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Tom Cull & Erik Mandawe at Couplets

4/29/2017

Luckily, last night I made it to the Couplets Reading Series (#8) and had the pleasure of hearing Tom Cull read poetry and converse with the very interesting indigenous gentleman Erik Mandawe who spoke at length and drummed and sang in his "spirit voice". Beautiful and mind-expanding.

Tom and Erik's collaboration is a long-term thing, so I'm going to suggest to the future organizers of London Open Mic Poetry that they feature them together at some point in future. I suggested it to Tom and he was all for it. If you listen to Erik narrating and singing in this video, you'll get some idea why I'm so enthusiastic.

About Tom Cull & Erik Mandawe and the Couplets Reading Series

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Poet Laureate Presents!

9/21/2016

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Join us for an evening of poetry, music, and art ...

Doors open at 6pm. This is a free and accessible event.
Hosted by the London Arts Council and London Public Library.

Program
Featured artwork by Nic DeGroot, London Arts Live painter
http://www.londonculture.ca/nic-degroot

Music throughout the evening by Between the Keys, a London Arts Live trio jazz band
http://www.londonculture.ca/between-keys

7:00 - 8:30pm
Introduction from Tom Cull, London’s 2016 Poet Laureate
http://www.londonculture.ca/poet-laureate

Readings by...

David Plain, representative from London Open Mic Poetry

David Huebert, representative from Poetry London

Levi Hord, representative from Poetry Slam

Tom Cull, London's 2016 Poet Laureate

Margaret Christakos, London’s 2016 Writer-in-Residence

The London Arts Council and the London Public Library would like to thank the City of London for their funding of the Poet Laureate and London Arts Live programs as well as the Canada Council for the Arts and Western University for their continued support of the Writer-in-Residence program.

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New Poet Laureate Tom Cull's acceptance remarks and 1st on-the-job poem.

7/19/2016

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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

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Our new Poet Laureate!!

7/19/2016

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Before the Mayor's announcement today at Innovation House, I looked around at the people milling there to see if I could figure out who the new Poet Laureate would be. The only major poet I recognized was Tom Cull. Tom is one of my favourite people, so my hopes shot up, but, when I asked him, he managed to make me think it must be someone else, saying with a tiny smile, "I have an educated guess who it is". I didn't press him. So when the mayor said, "Tom Cull", I was very surprised, very excited and suddenly very happy.

What a great selection. I can't imagine a better person for the job. Tom is not only an excellent poet, he is a man with a strong, deep social conscience, and a love for his city and a desire to improve it. He has put a huge amount of work over the years into cleaning the Thames, in the process organizing an awful lot of people to help him do it. And Tom has the social skills to be an effective Poet Laureate. He is a very social person, an easy and natural one. Who better to inspire Londoners? Wonderful!

Stay tuned for more on Tom and his new post.

Stan

Here is the London Arts Council's biography of Tom

From Facebook: likes...56: Charmaine E. Elijah, Kate Lawless and 54 others
3 comments
6 shares

Comments

Tom Cull Thanks so much Stan! I was so glad you were there for the announcement. You are a pillar of the poetry community!
Unlike · Reply · 5 · 17 hrs

Stan Burfield Now I get to take that seriously! Ha ha
Like · Reply · 1 · 17 hrs
Write a reply...

Jo-Elle Christina · Friends with Tom Cull and 3 others
How wonderful! Congratulations Tom Cull! Well deserved, indeed!
Like · Reply · 13 hrs

Tom Cull Thanks Jo-Elle Christina!! Say hi to Marc!
Like · Reply · 8 mins
Write a reply...

Patricia Black Congratulations Tom. We met once a couple of years ago. Enjoy your exciting role!
Like · Reply · 10 hrs

Tom Cull Thanks Patricia---hopefully our paths will cross again!

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Reminder: Come and read at our new library series: Guerrilla Poetry

4/22/2016

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During the Nov. 2015 Words Festival in London, Aileen House took to the milk crates to read her poetry on the notorious corner of Dundas and Richmond. Organizer Tom Cull provided enthusiastic support.

Saturday at 2 pm, London Open Mic Poetry Night is launching its new monthly series called Guerrilla Poetry, to be held in the central branch of the London Public Library. This may very well be a world 1st. So come and get your name on the reading list.

WHERE: The reading will be held just inside the doors of the library proper, in the open area called Discovery Place in front of the circulation desks . The hosts of the event will wear black t-shirts decalled with "Guerrilla Poetry". The library will also provide a poster to back up the readers.

