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Steven McCabe: Featured Poet for London Open Mic, April 6

3/16/2016

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Toronto's Steven McCabe will feature at London Open Mic's National Poetry Month event on April 6th at Mykonos Restaurant.

Steven McCabe is a poet and multidisciplinary artist. He is the author of four full-length poetry collections, has co-authored a chapbook, and is the creator of six poetry videos. These were begun after ‘Hierarchy of Loss’ (2007) and were completed 2009-2013. While his work was included in a couple anthologies during this time, his poetic energies were directed toward the videos.  After breaking an ankle on the final day of May 2014, he destroyed all his unedited poetry prior to 2014. Most recently he authored a 'wordless poem,' Nevermore Together (The Porcupine's Quill press, 2014), using 120 linocut prints. A link to his interview about the idea of a ‘wordless’ poem is included below. He has performed poetry with musicians, dancers & multimedia presentations. He creates digital & original visual art @ his Wordpress blog poemimage, creating a parallel visual narrative to accompany Canadian and International poetry. He is currently editing a new poetry manuscript. The first drafts he is working on may become a straight text poem or may be incorporated into ‘poemics,’ combinations of comics and poetry.
​​
 http://www.openbooktoronto.com/news/writing_with_steven_mccabe

London Open Mic Poetry Night features one poet per season from outside the London, Ontario region.

THE EVENT 

WHERE: The Mykonos Restaurant at 572 Adelaide St. North, London, Ontario. The restaurant has a large, enclosed terrace just behind the main restaurant, which comfortably holds 60 poetry lovers. Mediterranean food and drinks are available. The terrace is open to the parking lot behind. Overflow parking is available across the side street and in the large lot one block north, in front of Trad’s Furniture.

WHEN: Wednesday, April 6th, 2016. Doors: 6:00 to 6:30 (It's a restaurant.) Event begins at 7:00

THE FEATURED POET: Steven McCabe  will open the poetry portion of the event at 7:00.

OPEN MIC: Following the featured poet, and an intermission at 8:00 pm, open mic poets will read to as late as 10:30. Each poet has five minutes (which is about two good pages of poetry, but it should be timed at home). Sign up on the reader's list, which is on the book table at the back. It's first come, first served.

COVER: Pay What You Can (in jar on back table, or use Donate Button on website Donate Page). Your contributions are our only source of income to cover expenses. 

RAFFLE PRIZES: Anyone who pays what cover they can at the event receives a ticket for a raffle prize, three of which will be picked after the intermission. The prizes consist of poetry books donated by Brick Books and The Ontario Poetry Society.  




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Andreas Gripp: London Open Mic's Featured Poet, March 2/16

2/8/2016

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​London poet Andreas Gripp is the author of 21 books of poetry, including Selected Poems 2000-2015 (Harmonia Press, 2016). Poems by Andreas Gripp have most recently appeared in the anthologies Window Fishing: The night we caught Beatlemania (Hidden Brook Press, 2014), Under The Mulberry Tree: Poems For & About Raymond Souster (Quattro Books, 2014), and Moon Shine: A Canadian Poetry Collection (Craigleigh Press, 2015). His book Anathema was shortlisted for the Acorn-Plantos Award for Peoples Poetry in 2010. He presently works in a used bookstore and lives in London with his wife, Carrie Lee.

Gripp has had a large influence on London Open MIc Poetry Night since it's founding four seasons ago. From his experience with his own sequence of open mic series in the past he was able to provide us with valuable advice before we began, and his knowledge of the London poetry scene, and especially it's major poets, sent us firmly on our way. Consequently, Gripp was our first featured poet, on Oct. 3rd, 2012.

THE EVENT 

WHERE: The Mykonos Restaurant at 572 Adelaide St. North, London, Ontario. The restaurant has a large, enclosed terrace just behind the main restaurant, which comfortably holds 60 poetry lovers. Mediterranean food and drinks are available. The terrace is open to the parking lot behind. Overflow parking is available across the side street and in the large lot one block north, in front of Trad’s Furniture.

