here comes april

Are you ready for seven-events-a-day madness? Good, because April (National Poetry Month) will probably be one-or-two-events-a-day madness, so you should be more than prepared to handle it. Here are thirteen sixteen eighteen April lit readings to get things started (including a 125-readings-in-one event and a two whole festivals as single listings - be sure to visit their websites and look into them more). I'll update this page with more readings as they slowly trickle in.

I'm involved in two of the events near the end of the month - see if you can spot me!

Friends Across the Pacific: An Evening of Readings & Performances
Thursday, March 31st, 7:30 PM - 10:30 PM
VIVO Media Arts Centre
1965 Main Street, Vancouver
Featuring: Daphne Marlatt, Joanne Arnott, Proma Tagore, Roy Miki, Lydia Kwa, Hiromi Goto, Fred Wah, and more!
By donation, all proceeds to Japanese Earthquake Relief


Multilingual Poetry Slam
Saturday, April 2nd, 4:30 - 6:00 PM
Vancouver Public Library, Alma VanDusen Room
350 West Georgia St., Vancouver
Featuring: Karen Houle, Fiona Lam, George McWhirter, Garry Thomas Morse, Andreas Schroeder, Nilofar Shidmehr, and Rhea Tregebov
Free!


The Peculiar Poetry Cabaret
Saturday, April 2nd, 8:30 PM
The Wise Hall
1882 Adanac Street, Vancouver
Featuring: C.R. Avery, Barbara Adler, Al Mader and more!
$10-$15, proceeds to the VIPF


BC Book Prize Soirée Night
Tuesday, April 5th, 7:00 - 9:00 PM
The Listel Hotel
1300 Robson Street, Vancouver
Featuring: Finalist authors signing books. Not sure which. Who cares, really - it's a free soirée at a fancy hotel. How do you turn down a free soirée?
Free (as I think I made fairly clear above)


Incite Reading Series
Wednesday, April 6th, 7:30 PM
Alice MacKay room, Central Library
350 West Georgia St., Vancouver
Featuring: Timothy Taylor, Gurjinder Basran, and Rupinder Gill
Free!


Twisted Poets Literary Salon
Thursday, April 7th, 7:00 PM — 10:00 PM
The Prophouse Cafe
1636 Venables Street, Vancouver
Featuring: Diane Tucker and Eric Hamber
$5 (suggested donation)


Robson Reading Series
Thursday, April 7th, 7:00 PM
UBC Bookstore, Robson Square
800 Robson St, Vancouver
Featuring: Ryan Knighton and Ed Macdonald
Free!


Three Poets Reading
Saturday, April 9th, 3:00 PM
Alma VanDusen & Peter Kaye Rooms, VPL Central Library
350 W. Georgia St., Vancouver
Featuring: Cathy Ford, bill bissett and Mona Fertig
Free!


Lit Fest New West
Friday, April 15th (evening) and Saturday, April 16th (all day)
Douglas College, New West Campus
700 Royal Avenue, New Westminster
Featuring: Free worskhops, and performances by Steven Galloway, C.R. Avery, Dennis E. Bolen and more!
Free!


Third Friday Reading Series
Friday, April 15th, 8:00 PM
People's Co-op Bookstore
1391 Commercial Drive
Featuring: Justin Lukyn
Free!


Vancouver International Poetry Festival
April 18th - 23rd, 2011
Events all over Commercial Drive, mostly at Cafe Deux Soleils, Wise Hall and Havana (view full event listings here)
Featuring: Oh man... Susan Musgrave, bill bissett, Billeh Nickerson, Lilly Allen, Mike McGee, Jem Rolls, Brendan McLeod, Heather Haley, Barbara Adler, and many, many more!
$60 for a festival pass, prices vary for individual events (check here)


Spoken Ink Reading Series
Tuesday, April 19th, 2011, 7:30 PM
La Fontana Caffe
101-3701 East Hastings Street, Burnaby
Featuring: Tariq Malik
Free!


Short Line Reading Series
Tuesday, April 19th, 6:30 - 8:30 PM
The Railway Club
579 Dunsmuir Street, Vancouver
Featuring: Jamie Reid and Daniel Zomparelli
Free!


Incite Reading Series
Wednesday, April 20th, 7:30 PM
Alice MacKay room, Central Library
350 West Georgia St., Vancouver
Featuring: Joyce Carol Oates and Johanna Skibsrud
Free!


