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livewords May 27: Colman, Fetherling, & Uppal
Join us May 27, as livewords welcomes Rob Colman, George Fetherling, and Priscila Uppal to the Black Swan, 154 Danforth Avenue, just east of Broadview (map).
Open Mic Sign-Up 7:30 p.m. (details below). Readings commence at 8 p.m.
Robert Colman is a writer and editor based in Newmarket, Ontario. His poetry has appeared in literary magazines across Canada. His first book of poetry, The Delicate Line, was published with Exile Editions in 2008. It was longlisted for the ReLit Award. The title poem received a Highly Commended Award in the Petra Kenney Poetry Competition (U.K.).
George Fetherling is a Canadian poet, novelist, journalist and essayist. One of the most prolific figures in Canadian letters, he has written and edited more than fifty books, including more than a dozen volumes of poetry, two novels, and a multi-volume memoir. Fetherling is the editor and publisher of Subway Books, an independent publishing house based in Vancouver, British Columbia. His column, “Books this Week”, appears in Seven Oaks magazine, an online journal and Geist magazine. A study of Fetherling’s books George Fetherling and His Work, edited by Linda Rogers, features essays by W. H. New, George Elliott Clarke, Brian Busby and others. Most recently he published the fiction titles Jericho in 2005 and Tales of Two Cities in 2006, along with the poetry collection, Singer, An Elegy published in 2004. He will be reading from his most recent book of poetry The Sylvia Hotel Poems which is being launched in May by Quattro Press.
Priscila Uppal was born in Ottawa in 1974 and currently lives in Toronto where she is a poet, fiction writer, academic, and professor of Humanities and English at the undergraduate and graduate levels at York University. She is also a member of the Board of Directors of the Toronto Arts Council. Her creative and academic interests frequently intersect, and she has published work that explores the tensions and dynamics between women (particularly in closed societies: schools, nunneries), the nature of human violence, sexuality (including infertility), multicultural clashes (ethnic, religious, geographical), revisionist mythmaking (classical myth, biblical myth, historical figures), illness (physical, psychological, cultural), mourning rituals and the expression of grief (towards individuals, communities, abstract concepts), the world of readers and the dangers and benefits of reading and the imagination, as well as the nature of the artistic process, among other things. She has also collaborated with visual artists in the past (Tracy Carbert, Daniel Ehrenworth), and plans on more collaborative projects in the future. She lives with poet and critic, Christopher Doda.
She is the author of five books of poetry: Ontological Necessities (2006), Live Coverage (2003), Pretending to Die (2001),Confessions for a Fertility Expert (1999), and How to Draw Blood From a Stone (1998), all from Exile Editions; and the novel The Divine Economy of Salvation (2002). Her work has been translated into Croatian, Dutch, Greek, Korean, Italian, and Latvian. Her second novel To Whom It May Concern was just released by Doubleday Canada, as well as a critical study on elegies, We Are What We Mourn, by McGill-Queen’s University Press. http://priscilauppal.ca/
Host and Producer: Edward Nixon
Our Open Mic Contest this month:
Theme: Hotel Poems
Duration: 3 minutes reading length
Sign-Up: 7:30 pm
Prizes:
- $25 for best reading of a “hotel” poem by a favourite poet
- $25 for best original “hotel” poem written by you
Note: The premise of the Open Mic contest is that it is an entertaining way to encourage participation and that be constraining it by theme or form it provides a challenge to participants and interest for the audience. The Open Mic contest is judged by volunteer judges recruited at the event. Their decisions may seem arbitrary or capricious but they are final. The host has no role in determining the winners.
Get in Touch
Tonight livewords @ the Black Swan 8 pm
The National Poetry Month Edition
Join us tonight for readings by poets Allan Briesmaster, Barry Dempster, and Angela Hibbs at the Black Swan, 2nd floor, 154 Danforth Avenue. Readings commence at 8 pm.
+ Poetry in Translation Open Mic Contest:
* 1 Cash Prize for Best Reading of a Poem Translated into English (not your own work)
* 1 Cash Prize for Best Reading of an Original Translation (your translation, not your original poem)
* Sign-up at 7:30 p.m.
livewords April – the National Poetry Month edition – with Briesmaster, Dempster and Hibbs.
Join us April 22, for readings by poets Allan Briesmaster, Barry Dempster, and Angela Hibbs at the Black Swan, 154 Danforth Avenue, just east of Broadview (map). Readings commence at 8 p.m.
Allan Briesmaster is a freelance editor, publisher, and literary consultant. His most recent books of poetry are Interstellar (Quattro Books, 2007) and Confluences (Seraphim Editions, 2009). He was centrally involved in the weekly Art Bar Poetry Reading Series in Toronto from its beginnings in 1991 until 2002. His poems have appeared in many journals and anthologies, and he has read his work in venues from Victoria to St. John’s. As an editor, working with several literary presses, Allan has been instrumental in the production of more than 80 books of poetry and non-fiction since 1998. In 2008 he co-edited the 256-page anthology Crossing Lines: Poets Who Came to Canada in the Vietnam War Era for Seraphim Editions. Allan lives in Thornhill, Ontario with his wife Holly, a visual artist who has collaborated with him several times on book projects.
