This Thursday the 14th I’ll be reading with BC poet Colin Browne. That will be at 8pm at Ottawa Art Gallery Arts Court. Of course I understand if you want to go to David Dollin’s celebration of life instead. I have no plans to read my own material in Ottawa again until Sawdust in December.
Browne’s a rare out of towner, a finalist for the Governor General’s Award and Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize, nominated for the ReLit Award, co-founder of the Kootenay School of Writing, he’ll also do a matinee on the 15th from 4-6pm. These in depth small group times with poets can be fabulous. It’s also free, thanks to funding bodies.
Before then, on Thursday, from 6:30to 7pm I’ll be on 93.1fm on CKCUfm talking with David O’Meara about poetry as a sneak peak to his reading with Sawdust Reading Series on the 20th. That will be David O’Meara, Kiera Sandrock, and Jeff Blackman. Jeff Blackman won the blind poetry competition for the month. Kiera Sandrock won 2nd place in the nationals for the Poetry In Voice recitation competition. Details of those Pour Boy poets:
David O’Meara lives in Ottawa, Ontario. He is the author of four collections of poetry, including Storm still (McGill/Queens, 1999), The Vicinity (Brick Books, 2003), Noble Gas, Penny Black (Brick Books, 2008) and a play, Disaster, nominated for four Rideau Awards. His books have been shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Award, the ReLit Prize, the Trillium Book Award, the Ottawa Book Award and he has won the Archibald Lampman Award three times. His poetry has been nominated for a National Magazine Award, quoted in a Tragically Hip song, and used as libretto for a pastoral cantata for unaccompanied chorus, written by composer Scott Tresham. His most recent book is A Pretty Sight (Coach House Press, 2013) won the 2014 Archibald Lampman Award and the Ottawa Book Award. He is director of the Plan 99 Reading Series, was a founding director and Artistic Director for VERSeFest (Canada’s International Poetry Festival) and was a jurist for the 2012 Griffin Poetry Prize. He is listed in the Canadian Who’s Who (University of Toronto Press).
Kiera Sandrock is the 2nd place winner of the national Poetry In Voice competition. She is a grade twelve student at Canterbury High School. She has enjoyed writing as a hobby since she was seven, and has been enrolled in Canterbury’s literary arts program for the past four years. Poetry has always had a special place in her heart. Kiera also loves nature and science. She is excited to be studying biology at the University of Ottawa next year.
Jeff Blackman lives and writes in the same place (Ottawa). Over the last year he’s performed in Montreal, Toronto, Peterborough and Kingston as part of the Accord of Poets tour in promotion of the anthology Five (Apt. 9 Press). His poems have recently appeared in Blacklock’s Reporter, Bywords, and the Steel Chisel, and one’s forthcoming in Best Canadian Poetry in English, 2015 (Tightrope Books). Jeff also self-publishes and sometimes self-deprecates via his blog
In June, my Literary Landscape show will be with Rachel Eugster who is the playwright of Whose Aemilia?, which will premiere at the Ottawa Fringe Festival in June. She is one of the first and best known of female medieval poets, writer of Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum. That’s June 4th.
She’ll also be at Prose in the Park, June 6th at Parkdale Park. 150 authors, 11 panels from 11am to 6pm.