Twisted Poets Literary Salon
Thursday, April 21st, 7:00 PM — 10:00 PM
The Prophouse Cafe
1636 Venables Street, Vancouver
Featuring: Rob Taylor (hey, that's me!) and Catherine McNeil
$5 (suggested donation)


4 poets, 10 hours, 13 kilometers, 125 readings
Thursday, April 21st
Starts at 9:00 AM, readings all over town (see poster)
Finish line reading, 7:00pm - 8:30 PM
Vancouver Public Library, Meeting Room, Level 3
350 West Georgia Street, Vancouver
Featuring: Ray Hsu, Kim Fu, Andrea Bennett and Kevin Spenst
Free!


Robson Reading Series
Thursday, April 21st, 7:00 PM
UBC Bookstore, Robson Square
800 Robson St, Vancouver
Featuring: Jacob McArthur Mooney, Susan Musgrave and Matt Rader
Free!


Poetry is Dead Issue #3 Launch
Thursday, April 21st, 7:00 PM (doors), 8:00 PM (start)
Havana Theatre
1212 Commercial Drive
Featuring: Ben Rawluk, Renee Sarojini Saklikar, Shannon Rayne, and more
$10 (includes a free subscription)


"Five", OCW Magazine's Fifth Birthday Party
Tuesday, April 26th, 7:00 - 11:00 PM
The Waldorf Hotel, Cabaret Room
1489 East Hastings St, Vancouver
Featuring: "PechaKucha" style five minute talks by Barbara Adler, TJ Dawe, Kevin Spenst, Rob Taylor (me!) and many more!
$10 (includes a free subscription)

at the mercy of someone else's display

On the new poetry-focused issue of O Magazine, and one photo-spread in particular:

“Spring Fashion Modeled by Rising Young Poets.” The words are heart-sinking. For some readers, this will be because poetry represents a higher form of culture that can only be debased by the commentary of Oprah Winfrey and the pencil skirts of L’Wren Scott. But this isn’t quite right. Any critic knows there are dozens of poetry collections published every year that are considerably less culturally valuable than Winfrey’s many enterprises and that could only be improved by pencil skirts, preferably by being wrapped in several of them and chucked in the East River. The problem is that poetry can’t approach the world inhabited by O and fashion design — that is, the world of American mass culture — with the same swagger as other fields do. When Terrell Owens holds forth on poetry in O (yes, he does), much of the audience knows that Owens is a football player, and has at least a vague idea of what football is, what it means and why it inspires otherwise reasonable people to put Styrofoam cheese slices on their heads. But poets and poetry readers... we can’t bring our context with us. We’re at the mercy of someone else’s display. The sad thing about “Spring Fashion Modeled by Rising Young Poets” is not that the photos are a debasement of Art. The sad thing is that they capture an inevitable and impossible yearning. The chasm between the audience for poetry and the audience for O is vast, and not even the mighty Oprah can build a bridge from empty air.

- David Orr, in his essay "Oprah Magazine's Adventures in Poetry" in the New York Times' Sunday Book Review. He goes on to talk about how questions like "where does poetry come from?" inevitably lead to answers "that make poetry sound like God’s own electric Kool-Aid acid test." Funny, smart stuff. Read the whole thing here.

p.s. Kathleen Rooney posted this response to Orr on the Harriet blog. An excerpt:

Those who declare—as David Orr does in the New York Times—that “The chasm between the audience for poetry and the audience for O is vast, and not even the mighty Oprah can build a bridge from empty air” fail to properly credit not Winfrey but poetry. One hopes that they do so out of an honest ignorance of the role poetry actually plays in the lives of most people who read, write, and share it. One fears, however, that they do so out of a desire to preserve poetry as a domain of connoisseurs, as an elite signifier for the educated and affluent. Someone may be well-served by this attitude; poetry is not.

some more advice for readers

A little more pointed than the last batch I posted on silaron, clearly written after the authors were traumatized at a particularly awful reading (set of readings? lifetime of readings?):

3) A poetry recital should be a performance. Most poets read their poems in front of an audience as if they were lecturing to a group of college students. This betrays two illusions. The first is that the poetry audience is the same as a classroom of captives. The second is that the audience must indulge the poet, rather than the poet showing sufficient respect for the audience to entertain it.

4) A poem should be recited to an audience before it is ever published. This should be a part of the poet’s method of composition and revision. Our modern practice is exactly the reverse: to publish a book of poems and then read them aloud, generally for the first time, to an audience. Is it any wonder that so many poets are so dreadful?

