You Think You Know Me, But You Have No Idea (July 19th @ Ben McNally Bookstore, Toronto, review by Jessie Travis)

On a night thick with the humidity of late July, the air was made to feel denser by the stifling exhaust of downtown Toronto’s 6pm rush hour gridlock. Ben McNally Books (366 Bay Street, Toronto) was the venue for a refreshingly dry(-witted) evening of conversation and authorial banter, organised by Freehand Books, Canadian Bookshelf, and hosted by Book Madam herself, Julie Wilson. You Think You Know Me, But You Have No Idea was an evening devoted to the often sidelined art of non-fiction and memoir writing. On the evening’s docket was an illustrator, cartoonist, and writer, Sarah Leavitt, primatologist and freelance journalist, Andrew Westoll, and writer and magazine professional, Stacey May Fowles. Even though Fowles was unable to attend, the panel of speakers engaged the audience with frank and open dialogue about writing, craft, relationships, – both human and primate – and the role of the author in a nonfiction work.


Against the glow of the power point, Sarah Leavitt opened the evening with an intelligently warm and witty account of her latently released (September 2010) graphic novel, Tangles (Freehand Books, 2010). Derived from the notes and sketches taken during her mother’s Alzheimer’s, Leavitt’s series of distinctively hand-drawn, yet expertly crafted illustrations, weaves together the stories and memories of her mother’s mid-50’s diagnosis. As vivid frames flashed on the screen and Leavitt’s seemingly disembodied voice narrated the frames from the back of the room, what emerged was a complex and poignant story of mothers and daughters, sisters, friends, and lovers, and how these ties evolve through the challenges and celebrations of growing up.

From the tangled web of family relationships, the evening shifted focus to Andrew Westoll’s account of the chimpanzees of The Chimp House at the Fauna Foundation. Housing thirteen chimps in total, the Fauna Sanctuary provides refuge for abused animals from experimental medicine and entertainment industries. After spending two-and-a-half months in the sanctuary, Westoll cultivated not only a unique relationship with the population of the sanctuary but a newfound understanding of himself (self-discovery. It’s a beautiful thing). The result? Westoll’s sophomore novel, The Chimps of Fauna Sanctuary (HarperCollins Canada, 2011). Even from the briefest of readings, one cannot deny the beauty, ease, and intensity of Westoll’s writing. Suspense-filled, plot-driven, and emotionally engaging, The Chimps of Fauna Sanctuary has this loyal fiction reader venturing further into the rows of non-bookshelves across the city.

Though divergent in subjects, both Leavitt and Westoll found common ground on the topic of memoir writing in the conversation with Wilson following the readings. Westoll was the first to admit that while the non-fiction author does indeed enter into a project to tell the tale of another, there is an element of self-discovery and self-interest. Through the process of writing and editing the experience, the subject, the memories, an author discovers and unpacks what it was they were looking for when they began. Though the story of her mother’s Alzheimer’s, Tangles, for example, is just as much a story about Leavitt’s memory, her “hang-ups,” the mental and physical loss of a parent, and her sexual identification – as Leavitt states herself. Almost ringing in unison, with Wilson’s voice setting the tone, both authors agreed on the importance of making the non-fiction work read like a novel – or a “rollicking good read,” to borrow a phrase from Westoll.

Perhaps the only disappointing note in the evening was Wilson’s attempt to spark a conversation about Tangles queer subtext (Leavitt’s partner makes brief appearances in the graphic novel’s final cut). An aspect of the story that has been largely ignored by rest of the media, it continued to be sidelined in Tuesday’s event despite Wilson’s intelligently clever efforts to fuel the dialogue. Perhaps if Stacey May Fowles Fear of Fighting (Invisible Publishing, 2008) had herself been in attendance, the obviously rich and meaty topic would have received the proper air time that it very much deserved.

