Stuart Ross's Blog, page 15
March 28, 2014
The first review of Our Days in Vaudeville
Here is the first review of Our Days in Vaudeville, appearing on rob mclennan's blog in early January. Who knows — it may wind up being the only review of Our Days in Vaudeville. So kudos to rob for taking on this project! rob does a fascinating inventory of other poetry collaborations in this country — some realized and some that never saw print.
One quick correction to this review: the poems in the book are not from the past couple of years — there are collaborations with Gary Barwin that date back about two decades. I'd say most of the pieces in the book, though, are from the past five or six years, though I admittedly did a mad burst of collaborations in the year leading up to publication.
It baffles me that collaborations aren't taken more seriously. I agree with rob that literary collaboration is largely viewed as a "parlour trick." Is it because they're, well, more fun to write? I'm curious to see if Our Days in Vaudeville gets any more reviews — every one of my previous books of poetry have received at least four or five reviews.
I'm immensely proud of Our Days in Vaudeville. I'm proud of my collaborators for agreeing to appear in such a strange book. I hope to do more volumes of collaborative poems.
Meanwhile, this Sunday, I'm leading a daylong workshop in Toronto on collaborative poetry. Trying to spread the gospel.
Over and out.
One quick correction to this review: the poems in the book are not from the past couple of years — there are collaborations with Gary Barwin that date back about two decades. I'd say most of the pieces in the book, though, are from the past five or six years, though I admittedly did a mad burst of collaborations in the year leading up to publication.
It baffles me that collaborations aren't taken more seriously. I agree with rob that literary collaboration is largely viewed as a "parlour trick." Is it because they're, well, more fun to write? I'm curious to see if Our Days in Vaudeville gets any more reviews — every one of my previous books of poetry have received at least four or five reviews.
I'm immensely proud of Our Days in Vaudeville. I'm proud of my collaborators for agreeing to appear in such a strange book. I hope to do more volumes of collaborative poems.
Meanwhile, this Sunday, I'm leading a daylong workshop in Toronto on collaborative poetry. Trying to spread the gospel.
Over and out.
March 18, 2014
In Collaboration: A Workshop
Here's the goods on a workshop I'm offering in Toronto on March 30. There are still some spaces available.
IN COLLABORATION: A WORKSHOP
Sunday, March 16, 10 am – 5 pm (45-minute lunch break)
Christie/Dupont area
$95 includes materials and snacks
Spaces are limited: register now by prepaying. Write razovsky@gmail.com.
My latest book, Our Days In Vaudeville, contains poems written in collaboration with 29 other Canadian poets. Writing it was an exhilarating experience, because collaboration means taking part in poems that you could never have written on your own — and becoming part of a fused consciousness!
In this workshop, we will explore at least a dozen different methods of collaboration. We will write in pairs, as a group, and we will even learn how to collaborate with ourselves. This promises to be a lively day in which you may cooperate in one poem, and then do battle in another — but it is also a day in which you have total license to experiment and explore.
WHAT PARTICIPANTS HAVE SAID ABOUT PAST WORKSHOPS
"Atmosphere is generous, open, light-hearted — great workshop! And a wonderful way to spend a Sunday."
"Really good at sparking off ideas and learning techniques for generating new poems and moving forward."
"The atmosphere was completely relaxed & enjoyable, yet completely focused on the activities. Really enjoyed it & found it extremely informative."
"Permission to experiment, acceptance, support. Thank you for an inspiring day — much appreciated."
"Great fun. Great atmosphere. Thought-provoking."
"An excellent assembly of techniques & lots of time to try them…"
"Constant writing — generating a lot of new material. Strategies that incite me to turn things upside down."
ABOUT ME
Stuart Ross is a writer, editor, and writing coach who has been leading workshops for two decades across the country. His most recent books include Our Days In Vaudeville (w/ 29 collaborators; Mansfield Press, 2013), You Exist. Details Follow. (Anvil Press 2012) and Snowball, Dragonfly, Jew (ECW Press, 2011).
Stuart has been shortlisted for the Trillium Book Award, the Alberta Book Award, and three times for the ReLit Prize; his story collection Buying Cigarettes for the Dog (Freehand Books, 2009) won him the coveted ReLit ring in 2010, and his novel Snowball, Dragonfly, Jew took the Mona Elaine Adilman Award for Fiction on a Jewish Theme as part of the prestigious J.I. Segal Awards. In 2013, his poetry book You Exist. Details Follow. received the only prize given to an Anglo writer by l’Académie Litteraire au Tournant du 21e Siècle.
