A new series in out of town — First Edition Reading Series. It’s held at The Factory Grind, 1 Sherbrooke St. in Perth, Ontario
AUTHORS & DATES:
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April 8 @ The Factory Grind
Tish Cohen, Rebecca Rosenblum, & Mark Sampson.
May 6 @ The Factory Grind
Diane Schoemperlen, Mike Blouin, & Jason Heroux.
June 3 @ The Factory Grind
Steven Heighton, Sarah Tsiang, Leigh Nash, & Catherine Owen.
July 8 @ The Factory Grind
Jeanette Lynes, Jennifer Londry, & Phil Hall.
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SPECIAL EVENTS
July 17 @ Ecotay Education Centre – “Readings On The Tay”:
Holly Luhning, Alexandra Leggat, Ibi Kaslik, Catherine Graham, & Pearl Pirie.
July 24 @ Ecotay Education Centre – “Readings On The Tay”:
Quattro authors: Giovanna Riccio, Grace Smith, Lucianno Icaobelli, Rob Solfe, Koom Kankesan.

Ben Ladouceur gave a spectacular reading. A name to watch for.

Michael Dennis gave a great reading as well. Ottawa’s quite lucky for talent.

Ian Keteku (World Slam Champion) with mask and some musical accompaniment

David McGimpsey was in town and brought his humour rippling thru the room of 100 or so people who made it out.
That’s just the tip of it. More Photos, more events at 7 pm and 9 pm until weekend when it goes from 1:30-10:00 daily.

Liz Worth thinks about the practicalities of the double life of a writer:

To be able to quit my day job, and be sustained by book sales alone, I’d have to sell 7,000 books a year, without working in any variables in making lifestyle changes. Pretty tough to sell 7,000 books in Canada, where a bestseller is considered to be a title that hits 5,000 sales. That would mean that for every author to live on book sales alone, each title would have to have a book that surpassed bestseller status.
When you think about it, it doesn’t really add up that publishing a book would give you a get-out-of-work-forever card, does it?

Yep, making money over material costs of poetry over the last year is something. Getting back the cost of paper for chapbooks to break even is a woo. Sorta sad. With promise of best year on record, when writing full time for 5 years, I’m still set to make 1/30th of my underemployed part time workforce job. Some artists blink and say, it’s not about money. I’m used to be being out of pocket. But does that not make a field an expensive hobby economically.
What’s sustainable isn’t necessarily that which sustains oneself with. But. But what? But I don’t know.

Steven Ross Smith in performances of March 5, 2011 AB Series. Here he’s reading sound poetry snippets and throwing them.
He also read from earlier books in his series. He’s reading from his poetry collection, fluttertongue book 5 today at 2 at Gallery 101 at 301 Bank St.

Sandra Ridley read from her upcoming collection Post-Apothecary (Pedlar Press, Fall 2011) and from new work. She reads again with Christine (soon to be a BookThug author) McNair March 9th, 9 pm at VERSeFest.

During Playback different members of Ridley’s sound troupe stepped forward to do parts. Here Christine McNair does.

In the opening piece Grant (pictured) did a base set of sounds and each of the others spoke or made sounds into it from around the room. Voices from different directions and depths, multiple voices picking up the sentence mid-way (to hocket?) and continuing in one voice yet multiple voices. That too was beautifully done, hard to photograph, hard to describe, great to experience live.

In the closing piece a numbering off with voices stepping in and out to the baseline words of Glenn Nuotio, foreground. Background in this shot are: Sean Moreland (reading at Dusty Owl today at 5 at the Carleton Tavern with Call Me Katie who play the Atomic Rooster March 13), Carmel Purkis and Grant Wilkins.
That picture was towards the middle of the group performance of Playlist.

The troupe together in the end with Michèle Provost’s who made Playlist. The exhibition closes this evening at the Dale Smith Gallery.

The book table and lesson from wisdom of listening to crowds? A few people said they wanted to buy the CD or Sandra Ridley’s last book Fallout but didn’t want to be greedy since there was at that time one and three respectively. How many have to be in the stack before someone says, it’s safe to buy one without costing someone else. These considerate bend-over backwards Canadians.
VerseFest officially starts Tuesday.

The marathon begins soon:

VERSeFest is March 8-13 with Pre-Verse Fest events this weekend, March 5 with Stephen Ross Smith and Sandra Ridley and crew, and 6th with another double-bill show: Steven Ross Smith and Chris Turnbull at the The AB Series
(Poster designed by Kevin Matthews)