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WE FEW THEY MANY (The Toronto Fringe Festival Theatre - review by Heather Babcock)

                                       
Fringe Festival play follows group of activists at G20 summit. From left to right (back to front) Tennille Read, Rebecca Perry, Anthony Gerbrandt, Andrew Young, Kat Edwards, Reut Shilton, Mitchell Court and Harmonie Tower are the cast and crew of We Few They Many, which is showing at the Fringe Festival until July 17. Photo/DORI LYNDE


WE FEW THEY MANY

Presented by Paper Plaid Theatre, written and directed by Kat Edwards, staged managed by Reut Shilton
The Toronto Fringe Theatre Festival, July 6 - 17, 2011


In her "note to the audience", included in the program for Paper Plaid Theatre's G20 focused ensemble piece WE FEW THEY MANY, writer/director Kat Edwards muses "More often than not an event is only acknowledged years after the fact. It's too little too late to allow a distancing of oneself from the event. Keep it current and you may then prevent it from happening again."

WE FEW THEY MANY tells the story of the 2010 G20 protests through the eyes of five energetic young political organizers and a conservative journalist who is slowly losing grasp of her own idealism. While the story is certainly "current", WE FEW THEY MANY's fresh, 3-dimensional characters and clever pacing ensure that the play will be just as accessible twenty years from now.

Like an old black & white movie, WE FEW THEY MANY creates a sense of urgency through music and lighting - the audience doesn't see the officers in riot gear or the violence, and yet we know that something very frightening is happening.

One of the characters in WE FEW THEY MANY wonders aloud why it has become cool to be apathetic. Luckily, the Paper Plaid Theatre folks aren't too cool to care. Here's hoping we see more from them - after all, living in Ford Nation, with the KPMG reports looming over our heads, we could all use a little more of their courage.

Heather Babcock is a secretary by day, writer by night. She has had short fiction published in GUT lit, The Annex Echo, GULCH- An Assemblage of Poetry & Prose and The Toronto Quarterly, among others. She resides in Toronto.







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Video Clips from the Guernica Editions Book Launch (July 5th @ the Supermarket)!!

José Acquelin reads the original French poems from The Man Who Delivers Clouds by José Acquelin & translated by Antonio D'Alfonso at the Guernica Editions launch on July 5, 2011 at the Supermarket on Augusta Avenue. Michael Mirolla reads the translations.




Len Gasperini reads from "My day at the Dixie Brewing Company" included in his The Snows of Yesteryear at the Guernica Editions launch on July 5, 2011 at the Supermarket on Augusta Avenue.



Laurence Hutchman presents In The Writers' Words: Conversations with Eight Canadian Poets at the Guernica Edtions Launch on July 5, 2011 at the Supermarket on Augusta Avenue





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Guernica Editions Summer Launch Party (Tuesday, July 5th @ The Supermarket) reviewed by Jessie Travis

Against the backdrop of a muggy July evening on Kensington Market’s main drag, tucked away in the cool depths of the Supermarket’s back room, Guernica Editions summer launch offered a much needed and refreshing breeze – of the literary variety. Over the course of the two hour launch, Guernica introduced a diverse set of 6 new titles, transcending genre lines with poetry, collections of interviews and academic essays, as well as short stories.

With a host of poetry and prose collections already under his belt, Len Gasparini demonstrated years of authorial prowess – prowess that garnered him a F.G. Bressani Literary Prize in 1990 – with a reading from his latest literary foray and sixth collection of short stories, The Snows of Yesteryear. Starting the evening off with a nod to the heart of Louisiana, New Orleans (or should I say “n’awlins”?), Gasparini enchanted audiences with his startlingly honest and entirely visceral depiction of a hot and murky day on the bottling line in “My day at Dixie Brewing Company.” Gasparini’s stark and uncluttered prose houses discourses of deep-seeded racial and economic tensions that continue to riddle the American south.

Following on the heels of Gasparini’s stylistic nod to modernist minimalists before him, it seemed more than fitting for the evening to transition to Laurence Hutchman's In The Writer's Words: Conversations with Eight Canadian Poets. Hutchman’s latest work features a series of 8 interviews with some of Canada’s most prominent modernist poets: Ralph Gustafson, George Johnston, P.K. Page, Fred Cogswell, Louis Dudek, Al Purdy, Anne Szumigalski and James Reaney. With footholds in both the poetic and academic community, Hutchman has written 6 books of poetry and teaches at the Université de Moncton, Edmundston Campus, it comes as no surprise that this work emerges from a desire to explore the evolution of the lives and, subsequently, works of Canadian poets. A project that began in the early 1990s, Hutchman examines the subtle development of each writer’s style, the origins of their poetic inclinations (“how does a poet begin to write a poem?” he asks), and the transformations they and their work have undergone thanks to their own literary influences – a section that seems to construct a Canadian version of Britain’s Bloomsbury group.