WHEN: Wednesday, March 2nd, 2016. Doors: 6:00 to 6:30 (It's a restaurant.) Event begins at 7:00

THE FEATURED POET: Andreas  will open the poetry portion of the event at 7:00.

OPEN MIC: Following the featured poet, and an intermission at 8:00 pm, open mic poets will read to as late as 10:30. Each poet has five minutes (which is about two good pages of poetry, but it should be timed at home). Sign up on the reader's list, which is on the book table at the back. It's first come, first served.

COVER: Pay What You Can (in jar on back table, or use Donate Button on website Donate Page). Your contributions are our only source of income to cover expenses. 

RAFFLE PRIZES: Anyone who pays what cover they can at the event receives a ticket for a raffle prize, three of which will be picked after the intermission. The prizes consist of poetry books donated by Brick Books and The Ontario Poetry Society.  




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Peggy Roffey, London Open Mic Featured Poet, Dec. 2/15: Her Bio

11/15/2015

 
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​Peggy Roffey is a Londoner, transplanted from Niagara Falls and Sarnia. She started writing poetry as a teen-ager, and, inspired by Western's first writer in Residence, Margaret Avison, and professor Stan Dragland, kept interrupting her essay writing to scribble down random poems. She interrupted her Undergraduate studies after two years to thumb around Europe with a friend, having various adventures in England, Scotland, Germany, Greece, Yugoslavia, and Egypt. She came back to London, married, had two delightful red-haired children and resumed her studies. She wrote her Masters in English Lit thesis on the works of London Poet, Colleen Thibaudeau, using a big sheaf of poems gathered from multiple journals by Jean McKay, London writer and one of the founding editors of Brick magazine. In 1978, the three-year old Brick Books publishing concern (operating out of the McKay farmhouse in Ilderton) put out a small chapbook of Peggy's poems, called From the Medley. A couple of years later, Brick Books also published The Renga, a collaborative poem, written in the course of one day, by Peggy, David White (London poet and Fanshawe professor), Patrick Deane (now President of McMaster University), and Sheila McColm (married to Patrick and happy horse-farmer, weaver, and fiction-writer). 
 
After she had completed the course work and comprehensive exams for her doctorate, Peggy's four-year Canada Council Fellowship ran out, so, on her own with her two children by then, she entered a world of work quite inimical to poetry-writing. She worked on the Philosophy of Science Journal at Western, then became Manager of Educational Services at St. Joseph's Health Centre. While there, she married London fiction writer and Fanshawe Professor, Roy Geiger, had baby #3, and finally finished her PhD thesis, Technology and Reverence: George Grant and Dennis Lee. In 2000, she became Director of Learning and Development at Western, focussed on leadership development and culture change. At the time, old Renga partner Patrick Deane was Chair of the English Department. He invited her to tip her work load into the crazy range by adding a contract teaching position in the Department. While leading her team in Learning and Development, and teaching Leadership courses to Vice-Presidents, Deans, Chairs, administrative Directors, Managers, and Supervisors, Peggy also taught 19 courses in Renaissance Literature, Introduction to Literature, Contemporary Canadian Literature, and Shakespeare. She semi-retired from her "day job" in 2011, retired from it fully in 2013, and finally retired from her role in the English Department in May 2015. After being retired for a whole 5 months, she took on a little part time role at her nearby church, writing parishioner interviews for the newsletter and generally stirring things up.
 
While working at Western, Peggy often ran into friend John Tyndall, London poet and Open Mike featured poet. John bugged her about starting to write poetry again and invited her to write a poem and come as a guest to his poets' group, which has been going strong for over 20 years. Finally, in 2012, she wrote a poem, the group liked it, and invited her to join. Reading and commenting on poems and exploring great ideas with the likes of John Tyndall, Patricia Black, Susan Downe, Julie Barry, John B. Lee, Mark Tovey , Jennifer Hedeges,  D'vorah Elias, Mike Wilson, and Alice Braun,  has been nothing short of an utter joy. In fact, it's such a rich experience, she has also joined another group with poets Christine Thorpe, David White, Ola Nowosad, Kelly McConnell, David Huebert, and Frank Beltrano. Peggy writes poems mainly to explore her past and to try to hold on to moments in her present before they get scattered by "the whirly-gig of Time."