- The editors of the Contemporary Poetry Review, in a blog post written after attending this year's AWP conference. You can read the whole post here.

p.s. The CPR editors posted a follow-up, further expanding on their "advice", here.

to liberate his feet / in the sand

On the bus last week, I saw this ad for Westside real estate agent Anthea Poon:

(click on the photo to see a bigger version)

It's great to see that Poetry in Transit has seeped into the collective consciousness of this city enough that an ad agency thought this was worth a go. Not enough of a go to write something other than... um... free-verse ad copy with scattershot punctuation... but that pun at the end really seals the deal!

Gotta love it!

margin also means frontier

In case you didn't take two days off work back in January to watch live-streaming of the "North of Invention" Canadian experimental poetry festival in Philadelphia, PennSound has now posted recordings of the talks and readings on their website.

There is a silly amount content there - fourteen hours or so. I have only seen a small portion of it myself, as I have these nasty habits of sleeping and eating from time to time. One of the highlights of what I've seen is M. NourbeSe Philip talking about the difference for a black person between writing in the US, England and Canada. On writing in Canada, she says:

"I can see myself as maybe taking on some aspect of the Canadian geography, in the sense that I felt like I was on the margins, but "margin" also means "frontier", with nothing that would really crush me, necessarily, as in the long tradition here [in the US] and the very sharply argued and reasoned history of African-Americans. In Canada it seemed that everything was open, and I had to either collapse into the nothingness or find my place somewhere."

Here's her full video:



Another highlight is Christian Bök explaining his Xenotext experiment. As someone who isn't caught up in the idea of creating "timeless" writing, I get a kick out of Bök's extending the logic of "eternal" poetry to absurd lengths. Of course, once the sun goes red giant on us in five billion years, his bacterium is going to fare no better than Keats' greatest hits...

His full talk:



So that's just under two hours of content. For the other twelve hours, click here. But for goodness sake, drink plenty of water, blink often, and take nap breaks from time to time, ok?

p.s. Christian Bök has posted an update on the Xenotext here.

tagged "personal"

The Other Side of Ourselves went to the printer yesterday! If I were a George Murray-esque aphorism, I would be "Anxiety is the love child of Excitement and Terror". Heavy on the excitement.

The book is out at the beginning of April. If you're keen, I've laid out the different ways you can pre-order it here.

Of late, I've been bunkered down in my house doing last minute edits (and a good deal of fact checking, which would quickly devolve into Wikipedia-surfing). It's about time for me to go outside again, and luckily I have a great reason to do so tonight:

Short Line Reading Series: Poets in Conversation
Tuesday, March 15th, 6:30 PM
The Railway Club
579 Dunsmuir Street, Vancouver
Featuring: Shannon Rayne, Warren Dean Fulton, Mariner Janes, Daniela Elza and Christine Leclerc
Free!

So long as the cold I'm currently bogged down with passes, I will be making a cameo appearance at the reading, performing this poem with Daniela Elza. More importantly, this reading will mark the literary return (of sorts) of Mariner Janes, one of my favourite poets from back in my High Altitude Poetry days up at SFU. You know how some people have talent, and other people have talent? Mariner's all over that second group.

And as if you needed any more convincing, you've got readings from Shannon Rayne, Warren Dean Fulton and Christine Leclerc. So for goodness sake, I'll see you there, right?

On the reading front, I've also added two new listings to the big reading list for March. We're now up to twenty-one for the month.

Oh, and last but certainly not least, I have a poem in the new "Form" issue of Poetry is Dead. Well, 1.22 poems, actually, as two lines from my poem in the last issue ("After the Game") are quoted in a cento by Tracy Stefanucci. The full poem in question is "We speak of silence, not in breath", a triptych in four parts (quadtych?). As I'm sure you, oh diligent silaron reader, are already aware, if you read the interview under the collaborative poem that I linked to three paragraphs ago, you'll see just how suitable it is that the publication of "We speak of silence, not in breath" coincides with my Short Line reading with Daniela. If you somehow missed the link, here it is again.

The issue also includes an essay by Jacob McArthur Mooney, an interview with Sina Queyras, and loads and loads of poems by loads and loads of poets (you can see much of the contributor list by clicking on, and expanding, the photo of the cover). Notable among the contributors is occasional silaron house guest Renee Saklikar, whose poem (a sestina) drops seven times as many F-bombs as my entire book. Congrats to Renee on that!

