We now have all our featured poets signed up for the first year. Each event, except for the April one, will include an hour of open mic and fifteen minutes of readings by a featured poet. Most will be on the first Wednesday of each
month at Mykonos Restaurant terrace, from 7:00 to 9:30, with live music and sign-up beginning about 6:00. Cover by donation.
October 3, 2012: ANDREAS GRIPP is well-known in london for the many readings he has given over the years, for the 14 books and 13 chapbooks he has had published, for editing and publishing his own literary journal for six years, and for hosting several reading series.
November 7: KATHRYN MOCKLER has an MFA in creative writing from UBC, has been published in many journals, has two collections in print, has had her work screened several times on television and screened at a number of festivals. Currently she teaches creative writing at UWO and co-edits the UWO online journal ‘The Rusty Toque”.
December 5: RL RAYMOND has two collections published. From a review of his first, ‘Sonofabitch Poems’: “These poems scream with life. Really. This is not your blue-hair’d grandmother’s genteel poetry. This is shock and awe poetry…take no prisoners…bomb-blast poetry. Poetry perched on bar stools, lounging in beer joints, waiting to catch you unaware and take you to your death.”
January 3 (THURSDAY): JOHN TYNDALL, a Londoner since 1967, has been
published in several anthologies, and many journals. His two collections, one
with poems about the birth and childhood of his son, the second (2006) the
illness and death of his mother, have been praised by the University of Toronto
Quarterly for his use of "strange and iridescent language". Tyndall also will be
reading newer works, both found poems based on an obscure book from 1947 and narratives in various voices, including that of his late father.
February 6: D’VORAH ELIAS, who was born in South Korea, was abandoned by
her mother and adopted to the United States from an orphanage. She married the late poet/physicist Vic Elias, and raised four children in London. She is a
playwrite and poet and has one published book of poems.
March 6: CHRISTINE THORPE says her poems are addressed to “those who feel in each bright stream, the pull of an underground river. Readers are drawn from personal crossroads into subtly strange lands where skies may be truly falling but the play of imagination endures.” Before settling for English literature, Christine studied biology, mathematics and computer science. She has two published books of poetry.
April 24, 2013 (note this is the fourth Wednesday): This is a special non-open-mic reading for National Poetry Month, held under the auspices of the League of Canadian Poets.
It will include FRANK DAVEY, who, since 1963, has been the editor-publisher of the poetics journal Open Letter, and who co-founded the world’s first on-line literary journal, Swift Current, in 1984. A prolific and highly-esteemed author of numerous books (the latest published in 2010) and scholarly articles on Canadian literary criticism and poetry, Davey writes “with a unique panache as he examines with humour and irony the ambiguous play of signs in contemporary culture, the popular stories that lie behind it, and the struggles between different
identity-based groups in our globalizing society—racial, regional, gender-based,
ethnic, economic—that drive this play,”according to his publisher’s reviewer.
London’s first Poet Laureate, PENN KEMP, will also read. Born in Strathroy, Kemp is co-editor and co-publisher of Pendas Productions. She describes herself as a ‘sound poet’ and has published twenty-five books of
poetry and drama, ten CDs and Canada's first poetry CD-ROM. Since Coach House published her first book in 1972, Penn has been pushing text and aural
boundaries, often in participatory performance. The League of Canadian Poets
proclaimed her one of the foremothers of Canadian poetry. The following is from
my review for this page of Kemp’s August 4th performance: “It's the opposite of
narrative poetry. In that if you are looking for a story to carry you forward you are completely missing what's happening. What's happening isn't in the future but the moment, not the story but each word the poem is built from. Not even the word, but the sound of the word. Not just the sound of the word but many of the possible sounds of each word, all fitting together, interweaving, each evolving with each other and with the whole. Imagine hearing jazz built from vocal sounds. Now imagine it's the first time you have ever heard any jazz in your life. Beyond the experience itself there is your own mental experience: You find yourself continually working on your expectations. And your needs. Which turn out to be many.”
Also to be included in the April reading are LONDON’S SECOND POET LAUREATE, who has not yet been announced at the time of this writing (to be expected September 28th), and possibly one other poet, not yet decided upon.
May 1, 2013: SONIA HALPERN has won many teaching awards including UWO’s 2012 Arts & Humanities Teaching Excellence Award for her teaching and research in women’s studies and art history. She has published a number of books in that field. She has been voted one of UWO’s most popular profs for five years running. Halpern is also an actor and a composer, and has one book of published poetry, ‘The Life and Times of Transition Girl’ (2005).
June 5, 2013: DAVID J. PAUL has taught in London high schools for nearly thirty years. He has published two chapbooks and one full-length collection (2005). His poetry has been described as concrete, honest, earthy and visceral. He plans on reading poems about birds, dogs, earthquakes, spiders, writers and desire.
