Tickets for raffle prizes are given to everyone who donates to Open Mic Night. Three prizes are given to winning tickets, each including poetry books and, when possible, a book by the featured poet and a frameable ‘broadsheet’ of one of the featured poet’s poems.
Donations are our only source of income to offset our expenses.
London’s Brick Books is the only press in Canada that specializes in publishing poetry books. It was founded by Stan Dragland and Don McKay in 1975 to publish chapbooks, but now publishes full-length volumes.
Brick Books has a national reputation for both production values and content. It publishes, distributes and promotes beautifully designed books by new and established poets, producing seven new books and an average of nine reprints every year.
Brick Books is a national press, with authors and editors scattered across the country (Quadra Island, BC to St. John’s, Newfoundland), with production, printing and distribution in Toronto, and with administration in London, Ontario.
At Brick’s website, you can hear podcasts by the poets Brick has published, reading nearly one hundred of their poems. Books can also be ordered there.
Kitty Lewis, Brick’s general manager, attends many London poetry events.
Brick’s Spring 2013 collection:
When This World Comes to an End by Kate Cayley
Afloat by John Reibetanz
Placeholder by Charmaine Cadeau
The Family China by Ann Shin
See Brick Book’s website.
The Ontario Poetry Society (TOPS) is a province-wide society of between 200 and 300 poets. It hosts poetry-reading events around the province, contests, poetry-anthology projects and creates many opportunities for poets to meet and socialize. It also publishes Verse Afire, a tri-annual newsletter that includes members’ poems, articles on writing poetry, contests, markets, member news, chapbook reviews, and event information.
The London TOPS chapter manager is Stan Burfield, who created London Open Mic Poetry Night after attending a similar TOPS event in Sarnia.
TOPS' leadership is Bunny Iskov and Debbie Okun-Hill.
See TOPS website.