THE EVENT

WHERE: The Mykonos Restaurant at 572 Adelaide St. North, London, Ontario. The restaurant has a large, enclosed terrace just behind the main restaurant, which comfortably holds 60 poetry lovers. Mediterranean food and drinks are available. The terrace is open to the parking lot behind. Overflow parking is available across the side street and in the large lot one block north, in front of Trad’s Furniture.

WHEN: Wednesday, Dec. 2nd, 2015. Doors: 6:00 to 6:30 (It's a restaurant.) Event begins at 7:00

THE FEATURED POET: Peggy Roffey will open the poetry portion of the event at 7:00, followed by a Q&A.

OPEN MIC: Following the featured poet, and an intermission at 8:00 pm, open mic poets will read to as late as 10:30. Each poet has five minutes (which is about two good pages of poetry, but it should be timed at home). Sign up on the reader's list, which is on the book table at the back. It's first come, first served.

COVER: This is a Pay What You Can event; you're welcome to come for free, but if you can spare some money to help us cover the cost of equipment (and whatever else), it would help us put on the show!

RAFFLE PRIZES: Anyone who donates at the event receives a ticket for a raffle prize, three of which will be picked after the intermission. The prizes consist of poetry books donated by Brick Books and The Ontario Poetry Society. 

Bio: Charles Mountford, Featured Poet for London Open Mic, Nov. 4/15

10/18/2015

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Charles Mountford is a poet who lives in Stratford, Ontario and, part time, in Quebec City. Governor General’s Award winning poet, Stephanie Bolster, has written that “Charles Mountford is one of the few Canadian poets at home in the dramatic monologue.

Mountford has an MA in English from Western and an MA in Librarianship from the University of London. 

 He has had nine books published and has been reading his work across Canada for the last ten years. 
​
 He won first prize in the Alberta Poetry Contest and was shortlisted for the Bridport UK  Poetry Prize in 2008  and 2010. The Pulitzer Prize winning poet, Carolyn Kizer, has written that Mountford’s “poems are rich and fine” and awarded him a workshop prize at the Indiana International Poetry Conference. 

He is the founder and artistic director of Poetry Stratford and is the librettist in residence at Orpheus Productions, Stratford. Orpheus has produced four operas so far using Mountford’s poetry as librettos.


THE EVENT

WHERE: The Mykonos Restaurant at 572 Adelaide St. North, London, Ontario. The restaurant has a large, enclosed terrace just behind the main restaurant, which comfortably holds 60 poetry lovers. Mediterranean food and drinks are available. The terrace is open to the parking lot behind. Overflow parking is available across the side street and in the large lot one block north, in front of Trad’s Furniture.

WHEN: Wednesday, Nov. 4th, 2015. Doors: 6:00 to 6:30 (It's a restaurant.) Event begins at 7:00

THE FEATURED POET: Charles Mountford will open the poetry portion of the event at 7:00, followed by a Q&A.

OPEN MIC: Following the featured poet, and an intermission at 8:00 pm, open mic poets will read to as late as 10:30. Each poet has five minutes (which is about two good pages of poetry, but it should be timed at home). Sign up on the reader's list, which is on the book table at the back. It's first come, first served.

COVER: By donation (in donation jar on back table, or use Donate Button on website Donate Page). Donations are our only source of income to cover expenses. 

RAFFLE PRIZES: 
Anyone who donates at the event receives a ticket for a raffle prize, three of which will be picked after the intermission. The prizes consist of poetry books donated by Brick Books and The Ontario Poetry Society. 