Enough feature poets (nearly all of the roughly twenty Londoners with published books) have agreed to read for Poetry Night to run us into our third year. We have deliberately intersperced the more well-known with the lesser-known poets so there will always be a good mixture. Anyone whom I have not contacted, please talk to us at London Open Mic Poetry Night.
month at Mykonos Restaurant terrace, from 7:00 to 9:30, with live music and sign-up beginning about 6:00. Cover by donation.
October 3, 2012: ANDREAS GRIPP is well-known in london for the many readings he has given over the years, for the 14 books and 13 chapbooks he has had published, for editing and publishing his own literary journal for six years, and for hosting several reading series.
November 7: KATHRYN MOCKLER has an MFA in creative writing from UBC, has been published in many journals, has two collections in print, has had her work screened several times on television and screened at a number of festivals. Currently she teaches creative writing at UWO and co-edits the UWO online journal ‘The Rusty Toque”.
December 5: RL RAYMOND has two collections published. From a review of his first, ‘Sonofabitch Poems’: “These poems scream with life. Really. This is not your blue-hair’d grandmother’s genteel poetry. This is shock and awe poetry…take no prisoners…bomb-blast poetry. Poetry perched on bar stools, lounging in beer joints, waiting to catch you unaware and take you to your death.”
January 3 (THURSDAY): JOHN TYNDALL, a Londoner since 1967, has been
published in several anthologies, and many journals. His two collections, one
with poems about the birth and childhood of his son, the second (2006) the
illness and death of his mother, have been praised by the University of Toronto
Quarterly for his use of "strange and iridescent language". Tyndall also will be
reading newer works, both found poems based on an obscure book from 1947 and narratives in various voices, including that of his late father.
February 6: D’VORAH ELIAS, who was born in South Korea, was abandoned by
her mother and adopted to the United States from an orphanage. She married the late poet/physicist Vic Elias, and raised four children in London. She is a
playwrite and poet and has one published book of poems.
March 6: CHRISTINE THORPE says her poems are addressed to “those who feel in each bright stream, the pull of an underground river. Readers are drawn from personal crossroads into subtly strange lands where skies may be truly falling but the play of imagination endures.” Before settling for English literature, Christine studied biology, mathematics and computer science. She has two published books of poetry.
April 24, 2013 (note this is the fourth Wednesday): This is a special non-open-mic reading for National Poetry Month, held under the auspices of the League of Canadian Poets.
It will include FRANK DAVEY, who, since 1963, has been the editor-publisher of the poetics journal Open Letter, and who co-founded the world’s first on-line literary journal, Swift Current, in 1984. A prolific and highly-esteemed author of numerous books (the latest published in 2010) and scholarly articles on Canadian literary criticism and poetry, Davey writes “with a unique panache as he examines with humour and irony the ambiguous play of signs in contemporary culture, the popular stories that lie behind it, and the struggles between different
identity-based groups in our globalizing society—racial, regional, gender-based,
ethnic, economic—that drive this play,”according to his publisher’s reviewer.
London’s first Poet Laureate, PENN KEMP, will also read. Born in Strathroy, Kemp is co-editor and co-publisher of Pendas Productions. She describes herself as a ‘sound poet’ and has published twenty-five books of
poetry and drama, ten CDs and Canada's first poetry CD-ROM. Since Coach House published her first book in 1972, Penn has been pushing text and aural
boundaries, often in participatory performance. The League of Canadian Poets
proclaimed her one of the foremothers of Canadian poetry. The following is from
my review for this page of Kemp’s August 4th performance: “It's the opposite of
narrative poetry. In that if you are looking for a story to carry you forward you are completely missing what's happening. What's happening isn't in the future but the moment, not the story but each word the poem is built from. Not even the word, but the sound of the word. Not just the sound of the word but many of the possible sounds of each word, all fitting together, interweaving, each evolving with each other and with the whole. Imagine hearing jazz built from vocal sounds. Now imagine it's the first time you have ever heard any jazz in your life. Beyond the experience itself there is your own mental experience: You find yourself continually working on your expectations. And your needs. Which turn out to be many.”
Also to be included in the April reading are LONDON’S SECOND POET LAUREATE, who has not yet been announced at the time of this writing (to be expected September 28th), and possibly one other poet, not yet decided upon.
May 1, 2013: SONIA HALPERN has won many teaching awards including UWO’s 2012 Arts & Humanities Teaching Excellence Award for her teaching and research in women’s studies and art history. She has published a number of books in that field. She has been voted one of UWO’s most popular profs for five years running. Halpern is also an actor and a composer, and has one book of published poetry, ‘The Life and Times of Transition Girl’ (2005).
June 5, 2013: DAVID J. PAUL has taught in London high schools for nearly thirty years. He has published two chapbooks and one full-length collection (2005). His poetry has been described as concrete, honest, earthy and visceral. He plans on reading poems about birds, dogs, earthquakes, spiders, writers and desire.
Enough feature poets (nearly all of the roughly twenty Londoners with published books) have agreed to read for Poetry Night to run us into our third year. We have deliberately intersperced the more well-known with the lesser-known poets so there will always be a good mixture. Anyone whom I have not contacted, please talk to us at London Open Mic Poetry Night.
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