(We're posting them as they come in, but only if they're written in the compact style of the entries below.)

• Wed. 5th: London Open Mic Poetry: Mykonos Rest., featuring James Deahl & Norma West Linder. Has open mic. 7 pm. Pay What You Can Event.  http://www.londonpoetryopenmic.com/news/do-you-have-an-april-poetry-event
• Sat. 8th: Basic Poetics Study Group, 1st edition on "line breaks", open to everyone, hosted by London Open Mic, each month one participant teaches the others about an aspect of poetics. 2 pm, Landon Branch Library, Community Room. Cost about $2 each to pay for room rental. http://www.londonpoetryopenmic.com/news/basic-poetics-study-group-meeting-1-sat-april-8th-youre-invited
• Sun. 9th: Lois Marie Harrod Poetry Writing Workshop, ALL DAY, in 3 parts, from 10 am into the evening, at Forest City Gallery and Mykonos Restaurant. Included in workshop: writing small poems, creating origami poetry books, Ekphrasis poetry, followed by reading and open mic.  Fee for the day is $50. (meals not included). Contact Frank Beltrano frankbeltrano@hotmail.com or Sharon Lindenburger slinden@rogers.com Learn more about Lois Mary Harrod.
• ​Wed 12th: Open Workshop, hosted by London Open Mic, participants critique each other's poems, 6:30, Landon Branch Library Wortley Room, If interested, email Stan at burfield@live.com                                 http://www.londonpoetryopenmic.com/news/join-our-new-poetry-workshop
• Tues. 18th: Sarnia-Lambton’s 2017 National Poetry Month Celebration, readings by Kara Ghobhainn Smith, Sharon Berg, James Deahl, Norma West Linder, Carmen Ziolkowski, and Debbie Okun Hill, 7 to 9 p.m. at John’s Restaurant’s Famous Room, 1643 London Line in Sarnia. Admission is free. More information athttps://okunhill.wordpress.com/2017/03/23/sarnia-lambton-poets-prepare-for-npm17-celebrations/
• Wed. 19th: Poetry London featuring ULRIKKA GERNES & JOHN NYMAN: Landon Branch Library, readings at 7:30pm, pre-reading workshop at 6:30pm
• Fri.  21st: London Poetry Slam Finals: Aeolian Hall, 7:30, $10.00

Thanks Mayor Brown, thanks to the City of London, and thanks to the London Arts Council for creating and funding this position. Finally, thanks to all of you who have come today. I see representatives here from London Poetry Slam, London Open Mic, and Poetry London—I am so grateful that you are here for this announcement.

I am thrilled and excited to be named Poet Laureate for the City of London. I want to begin by acknowledging the hard work, devotion and successes of my predecessor, The City of London’s first Poet Laureate, Penn Kemp. The first poem I ever published was part of a program called Poetry in Motion, a program Penn created in her time as the Poet Laureate. Poetry in Motion was a poetry competition that invited submission for poems that would be published on city busses. My poem was one of 50 poems chosen and I remember quite distinctly meeting Penn soon after. She said “you are a poet—keep writing” This was a very important moment for me and it gives me a great deal of appreciation for how this position can be used to reach out to artists and would-be artists to help foster and encourage their development.

This is an exciting time to be a Londoner; there is an energy and dynamism in this town and it is being felt nowhere more keenly than in the Arts. I look forward to using the position of Poet Laureate to not only champion artists and arts institutions in this city, but I also want to focus on projects that build and encourage inclusiveness, diversity and collaboration in our city. The arts are for everybody. The arts can help us think through what we as citizens collectively value, and thus the arts can facilitate engagement with the civic process—giving us ways to think creatively about how we want to build and shape this city we share.

To this end, I’d like to conclude with a poem that is inspired by my love and concern for one of London’s most defining natural features---the Thames River, or Antler River as it was and is known to First nations groups whose traditional lands, the river runs through.



Trash Fish

In April, the carp return to Wellington Bridge.
Lumbering mud barges, they dredge the muck,
sub-terminal mouths shaped like the Scream of Nature--
they munch tasty bits of crud, sending up plumes of silt
like spice harvesters on a watery Dune.

Saturday six-pack anglers sit under the bridge,
flick cigarette butts into the river and wait
for the bobber to dive. The ponderous pull
of a hooked carp is hardly sport—landing
one is like lifting a sleeping infant out of a car seat.

The man hoists his catch for his toddler to see.
Spent, the fish musters one mechanic convulsion and falls on some rocks.
The man kicks at it and it slaps back into the water.
Too late, too battered, it flounders about in the shallows gasping--
capsized like a Carnival Cruise.

