Video By Kevin Burton

SCBWI Canada East invites the public to a celebration of children’s books on Friday, October 14, from 6-9 p.m. at Collected Works Bookstore (1242 Wellington St. W., 613-722-1265; http://collected-works.com/). Adults and kids are invited to come meet the people who are creating the latest books for young adults, tweens, and children; to hear about new releases directly from the authors; and to have them autographed on the spot.
 
RACHEL EUGSTER chats with author Rachna Gilmore and illustrator Ben Hodson about the art and business of creating books for kids, the party at Collected Works, and the writers’ and illustrators’ conference to follow (“The Courage to Create,” October 15-16, the Sheraton Hotel: www.scbwicanada.org/east/ .)

 
Authors appearing at the October 14 party include:
 
R.J. Anderson* (Ultraviolet, Spell Hunter, Wayfarer)
Catherine Austen (My Cat Isis, 26 Tips for Surviving Grade 6, All Good Children)
Lizann Flatt (Let’s Go! The Story of Getting from There to Here)
Alma Fullerton (Burn, Libertad)
Rachna Gilmore (That Boy Red, The Flute)
Ben Hodson* (Richard Was a Picker, Jeffrey and Sloth, Hear My Roar)
Deborah Jackson (Time Meddlers, Time Meddlers: Undercover)
Kate Jaimet (Dunces Anonymous, Slam Dunk)
Caroline Pignat (Greener Grass, Wild Geese, Timber Wolf)
Marsha Skrypuch (Stolen Child, Daughter of War)
 
 *featured speaker at the October 15-16 conference

The Lanark County Live Poets Society, or LiPS, is sending a team of local spoken word performance poets to the five day long Canadian Festival of Spoken Word, where they will compete against nineteen other teams from across Canada. To help raise funds to send the team to Toronto this October, LiPS is hosting an event in Perth on Saturday October 8th.

Several team members will be at the Farmers Market as the day’s charity group, from 8 am to 1:30 pm, with basket draw and silent auction items, and collecting donations. Tickets for the basket draws may be purchased and allocated to any basket(s) you wish, as many times as you wish. Bidding for silent auction items is done by writing down your bid, keeping in mind later bids can top yours so you have to check back in.

Everything will be moved over to the Factory Grind at 1 Sherbrooke St. after the Market, where an open-stage style evening of entertainment will be held, welcoming poets, musicians and storytellers to participate, and everyone to enjoy features by a number of guest performers.

The silent auction will conclude at the end of the evening, and basket items drawn as well, so some people will be going home with treasures and goodies.
Matt Dickson, a local musician with the acoustic duet band Rockin’ Horse, lead singer for The Respectables, and drummer for both Beatlejuice and the Commuters, will be the evening’s MC as well as performing, and two guests from Ottawa will also feature: spoken word artist Rusty Priske, the Capital Poetry Collective’s Slam Master and repeat member of their Capital Slam national team, and storyteller “aka professional liar” Ruthanne Edwards, founder and Slam Master of Once Upon A Slam and member of the Kymeras storyteller troupe.

The members of the Lanark County Slam team, Poettiquette, Inez Dekker, Andy Kerr-Wilson and b!WILDer, will also be performing spoken word poetry. For those who have not yet experienced spoken word and slam poetry, you will be in for a pleasant surprise with this performance art, which has been rapidly gaining in popularity around the world. It is not likely to resemble what you may be thinking of as “poetry reading”.

Doors open at 6:30 and the stage opens at 7.

Admission is $5 and includes a free basket draw ticket.
For more information please e-mail lanarklips@hotmail.com or look for LiPS on Facebook.

Running at the Arts Court (2 Daly Avenue) from Tuesday, March 8^th until Sunday, March 11^th (with pre-festival shows starting today and tomorrow, March 5^th and 6^th), VERSeFest has 20 events, each sponsored by one of the 14 groups that make up VERSe Ottawa.

The festival kicks off at 7 pm, Tuesday, March 8^th with World Slam Champion Ian Keteku, David McGimpsey, Brad Morden, and recent Ottawa Book Award (English) winner Craig Poile.

“Ottawa is a poetry town,” says organizer Rod Pederson. “We put the numbers together and realized that somewhere between 600 to 1000 people attend poetry events here every month. And we have a line-up for our first year that is a bounty of diversity and talent, including the current winners of the Governor General Award and the Griffin Poetry Prize. (Richard Greeen and Karen Solie, Tree Reading, Saturday, March 12.)

Formed in 2010, VERSe Ottawa came together when, “A number of poets and organizers felt the need for our poetry community to have a common voice,” says VO’s Jessica Ruanno. “And VERSe Ottawa works to better promote Ottawa’s wide-ranging poetry community, to act as an effective voice and to provide support to those involved. And what better way to promote the community than with VERSeFest.”

