Mansfield Press and Wolsak and Wynn are joining forces for a launch of our spring books. Featuring Mansfield authors Gary Barwin (Moon Baboon Canoe), Dani Couture (YAW) and David W. McFadden (Shouting Your Name Down the Well: Tankas and Haiku), and Wolsak and Wynn’s D.D. Miller, David Lee and James Brock. It is at Homegrown Hamilton, 27 King William Street. Please join us. There will be a cash bar but otherwise it’s free!
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Upcoming Readings and Latest News
READINGS
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 11, 7 PM — WINDSOR
Peter Norman (Water Damage) launches his new novel, Emberton, along with Micheline Maylor. Biblioasis, 1520 Wyandotte East. Free.
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 11, 7:30 PM — OTTAWA
Jason Camlot (What The World Said) reads with Gillian Sze and Janice Tokar at Pressed Café, 750 Gladstone Avenue. Free.
THURSDAY, JUNE 12, 9 PM — TORONTO
Dani Couture (YAW) is reading as part of An Evening With Some of Toronto’s Favourite Queer Writers. The Steady, 1051 Bloor West.PWYC.
SUNDAY, JUNE 15, 7 PM — HAMILTON
Mansfield Press and Wolsak and Wynn join forces for a joint launch. Featuring Mansfield authors Gary Barwin (Moon Baboon Canoe), Dani Couture (YAW) and David W. McFadden (Shouting Your Name Down the Well: Tankas and Haiku), and Wolsak and Wynn’s D.D. Miller, David Lee and James Brock. Homegrown Hamilton, 27 King William Street. Free.
THURSDAY, JUNE 19, 7:30 PM — COBOURG, ON
Stuart Ross (Our Days in Vaudeville) reads as part of the Third Thursday Poetry Series, along with former Cobourg poet laureate Eric Winter and Sharon Knap/Donna Lee. Meet at 66 King Street West, 66 King Street West. Free.
THURSDAY, JUNE 19, 8:15 PM — TORONTO
Jim Smith (Happy Birthday, Nicanor Parra) reads as part of the Hot-Sauced Words Reading Series, with JonArno Lawson. Black Swan Tavern, 154 Danforth Avenue. PWYC.
FRIDAY, JUNE 20, 7:00 PM — MONTRÉAL — QC
Reading with Gary Barwin and Marc Di Saverio, Argo Bookshop 1915 Rue Sainte-Catherine Ouest,
SATURDAY, JUNE 21, 2 PM — FONTHILL, ON
Jim Smith (Happy Birthday, Nicanor Parra) reads as part of the Niagara Literary Arts Festival, along with 10 other writers. Pelham Public Library, 43 Pelham Town Square. Free.
SATURDAY, JUNE 21, 6 PM — ST. CATHARINES, ON
Jim Smith (Happy Birthday, Nicanor Parra) reads as part of the Niagara Literary Arts Festival, along with 4 other writers. Patrick Sheehan’s Irish Pub, 101 St. Paul’s Street. Free.
THURSDAY, JUNE 26, 7:30 PM — TORONTO
Gary Barwin reads as part of the Livewords reading series, with Adam Getty, Sonja Greckol and Laurie D. Graham. Black Swan Tavern, 154 Danforth Avenue. PWYC.
NEWS
Nelson Ball (In This Thin Rain) has a new book out from BookThug. A Gathering is a sequence of poems in memory of the poet David UU (1948-1994).
Gary Barwin (Moon Baboon Canoe) has a new collaborative poetry chapbook out with Ottawa poet Amanda Earl. It’s called Bone Sapling and it’s published by AngelHouse Press.
George Bowering (Teeth) will be the focus of an issue of the Vancouver-based literary journal The Capilano Review.
Alice Burdick (Holler) has new work in the Canadian supplement of the Tel Aviv-based arts magazine Hava LeHaba.
Jaime Forsythe (Sympathy Loophole) has a new poem in the Canadian supplement of the Tel Aviv-based arts magazine Hava LeHaba.