Stuart was Fiction & Poetry Editor at This Magazine for eight years, and is editor at Mansfield Press, where he has his own imprint. Books he has edited have been shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize (twice!), the Governor General’s Award, the Toronto Book Award, the Trillium Book Award, and the Gerald Lampert Award. He was editor of David McFadden’s What’s The Score?, which won the 2013 Canadian Griffin Poetry Prize. Stuart lives in Cobourg, Ontario.
Over and out.
IN COLLABORATION: A WORKSHOP
Sunday, March 16, 10 am – 5 pm (45-minute lunch break)
Christie/Dupont area
$95 includes materials and snacks
Spaces are limited: register now by prepaying. Write razovsky@gmail.com.
My latest book, Our Days In Vaudeville, contains poems written in collaboration with 29 other Canadian poets. Writing it was an exhilarating experience, because collaboration means taking part in poems that you could never have written on your own — and becoming part of a fused consciousness!
In this workshop, we will explore at least a dozen different methods of collaboration. We will write in pairs, as a group, and we will even learn how to collaborate with ourselves. This promises to be a lively day in which you may cooperate in one poem, and then do battle in another — but it is also a day in which you have total license to experiment and explore.
WHAT PARTICIPANTS HAVE SAID ABOUT PAST WORKSHOPS
"Atmosphere is generous, open, light-hearted — great workshop! And a wonderful way to spend a Sunday."
"Really good at sparking off ideas and learning techniques for generating new poems and moving forward."
"The atmosphere was completely relaxed & enjoyable, yet completely focused on the activities. Really enjoyed it & found it extremely informative."
"Permission to experiment, acceptance, support. Thank you for an inspiring day — much appreciated."
"Great fun. Great atmosphere. Thought-provoking."
"An excellent assembly of techniques & lots of time to try them…"
"Constant writing — generating a lot of new material. Strategies that incite me to turn things upside down."
ABOUT ME
Stuart Ross is a writer, editor, and writing coach who has been leading workshops for two decades across the country. His most recent books include Our Days In Vaudeville (w/ 29 collaborators; Mansfield Press, 2013), You Exist. Details Follow. (Anvil Press 2012) and Snowball, Dragonfly, Jew (ECW Press, 2011).
Stuart has been shortlisted for the Trillium Book Award, the Alberta Book Award, and three times for the ReLit Prize; his story collection Buying Cigarettes for the Dog (Freehand Books, 2009) won him the coveted ReLit ring in 2010, and his novel Snowball, Dragonfly, Jew took the Mona Elaine Adilman Award for Fiction on a Jewish Theme as part of the prestigious J.I. Segal Awards. In 2013, his poetry book You Exist. Details Follow. received the only prize given to an Anglo writer by l’Académie Litteraire au Tournant du 21e Siècle.
Stuart was Fiction & Poetry Editor at This Magazine for eight years, and is editor at Mansfield Press, where he has his own imprint. Books he has edited have been shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize (twice!), the Governor General’s Award, the Toronto Book Award, the Trillium Book Award, and the Gerald Lampert Award. He was editor of David McFadden’s What’s The Score?, which won the 2013 Canadian Griffin Poetry Prize. Stuart lives in Cobourg, Ontario.
Over and out.
March 17, 2014
Further Confessions … but first some chapbooks and a couple of south-of-the-border mags
Look for something called something like Further Confessions of a Small Press Racketeer coming out in spring 2015. The contract is not signed yet. All the sordid details when it is. It's a book I've been both dreading and eager for.
In the meantime, I so far have four chapbooks scheduled to come out this year in Canada, and I'm really excited about them — from Jay MillAr's BookThug (Toronto), Linda Crosfield's Nose in Book Publishing (Ootischenia, BC), Warren Dean Fulton's Pooka Press (Vancouver), and Michael Casteels' Puddles of Sky Press (Kingston).
The BookThug and Puddles of Sky chapbooks will be miscellaneous collections; the Nose in Book chapbook will be a sequence of haiku (plus one non-haiku); the Pooka Press chapbook will be two 10-poem sequences.