Alright, that's enough cough syrup-induced rambling for now.

I hope to see you tonight!

some more march readings

Added below and to the big list for March:

Locution Reading Series
Thursday, March 10th, 7:00 PM
Pulpfiction Books
2422 Main Street, Vancouver
Featuring: Charlie Demers, Jeff Stautz, Natalie Thompson, and more!
Free!


Cross-Border Pollination Series
Saturday, March 12th, 5:00 PM - 7:30 PM
SFU Harbour Center, Room 2270
515 W. Hastings Street, Vancouver
Featuring: Miranda Pearson, Wayde Compton, Jacqueline Osherow, and more!
Free!


Cabin Fever: Poetry Reading
Monday, March 14th, 7:00 PM
Alma VanDusen Room, Vancouver Public Library
350 West Georgia Street, Vancouver
Featuring: Anna Swanson, Bren Simmers and Maleea Acker
Free!


Short Line Reading Series: Poets in Conversation
Tuesday, March 15th, 6:30 PM
The Railway Club
579 Dunsmuir Street, Vancouver
Featuring: Shannon Rayne, Warren Dean Fulton, Mariner Janes, Daniela Elza and Christine Leclerc (and, just maybe, a cameo from yours truly)
Free!

more translation than self-expression

I hate the idea of revision being a lessening of some original insight. Most original insights are unoriginal, of course, and this is something I see less of as my “peer group” of poets is maturing along with me. Revision (shared revision) isn’t about dulling the edges of the bright, shiny, ax of your brilliance, it’s about pushing the self-expressive source of a poem forward towards its end goal of person-to-person communication. A poem is more an act of translation than an act of self-expression, anyway. Translation is a social gesture, so it benefits from the attentive, patient, eye of another person.

- Jacob McArthur Mooney, answering Kevin Spenst's editing questions over at his Poetic Edits blog. You can read the whole post here.

the makings of you

I'm very proud of our latest "Special Series" over at One Ghana, One Voice. Throughout March we're featuring poems from Nii Ayikwei Parkes, a rapidly-rising Ghanaian poet who currently lives in the UK. His most recent poetry chapbook, Ballast: A Remix, was a 2010 finalist for the Michael Marks Award for Poetry Pamphlets, and his first novel, Tail of the Bluebird, was shortlisted for the 2010 Commonwealth Writers' Prize.

His first full collection of poems, The Makings of You, was published in late-2010 by Peepal Tree Press, and it is certainly one of the finest books of poetry I've read so far in 2011 (and I suspect few will surpass it over the rest of the year). You don't need to take my word for it though, as all the poems we'll be featuring on OGOV will be from The Makings of You.

The first poem in the series is up, and can be read here. And here's his first author bio/Q+A. Once they are all posted, the whole series of poems and interviews will be available here.

I'm not sure which I'm more excited about: the poems or the interviews. Parkes is a sharp essayist, and a champion of Ghanaian poetry (in fact, the "Poems from Ghana" page on his old wordpress site was one of the only online sources of Ghanaian poems that existed pre-OGOV, and served as a source of inspiration), so I relish the opportunity to have a back-and-forth Q+A with him over the next month.

Keep an eye on OGOV this month - new content will be posted each Saturday!

some march readings

Vancouver reading series' seem to be scheduling more frequently and doing a better job of getting their reading lists out in advance. Because of this I can give you - WAMMO - twelve seventeen nineteen twenty-one readings right at the beginning of the month. Yay reading serieses!

Michael Park and Friends II: Featuring Works by Contemporary Canadian Composers
Wednesday, March 2nd, 8:00 – 9:00 PM
Piano Lounge, Graham House, Green College
6201 Cecil Green Park Road, UBC, Vancouver
Featuring: Ray Hsu
Free?


Twisted Poets Literary Salon
Thursday, March 3rd, 7:00 PM — 10:00 PM
The Prophouse Cafe
1636 Venables Street, Vancouver
Featuring: Billeh Nickerson and Daniel Zomparelli
$5 (suggested donation)


SFU Special Collections Reading
Friday, March 4th, 12:30 – 1:30 PM
W.A.C. Bennett Library, Room 7100
Simon Fraser University, 8888 University Drive, Burnaby
Featuring: Stephen Collis and Clint Burnham
Free!


