Thursday May 5th livewords welcomes six Guernica Editions poets for our Guernica Showcase Night at the Black Swan, 154 Danforth – 2nd floor – [map]. Doors at 7:30 p.m. - Readings from 8:00 p.m.

Our readers for the show are:

• Brian Day: is the author of three books of poetry, Love Is Not Native to My Blood, Azure, and Conjuring Jesus, all published by Guernica Editions.  He teaches in Toronto.

• Baila Ellenbogen: is a poet and psycho-educational consultant who resides  in Vaughan, Ontario, with her family. She conducts research in conjunction with the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto, which focuses on poetry composition and investigates the cognitive and creative processes that underlie writing.

• John Oughton: Born in Guelph, John Oughton has lived in Egypt, Iraq and Japan as well as Canada. He completed degrees in literature at York University, studying with Irving Layton and Miriam Waddington, and non-credit courses at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics where he worked closely with Anne Waldman, Allen Ginsberg, and William Burroughs.  He is the author of five collections of poetry, most recently Time Slip (Guernica, 2005) and over 400 articles, reviews, blogs and interviews.  John is Professor of Learning and Teaching at Centennial College, and now completing a PhD in education at York University.

• Julie Roorda: is the author of three volumes of poetry Eleventh Toe (2001), Courage Underground (2006), and most recently Floating Bodies (2010), all published by Guernica Editions.  She has also published a collection of short stories called Naked in the Sanctuary (Guernica Editions, 2004) and a novel for young adults Wings of a Bee (2007) published by Sumach Press.  She has been a winner of The Fiddlehead’s annual fiction contest and a finalist for the Confederation Poets Prize, and has published work in several literary journals across North America.

• Karen Shenfeld: has published three books of poetry with Guernica Editions: The Law of Return (1999), which won the Canadian Jewish Book Award for poetry in 2001, The Fertile Crescent (2005), and, most recently, My Father’s Hands Spoke in Yiddish (2010). Her work has also appeared in well-known journals published in Canada, the United States, South Africa, and Bangladesh, and she has given readings in Canada, the U.S., Mexico, England (at the home of Lord Tennyson), and South Africa (at the original Manenberg’s Jazz Café). Her poetry has been featured on CBC Radio, and on the U.K.’s 39 Dover Street. Shenfeld has also brought her poetic sensibility to the writing of magazine stories. Her personal documentary, Il Giardino, The Gardens of Little Italy, was screened at the 2007 Planet in Focus Festival.

• Elana Wolff: Elana Wolff’s poems have appeared in journals and anthologies in Canada, the UK and the US. She has published five books with Guernica, including the You Speak to Me in Trees, which was awarded the 2008 F.G. Bressani Prize for Poetry, and Implicate Me, a collection of short essays on individual poems by Toronto-area poets. Her fourth collection of poetry, Startled Night, will be released this fall. Elana lives in the City of Vaughan, where she writes, edits, and facilitates therapeutic community art.

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