It'd be nice to see six chapbooks happen in 2014. Any takers, apply within.
Also this year, I have poems appearing in two of my absolute favourite American literary magazines: Gargoyle and Jubilat. A dream come true. One poem in each.
Over and out.
In the meantime, I so far have four chapbooks scheduled to come out this year in Canada, and I'm really excited about them — from Jay MillAr's BookThug (Toronto), Linda Crosfield's Nose in Book Publishing (Ootischenia, BC), Warren Dean Fulton's Pooka Press (Vancouver), and Michael Casteels' Puddles of Sky Press (Kingston).
The BookThug and Puddles of Sky chapbooks will be miscellaneous collections; the Nose in Book chapbook will be a sequence of haiku (plus one non-haiku); the Pooka Press chapbook will be two 10-poem sequences.
It'd be nice to see six chapbooks happen in 2014. Any takers, apply within.
Also this year, I have poems appearing in two of my absolute favourite American literary magazines: Gargoyle and Jubilat. A dream come true. One poem in each.
Over and out.
March 5, 2014
The birth of Donkey Lopez
I was on FB a couple months ago and someone had written as their status update, "If I had a band, it would be called—" Well, I don't remember who it was or what their band would be called. But I wrote a new status update: "If I had a band, it would be called Donkey Lopez."
Within a few hours, my musician friend Steve Lederman, aka Gongadin, wrote to me and told me he had enlisted his friend and percussion mentor Ray Dillard, and we three were now the trio Donkey Lopez. Could we get together and rehearse in the next week or two?
I met Steve in the early 1990s, when a band called the Angry Shoppers were scheduled to appear on some cable TV variety show, and their lead singer and guitarist had just quit. The band's horn player, Rick Bordolotti, who I knew through my friend Kevin Connolly, asked me if I would front the band for this TV appearance. We got together for a couple of rehearsals, during which I adapted four of my poems to their music — or perhaps they adapted four of their tunes to my poems — and then we went on the show. It worked out pretty well. The drummer was a guy named Steve Lederman. Our rehearsals took place in the basement of his parents' house. Steve reminded me recently that I had arrived at the house, looked around, and said it looked like a place my mother, Shirley, who was an interior decorator, might have decorated. Well, it turned out my mother had done the interior decorating there, and she and Steve's mom, Marilyn, were good friends.
The Angry Shoppers never performed again, in whatever form, but Steve and I continued to work together sporadically, doing an improvisational duo at the El Mocambo, recording a bit in Steve's attic, and then working a couple times with bassoon player Jeff Burke, guitarist Andrew Frost, and dancer Norma Araiza for a festival called Figure of Speech.
It was at Steve and Jessica's son's bar mitzvah last year that I was seated with Ray Dillard, and we talked music, and sound poetry, and eventually, when Steve came around to shake hands at all the guests' tables, he decided that he, Ray and I should play together someday. Here's Ray performing a couple movements of John Cage's 4.33.
So it came to be, and we've had a couple of improvisational jam sessions in Ray's basement in Barrie, Ontario. When I was invited to take part in a tribute to my dear friend Paul Dutton, one of the world's foremost sound-singers (he doesn't like the term "sound poet"), I thought that maybe this could be Donkey Lopez's public debut.
For the performance at A Tribute To Paul Dutton At 70, which brought together about 20 sound and literary artists at The Supermarket in downtown Toronto on March 4, and about which I'll write more another time, we did a trio rendition of Paul Dutton's prose text "This and That."
It was a fast and frenetic interpretation. As soon as it was over, I had almost no memory of what we'd done. I did recall, though, that about a minute into it, I blacked out for a split second, regaining consciousness to feel myself falling backward before recovering and continuing. I better work on my breathing.
This is that performance:
We have another engagement scheduled for Toronto at the end of May — an hour-long performance about which I'm far less nervous. We might even get a quick-and-dirty CD ready for that. Ray records all our jams, and instantly engineers them after we complete each improvised piece, then sends them to Steve and me via Dropbox later that night. Those guys tend to love everything we do, while I mutter critically about many of my own contributions and suffer from impostor syndrome.
Over and out.