Barry Dempster is the author of fifteen books, including a novel, The Ascension of Jesse Rapture, a children’s book, two volumes of short stories and eleven collections of poetry. He has been nominated for the Governor General’s Award twice and has won a Petra Kenney Award, a Confederation Poets’ Prize, a Prairie Fire Poetry Contest and the Canadian Authors’ Association Jack Chalmers Award for Poetry for his 2005 collection, The Burning Alphabet. In 2009, he published two new books of poetry: Love Outlandish, published by Brick Books, and Ivan’s Birches, with Pedlar Press. A new collection, Blue Wherever, will be published by Signature Editions in the spring of 2010. Barry is acquisitions’ editor at Brick Books. Over this past year, he was a Wired Writing mentor at the Banff Centre as well as facilitator of a two week poetry workshop in Santiago, Chile. He lives in Holland Landing, Ontario, where he runs a film series and two book discussion groups.
Angela Hibbs’ second collection of poetry, Wanton, came out with Insomniac Press in the fall. Her work has been translated into Russian and French. Her first collection, Passport was long listed for the re-lit award. She was the winner of the 2001 Starchie Award, was shortlisted for the Irving Layton award and holds a MA creative writing from Concordia University.
+ Poetry in Translation Open Mic Contest:
- 1 Cash Prize for Best Reading of a Poem Translated into English (not your own work)
- 1 Cash Prize for Best Reading of an Original Translation (your translation, not your original poem)
- Sign-up at 7:30 p.m.
As seen @ Open Book Toronto
livewords goes east on November 26th with Pier Giorgio Di Cicco, A. F. Moritz, Robyn Sarah and Zach Wells.
It’s a cool November livewords in a new location the Black Swan Tavern at 154 Danforth Avenue just steps east of Broadview Station.
livewords is pleased to welcome Pier Giorgio Di Cicco, A. F. Moritz, Robyn Sarah and Zach Wells.
We look forward to seeing you on Thursday, November 26 at Black Swan Tavern- at 154 Danforth Avenue just steps east of Broadview Station, please click here for a map.
A. F. Moritz‘s book of poems The Sentinel (House of Anansi Press, 2008) won the 2009 Griffin Poetry Prize and was a finalist for the 2008 Governor General’s Award. His poetry has received awards including the Guggenheim Fellowship, the Ingram Merrill Fellowship, the Award in Literature of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Beth Hokin Prize of Poetry magazine. Night Street Repairs (Anansi, 2004) won the 2005 ReLit Award for poetry, Rest on the Flight into Egypt (Brick Books, 1999) was a finalist for the Governor General’s Award, and The Tradition (Princeton University Press, 1986) was selected to the Princeton Series of Contemporary Poets. His poems have appeared in such magazines as Poetry, Hudson Review, American Poetry Review, Paris Review, Partisan Review, Southwest Review, The Fiddlehead, Malahat Review, The Walrus, etc. They have been selected to many anthologies, including The Best Canadian Poetry in English 2007, four editions of the annual Best American Poetry series, and Harold Bloom’s 1998 Best of the Best American Poetry. Moritz is editor of The Best Canadian Poetry in English 2008 (Tightrope Books, 2009).
Pier Giorgio Di Cicco was born in Arezzo, Italy, and was raised in Baltimore, Montreal, and Toronto. He currently resides in the countryside north of Toronto. His newest book Names of Blessing was launched this fall by Novalis Publlishng. He is the author of over thirteen books of poems from 1975 to 1986 including The Tough Romance, Dancing in the House Of Cards, Flying Deeper into the Century, and Virgin Science: Hunting Holistic Paradigms. He withdrew from the world of letters to join a monastery in 1986 and re-emerged in 2001 to publish Living in Paradise – New and Selected Poems with Mansfield Press. He has been the Emilio Goggio Visiting Professor in Italian-Canadian Studies at the University of Toronto, and in 2004 he was named as the Poet Laureate for the City of Toronto. He is an urban consultant and Curator of the Toronto Museum Project and a recipient of a 2007 Canadian Urban Institute Urban Leadership Award. He is on the design team of BMI/Pace Architects/Planners, Principal of Municipal Mind, and an ordained Roman Catholic Priest. watch?v=W57llOel9Y4&feature=related
Robyn Sarah is the author of eight poetry collections, most recently Pause for Breath (Biblioasis, 2009), as well as two collections of short stories and a book of essays, Little Eurekas: A Decade’s Thoughts on Poetry. Her writing has been published widely, anthologized and broadcast in Canada and the United States. She edited The Essential George Johnston and The Essential Don Coles for The Porcupine’s Quill, and is currently working on The Essential Margaret Avison. She lives in Montreal.
Writer and editor Zachariah Wells is the author of the poetry collection Unsettled; co-author of the children’s book Anything But Hank!; and editor of the anthology Jailbreaks: 99 Canadian Sonnets. His latest book is the poetry collection Track & Trace. He lives in Halifax, where he works sporadically as an onboard attendant for Via Rail. Visit him online at zachariahwells.com or read his popular blog: Career Limiting Moves.
OPEN MIC CONTEST:
The return of our popular Poetry in Translation contest:
- Prize for best reading of poem translated into English
- Prize for best original translation of a poem into English.
Poems should be no loner than 3 minutes.
Poems must not be your own original writing.