Photo by Jennifer Huzera

One of the many different groups that makes up VERSeFest is In/Words (Tuesday, March 8, 9 pm). For Justin Million, “VERSeFest is an opportunity for us to come together, with Moose and Pussy and Apt. 9 Press, to promote local poets. Michael Dennis and Ben Ladouceur were chosen to read because I feel they may be two of the finest poets in the city who do not receive enough attention for their incredible bodies of work. The festival lets us introduce them to new audiences.”

Apt. 9 Press publishes limited edition, hand stitched, poetry and fiction chapbooks and will be unveiling their first broadsides that night. Says Cameron Anstee, press founder, “I’m thrilled to work with Michael and Ben and it means the world to me that they trust me with their work.”

Wednesday night starts with Voices of Venus, a reading series which celebrates women writers who focus on poetry and spoken word. They are organizing an all-erotica performance with Beth Anne Fischer and a line-up of women writers.

Christine McNair and Sandra Ridley will follow at 9 pm (with blUe mOnday, and they are both reading as part of the AB Series pre-festival event). Says Christine, “I’m looking forward to seeing the other events and readings at VERSeFest. There seems to be a wide-range of participants and I’m all for eclectic diversity. And possibly balloons.”

Christine McNair

Ditto for Sandra, “By virtue of the fact that two different events are being highlighted each night, at the same venue, there will be an overlap of audiences. And I’m looking forward to reading to different audiences who I might not usually get to see. And to see other readers, of course.”

And on it goes for the whole week, though it’s not just about readings, page, stage or otherwise.

For rob mclennan (Factory Reading Series, Friday, March 11, 7pm, featuring Marcus McCann and Monty Reid), VERSeFest is a chance to do something different. “I’ve been wanting to run a lecture series for a decade now, &, through VERSeFest, finally have the opportunity to begin. With so much of the festival featuring performances, I thought it would be an interesting mix to ask some local and locally-known writers to discuss writing, to allow the audience some deeper and/or different perspectives into how they (Marcus and Monty) might approach the craft itself.”

Monty Reid and Marcus McCann

Likewise for Dave O’Meara (Plan 99 Reading Series, Saturday, March 12, 5pm), who will be hosting a discussion on words and music (with guests Jim Bryson, Mike Dubue and Megan Jerome). “Lyrics are a form of poetry, and I wanted to get some songwriters together to ask them how they write their songs, but from a word angle rather than a music angle.”

Adds Dave, in his role as a festival organizer, “We hope that our festival of poetry, by emphasizing original thought, bold oration, startling imagery, fresh, innovative language and artful phrasing, will represent another articulate part of the extensive culture of music, dance, theatre, visual arts and literature here in our city.”

David McGimpsey

If that’s not ambitious enough for six months of hard work, the future holds more. “Our intention,” says Rod Pederson, “is to become an international festival, drawing on the strength of page and stage poets from across the world, while still focusing on Canada and showcasing the Ottawa region.”

For a full schedule of events and ticket information, check out the VERSeFest site.

2010 Capital Slam Team,

Capital Slam: Saturday, March 12, 9 pm

The pre-festival fun begins today (March 5, at 7pm) and tomorrow, with the AB Series Reading Series, featuring reading and “playback, a poetry reading” which will see seven different poets reading, reconfiguring and responding to Michelle Provost’s new work: playlist.

And if that’s not ekphrasis to the nth degree, then I no longer have a hat.

Come celebrate the Canadian contributors to international prose & poetry anthology series Van Gogh’s Ear, the most popular of international books in the field of creative writing!

Based in Paris, France and published in conjunction with Allen Ginsberg’s Committee on Poetry in New York City, Van Gogh’s Ear has gained international acclaim since its debut in 1992 for its eclecticism and original creative work by all walks of life – celebrated poets, authors, artists and other discovered talents.

Ottawa’s independent Collected Works Bookshop & Coffeebar, who has been serving the vibrant Canadian community with the best in Canadian, American and British literature, will be hosting a book reading to celebrate the end of the critically-acclaimed anthology series and pay tribute to the Canadian writers who have contributed some of their amazing work (some of whom include writers Margaret Atwood, Molly Peacock, Gordon Downie & David Helwig). Reading from their own published works in the series are Canadian writers:

Gabrielle McIntire – Queen’s University literature professor and recipient of the W. J. Barnes Arts and Science Undergraduate Society Award for Excellence in Teaching; author of Modernism, Memory, and Desire: T.S. Eliot & Virginia Woolf; and poet whose creative and absorbing poetry has been published in The Literary Review of Canada, The Cortland Review and Kingston Poets’ Gallery.

