reading is sexy!

Check out my CanLit roundup post on Schema.ca

on palimpsests and the inter-web

After I had the great fortune to attend five or so days of VIWF (Vancouver International Writers & Readers Festival) 2008 and blog about it, I began to have serious literary blogging withdrawal.


But then I thought, I have a blog. I go to stuff. I've got a shitty Canon PowerShot A530 digi-cam. Why not write about the readings and launches I attend? Wow! I thought. Why didn't I think of that before?

Ergo:


Front Row, l to r: Betsy Warland, Peter Quartermain, Roy Miki
Second Row, l to r: Pauline Butling, Fred Wah

On October 28th at the Helen Pitt Art Gallery, Oana Avasilichioaei launched feria: a poempark, with readings by Jeff Derksen, Meredith Quartermain and Jen Currin.

feria: a poempark uses Vancouver’s Hastings Park as its palimpsest. Park and book coincide, layering landscape, history, architecture, exploring what is natural, what is language and whose voices are we listening to.

This evening was palimpsest upon palimpsest, which included the screening of a short film by Thierry Collins (view here) and a performance by the evening's host/curator Michael Turner. Turner enacted a palimpsest on Oana's last name by writing the topography of Vancouver over it, a delicious and appropriate moment.



Turner also invited the audience to win a prize by naming another landmark palimpsest in Vancouver, which seems to be his wont. The Woodwards Building is of course the most obvious, but a clever woman several rows back mentioned the Bomax sign (once the biggest neon sign in North America, now partially obscured by a Toys"R"Us sign) on Broadway.

If I'd been on the ball, I might have mentioned a further palimpsest of the Bomax sign in Vancouver band Young & Sexy's song "The City You Live in is Ugly," (lyric: They covered up the Bomax sign/With Toys R Us you didn't make a fuss/But now you're regretting it) which incidentally is the first tune I'd heard that exactly mirrored my own ambivalence towards this godforsaken port town that I'd willingly moved to.....



I digress, I digress.

Good city poems by Jeff Derksen



Jen Currin



Meredith Quartermain



and of course Ms. Oana Avasilichioaei



I really enjoyed feria, but can't speak to it more here, as I've already lent it to CBC media archivist extraordinaire / Vancouver history afficionado Colin Preston. You may be able to track him down at the Heart of the City festival to ask him what he thinks.

May is Asian Heritage Month

Visit CBC's Asian Heritage Month site for all your Asian Heritage Month needs

letter writing club!

i heart the regional assembly of text

Awards! Prizes! Keeping the Blues Alive!

Just a bit of family bragging here:

2008 Keeping the Blues Alive Awards

Twenty-one individuals and organizations will be honored with The Blues Foundation's 2008 Keeping the Blues Alive (KBA) Award during a recognition brunch at the Downtown Doubletree Hotel Saturday, February 2, 2008, in Memphis Tennessee. The KBA ceremony will be held in conjunction with the 24th International Blues Challenge (IBC) weekend of events that will feature the semifinals and finals of the world’s largest gathering of Blues bands, as well as seminars, presentations, and receptions for blues societies, fans, and professionals.

The Keeping the Blues Alive Awards recognize the significant contributions to Blues music made by the people behind the scenes. Each is selected on the basis of merit by a select panel of Blues professionals. KBA Chairman Art Tipaldi notes with respect to this year’s recipients, “The committee is once again impressed with the quality of the selected recipients - the outstanding men, women, and organizations that have evidenced a longstanding commitment to the Blues genre. In recent years, The Blues Foundation has increasingly recognized the global reach of this indigenous Afro-American art form and the 2008 honorees certainly reflect this awareness, with recipients hailing from Canada, France, and Sweden, in addition to the United States."

This year's winner of the Keeping the Blues Alive Award for Public Radio is Holger Peterson, host of CBC Radio's Saturday Night Blues. (above)

The award is a great honour for Holger, for Saturday Night Blues and also for the show's producer, who also happens to be my dear uncle. Three cheers for Temptacious D!