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Bio: Madeline Bassnett, featured poet for London Open Mic, Oct. 7th, 2015

9/17/2015

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Madeline Bassnett teaches English and Creative Writing at Western University. She is the author of Elegies (Frog Hollow, 2011). Her second chapbook, Pilgrimage, will be published by Baseline Press in 2016. Her poems have appeared in Riddle Fence, The New Quarterly, The Fiddlehead, The Paradelle: An Anthology (Red Hen, 2005), echolocation, The Malahat Review, and Room of One’s Own.


THE EVENT


WHERE: The Mykonos Restaurant at 572 Adelaide St. North, London, Ontario. The restaurant has a large, enclosed terrace just behind the main restaurant, which comfortably holds 60 poetry lovers. Mediterranean food and drinks are available. The terrace is open to the parking lot behind. Overflow parking is available across the side street and in the large lot one block north, in front of Trad’s Furniture.

WHEN: Wednesday, Oct. 7th, 2015. Doors: 6:00 to 6:30 (It's a restaurant.) Event begins at 7:00

THE FEATURED POET: Madeline Bassnett will open the poetry portion of the event at 7:00, followed by a Q&A.

OPEN MIC: Following the featured poet, and an intermission at 8:00 pm, open mic poets will read to as late as 10:30. Each poet has five minutes (which is about two good pages of poetry, but it should be timed at home). Sign up on the reader's list, which is on the book table at the back. It's first come, first served.

COVER: By donation (in donation jar on back table, or use Donate Button on website Donate Page). Donations are our only source of income to cover expenses. 

RAFFLE PRIZES: Anyone who donates at the event receives a ticket for a raffle prize, three of which will be picked after the intermission. The prizes consist of poetry books donated by Brick Books and The Ontario Poetry Society. 

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Laurie D Graham's Bio: Featured Poet for London Open Mic, May 6, 2015

4/14/2015

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Laurie D Graham was raised in Sherwood Park, Alberta, and now lives in London, where she writes, reviews, teaches, and helps edit Brick magazine. Rove, her first book of poetry, was published by Regina’s Hagios Press in 2013 and was shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. Her second book of poetry is due out with McClelland & Stewart in 2016. Work from that forthcoming collection recently won The Puritan’s Thomas Morton Memorial Prize, was shortlisted for the CBC Poetry Prize and Arc’s Poem of the Year contest, and is forthcoming in Prairie Fire.


THE EVENT

WHERE: The Mykonos Restaurant at 572 Adelaide St. North, London, Ontario. The restaurant has a large, enclosed terrace just behind the main restaurant, which comfortably holds 60 poetry lovers. Mediterranean food and drinks are available. Except for the coldest months, the terrace is open to the parking lot behind. Overflow parking is available across the side street and in the large lot one block north, in front of Trad’s Furniture.

WHEN: Wednesday, May 6th, 2015. Doors: 6:00 to 6:30 (It's a restaurant.) Event begins at 7:00

THE FEATURED POET: Laurie D Graham will open the poetry portion of the event at 7:00, followed by a Q&A.

OPEN MIC: Following the two featured poets in the first hour and the intermission, open mic poets will read until 10:30. There may be a second intermission after the first 15 have read. Each poet has five minutes (which is about two good pages of poetry, but it should be timed at home). Sign up on the reader`s list, which is on the book table at the back. It's first come, first served.

COVER: By donation (in donation jar on back table, or use Donate Button on website Donate Page). Donations are our only source of income to cover expenses. 

RAFFLE PRIZES: Anyone who donates at the event receives a ticket for a raffle prize, three of which will be picked after the intermission. The prizes consist of poetry books donated by Brick Books and The Ontario Poetry Society. 


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Penn Kemp Featuring With John Nyman at London Open Mic, April 1st: Bio and Poems

3/17/2015

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Penn Kemp will be joining John Nyman to feature at out April 1st event at Mykonos. 

April is National Poetry Month. As in the past, London Open Mic will feature two poets, but this time it will also include its regular contingent of about 15 open mic readers. John Nyman and Penn Kemp will feature during the first hour, followed by a Q&A for both of them, and the open mic section after the intermission.


Penn: "I’m delighted to celebrate National Poetry Month through the League of Canadian Poets with London Open Mic and John Nyman at Mykonos. Our topic this year is, very appropriately, FOOD!"

