I’ve never written seductive poetry and I have never written for money. I had an ideal for my poetry. I tried to write things which would stir people to think and to act. And I feel that it is a responsibility and I’ve always had that attitude towards it. I’m no longer interested in myself as far as that’s concerned. I’m interested in poetry. I rejoice when I see it spreading, where it does spread, if it does spread. Whether my name is attached to it, it concerns me little or none, none at all.” - Joe Wallace
In 2019, filmmaker Sara Wylie asked me to choose five of her great uncle Joe Wallace's poems to adapt to song. The songs would be featured in Wylie’s film , “A More Radiant Sphere” which premiered at DOXA 2022, and tells the lost story of Communist poet, activist and Canadian political prisoner Joe Wallace.
Wylie’s film explores the historical record and looks at the way in which Canadian communists, like Wallace, are largely erased from popular accounts of the settler state’s formation and body politic. Born in 1890, Wallace wasn’t celebrated for his poetry in Canada. In fact much of his poetry was dismissed for its style by his more renowned contemporaries like Milton Acorn and Northrop Frye. But he was the most popular Canadian poet in Eastern Europe and in China from the 1950’s until after his death in 1975. Schmidt chose five of Joe’s poems, wrote them into song, and then arranged them with John Showman (fiddle), Nick Dourado (piano) and Nathan Doucet (percussion). I was then asked to score the rest of the film. Working with Nathan Doucet and Nick Dourado, the three of us elaborated on and recontextualized the original songs’ melodic themes to create new instrumental pieces for guitar, piano and drums. The resulting collection, “The Joe Wallace Mixtape: Soundtrack to A More Radiant Sphere” is a study in two parts and two sides: first in song and second in melodic variation. You can pre-order the cassette or the digital version here on the You’ve Changed Records bandcamp.