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February 2012

Tuesday February 7, 2012
Bryden MacDonald's Whale Riding Weather at the Sex Festival

Wednesday February 8, 2012
Divisadero - Michael Ondaatje and Daniel Brooks - Theatre Passe Muraille

Thursday February 9, 2012
bill bissett: problematics - UFV

Thursday February 9, 2012
The Long Poem Workshop - Jay MillAr

Thursday February 9, 2012
Problem Child & The End of Civilization - George F. Walker - Telus Studio Theatre

Thursday February 9, 2012
Moving Along - Chris Craddock - Roxy Theatre

Wednesday February 15, 2012
Write Here Readers Series - North Island College

Thursday February 16, 2012
2012 Gabriola Poetry Festival

Friday February 17, 2012
House - Daniel MacIvor - The ARTS Project Theatre

Saturday February 18, 2012
HOME FRONT, a reading series - Sharon Thesen

Thursday February 23, 2012
Talking Stick Festival presents In a World Created by a Drunken God

Friday February 24, 2012
Galiano Literary Festival - 2012

Saturday February 25, 2012
red diva projects - Marie Clements, Michelle St. John, Women from DTES Centre

Tuesday February 28, 2012
The Leisure Society - Trafalgar Studios - UK

March 2012

Thursday March 1, 2012
Fred Wah - Versefest in Ottawa

Thursday March 1, 2012
Gordon - Morris Panych - Revue Stage

Thursday March 1, 2012
Where the Blood Mixes - Kevin Loring - Remai Arts Centre

Friday March 9, 2012
Ms Thing - Vancouver Women in Film Festival - Embracing the Darkness

Saturday March 10, 2012
How To Write A Poem For The Queen: a workshop with the Parliamentary Poet Laureate

Wednesday March 21, 2012
BellaLuna's Fresco - Lucia Frangione - Shadbolt Centre and Cultch

Friday March 23, 2012
Words on the Water - Campbell River Writer's Festival 2012

April 2012

Friday April 13, 2012
Bordertown Cafe - Kelly Rebar - Toledo Repertoire Theatre

Thursday April 19, 2012
Down Dangerous Passes Road - Michel Marc Bouchard - Encore Theatre

Tuesday April 24, 2012
The Real World? - Michel Tremblay -Tarragon Theatre

Monday April 30, 2012
M.A.C. Farrant at Banff Centre in 2012

Of Strange Comfort

On Canada Day, many faces painted with maple leaves jouncing atop bodies wearing red and white can be seen strolling through Cates Park for a picnic, perhaps without happening upon the stone in memory of Malcolm Lowry. They walk along, unaware that across the water, the ‘S’ was once burnt out and that the sign ‘HELL OIL’ would blaze out of the verdant darkness.

Malcolm Lowry was a remittance man who turned up living in the Dollarton Flats on Vancouver’s North Shore. His existence was nomadic to the point that a number of countries have claimed him as their own, including Canada. It was in a squatter’s shack in the Dollarton Flats during the 40s and 50s where he completed his masterpiece Under the Volcano, apparently while limiting his drinking and standing upright. He was vocal about Vancouver, and his observations from the book are often quoted:

“it has a sort of Pango Pango quality mingled with sausage and mash and generally a rather Puritan atmosphere. Everyone fast asleep and when you prick them a Union Jack flows out of the hole. But no one in a certain sense lives there. They merely as it were pass through. Mine the country and quit. Blast the land to pieces, knock down the trees and send them rolling down Burrard Inlet…”

His former haunt, the pub in the Dominion Hotel, is now lined wall to wall with blaring television screens. Go a couple of blocks towards the former Woodward’s building, now a cozy sconce for Nester’s, and you will find a more or less accurate variation upon Lowry’s poem:

Beneath the Malebolge lies Hastings street
The province of the pimp upon his beat
Where each in his little world of drugs or crime
Drifts hopelessly, or hopeful, begs a dime
Wherewith to purchase half-a-pint of piss
Although he will be cheated, even in this.