Rounding off the first half of the evening, Dane Swan took to the stage with effortless ease and an understated confidence before delivering the evening’s most dynamic and vibrant reading. Part of Guernica’s First Poet Series, a series that fosters new poetic voices aged 35 and younger, Swan’s reading, nay performance, of 6 pieces from his first full collection, Bending the Continuum, commanded a hushed silence from the audience, despite admitting that he had not intended to read. His reading reached a potent climax with “Blackface,” calling the audience to “join me” – a call that I most happily answered thanks, in large part, to the powerful force of his roots in slam poetry.

Switching gears in the second half of the evening, Howard A. Doughty and Marino Tuzi were on hand to introduce Culture and Difference: Essays on Canadian Society. This collection of six essays is divided into two very distinct halves: literary and political/social analysis. Spanning literary, cultural, political, and anthropological criticism, Culture and Difference explores the notion of cultural diversity in Canada, mobilizing textual and cultural comparisons to explore how historical, political, and economic forces shape cultural ideologies and belief systems.

The evening culminated with a turn to Guernica’s bilingual roots with two of Quebec’s most acclaimed poets, Madeline Gagnon and José Acquelin. Though Gagnon was not on hand to introduce Stone Dream, the most recent release in a career that boasts over 40 books of poetry and prose, Guernica’s Michael Mirolla stressed Gagnon’s desire to take readers on a journey through collective unconscious, a journey that culminates in the construction of living poetry, not merely words on a page.

Bringing the evening to a conclusion, José Acquelin romanced audiences with his sultry poetry, familial anecdotes, and deep, heavily accented and resonant voice. Having authored 15 poetry collections over the course of a 25-year-career, Acquelin’s work reads as timeless. Attendees were lucky enough to have Acquelin on hand to read his work in its original French, while Mirolla followed with recitations of the English translations. While Acquelin’s brother teases that his work is better in its translated form, it is clear that The Man Who Delivers Clouds will make waves in both the French and English poetic communities.

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Toronto Poets - 5 Questions Series - Ruth Roach Pierson

Ruth Roach Pierson’s highly anticipated third poetry collection Contrary (Tightrope Books, 2011) has finally hit bookstore shelves. Pierson is the author of two previous collections of poetry: Where No Window Was (Buschek Books, 2002) and Aide-Mémoire (Buschek Books, 2007) which was a finalist for the Governor General’s Award in 2008. Her poems have appeared in many literary journals including Arc, CV2, Event, The Malahat Review, Vallum, The Fiddlehead, Literary Review of Canada, Pagitica, Pottersfield Portfolio, Prism International, Queens Feminist Review, Quills, and Room of One’s Own. She has also appeared in a number of anthologies including Crossing Lines: Poets Who Came to Canada in the Vietnam Era, edited by Allan Briesmaster and Steven Michael Berzensky (Seraphim Editions, 2008), Regreen: New Canadian Ecological Poetry, edited by Madhur Anand and Adam Dickinson (Your Scrivener Press, 2009), and Celebrating Poets Over 70, edited by Marianne Vespry and Ellen Ryan (McMaster Centre For Gerontological Studies and Tower Poetry Society, 2010).

Best God-Damned Poet in the USA

One spring afternoon after class
we all adjourned to the Red Robin Tavern,
and Roethke slapped me on the rump
declaring it plenty firm without a girdle.