Sara Heinonen’s debut short story collection, Dear Leaves, I Miss You All, received a very positive review in the current issue of Broken Pencil.
David W. McFadden (Shouting Your Name Down the Well: Tankas and Haiku) has a memoir piece in the June issue of Toronto Life, about being a poet with Alzheimer’s.
Peter Norman (Water Damage) has a new poem in the current issue of The Walrus.
Stuart Ross (Our Days in Vaudeville) has two new poems in the current issue of the New Orleans-based literary zine Fell Swoop. He also has a new chapbook, Nice Haircut, Fiddlehead, out with Kingston micropress Puddles of Sky. In other news, Stuart is part of the sound/noise trio Donkey Lopez, who have just released their first CD, Juan Lonely Night.
Jim Smith (Happy Birthday, Nicanor Parra) has poems in the Canadian supplement of the Tel Aviv-based arts magazine Hava LeHaba.
Tom Walmsley (Dog Eat Rat) has fiction in the debut issue of The Tawdry Goat, published by Ottawa-based Amanda Earl, and new poetry in the Canadian supplement of the Tel Aviv-based arts magazine Hava LeHaba.
Sue Goyette on David W. McFadden
Celebrated Halifax poet Sue Goyette, whose marvellous book Ocean has been shortlisted for the 2014 Griffin Poetry Prize, recently read at Ottawa’s VerseFest with David W. McFadden. Dave, of course, took last year’s Canadian Griffin for his collection What’s the Score? and is currently launching Shouting Your Name Down The Well: Tankas and Haiku (both titles from Mansfield Press).
Sue had this to say in her weekly column in the newsletter for the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia, and she was happy to share it with us, and allow us to share it here. Thanks so much, Sue!
I want to tell you about a poet I read with last week at a poetry festival in Ottawa. David McFadden was diagnosed a couple of years ago with logopenic aphasia (a form of Alzheimer’s disease) and is forgetting his words. He brought a binder to the podium filled with his poems as well as a script he could read introducing the poems because thinking up words on the spot has become a problem. In this way, he invited the audience to participate in the reading in a way I hadn’t encountered at a poetry reading before.
We sometimes waited for him to sound out words before saying them, which he did with such honeyed delight: not house, he would exclaim after reading a line but horse! The poem reshuffling this new noun. We were invited to witness and then participate in his delight, the flourish he’d make with his hand when he finished a poem without a hitch, the surprise and — here’s when there’s no proper word for the expression on his face (delight, homecoming, curiosity, agreement all mixed up with a bashful humility and a little composure) — when we laughed at the poem ruffling its fur then settling into the animal it was originally meant to be. Which delighted McFadden even more, if that is possible, and there we were at a poetry reading volleying the best kind of humanity back and forth like a beach ball, the poems all duck feet and startled at finding themselves out of their water, splayed and so compelling, with all of us gawking.
That was one side of the performance but, more bravely, the other was a man in his mid-seventies persisting and showing us a little something about dignity and community. There were greenhouses on the outskirts of the town I grew up in and the light they gave off was an integral part of the landscape, blushing the sky with a steadiness of flowers and their glow. McFadden’s reading gave off a glow like that and we found ourselves seriously in each other’s company celebrating someone courageous enough to let us see what forgetting looks like. And that his partner [Merlin Homer] sat in the second row, an anchor he’d use to realign himself, made the delight all the more palpable. Look what I’m getting away with, he’d grin at her.
When we applauded, sure we clapped for the poems and for the poet, but we also clapped for the real human of him, how he, in believing we were good enough to welcome him, made us worthy of the welcoming. He showed us it can look and feel this good and, in this way, made a path of sorts, that we may, one day, need. Potent. And righteous. Happy National Poetry Month indeed. — Sue Goyette
Gary Barwin Gets Inside Stephen Harper
Here’s a great video for a poem that appears in Gary Barwin’s brand new Moon Baboon Canoe.
Moon Baboon Canoe Trailer
Here is a little trailer for Gary Barwin’s Moon Baboon Canoe which will be launched in Toronto on April 9th at the Monarch Tavern.
