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July 2012

Thursday July 19, 2012

Denman Island Readers & Writers Festival - 2012

March 2012

Friday March 23, 2012

Words on the Water - Campbell River Writer's Festival 2012

Thursday March 1, 2012

The Kranky Reading Series - Raoul Fernandez, Jordan Abel, and Gurjinder Basran

February 2012

Wednesday February 15, 2012

Write Here Readers Series - North Island College

Garry Thomas Morse

Garry Thomas Morse has had two books of poetry published by LINEbooks, Transversals for Orpheus (2006) and Streams (2007), one collection of fiction, Death in Vancouver (2009), published by Talonbooks, and two books of poetry published by Talonbooks, After Jack (2010) and Discovery Passages (2011), finalist for the Governor General’s Award for Poetry.

Grounded in the work of Arthur Rimbaud, Robert Desnos, Ezra Pound, Jack Spicer, Rainer Maria Rilke and his Native oral traditions, his work has been featured in a variety of publications, including Branch Magazine, Canadian Literature, The Capilano Review, CV2, dANDelion, filling Station, memewar, Poetry is Dead, subTerrain, The Vancouver Review and West Coast Line. Morse is the recipient of the 2008 City of Vancouver Mayor’s Arts Award for Emerging Artist and has twice been selected as runner-up for the Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry.

Minor Episodes, his second book of fiction, concerning surrealist and speculative genres, is forthcoming from Talonbooks in 2012.

December 2011 : Support Your Indie Bookshop This Sunday!

December 2011 : Talonbooks Presents Karl and Christy Siegler's Farewell Bash

October 2011 : B.C. and the GGs in 2011

September 2011 : 100 Thousand Poets for Change: Vancouver, BC

September 2011 : Word on the Street Vancouver, 2011

August 2011 : Poetry is Dead: Chain Letters to the City of Vancouver

June 2011 : Bring it Home, Vancouver!

April 2011 : Garry Thomas Morse at the Anza Club

April 2011 : Weather-Permitting, Poetry is in Bloom in BC!

April 2011 : Triple Threat Book Launch at the Anza Club in Vancouver!

April 2011 : Vancouver Is...The Place to Be!

April 2011 : Garry Thomas Morse reads from After Jack at SFU

March 2011 : Discovery Passages and Dead White Writer on the Floor Have Arrived!

December 2010 : Poetry Quebec: The Artie Gold Issue

December 2010 : Make That What: time and Artie Gold Launched in Vancouver

November 2010 : Garry Thomas Morse Reads Artie Gold in Vancouver

September 2010 : Invitation to the Future

May 2010 : Video Clips From Talon’s 2010 Cross-Canada Poetry Tour: Vancouver

May 2010 : Talon Spring Launch at the Edmonton Poetry Festival

May 2010 : Talonbooks Spring Poetry Launch in Calgary

May 2010 : Talon Spring Poetry Night in Vancouver

AUTHOR AWARDS

Governor General’s Poetry Award finalist (2011), Discovery Passages.

BOOK AWARDS

Finalist for the 2011 Governor General’s Literary Award for Poetry

QUOTES OF NOTE

“With Discovery Passages Garry Thomas Morse has remained true to what U.S. poet Gary Snyder has called the work of poetry: seriousness, commitment to craft, and no bulls—-, no backing away from any of the challenges that are offered to you.”

— The Vancouver Sun

“Morse is a master of tonal balance, a virtuoso composer with an ear for epic contrast, and a poet of complexly binary intertexts for whom an envoi leads to no single destination.”

— Canadian Literature

“ Discovery Passages is a vital cross-cultural work, urgent in both its anger and its celebration. Morse’s supple voice lifts off the page while the stripped-down quotes in the documentary poem are presented in all their damning evidence, no further comment necessary. His longer poem ‘Wak’es’ with its literary echoes, is the most ironically intelligent statement I’ve read on ­cultural theft.”

— Daphne Marlatt

“Take Garry Thomas Morse’s Discovery Passages, for example. For the poet, the book represents a kind of breakthrough; but, his work has been on my radar for so long, I cannot imagine our poetry without it; and, sans façon, I believe we are all richer for its existence.”

— Judith Fitzgerald

“Adept, stunning, startling, and necessary, Discovery Passages performs an uncanny operation on the archives, reactivating some stories and decommissioning others so that we can breathe more fully today. This poetic excavation of the injustice inflicted on the Kwakwaka’wakw people is insightful, tender, and brutal in its scope. Here, "language is, portaging across/ global debris…" – gleaning the trash of history to make poetry that takes back what was stolen from Morse’s ancestors. This book includes the funniest dressing down of Duncan Campbell Scott I have ever read, snatching dignity away from colonial thieves and restoring it back into the communities where it belongs.”

— Rita Wong

“These are passages planked by images of island life. Waves of words spoken by elders flood the poems, which crash into excerpts of Indian Affairs policies and paternalistic state documents. There are 500 years and 500 lines of unspeakable anguish but there is also a knowing, smiling resistance. Morse’s words are rhythmic as wild salmon, departing to explore a wider ocean but always coming back home.”

— Russell Wallace

QUOTES OF NOTE

"In After Jack, Morse has stepped firmly onto the ground occupied by George Bowering’s Kerrisdale Elegies, where translation crosses boundaries of space, time, culture, and language, laying the common property of the poem bare―and gasping for air. Take a deep breath. Now dive back in."

— Stephen Collis

"After Jack is rich in imaginings—and in realities of Lorca-memories and in shimmerings and reflections of the grail."

— Michael McClure

"Morse’s words are cutting. He ravages language, but thankfully maintains a subtle humour throughout. This book is a love story between Jack Spicer, Garry Thomas Morse, language, and you."

— Geist

"Far too clever for its own good, After Jack is a large rabbit-eared radio, indeed."

— Commonline

QUOTES OF NOTE

"Admirers of James Joyce, Malcolm Lowry, and Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice will be intrigued by Garry Thomas Morse’s strong collection of stories entitled Death in Vancouver. Though often exhibiting echoes of the great masters, these stories are certainly new, anchored solidly in the author’s West Coast world. In the title story, especially, the author has built an original tale vibrating with strong reverberations of the Mann novella and making use of locations that found their way into Lowry’s writing. Despite its roots in giant works of the past century it reads as authentically new, thanks in part to that obviously contemporary narrating "street voice" — combined with subtle First Nations references. It is a reminder that we all live in a world that has been created by those who came before us and who are, in some way, still with us."
— Jack Hodgins

"Garry Thomas Morse is an extraordinarily talented writer, and his Death in Vancouver is nothing less than a stunning accomplishment. It is work of prodigious erudition and imaginative daring, and it brings vividly to life (and death) the entangled narratives and sonantic richness of the global city."
— David Chariandy

"Death in Vancouver, a selection of short prose bits with crazy compelling characters, tight, precise and breathtaking language and imagery and opera! I am enthralled by its originality. His writing reminds me of John Lavery’s work; they both are adept at linguistic "acrobatics" and are skilled in painting memorable and unusual characters."
— Amanda Earl

"In Death in Vancouver, the story ‘Salt Chip Boy’ is very fine and intriguing, with the severe Baudrillard disconnect between mind and body, the cyber push in the direction of William Gibson and beyond, the cheeky use of ‘K’ which holds a whiff of Kafka, and the language which makes one feel as if they’ve stumbled (with satisfaction) into times far hence."
— M.A.C. Farrant