“It wasn’t in the mind of girls to write,”
Nuala O’Faolain remembers of Ireland
in the early 60’s. Nor was writing in the mind
of Seattle girls in those constricted years. Poets
were like Theodore Roethke: bigger-than-life,
male, slightly unstable. Living his idea

of the Dylan Thomas life,
the wannabe poet John Pym became
a brawling, raucous frequenter of taverns.
One night, in the Blue Moon, he swept
all the bottles and pitchers to the floor, then,
losing balance, slipped and fell, suffering

a deep gash to his thigh. He walked around
pantless for days, displaying his dressed wound
like a badge. One night, bare-legged
and drunk, shirt-tail flapping like sails
in a gale-force wind, he showed up
at my apartment door. I managed
to talk him out of coming inside,

but I never managed to write, not one single
line, not for years. Though I read,
thanks to Roethke – Lousie Bogan, Leonie Adams,
Denise Levertov, and, above all,
Roethke himself – the mystical, magnificent,
towering Ted Roethke.

TTQ - When did you decide that you were destined to become a poet and who were some of your early influences or mentors?

Pierson - I had the good fortune when I was an M.A. student at the University of Washington to take Theodore Roethke’s course in 20th century English language poetry. At the time, 1962-63, I was working on a Master’s degree in history, but that programme required all students to take one elective. Two friends of mine, both in the English literature programme, persuaded me to take a course from Roethke. I have always felt deeply indebted to them, for Roethke was a magnificent teacher as well as poet and a magnificent oral interpreter of his own and other poets’ work. The course was, I should make clear, not in writing but in reading poetry. My most recently published book, Contrary (Tightrope Books, 2011), contains a poem entitled “The Best God-damned Poet in the USA” which is a tribute and statement of indebtedness to Roethke but also something of an explanation as to why at the time (I was in my 20’s) I didn’t think I myself could become a poet. That had to wait for many years – until I was in my early 50s. Then, my reading of Dianne Middlebrook’s outstanding literary biography of Anne Sexton re-awakened my long dormant interest in poetry, Dianne, coincidentally being one of the two friends who had recommended Roethke’s course some thirty years earlier. And in 1992-1993 I began composing what I hoped were poems. Eventually I screwed up my courage and showed a sheaf of them to Helen Humphreys whom I had got to know through her association with Resources for Feminist Research which had its offices just down the hall from mine at OISE. She very kindly took the folder home and read my stabs at poem writing and then suggested we go out for coffee and, instead of telling me to throw everything I had shown her into the trash, suggested that if I were really serious, I should consider signing up for a poetry writing course. In September 1993 I enrolled in the course she was teaching at George Brown College. And I’ve never looked back. Since then, I’ve had many further poetry teachers and mentors – including Don MacKay, Daphne Marlatt, Gerry Shikatani, Rhea Tregabov, Ken Babstock, Stan Dragland, and Barry Dempster -- and learned from every one of them. Having started so late in life, I have always felt I had (and still feel I have) a great deal of catching up to do.

TTQ - Your latest book of poetry Contrary (Tightrope Books, 2011) deals with some difficult subject matter, namely the dying and death of your brother. Was your process in writing this book a lot different from your previous books? Was it cathartic in terms of saying goodbye to him? How close were you to your brother and what are some of your fondest memories of him?

Pierson - Indeed, a sequence of poems about the dying and death of my older brother, my only sibling, lies at the core of my latest poetry collection Contrary. And indeed the process of writing the poems that address my maelstrom of contradictory feelings unleashed by this loss was very different from that of my two earlier collections, in fact from that of many of the other poems in this current collection. The poems about my brother and our relationship were written over a period of more than a year and while writing them I often felt as if I were possessed – by some very strong emotions, for a start, such as anger, remorse, grief, regret, but also by piercing memories. In one, for instance, “a grieving walk (Chile),” I am seeing, hearing and feeling the landscape I’m walking in through the filter of grief. In another, I feel observed by my no-longer-living brother – “Four Months and Fourteen Days.” And in others I am carrying on a conversation with him, as in “A Little Knowledge.” Only in a minority of more lyrical poems contained in this sequence do I make much use of figurative language. As I was writing so many of these poems from a position of stunned disbelief at my brother’s swift decline and death and also carrying on arguments with him or myself or my memory of our shared past, I somehow felt simile and metaphor were too distancing and would ring false and so opted for bald, unadorned language. The collection also contains a number of ekphrastic poems and in at least two of these I am reading the work of art through my shock at my brother’s death or through my guilt at failing him as a sister (“After Betty Goodwin’s The Memory of the Body” and “Louise Berliawsky Nevelson’s Night Zag IV”). I’m sure writing these poems did serve a cathartic purpose, not so much in saying goodbye to my brother as in giving me a forum in which to grapple with the conflicting feelings I had and still have about my brother and our relationship. For that relationship was “fractious” and “often broken,” as John Barton writes in his back cover blurb. We both came from an arch Protestant family and, while my brother became a Jesuit priest, I became a radical, non-believing feminist historian. Even my fondest memories of him, which I touch on in a couple of poems (“A Hard Nut” and “Twine and Rouge,” for instance), are shadowed by the conflictedness.