Within a few hours, my musician friend Steve Lederman, aka Gongadin, wrote to me and told me he had enlisted his friend and percussion mentor Ray Dillard, and we three were now the trio Donkey Lopez. Could we get together and rehearse in the next week or two?
I met Steve in the early 1990s, when a band called the Angry Shoppers were scheduled to appear on some cable TV variety show, and their lead singer and guitarist had just quit. The band's horn player, Rick Bordolotti, who I knew through my friend Kevin Connolly, asked me if I would front the band for this TV appearance. We got together for a couple of rehearsals, during which I adapted four of my poems to their music — or perhaps they adapted four of their tunes to my poems — and then we went on the show. It worked out pretty well. The drummer was a guy named Steve Lederman. Our rehearsals took place in the basement of his parents' house. Steve reminded me recently that I had arrived at the house, looked around, and said it looked like a place my mother, Shirley, who was an interior decorator, might have decorated. Well, it turned out my mother had done the interior decorating there, and she and Steve's mom, Marilyn, were good friends.
The Angry Shoppers never performed again, in whatever form, but Steve and I continued to work together sporadically, doing an improvisational duo at the El Mocambo, recording a bit in Steve's attic, and then working a couple times with bassoon player Jeff Burke, guitarist Andrew Frost, and dancer Norma Araiza for a festival called Figure of Speech.
It was at Steve and Jessica's son's bar mitzvah last year that I was seated with Ray Dillard, and we talked music, and sound poetry, and eventually, when Steve came around to shake hands at all the guests' tables, he decided that he, Ray and I should play together someday. Here's Ray performing a couple movements of John Cage's 4.33.
So it came to be, and we've had a couple of improvisational jam sessions in Ray's basement in Barrie, Ontario. When I was invited to take part in a tribute to my dear friend Paul Dutton, one of the world's foremost sound-singers (he doesn't like the term "sound poet"), I thought that maybe this could be Donkey Lopez's public debut.
For the performance at A Tribute To Paul Dutton At 70, which brought together about 20 sound and literary artists at The Supermarket in downtown Toronto on March 4, and about which I'll write more another time, we did a trio rendition of Paul Dutton's prose text "This and That."
It was a fast and frenetic interpretation. As soon as it was over, I had almost no memory of what we'd done. I did recall, though, that about a minute into it, I blacked out for a split second, regaining consciousness to feel myself falling backward before recovering and continuing. I better work on my breathing.
This is that performance:
We have another engagement scheduled for Toronto at the end of May — an hour-long performance about which I'm far less nervous. We might even get a quick-and-dirty CD ready for that. Ray records all our jams, and instantly engineers them after we complete each improvised piece, then sends them to Steve and me via Dropbox later that night. Those guys tend to love everything we do, while I mutter critically about many of my own contributions and suffer from impostor syndrome.
Over and out.
February 24, 2014
I got interviewed
Canadian writer Pamela Stewart interviewed me for ignite.me — and here it is:
http://ignite.me/articles/artist-inte...
http://ignite.me/articles/artist-inte...
February 9, 2014
2 workshops in Toronto — an old favourite and new adventure!
I have two poetry workshops scheduled for the near future, both in Toronto. One is a workshop I've been running and honing and morphing for nearly a decade — Stuart Ross's Poetry Boot Camp. The other is a new workshop, inspired by my recent poetry book, Our Days In Vaudeville, which contains collaborations I wrote with 29 other Canadian poets — In Collaboration. The focus of both workshops is on producing new material and exploring new strategies for making poems.
Here are the details:
STUART ROSS’S POETRY BOOT CAMP
Sunday, February 23, 10 am – 5 pm (45-minute lunch break)
Christie/Dupont area
$95 includes materials and snacks
Spaces are limited: register now by prepaying. Write razovsky@gmail.com.
This relaxed but productive workshop for beginning poets, experienced poets, stalled poets, and haikuists who want to get beyond three lines is a Toronto institution! Poetry Boot Camp focuses on the pleasures of poetry and the riches that spontaneity brings, through lively directed writing strategies. You will write in ways you’d never imagined.
Even if you’ve taken the Boot Camp before, you’ll be introduced to many new adventures in poetry. I have a lot of fresh strategies up my sleeve!
As always: arrive with an open mind, and leave with a squirming heap of new poems!