Maybe he'll bring me something cool from Memphis. Like.......Elvis.

THREE DAYS IN NOVEMBER: LOUIS CABRI

Louis Cabri, shown here with the lovely and talented Nicole Markotic

===========================================
THREE DAYS IN NOVEMBER: LOUIS CABRI
Sponsored by the Canada Council for the Arts
Capilano College Creative Writing, Emily Carr Institute& the Kootenay School of Writing
===========================================

LOUIS CABRI teaches contemporary poetry and poetics and critical theory at the University of Windsor. He has published widely on Bruce Andrews, Peter Inman, Frank O'Hara, Catriona Strang, Fred Wah, Ezra Pound, and Zukofsky, poetry's "social command", and the literary nonce-word. Current projects include a study of Louis Zukofsky and the Language Poets, a collection of essays on contemporary poetics, and
anthologizing a poets-in-dialogue series he edited and curated (PhillyTalks, 1997-2001). Cabri's poetry book The Mood Embosser (Coach House Books, 2003) was acclaimed as a 2003 Book of the Year by the Small Press Traffic Literary Arts Center (San Francisco).


Over three days in November, Cabri will be giving several readings and
talks, culminating in an afternoon seminar at the Kootenay School of
Writing on poetry and "the social." Times and locations are as follows:

- CAPILANO COLLEGE: Reading & Q/A
Thursday, Nov. 1
1:30 pm, Library 322
2055 Purcell Way, North Vancouver

- EMILY CARR: Reading & Q/A
Thursday, Nov. 1
7:00 pm, SB 406
Granville Island, Vancouver

- SPARTACUS BOOKS / KSW: Reading & Talk
Friday, Nov. 2
7:30 pm, 319 W. Hastings, Vancouver

- KOOTENAY SCHOOL OF WRITING (HQ): Seminar
Saturday, Nov. 3
1:30 - 4:30, 309-207 W. Hastings, Vancouver
(604.313.6903)


Suggested Reading and Listening:

http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Cabri.html

http://www.monoecious.org/cabri-nonce.html

http://www.chbooks.com/archives/online_books/mood_embosser/


For more info, contact:
Roger Farr, Capilano College
rfarr@capcollege.bc.ca
604.986.1911 (2554)

--

http://www.capilanocreativewriting.blogspot.com

Vancouver Literary-acopia - September 17-21, 2007

Upcoming this week, Memewar Magazine presents the Short Line Reading Series at the Railway Club on Monday, September 19th. Readers for this event include George K. Ilsley, Patrick Morison, Kevin Murray, Elizabeth Bachinsky, Amanda Ryan and Brendan McLeod. The Railway Club is upstairs at 579 Dunsmuir Street and serves, I'm told, espresso martinis, a beverage Miss Snark will definitely have to add to her list of preferred drinks. Caffeine + Alcohol? What's not to love? As the series is free, one should have enough change in pocket to partake in one's poison of choice.








Continuing with the readings-at-bars theme, so appropriate for the alcoholic in every writer, Tuesday, September 18th sees the Capilano College Creative Writing Program Reading at Pat's Pub on east Hastings. This open-mic reading inaugurates Cap College's new Associate of Arts Degree in Creative Writing. Terrifying as the prospect of an open mic reading is to the Snarky Monkey, this reading does hold promise given the deservedly good reputation of Cap College alumni and faculty.

Wednesday, September 19th: Take a breather. Do the laundry.

Thursday, September 20th: New UBC reading series Play Chthonics (say that ten times fast. Go ahead, do it) kicks-off their 2007-08 season with a reading by Catriona Strang and Sina Queyras. Ms. Strang is, of course, the local writer whose many collaborations with the late Nancy Shaw include Busted (Coach House 2001) and Cold Trip (Nomados 1996), as well as the upcoming Light Sweet Crude to be published by Line Books. Strang's partner is hunky clarinetist about town François Houle. Sina Queyras' 2006 Coach House release Lemon Hound is one of those books that makes Miss Snark want to hang up her pen in shame. Lisa Robertson's The Men is another. This should be a great reading, but you'll have to get yourself all the way west to Thea’s Lounge in the Thea Koerner Graduate Student Centre on 6371 Crescent Road at UBC. Translink estimated an hour and twenty minutes from my house in East Van, with two transfers.