TTQ - What was the time frame like for you in writing the book and do you have a particular method or surroundings that you prefer when writing? What message would you hope your readers take away after reading Contrary?

Pierson - Largely because of the swiftness with which I wrote many of what I came to call “The Brother Poems,” I completed Contrary faster than either of my two previous books. As for writing first drafts of poems, I can and I do do that almost anywhere – from sitting on the subway to lying in the bathtub. The revisions (and some of those number as high as forty or fifty something) I work on at night lying in bed before falling asleep and during the day at my computer on my desk in my very cluttered office.

I suppose I hope that my poems resonate with readers, i.e., that my ekphrastic poems might encourage readers to respond to a work of art in a new way, that my contrarian poems might comfort them that there’s someone out there in the world who often feels disgruntled and powerless, and that my poems about my loss of a brother with whom I had a conflicted relationship might console others who have experienced something similar.

TTQ - How important is reading your poetry in front of a live audience and is that a part of your writing process when composing a new book whereby you can try some of your new poems out on audiences?

Pierson - I write my poems in order to be able to read them aloud and jump at any opportunity to give a reading. As I wrote earlier, Theodore Roethke was a wonderful oral interpreter of his own and other poets’ work. Indeed, in his classes, he never started discussing or analyzing a poem without first reading it aloud in order to give us an opportunity to hear it. He felt strongly that the sonority of the poem is of prime importance. As I write my own poems, I read them aloud to myself over and over again. I revise them in light of their sound and rhythm as much as with respect to language and meaning, though all these elements are inextricable. I do not however tend to try out new poems before live audiences before I’m pretty sure I’ve got the poem in the best shape possible. Well, that’s not exactly true. What I mean to say is I don’t tend to try out new poems in public venues before large audiences of strangers. I do try them out before sympathetic friends and in my poetry groups.

TTQ - What is your opinion of the current state of poetry in Toronto? Do you feel poetry has a chance of becoming more popular with readers today or will it always be appreciated only by poets?

Pierson - These are both huge questions, and I don’t think I’ve adequate knowledge to answer either one of them. I recognize that poetry remains a minority taste, but in other respects poetry seems alive and well in Toronto. There are many reading venues and a great variety of genres, each, to some extent, with its own audience. But it’s not always the case that these audiences are made up exclusively of practitioners. At the recent Poetry Read-A-Thon I hosted in my back garden which featured seven poets, myself included, about fifty people attended and I would wager that at least a fourth of them were not poets but lovers of poetry or people interested in hearing poetry read.




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Introducing: Revelstoke (an interview by Charmaine Santos)

Wednesday, July 6, 2011 marks the anticipated debut release of Revelstoke’s EP Espirit d'Escalier. Although considered a rookie within Toronto’s music scene, it is evident that Revelstoke’s eclectic sound is the product of his meticulous orchestration of stories and symphonies fostered by time. A traveling journalist and a literary buff, his music is inspired by his attraction to confusion and the pursuit of cohesion in our everyday life through the act of story-telling. As a one-man band, he has enrapt listeners with the dulcet sounds of his aerial guitar as he graces it with a violin bow, the chilling tunes of his 40-year old mandolin and a banjo that he named Freedom, and his ensemble of rhapsodic lyrics. Despite the recent release of his debut EP, Revelstoke has already gained attention for his captivating live performances as he opened for local big names like Brett Caswell, Appleseed Cast, and more. The Toronto Quarterly chatted with Andrew Seale, the man behind Revelstoke and the experimental folk jams that had already captured the ears of music enthusiasts who are anxious to hear something new.