WHAT: Co-hosts Stan Burfield (burfield@live.com) and Joan Clayton, will sign up readers, who will read in rounds. At each reading, they will read a maximum of two short-to-medium poems. Anyone wanting to read after the event has begun can sign up at the bottom of the list. Poets can read their own poetry, or that of others. Audience members will be encouraged to find poems they like in the poetry books brought to the area for this purpose by the librarians, then sign up and read them. (We only ask that they have read a poem at least once before reading it to the audience.) This first event will only last one hour, ending at 3 pm.

GENRES: Every type of poetry is suitable, although some would definitely go over better than others. Performance poetry, by its extraverted nature, should be at home here. Any narrative poetry, with it's story-like quality, is fairly easy to follow in a reading. Many other types, however, fare much better when read more slowly than is possible in an oral reading. A bit of an introduction in these cases can certainly help to orient the listeners' minds ahead of time. Considering many in our audience will be very poetry illiterate, it would be good to introduce most poems.

TABOOS: We will have to make a couple of compromises between the wild freedom of true guerrilla poetry and the demands of our library setting. The library doesn't allow photos to be taken without authorization from the photoees. So its staff photographer will take any and all photos. Also, of course, what we read must be suitable for children. So "no profanity or very graphic violence".

WHY: The idea of guerrilla poetry is to take unsuspecting passersby by surprise. Those checking out books at the circulation desk, or wandering to or from the escalator, or youths from their area behind the circulation desk, or people playing chess to one side, or working a jig-saw puzzle, or a colouring book, people who might not otherwise expose themselves to poetry, could end up listening, becoming interested in poetry for the first time, and might even take to the milk crates themselves to read to others. (For those people, the library is bringing down a selection of poetry books and anthologies.) And to many, this will be their first exposure to the poetry open mic scene. If they enjoy it enough, they might even come out to our regular events.

This London Open Mic version of guerrilla poetry was inspired when London poet Tom Cull brought guerrilla poetry to his home town during the Nov. 2015 Words Literary and Creative Arts Festival. Several groups of readers stood on milk crates at various places on downtown sidewalks and read poetry to pedestrians. The main difference between that version and the London Open Mic one is that the new one takes place inside a building, the library, where there is no traffic noise to compete with, and which probably has a larger number of literary-minded strollers to fascinate. Also, the library, being a destination for people, has already slowed them down and opened them up. The sidewalk outside is just the opposite.

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Radio readings to save the woodlot

7/12/2013

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Listen in on Tuesday, July 16, 6:30 - 7:00 pm EDT. Gathering Voices, CHRW FM 94.9 FM. (R. July 23, 6:30-7:00 am),
https://www.facebook.com/groups/3992303404/?fref=ts.

A polyglot of poets read their poems to save the woodlot, as published in the PigeonBike Press pamphlet, “Trees or Jobs: It Should Not Be a Dichotomy”. Readers include Tom Cull, Andreas Gripp, Patricia Keeney, Penn Kemp, Susan
McCaslin, and R L Raymond from PigeonBike. With an intro. by Joni Baechler, London City Councillor. The poems are up on http://www.scribd.com/doc/150431112/Trees-or-Jobs.

Also, a preview of "Choose, but Choose Wisely", Jeff Culbert’s new War of 1812 play, commissioned by Fanshawe’s Pioneer Village, opening July 16: see fanshawepioneervillage.ca.

For updates, see our Gathering Voices group, ttps://www.facebook.com/groups/3992303404/.

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MY INTRODUCTION TO TOM CULL

4/25/2013

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The following is Stan Burfield’s introduction to Tom Cull at the special London Open Mic Poetry Night event at Landon Library on April 24th, 2013 in celebration of National Poetry Month. Cull was the 2nd featured poet that night, following the celebrated Canadian poet Frank Davey.

"For those of you who dont know me, I’m Organizer Stan. Some of you who do know me, know that I tend to get excited about something, jump in with both feet, and then think. Well, Ì’m going to tell you why I got excited about Tom Cull.

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Tom Cull & Erik Mandawe at Couplets

Poet Laureate Presents!

New Poet Laureate Tom Cull's acceptance remarks and 1st on-the-job poem.

Our new Poet Laureate!!

Reminder: Come and read at our new library series: Guerrilla Poetry

Radio readings to save the woodlot

MY INTRODUCTION TO TOM CULL

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