The celebrated and influential poet Frank Davey has joined the organizing committee of London Open Mic Poetry Night.

Davey will bring to the open mic a world of experience with diverse aspects of the poetry scene.

Strathroy resident Frank Davey grew up in BC and  studied at UBC where in 1961 he co-founded with George Bowering and Fred Wah the influential and contentious poetry newsletter TISH. His first volume of poetry, in 1962, was described as ‘the act of the moment’ rather than poetry as the commonplace attempt 'to express  feelings.' In 1965 he launched the avant-garde poetry and criticism journal Open Letter, and, with the assistance of bpNichol, developed it into what many still see as Canada's most important forum for discussion and examination of innovative and experimental ideas and texts. 

Davey obtained his PhD from the University of Southern California in 1968. With the encouragement of George Woodcock, he began writing literary criticism, a body of work from the 1970s to the ‘90s which would be described as 'the most individual and influential ever written in Canada.' 

His most important early contribution was his withering 1974 critique, 'Surviving the Paraphrase, which discredited thematic criticism in Canada, including that of Northrop Frye, D.G. Jones and Margaret Atwood. 

From 1975-1992 Davey was one of the most active editors of the Coach House Press. In 1984 he co-founded the world’s first on-line literary journal, Swift Current. In 1986 he became the chair of the English Department of Toronto’s York University, where he quickly assumed a nationally influential role. Then, in 1990 Davey came to London, where he was appointed to the Carl F. Klinck Chair of Canadian Literature at UWO. Here he began a new writing phase involving analysis of various Canadian cultural scenes—from literary criticism to politics, celebrity, and popular crime  writing. These studies have given him much fodder for his poetry. 

Over the years, the stance Davey has taken in his criticism has occasionally put him into conflict with the Canadian literary establishment. For example, he has described Canadian literary and academic prizes as institutional rewards for 'banality and careerism'. On the other hand, he has often been seen as a 'poet’s poet'. 

Through his books of poetry, his literary and cultural criticism and his rich range of essays on diverse topics, Davey has been a major figure in introducing the idea and practice of postmodernism to writers in Canada. 

So far Davey has published 27 books of poetry, six since 2000, the latest being ‘Spectres of London, Ont’ (2012). He also has numerous non-fiction titles.

Amongst other endeavours, Davey is currently posting on Frank Davey Blog, which is hosted by London Open Mic Poetry Night.

The Erik Martinez Richards Blog will be launched any day now. It will be the fifth blog on the London Open Mic Poetry Night website.  
 
By way of introduction, here are some personal impressions of Erik. 
 
It's not an overstatement to say he excels in all the mental traits most basic to human beings: language use, social ability, empathy, creativity and intelligence. Those of us who have worked with him have watched these in action.  
  
Erik is fluent not only in Spanish, his mother tongue, but also in English -- not just fluent but deeply fluent. His day job since 1987 was  English/Spanish and French/Spanish translation for the Translation  Bureau  of Canada. He has used his translation skills on poetry as well, both his own and others, a formidable task to say the least. His intense focus on language also comes into play in listening to poems read aloud during our events, and in various workshops. He hears poems as if he were reading them.  
 
As much as we value Erik's role at the open mic as its chief photographer, he performs an even greater function due to his sensitivity to social situations. He is quick to see and prevent potential blunders, since his empathy for others is always turned on. I for one have learned an important lesson from Erik, in observing his behaviour with others, that there is nothing more important in life than preventing the hurt of other people, no matter how small it may seem.  
 
Erik is serious about life, and especially about the life of emotions, which has always been central to his poetry. 
 
 Born in Santiago, Chile (1944), Erik studied Spanish literature at the Universidad de Chile and participated in the editorial board of 'Orfeo' a prestigious poetry journal, together with his friends from the 'Santiago School', an active poetry group at the time. After Pinochet's military coup, his position as a lecturer terminated, he witnessed the ugly side of the military intervention in his faculty  and saw the magazines where he had worked closed, so he decided, as many of his generation, to go into exile. He rushed to the Canadian Embassy in Santiago to present his application to migrate to Canada which in January 1974 started a fast track procedure for Chileans affected by the military regime. He was allowed to emigrate to Canada in February, 1974. He obtained an M.A. in Spanish from Queen's University (Kingston), graduating with a dissertation on Altazor, a long poem by Vicente Huidobro, which is considered one of the greatest achievements of 20th Century Latin American poetry.  
 
In 1985, Ediciones Cordillera published Erik's book of poems, Tequila Sunrise (Ottawa, 1985), and he has been included in several anthologies of Chilean poetry in Canada. Around 2003, he joined the El Dorado Poetry Collective in Ottawa which organized, among other events, an international poetry reading series. 
 
He has published translations and poetry in Canadian and international journals. Presently, Erik has just completed his second book of poems, The Sun Never Sets, a great effort because he felt it was time to start writing in English, not an easy job for someone with a pragmatic but rather limited knowledge of the language at the moment of his arrival. He moved back to London in 2009 where he lives with Violetta, his wife.   
 
Erik Martinez Richards was one of the founding members of London Open Mic Poetry Night. He, Martin Hayter and I, Stan Burfield, drove to a reading in Sarnia in June 2012. We three Londoners read in the open mic at the end of the reading and on the way back wondered why there was a monthly open mic in Sarnia but none in the much larger city of London. The result was the founding of London Open Mic Poetry Night.