Canada's most generous poetry award, founded by businessman and philanthropist Scott Griffin.
You are invited to the Horizons Writers Circle public reading, presenting writers Gian Marco Visconti, Meghan Eacker, Diana Gaviria, Poushali Mitra, and Candice Joy Oliva.
We want to thank Horizons Writers Circle Mentors Uche Umezurike, Rayanne Haynes, Jumoke Verissimo, Jana Pruden, and Adriana Onita for sharing their talent with our cohort.
Special thanks go to Ellen Kartz, and the Edmonton Arts Council for their support, as well as our private donors.
Amid the current catastrophe in Ukraine, a brutal invasion of a sovereign nation, it is more urgent than ever to listen to the voices of its people. While media provides overwhelming coverage, literature, poetry, and art are just as important for processing, coping, and surviving trauma.
Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach and I bring Ukrainian poets and their translators alongside US poet-allies in Voices for Ukraine–a transatlantic reading spanning from Kyiv, Odesa, and Lviv, to LA, Atlanta, Philly, and Little Rock, as well as recordings Ukrainian poets have sent in the event they are unable to join us live due to internet outages and air raids. Poetry will be read in English translation as well as Ukrainian & Russian language originals.
***Please note that registration is required. You can register here: https://upenn.zoom.us/…/tJwkdemvqT4oG9ehw8PpmPKcN…
Watch recording of the event here:
She Who Has No Master(s) is initiating a creative writing mentorship program led by and designed for Vietnamese and SE Asian diasporic women and nonbinary writers. The centering of this perspective is important because in most educational settings the focus on subject matter and perspectives of women/nonbinary SE Asian diasporic women is marginal, if not totally unaddressed. In creating educational spaces that center those viewpoints, we create a nourishing space in which aspiring writers can see themselves, explore, and embrace their own particularities, and create more expansively. These mentorships will address both creative and professional aspects involved in the writing life. These offerings fulfill a dire contemporary need in our nation’s current environment for creative writing education.
Mentorship courses will be formatted in a “low-residency” style, of monthly mentorship “packet” exchanges (via email and online i.e. video chat correspondences) between mentors and mentees/writing students, from May to August 2022. For our inaugural year, in order to work within limitations and uncertainties presented by public health concerns, this will be a remote-only mentorship course. Applicants may be located anywhere in the world (but must be willing to schedule with a mentor based in US and Canada time zones).
Mentorship is designed so that each student receives intensive one-on-one guidance from their mentor. Mentees and mentors will also convene online in several group sessions, where mentees will get to interact, share creative work, and discuss aspects of craft with their peers and the other mentors. Mentees should be passionate and committed to exploring creative writing, ready to generate new creative work, engage in revision processes, and capable of working both independently as well as from writing prompts given by mentors. Mentors will work with mentees to tailor creative writing guidance that meets the mentees’ specific interests and needs.
The mentors for our inaugural 2022 mentorship program will be: Diana Khoi Nguyen, Hoa Nguyen, Lily Hoang, and Vi Khi Nao.
If you are selected for a mentorship, you will receive 4 months of tuition-free mentorship, an extremely unique opportunity for mentees to work closely with distinguished, award-winning women writers of the Vietnamese diaspora. Our first cohort will engage 4 students and 4 mentors.
Another month, another chance for students in Canada to win $100 in Poetry in Voice’s monthly Poetry Prompt Prize! The prompt for the month of February is “Respond to art”, by Karen Solie.
Live on Crowdcast
Readings by
Shashi Bhat
Jason Purcell
Zoe Whittall
Troy Sebastian | Nupqu ?a·k? am?
ryan fitzpatrick
Naben Ruthnum
Hosted by
Dina Del Bucchia
Sean Cranbury
Sponsored by
BC Arts Council
Canada Council for the Arts
Poster Design
Jérôme Berthier
Once I was asked in front of a television camera: “Who is the most important person you ever met?” and I remember answering: “A mountain.” I thus discovered that Tamalpais was at the very center of my being. — Etel Adnan
Join us for a conversation on the person, writer, artist, publisher, correspondent, and friend—Etel Adnan.
Etel’s presence in Bay Area poetry communities, international networks, and throughout the visual art world, is a force as gentle and moving as Mount Tamalpais. Denise Newman describes this mountain as being so central to her work—a body of work that is vast, always expanding outward—while holding onto this central focus, always returning to the mountain.
Deena, Brandon, and Denise will discuss Etel’s life, work, and continuing influence. There will be time for open discussion among participants.