IN COLLABORATION: A WORKSHOP
Sunday, March 16, 10 am – 5 pm (45-minute lunch break)
Christie/Dupont area
$95 includes materials and snacks
Spaces are limited: register now by prepaying. Write razovsky@gmail.com.
My latest book, Our Days In Vaudeville, contains poems written in collaboration with 29 other Canadian poets. Writing it was an exhilarating experience, because collaboration means taking part in poems that you could never have written on your own — and becoming part of a fused consciousness!
In this workshop, we will explore at least a dozen different methods of collaboration. We will write in pairs, as a group, and we will even learn how to collaborate with ourselves. This promises to be a lively day in which you may cooperate in one poem, and then do battle in another — but it is also a day in which you have total license to experiment and explore.
WHAT PARTICIPANTS HAVE SAID ABOUT PAST WORKSHOPS
"Atmosphere is generous, open, light-hearted — great workshop! And a wonderful way to spend a Sunday."
"Really good at sparking off ideas and learning techniques for generating new poems and moving forward."
"The atmosphere was completely relaxed & enjoyable, yet completely focused on the activities. Really enjoyed it & found it extremely informative."
"Permission to experiment, acceptance, support. Thank you for an inspiring day — much appreciated."
"Great fun. Great atmosphere. Thought-provoking."
"An excellent assembly of techniques & lots of time to try them…"
"Constant writing — generating a lot of new material. Strategies that incite me to turn things upside down."
ABOUT ME
Stuart Ross is a writer, editor, and writing coach who has been leading workshops for two decades across the country. His most recent books include Our Days In Vaudeville (w/ 29 collaborators; Mansfield Press, 2013), You Exist. Details Follow. (Anvil Press 2012) and Snowball, Dragonfly, Jew (ECW Press, 2011).
Stuart has been shortlisted for the Trillium Book Award, the Alberta Book Award, and three times for the ReLit Prize; his story collection Buying Cigarettes for the Dog (Freehand Books, 2009) won him the coveted ReLit ring in 2010, and his novel Snowball, Dragonfly, Jew took the Mona Elaine Adilman Award for Fiction on a Jewish Theme as part of the prestigious J.I. Segal Awards. In 2013, his poetry book You Exist. Details Follow. received the only prize given to an Anglo writer by l’Académie Litteraire au Tournant du 21e Siècle.
Stuart was Fiction & Poetry Editor at This Magazine for eight years, and is editor at Mansfield Press, where he has his own imprint. Books he has edited have been shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize (twice!), the Governor General’s Award, the Toronto Book Award, the Trillium Book Award, and the Gerald Lampert Award. He was editor of David McFadden’s What’s The Score?, which won the 2013 Canadian Griffin Poetry Prize. Stuart lives in Cobourg, Ontario.
Over and out.
Here are the details:
STUART ROSS’S POETRY BOOT CAMP
Sunday, February 23, 10 am – 5 pm (45-minute lunch break)
Christie/Dupont area
$95 includes materials and snacks
Spaces are limited: register now by prepaying. Write razovsky@gmail.com.
This relaxed but productive workshop for beginning poets, experienced poets, stalled poets, and haikuists who want to get beyond three lines is a Toronto institution! Poetry Boot Camp focuses on the pleasures of poetry and the riches that spontaneity brings, through lively directed writing strategies. You will write in ways you’d never imagined.
Even if you’ve taken the Boot Camp before, you’ll be introduced to many new adventures in poetry. I have a lot of fresh strategies up my sleeve!
As always: arrive with an open mind, and leave with a squirming heap of new poems!
IN COLLABORATION: A WORKSHOP
Sunday, March 16, 10 am – 5 pm (45-minute lunch break)
Christie/Dupont area
$95 includes materials and snacks
Spaces are limited: register now by prepaying. Write razovsky@gmail.com.
My latest book, Our Days In Vaudeville, contains poems written in collaboration with 29 other Canadian poets. Writing it was an exhilarating experience, because collaboration means taking part in poems that you could never have written on your own — and becoming part of a fused consciousness!
In this workshop, we will explore at least a dozen different methods of collaboration. We will write in pairs, as a group, and we will even learn how to collaborate with ourselves. This promises to be a lively day in which you may cooperate in one poem, and then do battle in another — but it is also a day in which you have total license to experiment and explore.