Just when it seems that the ghost of Lowry has been completely exorcised from Vancouver streets, outside of the new Living Shangri-La development on Georgia and Thurlow, there has arisen a sculptural installation by Ken Lum (until September 6th), which includes a reduced replica of Lowry’s shack. The exhibit is an ironic reminder that an edict by the City of Vancouver led to the destruction of these makeshift homes. It is not so much of a stretch to remind ourselves of the Downtown Eastside in the form of tent cities outside of high-end mod-connish properties intended for purchase by absentee owners.

One poignant memory is from the National Film Board’s eerily brilliant Volcano: An Inquiry into the Life and Death of Malcolm Lowry, in which a past letter to his publisher is read aloud, a request for enough money to mend his radio so Lowry and his wife can listen to a Canadian broadcast about his own genius as a novelist.

Strange Comfort is a collection of essays by Sherrill Grace about Malcolm Lowry that addresses these and other key issues of the 21st century in his writing.

• Jerry Wasserman on Studio 4 with Fanny Kiefer
• Whale Riding Weather Hits the Sex Festival!
• A Preview of Chris Craddock's Moving Along
• Jeff Derksen reading from Dwell at Capilano College
• 8th Fire: Drew Hayden Taylor
• Promo Video for Carmen Aguirre's Blue Box
• An Interview with Fred Wah
• Jillian Fargey In Absentia
• Ryan Beil, Classically Trained Actor DVD Intro
• Eric Peterson Nominated for ACTRA for Billy Bishop!
• Librettist and Playwright John Murrell Returns to the Stage
• Meg Tilly Hailed By Critics' Choice Spotlight Awards
• The Rap Guide to Evolution! on MSNBC
• All Is Flesh! Is Here!
• The Leisure Society In Vogue
• Fred Wah Is Our Poet Laureate!
• Adeena Karasick at post_moot
• Real Vancouver Writer's Series - 2nd Anniversary!
• Support Your Indie Bookshop This Sunday!
• The Poets are Coming to Pages in Calgary!
• Meredith Quartermain and Daphne Marlatt at Play Chthonics
• Cecily Nicholson at Play Chthonics
• A B Series Launch For Two New bill bissett Books
• Talonbooks Presents Karl and Christy Siegler's Farewell Bash
• Carmen Aguirre Tours Blue Box in 2012
• Fangtastic News for Josh MacDonald's The Corridor!
• Ride the Cyclone is Sold Out!
• Endre Farkas lauded by Quebec writers
• Joan MacLeod wins the 2011 Siminovitch Prize!
• Shadow Catch - Daphne Marlatt Pens Libretto for Local Opera
• Talk About David French's Salt Water Moon on CTV
• George Bowering - Memories of Victoria College
• Judith's Sister, Miss Take, and Then We Were One Have Arrived!
• Billy Bishop Goes to War - Official Movie Trailer
• textual vishyuns is here!
• Stuart Aikins and Jerry Wasserman on Urban Rush
• B.C. and the GGs in 2011
• Jeff Derksen - Vector Association Round Table Conversation
• The Dragonfly of Chicoutimi at NAC Studio
• Siminovitch Prize Short List Announced!
• Post-War Apology and Reconciliation
• Inside the Mind of Lucia Frangione
• 100 Thousand Poets for Change: Vancouver, BC
• Karl and Christy
• Daniel MacIvor on His Greatness
• The Four Horsemen Get All Emotional
• Jane Rule Upon Receiving Her Degree
• Sachiko Murakami's Launch of Rebuild in Toronto
• Lorne Cardinal to play Norval Morrisseau and Michel Tremblay's 'Narrator'
• Word on the Street Vancouver, 2011
• They Rule!
• Working in a Bookstore: The Virtual Experience
• Uniform Landscapes / Hybrid Dialogue
• Vancouver Poets Pay Homage to bill bissett
• Poetry is Dead: Chain Letters to the City of Vancouver
• Anishnawbe Keeshigun pays homage to all First Nation peoples
• Elee Kraljii Gardiner on the Writing Community at SFU's The Writer's Studio
• The Best Canadian Feature for Horror!
• Summer Dreams: A Night of Honour for George Bowering
• Rappin' Chaucer
• In Piazza San Domenico, Ordinary Time, and Rebuild are here!
• Mom's The Word: Remixed at the Belfry in August!
• I'll Drown My Book, Conceptual Writing by Women
• Don't Miss Hosanna at the Stratford Festival!
• Richard III Goes A-wooing at Stratford
• The Vancouver 125 Poetry Conference!
• Come to the Launch of the Vancouver Anthology!
• Move into Project Rebuild - A Poetry Project Initiated by Sachiko Murakami
• Kudos to the Winners of 2011 Jessie Richardson Theatre Awards!
• bill bissett & Friends at The Whitehorse Poetry Festival
• Robert Kroetsch, Teacher of a Generation
• One Thousand Stories!
• Festival Players Open Up The Book of Esther
• Carmen Aguirre at the Toronto Women's Bookstore
• TAJ is Tonight!
• Bring it Home, Vancouver!
• Billy Bishop Returns to Soulpepper!
• Riders on the Storm - Ray Manzarek & Michael McClure
• Pick Up Your Book Freshener Today!
• Support Megaphone and Pins and Needs
• Talonbooks Has New Distribution!
• it's a bouche time!
• This is What Happens Next in Ottawa
• Carmen Aguirre on Studio 4 with Fanny Kiefer, Part 1
• One Book, One Vancouver: Boxing at the Square
• Tomson Highway: On Canada's Beauty
• Go See Fronteras Americanas!
• Robin Blaser - 'It springs on you'
• Another Spring - A Renga For Japan
• Alain Deneault on Canadian Mining Companies
• We Have Confidence in We - The Script Tease Project
• Salt-Water Moon at the NAC
• Garry Thomas Morse at the Anza Club
• Cecily Nicholson at the Anza Club
• Two Poetry Titles Shortlisted for W.O. Mitchell Book Prize!
• Weather-Permitting, Poetry is in Bloom in BC!
• On the Material Wins 2011 BC Book Prize for Poetry!
• Triple Threat Book Launch at the Anza Club in Vancouver!
• Glimpse of A Beautiful View
• Vancouver Is...The Place to Be!

