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Dwayne Morgan Dwayne Morgan began his career as a spoken word artist in 1993. In 1994, he founded Up From The Roots entertainment, to promote the positive artistic contributions of African Canadian and urban influenced artists. In 1998, Morgan received both the African Canadian Achievement Award, and the Harry Jerome Award for Excellence in the Arts. He is also the winner of 3 Canadian Urban Music Awards (2001, 2003, 2005). In 2005 he was recognized as Poet of Honour at the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word in Vancouver, and in 2008 MorganÕs contribution to the Arts and Canadian society were recognized on the Official Black History Month poster. Ritallin Greg Frankson a.k.a. Ritallin is a spoken word artist and arts educator based in Ottawa. He co-founded Capital Slam, Canada's second longest running poetry slam series, and is the immediate past National Director for Spoken Word Canada, organizers of the annual Canadian Festival of Spoken Word. He is also the Poet Laureate for the International Initiative for Mental Health Leadership and National Director of the Artists' Alliance for Mental Health Canada. Greg released Capital Thoughts, a spoken word EP recording, in 2005, and his debut poetry collection Cerebral Stimulation was released by BeWrite Books in 2006. Ritallin has published three chapbooks and was a contributor to the Mic Check spoken word anthology by Quattro Books in 2008. Greg is currently working on his second recording of a cappella poems, Poet Psychology Vol. I, due for release in fall 2010. Through his creative services company Cytopoetics, Greg works in schools and the community as a presenter and performer, and with businesses and social services organizations as a facilitator, emcee, keynote speaker and creative services consultant. That Brown Bastard That Brown Bastard! (Rahul Gupta) is a semi-professional poet and journalist. He has appeared in various reading series, poetry slams, high schools and polka halls all over North America. He is a founding member of the Toronto Poetry Project and always on the guest list for the Toronto Poetry Slam. He is the token brown guy in the Last Call Poets support group/poetry troupe, co-founder of seminal spoken word oddities The StrapOns and lik.
rob mclennan Born in Ottawa, Canada's glorious capital city, rob mclennan currently divides his time between Ottawa and Toronto. The author of some twenty trade books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction, his most recent titles are the poetry collections a compact of words (Salmon Poetry, Ireland), wild horses (University of Alberta Press, Edmonton), kate street (Moira, Chicago) and a second novel, missing persons (The Mercury Press). An editor and publisher, he runs above/ground press, Chaudiere Books (with Jennifer Mulligan), seventeen seconds: a journal of poetry and poetics (ottawater.com/seventeenseconds), The Garneau Review (ottawater.com/garneaureview) and the Ottawa poetry pdf annual ottawater (ottawater.com). He spent the 2007-8 academic year in Edmonton as writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta, and regularly posts reviews, essays, interviews and other notices at robmclennan.blogspot.com. Sandra Ridley In 2009, Sandra Ridley was co-winner of the bpNichol Chapbook Award and was a finalist for the Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry. Fallout, her first book of poetry, will be published this spring by Saskatchewan's Hagios Press. An earlier version of this manuscript won the 2008 Alfred G. Bailey Prize. Ridley's poems can also be found in journals including Fiddlehead, Grain, New Quarterly, Prairie Fire, RAMPIKE, and This Magazine, and as a chapbook titled Rest Cure published by OttawaÕs Apt. 9 Press. Marcus McCann Marcus McCann is a professional troublemaker. He's the author of Soft Where and 8 chapbooks, most recently Town in a Long Day of Leaving. He was shortlisted for the Lampert Award and won the Newlove Award in 2009. After 8 1/2 years in Ottawa, he moved to Toronto in November to take over as the managing editor of Xtra.
Poetry & Music Night - Let's Hear the Lyrics! Often the lyrics of a song are actually a beautiful poem, but you can't always hear them over the music. Tonight, please bring your favourite song, and read the lyrics as a poem! - 20 (or more) open mic spots, signup at 8 pm sharp. - bring a second song, just in case someone ahead of you reads the same one you picked. (we can't sit through Stairway to Heaven more than once) - you don't have to read it just like on the album... rearrange the order of verses, just do the chorus once, leave out the "oooh oooh baby, baby"... whatever you like. - feel free to read the piece in a completely different mood / tone than it was intended. - Rock, Country, Rap, Pop, Punk, Disco - anything goes. (Okay, let's keep it in the realm of "reasonably tasteful") - have shy friends who are afraid to read their poetry in public? perhaps this would be a good starting point! - no singing, no instruments - this is a songs-read-as-poetry-only night. - if you're a songwriter, yes you can read an original song as a poem. - if you forget to bring lyrics, never fear - your host Cynthia will bring a selection of her favourite songs and you could read one of those!
