Do you also want Ottawa to have a poet laureate? The City of Ottawa budget was tabled yesterday, and it highlights “an additional $500,000 investment in the Arts, Heritage and Culture Plan”. That plan proposes $25,000 in 2014 for “a renewed municipal poet laureate program that selects a poet whose work displays excellence to serve as Ottawa’s literary ambassador, to promote the literary arts to Ottawans and to advance Ottawa’s unique voice in the world”. You can check out the Art, Heritage and Culture plan here
Wow, I don’t envy the judges of the 2013 bpNichol Chapbook Award. It will be hard to judge the top pick from that shortlist of:
- thirteen poems for releasing love by joanne thorwaldson (leaf press)
- An OK Organ Man by Fenn Stewart (above/ground)
- Ordinary Time: The Merton Lake Propers by Gil McElroy (baseline press)
- fruit machine by Shannon Maguire (Ferno House)
- 21st century monsters by ryan fitzpatrick (Red Nettle Press)
- naturally speaking by Sandra Alland (espresso [paperplates press])
Nina Berkout won the Lampman Award for Elseworlds (Seraphim Editions). Here’s a picture of her reading at the finalist reading earlier this month:
Mary Lee Bragg did her Tree Press chapbook award reading and launch of Winter Music on Tuesday. It is open to anyone who attends Tree. The next competition is on for the next couple of months.
The Untying the Apron remembering our mothers anthology has gone into its THIRD printing! They have hefty sized print runs too.
Don’t miss the writers fest tomorrow. You can always pick up the books, but the reading is something on top. The crime de la crime would be to miss David O’Meara and Stephen Brockwell have reading and neither read that often. After that is the John Newlove Awards. 2/3 events are free and 2/3 have music accompanying, but not the same 2.