The cars rush overhead; home from the market, hemp
bags stuffed with tilapia, trout, farm fresh salmon, line-caught halibut.
The fishermen beneath crack their last tall boys, the osprey
and heron bide their time, and the carp under Wellington Bridge
hunch against the current—their teeth in their throats--
and continue to pack on the pounds.


​The London Arts Council's biography of Tom Cull


​
From Facebook: likes....35: Frances Sullivan, Charmaine E. Elijah and 33 others
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Comments

Brad Shiell · Friends with Tom Cull
Thomas I looked up on google what your role is as poet laureate and you came up on Google ! The girls in the office think you are "hot " ! You now have a following in Australia !

Like · Reply · 2 · 11 hrs

Tom Cull Thanks Brad. the photographer used a special lens called "hot in australia"
Like · Reply · 34 mins



Debra Franke Way to go Tom Tom Cull--what wonderful news!
Like · Reply · 11 hrs

Tom Cull Thanks Debra Franke!
Like · Reply · 32 mins



Cornelia Hoogland Congrats Tom, enjoy the postition!
Like · Reply · 10 hrs

Tom Cull Thanks Cornelia!
Like · Reply · 33 mins



Patricia Black Great poem Tom; great cause; We do have Poetry in Motion in common.
Like · Reply · 10 hrs

Tom Cull Fantastic! That was a fun program. Guess I'd better get to work!
Like · Reply · 32 mins


Anna Yin Congratulations!
Like · Reply · 2 hrs

...but when some of our really sharp poets get wound up at the mic the main thing I experience is a dull sinking feeling. And the need for another cup of coffee.

Well, we at ‘Open Mic Night’ (I’ve ...heard that term floating around lately), and the people over at Brick Books, have come up with two different solutions to this one hurdle that’s very common at poetry readings like ours.

Our’s is to post a batch of our featured poet’s poems on the internet (here and on our Facebook page) before the reading so everyone can read at least some of the poet’s poems as many times as they want to. And deeply.

Brick books has a totally different solution, but one just about as good. Podcasts. Put your headphones on and listen to Canada’s major poets read some of their poems, over and over and over...as many times as it takes. You can even stop them mid-stride and tell them to reread that bit. Anything -- run it through a voice analyzer. It’s like learning a language from a CD. Replay it till you get it:   Brick Books Podcasts
Here’s a fantasy of mine, just to take it to the limit. Tell me what you think: We bring a projector to the reading and have each poem, exactly as it was written, on a big screen behind the poet. You read the poem and at the same time hear the poet read it as it was intended to be read.

(Stan: I only made a suggestion to Kevin, and a very light one at that, a couple times, that if he wrote a poetry-related personal essay for this page he would earn the right to have one of his poems posted with it. That’s all there was to it.)

ALRIGHT ALRIGHT ALRIGHT ALREADY by Kevin Andrew Heslop
 
The purpose of the following personal essay is to make it clear to Stan that I refuse to write a personal essay under any circumstances whatever.

A personal essay seems so much margarine to me. With poetry, or with a list, even, you got the bullets: bang bang bang. I got the idea across. I got the information across. Good. Have a nice day. I mean, there’s usually so much fluff and pomp that you get bored and if you haven’t done by now I’m sure you won’t see my point. 

 Yes, we  will gladly take your poem and post it here, on our Facebook
page and also on our website. 

There's a catch, though. There has to be. If not, we would probably be
overrun with poems, and more than one from everyone. The problem is that in
order to winnow them down, I would have to judge them. And I certainly don't
have that ability. And even if I found a way to judge them well, I would be
leaving a trail of angry losers in my wake. Just as in any contest with only one
winner. So....

 My catch is that you have to write an essay for us. Then you’ve earned the
right to attach one poem to it. The essay has to somehow relate to poetry. A
good idea you had, an intuition, a revelation in the sense of a sudden
understanding, even an opinion. But you need to write it in the form of a
personal essay, not the formal kind you remember from school. A personal essay
has no citations, no footnotes, no bibliography, only you and your ideas. In a
personal essay you are the only expert that counts, and you tell your idea
breathlessly just as you would to your best  friend on the phone.
Including, if possible, how and where you came about the idea. Or, if part of it
is not your own, which is guaranteed, where that came from, in a general sense.
And so on. I wrote a personal essay below about writing personal essays, if
you’re interested. It’s called, ‘4th Poetry Night Essay.... Wanted:You’.

 Have fun.