FIFTY YEARS of Writing and Publishing in London… and Away
 
Activist poet, performer and playwright Penn Kemp is Creative Age London’s Writer-in-Residence. She is the inaugural Poet Laureate for London Ontario (2010-12), a Life Member of the League of Canadian Poets, and a recipient of the Queen Elizabeth Diamond Jubilee medal. For Creative Age London, Penn has curated a series of four free reading/workshops to be held Saturday mornings in May at Landon Library. 


Penn’s poetry was first published fifty years ago in Western’s literary magazine, FOLIO, when she was an Honours English student. Before that, she was the editor of the Masonville Gazette and the Medway Magnet! Since her first book was published by Coach House Press in 1972, she has been pushing textual and aural boundaries, often in participatory performance work. Penn has published twenty-six books of poetry and drama, had six plays and ten CDs produced as well as several award-winning videopoems. 

As Writer-in-Residence for Western, her project was the DVD, Luminous Entrance: a Sound Opera for Climate Change Action, Pendas Productions.  For seven years, Penn has presented an eclectic literary show, Gathering Voices, on Radio Western: see http://chrwradio.ca/content/upcoming-episodes-gathering-voices. Her essays have been widely anthologized in such Canadian works as the League of Canadian Poets Feminist Caucus archives, Windsor Review: special Alice Munro issue; Untying The Apron; Basements and Attics, Closets and Cyberspace; and Poetry London’s Possessions. Having performed in festivals around the world, most recently in Britain, Brazil and India, Penn lives in the house she grew up in here in London, where she edits poetry for Pendas Productions with her husband Gavin Stairs. She has been heralded by the Writers’ Union as a “one woman literary industry”. Updates and poems are on http://mytown.ca/pennletter and https://pennkemp.wordpress.com/, https://pennkemp.wordpress.com/, linkedin.com/pennkemp,twitter.com/pennkemp.

Penn Kemp: Interview and Five Poems, 
From London Open Mic, April, 2014


Five Poems on Food by Penn Kemp:


Read More
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John Nyman: London Open Mic Featured Poet, April 1, 2015

3/13/2015

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John Nyman types, speaks, and constructs poetries ranging from lyric verse through to visual and conceptual forms. His poems and short fiction have been featured in a variety of print and online journals and collections—most recently including Rampike, (parenthetical), ditch, and Cordite Poetry Review—and he has performed at and/or co-hosted several prominent reading series. Since summer 2014 he has also designed and self-published innovative, small-scale chapbooks featuring visual and experimental poetry.

Originally from Toronto (where he often still appears at barroom open mics and house-readings), John is currently studying towards a PhD in Theory and Criticism at Western University with a focus on postmodern theories of language and contemporary conceptual writing. In the past he has served as Senior Fiction Editor of Existere, a biannual art and literature journal published out of York University’s Vanier College, and Arts Editor of Excalibur, York’s campus newspaper. John is also a graduate of York University’s undergraduate program in Creative Writing.

John Nyman lives in the body, the body lives in the world, and the world lives in the text.

More information and links to past publications can be found at https://johnnymanwriting.wordpress.com/.



THE EVENT

WHERE: The Mykonos Restaurant at 572 Adelaide St. North, London, Ontario. The restaurant has a large, covered terrace just behind the main restaurant, which comfortably holds 60 poetry lovers. Mediterranean food and drinks are available. Except for the coldest months, the terrace is open to the parking lot behind. Overflow parking is available across the side street and in the large lot one block north, in front of Trad’s Furniture.

WHEN: Doors: 6:00 to 6:30 (It's a restaurant.) Event begins at 7:00

THE FEATURED POET: John Nyman will open the poetry portion of the event at 7:00, followed by a Q&A. See John's bio.

OPEN MIC: Following the featured poet, open mic poets will read, the first 15 before a break at about 9:00 pm, and any more poets reading until 10:30. Each poet has five minutes (which is about two good pages of poetry, but it should be timed at home). Sign up on the reader`s list, which is on the book table at the back. It's first come, first served.