To listen to Revelstoke’s music, visit his myspace page. Also check out http://revelstoke.bandcamp.com/album/esprit-descalier for a free download of Espirit d’Escalier.

TTQ - What made you decide that being a musician was something you wanted to do?

Revelstoke - Growing up in a small town. Watching my dad strum out old cigarette commercial jingles on the guitar. I got the mandolin when my great aunt passed away. It felt weird to own it without playing it.

TTQ - Not everyone has it in them to openly expose their thoughts through creative means such as writing and creating music. What inspires you to do what you do?

Revelstoke - I'm fascinated by people and culture. Why we act the way we do, why we do what we do. I've studied and worked as a journalist for seven years. It's taken me some places and introduced me to people I might have taken a lot longer to meet. I don't really have a right to tell people what to do or what's right but it gives me license to tell stories. Everyone should tell their stories. Sometimes the easiest ways to tell stories is through music, it's my way of making sense of things - people, geography, politics.

TTQ - How would you best describe your music and your live shows?

Revelstoke - It's folk music. Storytelling. Sometimes about Canada and places/people I love. Other times it's about the physical landscape. I like to add a bit of abstraction to the music, shake it up with loops and violin bows on the guitar. Maybe experimental folk music? I don't know. The live sound allows me to expand on it and tweak different elements so the songs don't sound the same twice. That's vital to my interest in the songs. It gets boring playing the same thing over and over. To be honest, I find the recorded songs restricting compared to the live compositions. I get more space to breathe up there.

TTQ - While kids are mostly picking up electric guitars, you grace the stage with a banjo, mandolin, and guitars with a violin bow. Tell us about your musical upbringing and the reasons why you opted to play unconventional instruments.

Revelstoke - I wouldn't say the instruments are unconventional. I mean the banjo is called "the people's instrument" for a reason, it's a staple of folk music. Even the mandolin is pretty traditional - my mandolin itself has been kicking around in my family for nearly fifty years, it just took a bit for someone to pick up and play it in a performance setting. If anything's unconventional, it's the way I patch the pieces together. As for an upbringing, my family always had weird instruments lying around - a sitar, accordion, broken pianos, guitars. It just took a bit of time to get around to getting them in one spot and figuring them out. My family and friends have always supported me.

TTQ - Why folk music? What do you think it has to offer to Toronto’s ever-flourishing music scene?

Revelstoke - I don't think I have the credibility to speak on behalf of people's interest. I mean I like how eclectic the Toronto music scene is as a whole. I think it stems from our generation's uninhibited access to all types of music through the internet. But folk music itself is one of the doorways to the human condition. Storytelling plays such a big role in understanding what's going on around us. If it all made sense we probably wouldn't have much use for music and art.

TTQ - What is the difference between your music now as Revelstoke than when you were Andrew Seale?

Revelstoke - It's less boring. I used to be obsessed with immediacy. You tap out a few chords and write about your ex-girlfriend. I put more thought into my music now, I'm a bit more grown up I guess.

TTQ - Why did you decide to name yourself Revelstoke?

Revelstoke - It's this sleepy 'lil mining town in the rockies. It's synonymous with freedom for me. I guess it's hard to explain. But it's just one of those places where the air is a little bit different.

TTQ - As a newcomer, where do you see yourself going in the future with your music?

Revelstoke - World's first concert at the bottom of the sea. A seahorse benefit show. In the meantime, drifting around and playing some tunes. Maybe make some new fans.

TTQ - What comes first for you: the music or the lyrics? Describe your writing process.

Revelstoke - It varies. Sometimes the music comes first. Other times it's the words. It's tough because by the time I play the songs for people I'm already too attached (and stubborn) to change them too much. I very rarely play songs for people that I don't enjoy playing myself. Sometimes I eat a slice of cheese before bed and then I have weird dreams and write about them. Other times I need to be on a beach. It really depends when inspiration pops its head in the door.

TTQ - Is there a particular musician or band that you would like to work with or share a stage with? What is it about the quality of their work that you most admire?

Revelstoke - Devendra Banhart, because I feel like he gets it.