W2 Uptopia Festival - Vancouver Women Read
Saturday, March 5th, 8:00 PM
W2 Storyeum
151 West Cordova Street, Vancouver
Featuring: Hiromi Goto, Antonette Rea, Hannah Calder, Kim Fu, and a keynote address from Peaches. How can you miss that?
$26 (net proceeds go to the W2 Inner-City Girls’ Summer Creative Tech Camp)


Incite Reading Series
Wednesday, March 9th, 7:30 PM
Alice MacKay room, Central Library
350 West Georgia St., Vancouver
Featuring: Diane Warren, Aurian Haller and Evelyn Lau
Free!


Robson Reading Series
Thursday, March 10th, 7:00 PM
UBC Bookstore, Robson Square
800 Robson St, Vancouver
Featuring: John Gould and Terrence Young
Free!


TWS Reading Series
Thursday, March 10th, 7:00 - 9:30 PM
Rhizome Cafe
317 E. Broadway, Vancouver
Featuring: Dave Gerry, Taryn Hubbard, and more!
Free!


Locution Reading Series
Thursday, March 10th, 7:00 PM
Pulpfiction Books
2422 Main Street, Vancouver
Featuring: Charlie Demers, Jeff Stautz, Natalie Thompson, and more!
Free!


Cross-Border Pollination Series
Saturday, March 12th, 5:00 PM - 7:30 PM
SFU Harbour Center, Room 2270
515 W. Hastings Street, Vancouver
Featuring: Miranda Pearson, Wayde Compton, Jacqueline Osherow, and more!
Free!


Cabin Fever: Poetry Reading
Monday, March 14th, 7:00 PM
Alma VanDusen Room, Vancouver Public Library
350 West Georgia Street, Vancouver
Featuring: Anna Swanson, Bren Simmers and Maleea Acker
Free!


Short Line Reading Series: Poets in Conversation
Tuesday, March 15th, 6:30 PM
The Railway Club
579 Dunsmuir Street, Vancouver
Featuring: Shannon Rayne, Warren Dean Fulton, Mariner Janes, Daniela Elza and Christine Leclerc (and, just maybe, a cameo from yours truly)
Free!


Spoken Ink Reading Series
Tuesday, March 15th, 2011, 7:30 PM
La Fontana Caffe
101-3701 East Hastings Street, Burnaby
Featuring: Mary Choo and Sandra Wickham
Free!


Fractional Jets - Treading - The Race
Wednesday, March 16th, 8:00 PM
Vivo Media Arts
1965 Main Street, Vancouver
Featuring: subTerrain-commissioned monologues by Tim Carlson and Charles Demers
$10


Twisted Poets Literary Salon
Thursday, March 17th, 7:00 PM — 10:00 PM
The Prophouse Cafe
1636 Venables Street, Vancouver
Featuring: Donato Mancini and Jess Hill
$5 (suggested donation)


Third Friday Reading Series
Friday, March 18th, 8:00 PM
People's Co-op Bookstore
1391 Commercial Drive
Featuring: Jordan Scott
Free!


"Subject to Change" Launch
Saturday, March 19th, 3:00 PM
Billy Bishop Legion Hall
1407 Laburnum Street
Featuring: Renee Rodin
Free!


An Evening of Poetry with Ronsdale Press Authors
Sunday, March 20th, 5:00 - 7:00 PM
Ardea Books & Art
2025 W 4th Avenue, Vancouver
Featuring: Inge Israel, Pamela Porter, Barbara Pelman, and refreshments!
Free!


Incite Reading Series
Wednesday, March 23rd, 7:30 PM
Alice MacKay room, Central Library
350 West Georgia St., Vancouver
Featuring: Lorna Crozier, Pauline Holdstock and Susan Juby
Free!


Suzanne Buffam Reading
Thursday, March 24th, 12:00 - 12:50 PM
Green College Coach House, UBC
6201 Cecil Green Park Road, Vancouver
Featuring: Suzanne Buffam
Free!


Robson Reading Series
Thursday, March 24th, 7:00 PM
UBC Bookstore, Robson Square
800 Robson St, Vancouver
Featuring: Suzanne Buffam and Derek Lundy
Free!


Denver/Vancouver: 7 Poets
Sunday, March 27th, 8:00 PM
W2 Storyeum
151 W. Cordova Street, Vancouver
Featuring: Sommer Browning, Brad Cran, Noah Eli Gordon, Ray Hsu, Christine Leclerc, Nikki Reimer, and Broc Russell
$5 (suggested, no one turned away)