Debbie: An Epic will be performed in its entirety on Friday, October 21st in LB 671.05 at Concordia University’s LB building from 2 PM – 5 PM. Stop by anytime to listen or join in.
Don McKay’s “Fridge Nocturne”
In “Fridge Nocturne”, a short poem near the beginning of Don McKay’s selected poems, the sleepless poet lies listening to the sound of his fridge, ‘the old/armless weeping willow of the kitchen’. The fridge’s “Humble murmur” brings to his mind several distant rivers–“the Saugeen, the Goulais/the Raisin”. The permeability of the border between the domestic world and the wilderness which lies beyond it marks a landscape whose vastness teaches early that, “Lonely is a knife whose handle fits the mind/too well, its oldest and most hospitable friend” (“Nocturnal Animals”). However, “There is a loneliness/ which must be entered rather than resolved” (“On Leaving”) and to enter the wilderness with Don McKay is to have the sharpest, most informed and responsive guide. Here are his thoughts on the White-throated Sparrow:
I was thinking of the muscles in that grey-white breast,
pectoralis major powering each downstroke,
pectoralis minor with its rope-and-pulley tendon
reaching through the shoulder to the
topside of the humerus to haul it up again;
of the sternum with the extra keel it has evolved to
anchor all that effort, of the dark wind
and the white curl on the waves below, the slow dawn
and the thickening shoreline. (“Load”)
Read the rest of “Introducing Don McKay” at Arc
(Photo Credit: National Post)
Don McKay & Jeramy Dodds, Friday October 7, 2pm, MB 2.130, 1450 Rue Guy
McKay’s collected poems, Angular Unconformity was published in 2014 and he has won the Governor General’s Literary Award for poetry twice, for Night Field (1991) and Another Gravity(2000). Dodds’ most recent publication is a translation of the Poetic Edda (Coach House Books, 2014) from Old Icelandic into English. He is a poetry editor at Coach House Books.
Lunch with Jane Munro & Surprise Guest
Jane Munro, Sept. 23 NOON in LB649 Concordia University, English Department,
A reading from Jane Munro’s award winning book Blue Sonoma
From Judges’ Citation:
Somewhere between the directness and clarity of haiku and Yeats’s ‘An aged man is but a paltry thing’ moves Jane Munro’s hauntingly candid explorations of the hard truths of growing old.
http://www.griffinpoetryprize.com/awards-and-poets/shortlists/2015-shortlist/jane-munro/
THERE WILL ALSO BE A SURPRISE MYSTERY READER!
Dionne Brand / Friday / 7pm
On Friday March 4th, Writers Read is pleased to host an evening with the renowned poet, novelist, and essayist, Dionne Brand. For Montreal, this is a once in a decade or perhaps even a once in a lifetime opportunity to be in the room with Brand, listening to her read and discuss her work.
Dionne Brand’s writing is notable for the beauty of its language, and for its intense engagement with issues of social justice, including particularly issues of gender and race. Dionne Brand has published eighteen books, contributed to seventeen anthologies, written dozens of essays and articles, and made four documentary films for the National Film Board (Canadian Poetry Online). She has won several awards for her writing including the Governor General’s Award and The Griffin Poetry Prize. She is currently a Professor of English at the University of Guelph. Her most recent novel is Love Enough, which is set in Toronto.
In her new novel, Brand explores the enigmas of intimacy, which, like language, do not exist on neutral ground. Through the interconnected stories of four characters – June, Bedri, Da’uud, and Lia – [Brand] imagines the city of Toronto as a setting for pain, heartbreak, disappointment, and fear. –Quill & Quire
Dionne Brand will read at 7pm on March 4th 2016, at the York Amphitheatre (EV 1.605, 1515 St. Catherine Street W., Concordia University). This event is free and open to the public.
Off The Page 2016 Update Reminder
OFF THE PAGE March 17-20, 2016
Confirmed Readers & Call for Participants
In March 2016, Writers Read & Concordia University are hosting the Off The Page literary festival. In cooperation with the Université de Montreal and Librarie Drawn & Quarterly, we are hosting Ben Lerner, Anne Boyer, Jordan Abel, Sonnet L’Abbé, and more. We are also organizing several panels and we need participants. There are details on the panels and how to submit work. The confirmed events are listed below and the rest of the schedule will be confirmed in early March.
MARCH 17, 2016: Jordan Abel, Anne Boyer, Sonnet L’Abbé
Venue: Librarie Drawn & Quarterly, 211 Bernard Ouest, 8pm
JORDAN ABEL’s conceptual writing engages with the representation of Indigenous peoples in Anthropology and popular culture. Abel is the author of The Place of Scraps (Talonbooks 2013), which was a finalist for the Gerald Lampert Award and the winner of the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize, Un/inhabited (Project Space Press and Talonbooks 2015), and Injun (Talonbooks 2016).