WHAT PARTICIPANTS HAVE SAID ABOUT PAST WORKSHOPS
"Atmosphere is generous, open, light-hearted — great workshop! And a wonderful way to spend a Sunday."
"Really good at sparking off ideas and learning techniques for generating new poems and moving forward."
"The atmosphere was completely relaxed & enjoyable, yet completely focused on the activities. Really enjoyed it & found it extremely informative."
"Permission to experiment, acceptance, support. Thank you for an inspiring day — much appreciated."
"Great fun. Great atmosphere. Thought-provoking."
"An excellent assembly of techniques & lots of time to try them…"
"Constant writing — generating a lot of new material. Strategies that incite me to turn things upside down."
ABOUT ME
Stuart Ross is a writer, editor, and writing coach who has been leading workshops for two decades across the country. His most recent books include Our Days In Vaudeville (w/ 29 collaborators; Mansfield Press, 2013), You Exist. Details Follow. (Anvil Press 2012) and Snowball, Dragonfly, Jew (ECW Press, 2011).
Stuart has been shortlisted for the Trillium Book Award, the Alberta Book Award, and three times for the ReLit Prize; his story collection Buying Cigarettes for the Dog (Freehand Books, 2009) won him the coveted ReLit ring in 2010, and his novel Snowball, Dragonfly, Jew took the Mona Elaine Adilman Award for Fiction on a Jewish Theme as part of the prestigious J.I. Segal Awards. In 2013, his poetry book You Exist. Details Follow. received the only prize given to an Anglo writer by l’Académie Litteraire au Tournant du 21e Siècle.
Stuart was Fiction & Poetry Editor at This Magazine for eight years, and is editor at Mansfield Press, where he has his own imprint. Books he has edited have been shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize (twice!), the Governor General’s Award, the Toronto Book Award, the Trillium Book Award, and the Gerald Lampert Award. He was editor of David McFadden’s What’s The Score?, which won the 2013 Canadian Griffin Poetry Prize. Stuart lives in Cobourg, Ontario.
Over and out.
January 25, 2014
Cobourg launch for Our Days in Vaudeville
I'm going to launch my new book of poetry, Our Days in Vaudeville (Mansfield Press), in Cobourg, which is where I live. The book is actually written by me and 29 other Canadian poets. Here I am reading a few poems about Cobourg.
I asked Richard Greene, who also lives in Cobourg and who is the 2010 winner of the Governor General's Award for Poetry, if he wanted to launch his new book with me. His new book is Dante's House (Signal Editions). Richard said yes. He and I once went for beers together in Cobourg, which makes him one of my best Cobourg friends! Here's Richard winning the GG.
Then I asked local singer-songer Ellen Torrie if she'd like to open the evening with a musical set. Ellen said yes. I've seen her perform a few times around town, and she's amazing. What a voice. Plus she's a teenager, so she brings the average age of performers at the launch down to 41. Here is Ellen Torrie performing.
The launch will take place on February 3 at 7 pm at Impresario Artisan Market, at 37 King Street West in Cobourg. Admission is free. Impresario is one of my favourite places in Cobourg — a one-of-a-kind store with a gallery in the back space. Owner Rebecca Baptista is doing amazing things for the arts and literary community here in Cobourg! Here's Rebecca taking the Oath of Allegiance to Poetry.
If you are in Peterborough, Brighton, Durham Region, Belleville or Trenton, Cobourg is less than 60 minutes away by car! This is going to be a very fun night.
Over and out.
I asked Richard Greene, who also lives in Cobourg and who is the 2010 winner of the Governor General's Award for Poetry, if he wanted to launch his new book with me. His new book is Dante's House (Signal Editions). Richard said yes. He and I once went for beers together in Cobourg, which makes him one of my best Cobourg friends! Here's Richard winning the GG.
Then I asked local singer-songer Ellen Torrie if she'd like to open the evening with a musical set. Ellen said yes. I've seen her perform a few times around town, and she's amazing. What a voice. Plus she's a teenager, so she brings the average age of performers at the launch down to 41. Here is Ellen Torrie performing.
The launch will take place on February 3 at 7 pm at Impresario Artisan Market, at 37 King Street West in Cobourg. Admission is free. Impresario is one of my favourite places in Cobourg — a one-of-a-kind store with a gallery in the back space. Owner Rebecca Baptista is doing amazing things for the arts and literary community here in Cobourg! Here's Rebecca taking the Oath of Allegiance to Poetry.