COVER: By donation (in donation jar on back table, or use Donate Button on website Donate Page).

RAFFLE PRIZES: Anyone who donates at the event receives a ticket for a raffle prize, three of which will be picked after the intermission. The prizes consist of poetry books donated by Brick Books and The Ontario Poetry Society. Donations are our only source of income. We still haven't paid off our initial debt!

 

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Patricia Black, Featured Poet for London Open Mic, March 4/15

2/20/2015

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PERSONAL:                            Born London, England in 1936
                                                Immigrated to Toronto from London, England in 1958
                                                Married Alistair Black in 1961 (Toronto)
                                                Kirsteen born in 1962
                                                Divorced in 1966
                                                Moved with Kirsteen to London in 1970
                                                Married Bryan Burwash in 2006
                                                Grandmother to Scott, Jennifer, Heather, Rachel and Melissa
                                                Step-grandmother to Kimberley, Jennifer, Jack, Carter and Keith
                                                Great-grandmother to Landon and Tom

WRITING & THEATRE
BACKGROUND:                     First poem published in high school magazine
                                                 Amateur acting in England
                                                Wrote humorous skits in London, England and London, Canada
                                                Re-commenced writing poetry in 1960s in Toronto
                                                Wrote occasional poems and prose pieces all my life
                                                Following participation in a Creative Writing course in London, Ontario                                                                                       in 1981 approx, began writing poetry in earnest         
                               
PUBLICATIONS:
Poetry:                                   The Creative Circus Book, Red Kite Press 1984 (anthology edited by                                                                                               Marianne Micros)
                                                Memory's Rapturous Pain 1987 (anthology)
                                                Barbed Lyres – Canadian Venomous Verse - 1990 (anthology)
                                                This Magazine (1990)
                                                The Fourth Morningside Papers (1991)
                                            
Personal Memoir:                 The Fifth Morningside Papers (1994)

Interviews:                              Author and playwright Timothy Findley in Carousel Magazine (1994)
                                                 Many interviews with theatre personalities published in Scene Magazine

Numerous public readings and readings on Radio and TV in London and elsewhere in Ontario

Haiku (along with two others on the same theme) set to music by Hawksley Workman and performed at the 2011 Home County Folk Festival

Poem circulated on LTC buses in 2012 as part of the Poetry in Motion contest

Edited The Babbling Book, Vols I and II (an anthology of poetry and prose by the participants in the “For Love of Words” writing course, Program 60)

WRITING
ASPIRATIONS:                        To write a play

AWARDS:                                 The Nathan Cohen (National) Award for Excellence in Theatre Criticism                                                                                      (Short Review Category) 1994
                                                  The Chris Doty Award – Brickenden Award for Lifelong Contributions to                                                                                     Theatre in London 2013

SPORTS:                                    Then: Field hockey, tennis, swimming, skating, walking, dancing,                                                                                                  bicycling, horseback riding

                                                    Now: (Since two hip replacements): aquafit and walking

HOBBIES:                                  Reading, music, singing, concerts, TV, movies, live theatre, cooking,                                                                                             gardening, conversation

Over my very full lifetime my work, my interests, tastes and activities have been eclectic; I have many passions, but above all for those whom I love, and for writing, and live theatre.

EDUCATION:                        Grammar School in London, England; completed Grade XII equivalent in                                                                                    1952 - main interests were languages, literature, live theatre

                                               Secretarial college, London, England for one year

                                               University courses at Western University in 1980s and 90s, including 
                                               Creative Writing and non-credit courses in Theatre, as well as other                                                                                            general interest courses and workshops since immigration to Canada in                                                                                    1958

                                                Completed Certificate in Thanatology, King's College – 1984 approx.