TTQ - Do you have any final words for the Toronto Quarterly readers and prospective fans?

Revelstoke - Drink milk. Spinach is a super food. Try surfing before you're forty. Learn to play an instrument. Vote in the elections. Read both fiction and non-fiction. Create something every day. Keepsies wasn't a legitimate rule in pogs - you were scammed. Thank you for your love and support thus far. Check out a live show if you can and grab the album for free at revelstoke.bandcamp.com.





Lyrics: Roots that Curl like Lips

"Tell the children the truth" — Bob Marley

Old folks homes and other places you thought you wouldn't miss.
Like grocery bags and laundry smells and roots so old and tired they curled like lips.

To wait in line in Brooklyn clubs and sing of new prescriptions torn to bits.
And Steels grew out his hair for Dave and Jordashes foosball championships.

And it went like this:
I spilled my beer
Ashed on the chair
And we talked for miles
Like you were there.

But you weren't.


credits
from esprit d'escalier, released 06 July 2011
Guitar, Harmonica and Vocals: Andrew Seale.









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A June Poetry Read-a-Thon (Location - The Boyd/Pierson back garden on Sunday, June 26th) reviewed by Caitlin Galway

A June Poetry Read-a-Thon was held this past Sunday in the Boyd/Pierson back garden. It looked like a traditional summer gathering met with a toast to the avante garde. Listeners settled on the grass as poets read from works ruminating the imagined history of the pineapple, the human condition, and reunions between ghosts.

Hosting the event was Washington-born Ruth Roach Pierson, who carries with her an extensive list of accolades, from a Yale doctorate to being named to the shortlist for the Governor General’s Award for Poetry in 2008. Her third compilation, Contrary (Tightrope Books, 2011), showcases an archive of loss, and those strange and shifting moments of emotional renewal.

Poet and filmmaker Leanne Averbach read from her recent poetry release, Come Closer (Tightrope Books, 2010), a politically and socially charged fusion of both the global and the visceral. Averbach’s first book, Fever (Mansfield Press, 2005) was shortlisted for the 2006 Gerald Lampert Memorial Prize, and her second short film, the mixed media “video poem” Teacups & Mink met with similarly notable acclaim, garnering such awards as Best Short Film at the 2008 Palm Desert Film Festival and Best Directorial Debut at the 2008 New York International Independent Film and Video Festival.

Nick Thran’s Earworm (Nightwood Editions, 2011) spirals through philosophy, history, and pop culture, from Caravaggio to The Rolling Stones, resulting in a swift and confident exploration of form and multi-media discourse.

Jim Nason, a social worker and author of such works as The Housekeeping Journals (Turnstone Press, 2007) and The Girl on the Escalator (Tightrope Books, 2011), read from his latest collection, Narcissus Unfolding (Frontenac House, 2011), a lyrical and unrelenting exploration of the physical, spiritual and eventually absent properties of a loved one.

Born and raised in the Philippines, Patria Rivera is now a Toronto-based poet and editor. Recent recognitions include being shortlisted for the 2006 Trillium Book Award for Poetry and co-recipient of the 2007 Global Filipino Award. With her latest book, Be (Signature Editions, 2011), she evokes with acuity and elegance the ambivalence of a dehumanized world.

ReLit Award-winning poet Daniel Scott Tysdal’s first book landed him impressive critical favour, including the 2004 John V. Hicks Manuscript Award and the 2006 Anne Szumigalski Award for Best Book of Poetry. With The Mourner's Book of Albums (Tightrope Books, 2011), he both deconstructs and adheres to traditional elegiac approaches, spanning themes broad as war, and intimate as suicide.

Writer and physiologist Jim Johnstone’s Sunday, the locusts (Tightrope Books, 2011), a collaborative project with artist Julienne Lottering, underscores the symbolism attached to the locust and its post-apocalyptic connotations for a society devoured. Author of two previous books of poetry, Patterncity (Nightwood Editions, 2010) and The Velocity of Escape (Guernica Editions, 2008), he is also the founder and former editor of Misunderstandings Magazine, and the poetry editor at Cactus Press.


*Note - All photos provided by Megan Boler.



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