Sunday, February 27
11am pacific / 2pm eastern
You are invited to the 33rd session of The Tartan Turban Secret Readings curated by Dr Amatoritsero Ede, featuring George Elliott Clarke, Lillian Allen, Clifton Joseph, Bertrand Bickersteth and H Nigel Thomas.
Dr. Amatoritsero Ede is an internationally award-winning poet born in Nigeria. He has three poetry collections, A Writer’s Pains & Caribbean Blues (1998), Globetrotter & Hitler’s Children (2009) and recently, Teardrops on the Weser (2021). His debut won the prestigious All Africa Okigbo Prize for Literature in 1998, the second was nominated for the Nigerian Literature Prize in 2013. In 2004, he won second prize in the first May Ayim Award: International Black German Literary Prize. He appears in 14 poetry anthologies locally and internationally. Ede is also a literary scholar and Assistant Professor of English at Mount Allison University, New Brunswick. He is the Publisher and Managing Editor of the Maple Tree Literary Supplement, MTLS .
George Elliott Clarke is the 4th Poet Laureate of Toronto (2012-15) and the 7th Parliamentary/Canadian Poet Laureate (2016-17). He was born in Windsor, Nova Scotia, in 1960. A professor of English at the University of Toronto, Clarke has also taught at Duke, McGill, UBC, and Harvard. His recognitions include the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Centre Fellowship (US), the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Fellows Prize, the Governor-General’s Award for Poetry, the National Magazine Gold Award for Poetry, the Premiul Poesis (Romania), the Eric Hoffer Book Award for Poetry (US), and International Fellow Poet of the Year, Encyclopedic Poetry School [2019] (China). His acclaimed titles include Whylah Falls (1990, translated into Chinese), Beatrice Chancy (1999, translated into Italian), Execution Poems (2001), Blues and Bliss (selected poems, 2009), I & I (2008), Illicit Sonnets (U.K., 2013), Traverse (2015), and Canticles II (MMXX) (2020).
Lillian Allen is a professor of creative writing at Ontario College of Art and Design University (OCAD). Two time JUNO Award winner and trailblazer in the field of spoken word and dub poetry, Allen artistically explores the aesthetics of old and new sounds in music to create her distinctive leading edge brand of Canadian reggae with new world sounds in her poetry recordings, with her powerful reggae dub poetry/spoken word recordings including her latest single Woken & Unbroken (2018), album ANXIETY (2012), her groundbreaking first solo Juno award-winning album Revolutionary Tea Party, a Ms. Magazine Landmark Album, followed by another Juno winner, Conditions Critical. Her third album, Freedom & Dance and her recording for children and young people, Nothing But a Hero, were released to critical acclaim.
Dubzz/poet/at/large Clifton Joseph is a poet and journalist living in Toronto. A founding member of the dub poetry movement in Canada, he has performed widely across this country, the US, UK, Europe and the Caribbean; & released Metropolitan Blues, a book of poems, and the CD Oral Trans/Missions. He has written for the Toronto Star, the Globe and Mail, This, Toronto life and Canadian Geographic magazines; and at CIUT, CKLN and CBC radio; movie reviewer for CTV’s Canada AM; at Imprint, TVOntario’s literary talk show; national reporter for CBC TV’s The National and investigative reporter for Undercurrents and Marketplace. Among his awards are two Gemini Awards; a Silver Fleece Award from the Chicago film festival; a Time-Warner Freddies Award for International health reporting; and the Peter Tosh Memorial Award from the Canadian Reggae Music Awards. his latest recordings are the single Where’re the politicians and not poem.
Bertrand Bickersteth is a poet, playwright, essayist and educator who was born in Sierra Leone and raised in Alberta. His collection of poetry, The Response of Weeds, was a finalist for multiple awards and won both the League of Canadian Poets’ Gerald Lampert Memorial Award and the Writers’ Guild of Alberta’s Stephan G. Stephansson Award for Poetry. His writing has appeared in many places including Geist, The Malahat Review, The Walrus, The Sprawl, and the CBC project Black on the Prairies. He lives in Calgary, teaches at Olds College, and writes about Black identity on the Prairies.
H. Nigel Thomas is a retired professor of United States literature and the author of thirteen books: six novels, three collections of short fiction, two collections of poems—Moving through Darkness (2000) and The Voyage (2021)— and two academic books. His novels Spirits in the Dark (1993) and Easily Fooled (2015) were shortlisted for the Hugh MacLennan Fiction Award. The French translation of Lives: Whole and Otherwise—Des vies cassées—was a finalist for the Carbet des lycéens award. He is the founder and English-language coordinator of Lectures Logos Readings and the editor of Kola. In 2000, he received the Montreal Association of Business Persons and Professionals’ Jackie Robinson Award for Professional of the Year; in 2013, Université Laval’s Hommage aux créateurs; in 2019, the Montreal Black Theatre Workshop’s Martin Luther King Junior Achievement Award; and, in 2021, the Quebec Writers’ Federation Judy Mappin Community Award.