Edward Nixon Edward has published three chapbooks: Nights in the City of the Dead (Aeolus House 2006); Arguments for Breath(lyricalmyrical 2007); Free Translation (Cactus Press 2009). HeÕs recently had poems published in Rampike, Misunderstandings Magazine and Jones Av; and had opinion pieces published by The Mark news website. He is currently working two new manuscripts.Edward hosts and produces the monthly reading series livewords at the Black Swan on the fourth Thursday of each month. Involved in his local community in the St. Lawrence Market area of Toronto, Edward is President of the Old Town Toronto Network, a community round-table bringing together arts, community, business, and NGOs in the area neighbourhoods of: St. Lawrence Market, The Distillery District, and Corktown. Michelle Elrick Michelle Elrick is a poet and fiction writer from British Columbia and Manitoba. Growing up on a mountain overlooking the Fraser Valley contributed to a sense of perspective that has continued to develop in her writing. Now on Canada's great plain, she lives in an attic overlooking the rooftops of Winnipeg. Her first book, a collection of poems titled To Speak, was published by The Muses' Company in 2010. In addition, her work has appeared in The Fiddlehead, Canadian Literature, Event and other magazines, and performed at festivals and events in Vancouver, Winnipeg, London, Kingston and Belfast. She is currently deep in a second draft of her novel, Dust House, surfacing on occasion to play the banjo and walk the dog.
Allan Briesmaster Allan Briesmaster is a freelance editor, publisher, and literary consultant. His most recent full-length poetry collections are Interstellar (Quattro Books, 2007) and Confluences (Seraphim Editions, 2009). He was centrally involved in the Art Bar Poetry Reading Series from its beginnings in 1991 until 2002. As an editor, working with several literary presses, Allan has been instrumental in the production of more than 90 books since 1998. He lives in Thornhill, Ontario. Sue Bowness Suzanne (Sue) Bowness is a writer and editor whose first book of poetry was published by Tightrope books in 2010. Her play "The Reading Circle" won the Ottawa Little Theatre's National One-Act Playwriting Competition in 2006, and she is currently working on a collection of short stories, a screenplay, and a novel. Sandra Kasturi Sandra Kasturi is a poet, writer, and editor, as well as co-creator of a kids' animated TV series. In 2005, she won ARC magazine's annual Poem of the Year award. She is the poetry editor of ChiZine: Treatments of Light and Shade in Wordsand the Co-Publisher of ChiZine Publications. Sandra has written three poetry chapbooks and has edited the poetry anthology, The Stars As Seen from this Particular Angle of Night. Her work has appeared in various magazines and anthologies, including Prairie Fire, Contemporary Verse 2, TransVersions, On Spec, Taddle Creek, several of the Tesseracts series, 2001: A Science Fiction Poetry Anthology, and Northern Frights 4. Her cultural essay, ÒDivine Secrets of the Yaga SisterhoodÓ appeared in the anthology Girls Who Bite Back: Witches, Slayers, Mutants and Freaks. Sandra is a founding member of the Algonquin Square Table poetry workshop and sporadically runs her other imprint, Kelp Queen Press. She managed to snag an introduction from Neil Gaiman for her first full-length poetry collection, The Animal Bridegroom (Tightrope Books). She is represented by the Anne McDermid Agency, and is currently working on her first novel, a mythological noir. She enjoys single-malt scotch, red lipstick, and Viggo Mortensen.
Betsy Struthers Betsy Struthers is the author of eight books of poetry and three novels. Her most recent book, Relay, crosses genre between very short fiction and very long prose poems with a narrative twist. A previous book of poems, Still, won the 2004 Lowther Award while another, Running Out of Time, was the runner-up silver medal winner for the 1994 Milton Acorn People's Poetry Award. She lives in Peterborough, Ontario where she works as a freelance editor of academic texts. Andrea Thompson Andrea Thompson is popular performer at venues and festivals across North America, and a pioneer of the Canadian Slam Poetry scene. Thompsons work has been featured on film, radio, and television; and included in magazines, literary journals and anthologies across Canada. Her Spoken Word CD One, was nominated for a Canadian Urban Music Award in 2005. Thompson was the host of season 2 of the 13 part television series, Heart of a Poet (Bravo TV, 2007), and is currently collaborating on an anthology of writing by mixed-race women. Merle Nudelman Merle Nudelman is a poet, editor, and teacher. Her first collection of poems, Borrowed Light, won the 2004 Canadian Jewish Book Award for Poetry. Merle's second book of poetry, We, the Women, and Borrowed Light each garnered a prize in the Arizona Authors Association Literary Contest. Her third poetry collection, The He We Knew, was recently released by Guernica Editions. Merle's poems have been published in journals, newspapers, and zines and she has done many readings from her books in Toronto, Hamilton, Central Ontario, and Arizona. She lives in Toronto where she teaches memoir writing and gives workshops on growth through writing as well as on the Holocaust. |
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