On Thursday May 14, livewords presents a great line up on an unusual date:

WORDS BY

Kate Marshall Flaherty:

Kate’s launched two collections of poetry in the past year: String of Mysteries (Hidden Brook press) and Hobbeldehoy (Lyrical Myrical Press).  She leads poetry sweatshops and writing-as-a-spiritual-practice workshops, leads meditation and mindfulness retreats, teaches yoooga and is a founding member of the Children’s Peace Theatre Toronto. She celebrated the launch of her first book, entitled Tilted Equilibrium, May 2006, and launched her first CD, Deepening Stillness, in June 2006. She has read at Toronto’s Art Bar, Toronto WordStage, Hot Sauced Words and The Renaissance Conspiracy reading series and TOPS events. She has won several awards for her poetry, is published in a number of magazines and anthologies, and made the shortlist for both the Descant Winston Collins Best Canadian Poem 2006, and the Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry 2006, and others. Kate won the Toronto Art Bar’s Poetry Slam 2005, and the Toronto Art Bar’s Poetry Sweatshop Contest in 2004. She has been filmed and interviewed for Bravo’s Heart of the Poet series twice in 2005 and 2006, and was interviewed by CBC’s Rosie Fernandez for “Words at large” as a new Random Acts of Poetry Poet. She has participated in The Banff Centre’s Writing With Style Program twice, and leads a Poetry Writing Workshop at University of Toronto’s Continuing Ed. SMC Campus. Poetry is her first love, and continues to be her life-line.

Naoise Hefferon:

Naoise has a habit of moving around. She has forever relied on language, in all its unreliability, to help navigate and make sense of her often blind negotiations through space and time. Naoise has not wrestled bumblebees or been to Australia but she has been stirred by the spiney tails of Queen Street conversations brushing against her cheek as they pass by. She hasn’t won any awards, of which she’s aware, and her work isn’t cool enough for kissmachine but she is a nice, non-harming sort of girl who tries to engage with the human experience. She humbly hopes that her experience is worth all the fuss.

Liz Howard:

Liz is a native of northern Ontario and an emerging poet in Toronto. She is part of the rural exodus and still clings to such a small root despite her urban crutch. Her poetry has previously appeared in El Chaos Communications (elchaos.org) and is forthcoming in Misunderstandings Magazine and the Toronto Quarterly Review. She is ineffably happy to be part of the Toronto poetry scene and to have her first feature at livewords!

Angela Szczepaniak:

A doctoral candidate at the University at Buffalo, Angela Szczepaniak is neck-deep in a dissertation on innovative poetry, detective fiction, and comic books. In addition to publishing poetry and critical essays, and working as a poetry editor for Redwood Coast Press, she recently participated in a hygiene themed poetry-art project with LOCCAL, and as a result her visual poetry can be found on placards in some of the finest public restrooms in Seattle. At the moment, she lives in Toronto, where she thinks about being ravaged by time’s withered claw. Her first book is a novel-in-parts–Unisex Love Poems.

Our original poem Open Mic contest returns this month! Inscrutable judges. $50 prize. One poem written by you. 3 minutes max.

@ Cervejaria, 842 College Street (just west of Ossington)
7:00 p.m. Doors Open
7:30 p.m. Open Mic Sign-Up
8:00 p.m. Performances Commence