susan notes that this is a valuable part of the editing process both for the one vocalizing the work and those experiencing the work gain life off of the page:
“Hearing others read a poem can lead my attention to things I hadn’t noticed when reading silently, sometimes things that should have been obvious, and to nuances possibly only present at all in the heard words, through cadence and variation in emphasis.
Reading aloud, I’m engaged in a physical journey through a verbal landscape. This landscape may or may not align with other elements of the poem, a situation that may or may not generate tension, richness, and resonance. Involving the body, specifically the vocal apparatus and breath—breath itself—makes reading a poem a holistic experience, somatic as well as conceptual.”
The physical acts of producing and receiving sound attune workshop members to whether a poem is resonating or not—a perfect place from which to begin critiquing in a workshop! While the spring sessions are starting up in March, the fall round will open for registration in August. Watch the QWF website and Instagram for the announcement of the fall workshops so you can also experience how reading aloud helps bring your writing to the next level.
JM FRANCHETEAU: JRG OPEN MIC
“Jay Ryan Gobuty was bored by nearly every poetry reading he ever attended,” recalls JM Francheteau, emcee of JRG Open Mic, “not out of antipathy towards poetry, though his real passion was theatre, but because the readings themselves were such staid affairs.” Fittingly named outrageous, the open mic series he co-hosted in Toronto with EJ Burns from 2012 to 2016 encouraged heckling, screaming, and exciting interdisciplinary performance. Jay passed away last year, but Francheteau has launched the JRG Open Mic (named for Gobuty’s initials) to put a literary spin on his eclectic legacy:
“Despite the name I didn’t go into the first JRG gig planning to make the night explicitly ‘about’ Jay. It might feel like a bit of a bait and switch for the audience to think they are going into a regular show and discover they are at a stranger’s wake!
But some people were moved to speak about Jay’s passing in their performances because it’s what they’re writing about at the moment, and because it is important to them to talk and to remember . . . people tend to go to readings to feel things, to share in some sort of collective vulnerability.
And if I might try to answer as Jay would, feelings and community are lovely, but it’s also about The Work. Writing is Work, but so is performing . . . JRG is about practice, thrilling practice.
Most forms of the written word thrive when spoken aloud. We honour our loved ones, we honour ourselves, and we honour the art when we present something publicly that makes others glad to have witnessed it. Jay believed art mattered—I can’t think of a better tribute than a space where people have fun getting better at theirs.”
The first JRG Open Mic provided Jay’s friends a place to openly and creatively grieve, hone the craft of reading aloud, and welcome others into the fold. If you want to experience the most not-boring open mic, the third installment of JRG will be held at Bar L’Hémisphère Gauche on March 6th, featured performers TBA.
CARLOS A. PITTELLA: AT HOME WITH LOVED ONES
For Carlos A. Pitella, previous co-editor-in-chief of Concordia’s English graduate literary journal, Headlight Anthology, and winner of a Forces Avenir prize for revamping the journal, reading aloud has always been a family affair:
“As much as I love reading aloud, I love being read to even more—or taking turns, passing the book back and forth. With my father, over many breakfasts, we read Camus’s The Plague and Eça de Queirós’s The Legends of Saints—and I remember us crying at the end of both. With my love, we’ve read dozens of books together, normally a chapter before bed, and developed an intuition for which kinds of stories work well out loud.
With our daughter, there has always been the bedtime story; now that she too can read, I love alternating pages with her, whether in Portuguese, English, or French. Though I enjoy podcasts and audiobooks, it’s never the same thing as a living being reading with you—someone to share the conjuring of a story and fall together into the magic trap of words.”
Experiencing a text with a loved one can bring up many emotions: everything from immense sadness to immense joy in connecting over a shared experience of the unreal. In the true spirit of World Read Aloud Day, Bibliotheque Benny in NDG sees the need for children to experience reading aloud, as they’re launching a preschool storytime beginning Saturday, February 22nd.
It is a gift to fall in love with storytelling at such a young age—and to later take advantage of all other opportunities documented here.
Jade Palmer (she/her) studied English and creative writing at Concordia University and is currently a poet and research assistant in Tiohti:àke/Montreal. Her work has won third place for the 2025 Foster Poetry Prize, been shortlisted for the 2024 Austin Clarke Prize, and won the 2024 Concordia Creative Writing Award. She is a poetry mentee in the QWF’s mentorship program, the managing editor of carte blanche, and a cohost for Accent Open Mic.
Illustration by Nina Drew.