EMPLOYMENT :                   

1) 1953 – 1959 approx. - Secretary at a publishing company, London, England then photographer and reporter, then secretary for the then British Travel and Holidays Association (i.e. Britain's official tourism organization), London, England and Toronto, Canada 

2) 1959 – 1970 - Secretarial positions with Toronto Industrial Leaseholds, the Crest Theatre, and the Ontario Law Reform Commission

3) 1970 – 1977 - Admissions Officer, Faculty of Law, the University of Western Ontario 

4) 1978 – 2006 - Various secretarial positions with the Bank of Montreal; Faculty of Nursing, UWO; Dept of Social Work, Victoria Hospital; Hamilton Road Family Medical Centre; Parkwood Hospital; Student Health Services, UWO

ADDITIONAL EMPLOYMENT: 

1984 – 2005 approx. - Facilitator/Instructor – Creative Writing Courses for “Program 60” (run by the then PUC at Beal Secondary School; Part-time and Continuing Education, UWO; Elderhostel, and gave workshops in Creative Writing and Autobiographical Writing for various organizations and individuals.                                                                                                                           
1990 - 2005 - Theatre columnist for Scene Magazine.

1996 – present -Standardized Patient for the Clinical Skills Learning Program, Western University –

Contributed articles on live theatre to various other publications

VOLUNTEER WORK:    Volunteer positions with various non-profit organizations


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Gary Barwin, London Open Mic Featured Poet for Feb. 4, 2015

1/13/2015

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Gary Barwin is a writer, composer, multimedia artist, and the author of 18 books of poetry and fiction as well as books for kids. His most recent collection is Moon Baboon Canoe (poetry, Mansfield Press, 2014.) Forthcoming books include Yiddish for Pirates (novel, Random House Canada, 2016), I, Dr Greenblatt, Orthdontist, 251-1457  (fiction, Anvil 2015) and Sonosyntactics: Selected and New Poetry of Paul Dutton (WLUP, 2015). 

 Other recent books include Franzlations (with Hugh Thomas; New Star), The Obvious Flap (with Gregory Betts; BookThug) and The Porcupinity of the Stars  (Coach House.) He was Young Voices eWriter-in-Residence at the Toronto Public Library in Fall of 2013 and he will be Writer-in-Residence at Western University in 2014-2015. Barwin received a PhD (music composition) from SUNY at Buffalo.

Barwin is winner of the 2013 City of Hamilton Arts Award (Writing), the Hamilton Poetry Book of the Year 2011, and co-winner of 2011 Harbourfront Poetry NOW competition, the 2010 bpNichol chapbook award, the KM Hunter Artist Award, and the President’s Prize for Poetry (York University). His young adult fiction has been shortlisted for both the Canadian Library Association YA Book of the Year and the Arthur Ellis Award. He has received major grants from the Canada Council and the Ontario Arts Council for his work. 

He lives in Hamilton, Ontario and at garybarwin.com. 
 
THE EVENT

WHERE: The Mykonos Restaurant at 572 Adelaide St. North, London, Ontario. The restaurant has a large, covered terrace just behind the main restaurant, which comfortably holds 60 poetry lovers. Mediterranean food and drinks are available. Except for the coldest months, the terrace is open to the parking lot behind. Overflow parking is available across the side street and in the large lot one block north, in front of Trad’s Furniture.

WHEN: Wednesday, Feb. 4th, 2015

MUSIC: We are quietening down our music to allow for easier conversation than was possible in the past. Consequently, we will have live accompanying music from 6:30 to 7:00, or, if we can't get a musician, piped-in restaurant music.

THE FEATURED POET: Gary Barwin will open the poetry portion of the event at 7:00, followed by a Q&A.

OPEN MIC: Following the featured poet, 15 open mic poets will read for about 1.5 hours, ending about 9:00 pm. Each poet has five minutes (which is about two good pages of poetry, but it should be timed at home). Sign up on the reader`s list, which is on the book table at the back. It's first come, first served.

RAFFLE PRIZES: Anyone who donates to London Open Mic Poetry Night receives a ticket for a raffle prize, three of which will be picked after the intermission. The prizes consist of poetry books donated by Brick Books and The Ontario Poetry Society. Donations are our only source of income. We still haven't paid off our initial debt!
 

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