If you are in Peterborough, Brighton, Durham Region, Belleville or Trenton, Cobourg is less than 60 minutes away by car! This is going to be a very fun night.
Over and out.
January 24, 2014
"I am a sensitive manatee…"
So this past Monday I took part in a fundraiser at the Monarch Tavern in Toronto for the Al Purdy A-Frame. I read, along with Paul Vermeersch and Jim Smith.
The event was a great success. Lots of people. A respectable amount of money raised. A really good feeling in the room. And the great Karen Solie gave a short, unscheduled reading of two wonderful new poems, then announced the A-Frame's first resident poet, Katherine Leyton (who also read a few great poems).
Before the event, I spent many hours putting together a poem that would take me about two minutes to read. This video explains it all.
Over and out.
The event was a great success. Lots of people. A respectable amount of money raised. A really good feeling in the room. And the great Karen Solie gave a short, unscheduled reading of two wonderful new poems, then announced the A-Frame's first resident poet, Katherine Leyton (who also read a few great poems).
Before the event, I spent many hours putting together a poem that would take me about two minutes to read. This video explains it all.
Over and out.
January 22, 2014
Dave McFadden's dad, Bill, turns 100 today!
David McFadden's father is 100 years old today. Born the same year as Nicanor Parra, who is also still alive and vital down in Chile.
I've met William McFadden twice: at the wedding of his son Dave to Merlin Homer, and at a small private launch party Mansfield Press threw in the Hamilton home of Gary Barwin and Beth Bromberg to celebrate Dave's 2013 book, Mother Died Last Summer, a journal of a 1992 trip to Europe he took with his dad a year after his mother died.
Bill wrote the introduction to that book. At age 99. And on a manual typewriter. That makes him the oldest writer I've ever worked with editorially! In this video, taken at the Hamilton gathering, Dave reads Bill's introduction to the guests (family, close friends, some local press, the Mansfield crew, the mayor of Hamilton, as well as writers Nelson Ball and Jim Smith), as Bill listens along.
I'll tell you — Bill is about as charming as they get! He is funny, sparkly-eyed, tender — and he also gave me excellent road directions when no one else in the car could figure out exactly where we were in Hamilton. In a booming voice, he also read to the launch guests a brief and lovely thank-you note that he drew from his the inner pocket of his jacket and carefully unfolded.
I wish William McFadden a very happy birthday! I understand it's a cake-and-ice-cream kinda day, with four generations of McFaddens congregating at his home.
So beautiful.
Over and out.
I've met William McFadden twice: at the wedding of his son Dave to Merlin Homer, and at a small private launch party Mansfield Press threw in the Hamilton home of Gary Barwin and Beth Bromberg to celebrate Dave's 2013 book, Mother Died Last Summer, a journal of a 1992 trip to Europe he took with his dad a year after his mother died.
Bill wrote the introduction to that book. At age 99. And on a manual typewriter. That makes him the oldest writer I've ever worked with editorially! In this video, taken at the Hamilton gathering, Dave reads Bill's introduction to the guests (family, close friends, some local press, the Mansfield crew, the mayor of Hamilton, as well as writers Nelson Ball and Jim Smith), as Bill listens along.
I'll tell you — Bill is about as charming as they get! He is funny, sparkly-eyed, tender — and he also gave me excellent road directions when no one else in the car could figure out exactly where we were in Hamilton. In a booming voice, he also read to the launch guests a brief and lovely thank-you note that he drew from his the inner pocket of his jacket and carefully unfolded.
I wish William McFadden a very happy birthday! I understand it's a cake-and-ice-cream kinda day, with four generations of McFaddens congregating at his home.
So beautiful.
Over and out.
January 10, 2014
Al Purdy A-Frame funder stars Smith, Vermeersch & me
Very pleased to be reading for a great cause in Toronto on January 20 — the Al Purdy A-Frame in Ameliasburgh, Prince Edward County, just a short drive from my home in Northumberland County. I'm joining two of my favourite poets — and two very good friends — Jim Smith and Paul Vermeersch. The funder, called Purdy Drinks, will also feature live music, plus the announcement of the first writers-in-residence at the A-Frame.
Over and out.
Over and out.