The week's not over yet. Save some energy for a Nomados book launch at the People's Coop Bookstore on 1391 Commercial Drive on Friday, September 21st. The literary press, a joint effort of local literati couple Peter and Meredith Quartermain, will launch When Snakes Awaken by Ken Belford and Articulations by Fred Wah. I'm fairly certain the Co-op doesn't serve alcohol, but as you'll be on the Drive, sustenance is only a stumble away. Tell them Freddy sent you.

Vancouver Literary-acopia - September 13-14, 2007

It's mid-September, and the events just keep coming. Snarky Monkey has been rather busy attending launches and reading this past week or so, and the fall schedule shows no signs of slowing down.

Thursday, September 13th saw the launch of The Capilano Review's Capilano College Issue at the Van East Cultural Centre, with readings by a host of local literary luminaries. Snarky Monkey's personal favourite was Clint Burnham's 'rap poem', complete with dj, Hawaii Five-O references and white-boy writer panache.

Friday, September 14th saw the launch of Donato Mancini's Æthel, a beautiful book of visual poetry with a beautiful cover designed by Clint Hutzulak of Mutasis.com with photo by Guillermo Perales.

Sources tell me Clint is the brother of local composer/performer/producer/artist/experimental musician Lee Hutzulak, a wunderkind about town recently seen at the stitching and unstitching performance series. A third sibling, Todd, is a photographer, blogger and multi-instrumentalist. Oh to be a leaf on that family tree of creatives!

This is Mancini's second book from New Star Books, and publisher Rolf Maurer was in attendance, as well as the usual Kootenay School of Writing / literary crowd. New Star provided free appetizers in the form of pita bread and dips, and there was beer and wine for sale.

bored tonight?

if you're out around Kitsilano this evening and looking for something to do, why swing by The Wired Monk and check out Lindsay Tipping & Bex? Do you think you can handle it?

PAWS FOR A CAUSE

For the second year in a row, I'll be walking in the SPCA's Paws For A Cause, a fundraiser to support the BC SPCA's many valuable programs. If you'd like to join us, the walk takes place September 9, 2007 at Vanier Park. Please sponsor me here. Or I'll force you to listen to stories of my cat. And nobody wants that.

Laura Elrick and Rodrigo Toscano Reading on Wednesday, Jan. 31st

the Kootenay School of Writing hosts Toscano and Elrick this upcoming Wednesday, January 31st.

I'll be one of the performers of Toscano's "Truax Inimical," along with Andrea Actis; Margot Butler; Mariner Janes; Donato Mancini; Nicholas Perrin. Should be fun - hope to see you there!

Reading to take place at Spartacus Books at 7:30 pm.

suck harder; you are becoming a poet

i always knew dave chokroun was some kind of insane genius, but the extent of his mad brilliance was not totally clear to me until the i saw the sorrow and the pity at the cobalt's fake jazz wednesdays series on jan. 24th. holy shit. not only can the man play the drums whilst screaming about fucking the system, eating shit, and counting donuts (this is no small feat; i once played the skins myself, and talking at the same time is bloody difficult. nevermind screaming coherently; in time) but he sounds brilliant whilst doing so. robots on fire will be at the cobalt this upcoming wednesday and it promises to be another ripping good time. as long as you don't mind your shoes sticking to the floor, or the possibility of acquiring various strains of hep from touching flat surfaces inside the club. a banner at the back asserts that this is vancouver's hardcore bar, and i have no reason to doubt them. (see previous post re: my middle-class upbringing.) bring purell.