Posted on behalf of Jillian Maguire
Please join us for our 6th Virtual Live Reading at Poets Corner!
These 3 poets were all lined up to read for us in person in March of this year when the pandemic hit. We’re delighted to be able to host them at last, if in virtual form.
Fiona Tinwei Lam’s third collection of poetry, Odes & Laments, was launched last fall. She has authored a children’s book, edited The Bright Well: Contemporary Canadian Poems on Facing Cancer, and co-edited Love Me True: Writers Reflect on the Ins, Outs, Ups & Downs of Marriage with Jane Silcott. Lam won The New Quarterly’s Nick Blatchford Prize and was a finalist for the City of Vancouver Book Award. Her work appears in more than thirty anthologies, including The Best of the Best Canadian Poetry in English: 10th Anniversary Edition and Forcefield: 77 Women Poets of BC. Her poetry videos have screened at festivals internationally. She teaches at SFU Continuing Studies. FionaLam.net
Allan Briesmaster has been active on the Canadian literary scene for many years as a workshop leader, readings organizer, editor, and publisher. He was a partner in Quattro Books from 2006 to 2017 and currently runs is own small literary press, Aeolus House. The author of eight full-length books and eight shorter ones, he has given readings and talks and hosted poetry events at venues across the country. The Long Bond: Selected and New Poems was published last fall by Guernica Editions. Allan is a Life Member of the League of Canadian Poets. He lives in Thornhill, Ontario.
Maureen Hynes’sfirst book of poetry, Rough Skin, won the League of Canadian Poets’ Gerald Lampert Award for best first book of poetry by a Canadian. Her 2016 collection, The Poison Colour, was shortlisted in 2016 for both the Pat Lowther and Raymond Souster Awards. Maureen’s fifth book of poetry, Sotto Voce, comes out from Brick Books in fall, 2019. Her poetry has been included in over 25 anthologies, including twice in Best Canadian Poems in English, and in Best of the Best Canadian Poetry, 2017.Maureen is the poetry editor for Our Times magazine, where she encourages submissions that reflect themes about workers’ lives, rights, insights, and social justice. maureenhynes.com
If you want to hear these great poets, you need to register ahead of time. YOU WON’T BE ABLE TO JOIN UNLESS YOU REGISTER.
To attend this month’s virtual live reading, here’s what you need to know…
Venue: Zoom platform online (click the link below to register)
Date: Wednesday, 21 October 2020, from 7:30 to 9:30pm, PDT
Register in advance by clicking this link:
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZApcu6tqD0uEtMV3yQQP7CxbvDrJ_wxW_kS
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about how to join the meeting. If you have any questions contact us in advance at: socialmedia@poetscorner.ca.
Sign up for the open mic
A regular feature of our poetry readings is the Open Mic segment, which is an enduring favourite with both the readers and the audience. To sign up for the Open Mic for September (limit of 10 readers; 3 minutes per reader!) please REGISTER first for the event and then contact us at socialmedia@poetscorner.ca.
Looking forward to seeing you online at our next reading on Wednesday October. 21st at 7:30 pm.
FINISHED! Poetry Reading on September 16th
Our September reading was a foray into work poetry. We started the evening with our first four open mic poets. We heard a range of work from the lighthearted misplacing of temper and sense of humour at the grocery store to the serious examination of family relationships and abuse. Our first feature poet, MC Warrior, read a host of poems about his experience working in the logging and fishing industries and the plight of the labourer. His voice was extra gravelly due to the recent smoke over B.C., which was perfect for reading his gritty, visceral lines. He celebrated the “essential worker” throughout history cleaning up after “important men”. His expertly crafted images transported the audience onto lonely, smelly fishing boats and into dangerous forests. He ended with the title poem from his book Disappearing Minglewood Blues.
Our second half featured another five open mic poets, with Primo chickpea ashcans, lamentations on the distance over which doctors now have to now treat their patients, the fire in Burns Bog, the collapse of the Second Narrows Bridge, and homages to William Carlos Williams and Garry Geddes.
Tom Wayman was our second feature poet. He read poems about his lifetime of activism, fifty years of setting up and taking down chairs for lectures and political meetings, leafletting, memories of old friends at the D.H. Tavern on Sandwich Street, and an imagined encounter with Pete Seeger in a taped-up sweatsuit. Tom’s poetry is powerful, at times humorous, and reminds us of the importance of holding management and government’s feet to the proverbial fire. It was an inspiring evening of poetry our thirty-eight attendees. See you in October