SONNET L’ABBÉ is the author of two collections of poetry, A Strange Relief and Killarnoe. She was the most recent Edna Staebler Writer In Residence at Wilfrid Laurier University. L’Abbé was the guest editor of the Best Canadian Poetry 2014 anthology.
ANNE BOYER is the author of Garments Against Women, was educated in the public libraries and universities of Kansas. Boyer works as an Assistant Professor of the Liberal Arts at the Kansas City Art Institute, a four year college of art and design, where she teaches with the poets Cyrus Console and Jordan Stempleman. In 2014, she was diagnosed with highly aggressive triple negative breast cancer which has been the source of her current project, a work about the politics of care in the age of precarity.
MARCH 18, 2016: An Evening with BEN LERNER
7pm, EV 1.605, York Amphitheatre, 1515 Rue St. Catherine.
Ben Lerner is the author of Leaving the Atocha Station (2011) and 10:04 (2014) as well as several full-length poetry collections, including Mean Free Path (2010) and Angle of Yaw (2006), which was a finalist for the National Book Award and the Northern California Book Award. His sonnet sequence, The Lichtenberg Figures (2004), won the Hayden Carruth Award.
Interested attendees can find more information, archival footage from previous readings, and updates on upcoming events at our website, writersreadconcordia.ca, and follow Writers Read on Twitter (@CUWritersRead) and Facebook (writersreadconcordia).
Call for Participants
***Deadline extended to February 28***
Off The Page, a literary festival hosted by Concordia University, is looking for insightful and thought-provoking papers, poems and creative projects that explore varying topics, to be presented and discussed at this year’s three-day festival from March 17ththrough the 19th. Papers should be between 1,250 and 1,750 words (10-15 minutes). Creative projects should be 4-5 pages or 10-15 minutes. Selected papers & projects will be presented in a panel discussion.
Panels
For a full description of each panel go to: https://writersreadconcordia.wordpress.com/off-the-page-2016/
Writing Iconocide
A Queer is a Queer is a Queer (Creative projects only)
Black Love (Creative projects only)
Blurred Boundaries: Between Fiction and ‘The Real’
Editors Talking Editing: The Other Side of Submittable
Behind the Screens
Cursing in Cursive
Where / When / How to Submit
- Send your papers & creative projects to offthepageconcordia@gmail.com
- Include the relevant panel title in the subject line of your email.
- Include a cover sheet with your name, contact information, paper title and relevant panel title with your submission.
- Send by Sunday 28 February 2016, before midnight.
Writers Read is one of a long tradition of diverse literary reading series at Concordia University and has hosted authors including Roxane Gay, Mary Ruefle, Lydia Davis, Roddy Doyle, Mary Gaitskill, Tanya Tagaq, Christian Bok, Rae Armantrout, Emma Donoghue, Charles Bernstein, Lisa Robertson, Gail Scott, and George Elliott Clarke.
Photo Archive: André Alexis
On January 14, 2016, Giller Prize winner, André Alexis joined the students at Concordia for a discussion about his novel Fifteen Dogs, confidence, and howling.
André Alexis Masterclass & Reading
Creative Writing students can sign up on Sina Queyras’ door LB 674.2 or email writersreadconcordia@gmail.com. Space is limited.
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Alexis will also be giving a reading at Librarie Drawn and Quarterly (211 Rue Beranrd Ouest) on Friday January 15th at 7pm.
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Alexis’ debut novel, Childhood (1997), won the Books in Canada First Novel Award, and was a co-winner of the Trillium Award. His most recent novel, Fifteen Dogs, won the 2015 Scotiabank Giller Prize and Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, and was shortlisted for theToronto Book Awards.”
A Year of Collaborations: The 2015-2016 Season
This year Writers Read is bigger than ever, with authors from across Canada, Ireland, and the US. So far we have confirmed fifteen authors beginning with Jordan Tannahill (Sept 22nd), Mary Ruefle (Sept 25th) and Major Jackson (Sept 30th). This year we are in collaboration with the Department of Canadian Irish Studies, the Centre for Expanded Poetics,Universite de Montreal, and Librarie Drawn & Quarterly. We are also collaborating with our very own creative writing students–who will curate part of a literary festival in March 2016. Off The Page marks a major evolution of Writers Read. We are scheduling our spring events to coincide with the student driven festival to ensure a melange of emerging and established authors, both local and from afar. We offer a list of events here, with a request to mark off March 17-20 for our festival that we hope offers even more surprising collaborations of readings, panels, and literary detournements.
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Writers Read: Concordia university's reading Series 