How to Bank Your Life on Speculative "Futures"

Jonathan Ball interviews Garry Thomas Morse about various speculative “futures”:

In two volumes of The Chaos! Quincunx, I use what William S. Burroughs called the “fold-in” method, which feels rather like battering some batter in a bowl. This process is exciting, because of its sense of immediacy. I’m never quite sure what the characters are going to do next!

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For the Pleasure of Seeing Her Again Comes to Kamloops

Michel Tremblay’s For the Pleasure of Seeing Her Again comes to Kamloops:

They may seem like everyday moments — and in many ways they are — but, with Lorne Cardinal and Margo Kane playing the only two characters, the play becomes “an homage to his mother,” Leyshon said.

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Anis Shivani Interviews Michael McClure

Anis Shivani interviewed Beat Poet Michael McClure On Jim Morrison, The Doors, Allen Ginsberg, and Jack Kerouac for The Huffington Post on March 03, 2011:

Shivani: Is Olson the major figure in American poetry after Pound?

McClure: I do not like seeing poetry as literature rather than art and I’m not happy with the separation of Poetry and the sister arts, I prefer to see Art as Art. I perceive that a major figure after Pound would be Jackson Pollock, and instead of looking at “American” Poetry as William Carlos Williams exhorted all to do, I would look worldwide at the poetry of D.H. Lawrence, Federico Garcia Lorca, Vladimir Mayakovsky, and of course Charles Olson, and all.

> Go to story...

Direct Harkening: A Review of On the Material

Andrew Vaisius reviews 2011 BC Book Prize Winner On the Material:

This poetry burns straight into your thoughts with a third degree of truth. Words matter. They aren’t frilly or sentimental, hoity-toity or academic. Collis writes in a language unencumbered by tired cliché or overwrought descriptions. His is a direct harkening, devoid of affectation, expressing the gut endurance of each sparking woman/man capable of the “natural brilliance of the human spirit.”

> Go to story...