Inspired by Toronto’s renowned, historic Bohemian Embassy, meet a new generation of artists inspiring Canada’s ever-evolving literary scene at The New Embassy: a digital mini-series of spoken word, poetry, prose, theatrical readings, music and dance.
Curated by author Canisia Lubrin, The New Embassy’s opening event features a lively and provocative programme of music, theatre and poetry. Experience the rhythms of Joy Lapps, leader of the Afro and Latin-Caribbean Jazz ensemble The Joy Lapps Project; a gripping monologue about the Springhill mining disaster of 1958, by Beau Dixon, presented as a selection from his one-man show Beneath Springhill: The Maurice Ruddick Story; as well as appearances from Cree poet, musician and artist Erica Violet Lee; and Griffin Poetry Prize-shortlisted poet Aisha Sasha John. This event is presented as part of Kuumba, which is supported by TD Ready Commitment and the Government of Canada.
This event will take place virtually. Please return to this page on February 25 at 7pm ET to watch the event.
Curated by Canisia Lubrin
Produced by Toronto International Festival of Authors
Co-Presented with Kuumba
Supported by TD Ready Commitment and the Government of Canada.
The New Embassy event series is funded in part by the Canada Council for the Arts through the Digital NOW program.
copyright ©2006
How magnificent the war is!
How eager
and efficient!
Early in the morning,
it wakes up the sirens
and dispatches ambulances
to various places,
swings corpses through the air,
rolls stretchers to the wounded,
summons rain
from the eyes of mothers,
digs into the earth
dislodging many things
from under the ruins …
Some are lifeless and glistening,
others are pale and still throbbing …
It produces the most questions
in the minds of children,
entertains the gods
by shooting fireworks and missiles
into the sky,
sows mines in the fields
and reaps punctures and blisters,
urges families to emigrate,
stands beside the clergymen
as they curse the devil
(poor devil, he remains
with one hand in the searing fire) …
The war continues working, day and night.
It inspires tyrants
to deliver long speeches,
awards medals to generals
and themes to poets.
It contributes to the industry
of artificial limbs,
provides foods for flies,
adds pages to the history books,
achieves equality
between killer and killed,
teaches lovers to write letters,
accustoms young women to waiting,
fills the newspapers
with articles and pictures,
builds new houses
for the orphans,
invigorates the coffin makers,
gives grave diggers
a pat on the back
and paints a smile on the leader’s face.
The war works with unparalleled diligence!
Yet no one gives it
a word of praise.
Notes on the Poem
This week’s poem is excerpted from the 2006 Griffin Poetry Prize-shortlisted collection, The War Works Hard by Elizabeth Winslow translated from the Arabic written by Dunya Mikhail. Of the collection, the judges, said; “These are political poems without political rhetoric, Arabic poems without Arabic poetical flourishes, an exile’s letter with neither nostalgia nor self-pity, an excavation of the ruins of her homeland where the Sumerian goddess Inana is followed on the next page by the little American devil Lynndie England. In Elizabeth Winslow’s perfect translations, poetry takes on its ancient function of restoring meaning to the language. Here is the war in Iraq in English without a single lie.” Listen to Dunya Mikhail read in this 92Y reading. Catch Dunya Mikhail in conversation with Ani Gjika at our second Translation Talks event on March 10, 2022 at 7pm ET. Register here.
The process of writing about place is an important way for us to explore in ourselves and to communicate with others our connections to a place. How can we begin to write evocative and meaningful poems about the historically, culturally or ecologically significant places in our city, those places that may represent generations of family and community stories? Or places that we have more modest connections to but nonetheless have come to mean something important to us.
Join Vancouver’s poet laureate, Fiona Tinwei Lam, during Heritage Week Heritage: Altogether Inclusive in its theme and explore an underemphasized way of making and sustaining connections to places. Fiona will lead this 1.5-2 hour online Zoom workshop commencing with a short period of grounding, stretching and meditation, a discussion of a few examples of site-based poems, and then lead into writing exercises and short rounds of timed writing and sharing with other participants. The writing generated during the session will provide participants with the raw material on which to build possible poems, essays, stories or more.
Please bring an object or photo (or map) relating to a place you wish to write about.
We thank UBC St. John’s College for their support in helping us deliver online programming.
Zoom link will be sent to you at a date closer to the event after registration.