Amanda Earl – poet, publisher, and wordsmith extraordinaire who has been a major contributor to Ottawa’s literary community for several years. Her sexually explicit erotica, poetry, and even sensual restaurant reviews have appeared online and in literary journals including Quills Canadian Poetry Magazine, Spire Poetry Poster, and The Dusty Owl Quarterly. She currently pilots local lit projects Bywords Quarterly Journal and AngelHouse Press.

rob mclennan – one of Ottawa’s most recognizable poets, radical authors, and all-round literary action figures who has published over two dozen trade books of poetry, fiction, and non-fiction including a compact of words, missing persons, and wild horses. He also runs above/ground press Chaudiere Books and attracts hundreds of readers each week with his literary blog where he regularly posts reviews, essays and interviews.

The reading event will be followed by a Q&A. All seven volumes (including the latest and final installment, The Supernatural Edition) will also be available for sale.

Friday, February 18 @ 7pm
Collected Works Bookshop & Coffeebar
1242 Wellington Street West
Ottawa, Ontario K1Y 3A4, Canada
Phone:: (613) 722-1265
www.collected-works..com

According to the Book and Periodical Council, which organizes Freedom To Read Week in Canada every year, more than 100 books in Canada have been censored or challenged in the last few years alone. And those books range from what you might expect to be challenged — queer literature, books dealing with the Israel-Palestine conflict — there are also some you might not expect to ever be the victim of censorship: Of Mice and Men, Harry Potter, or Wallpaper magazine.

In recent days, a version of Huckleberry Finn that deletes the “n-word” and the censorship of the Dire Straits song “Money For Nothing” have been in the news.

So, since Ottawa Tonite believes that each person should get to choose what he or she consumes, we’re organizing a cabaret of censored and challenged works. Come to Censored Out Loud at the Raw Sugar Café and join a motley crew (no, not Mötley Crüe) of writers, actors, and musicians as they celebrate Freedom To Read week by bringing some scandalous — and not so scandalous — works to life. Everything you’ll hear will have one thing in common, whether it’s Donna Summer or Margaret Atwood: the work has been censored or challenged.

Some of the people reading and playing on stage will be: Lisa Poushinsky, Nichole McGill, Jesse Dangerously, Megan Jerome, Jessica Ruano, Mike Essoudry, and many more. It’s gonna be fast-paced, fun, and a great way to celebrate the power of creative expression and the freedom to offend.

The show takes place Wednesday, February 23, 2011, starting at 8:00 pm at the Raw Sugar Café, 692 Somerset Street West. There’s a cover charge of $10 or what you can afford to pay and proceeds are going to go to PEN Canada, an organization that fights for the right to create and read.

We guarantee at least ONE thing to offend EVERYBODY. Spread the word. Loudly.

I should have come earlier.

The salon-like Fourth Stage at the National Arts Centre was already packed with charming café tables, candle-lit, naturally. And all of the 30 or so tables had been claimed 15 minutes before “curtain rise”. It was sitting room at the back only. Even from there the view of the stage was clear and intimate.

Three women in shawls inscribed with Celtic patterns walked onto the stage. Musician Nathan Bishop played a Celtic drumbeat. The crowd was hushed.

Ottawa poet Kathryn Hunt, the central figure and the impetus for the evening’s vision, first invited us to re-imagine Bouddica, the Iceni queen who lived in 1st century England, the person who is said to have led the largest uprising against the Roman Empire and after some early victories, lost.

The tensions began around 61 AD when Boudicca’s husband Prasutagus attempted to leave half of his estate to his daughters, and the other half to Rome. Instead, upon Prasutagus’s death, the Roman procurator seized the entire estate, Boudicca was publicly flogged, and her two daughters raped.

The uprising that ensued could be read as revenge writ large with a scorned woman at its heart. Considering that all we know about her is from her Roman victors, one can only imagine what the real woman was like.

It’s rich fodder for storytelling and Hunt, author Marie Bilodeau and storyteller Ruthanne Edward took on the challenge while Bishop provided Celtic musical interludes during their performances, while Hunt, Bilodeau and Edward and shared the storyline over two acts.

Edward was the most seasoned storyteller of the three. To her were given the battle scenes, each word delivered like a polished stone, no audible exhale or inhale on either end, hand gestures measured and effective. She easily slipped into the persona of stalked Roman, washerwoman crone or infuriated daughter and her account of Boudicca’s first attack told from the perspective of a future Roman victim, invoked a creative use of narrative and conveyed the most tension and drama.

Hunt represented us: her poems were poignant and speak to how she, as a 13-year-old living in England, fell under the allure of the tawny-haired warrior queen. She talked of her continual search, internal and creatively, for the mythical queen’s persona, and for her source of strength and great her rage. Throughout the performance, Hunt remained the touch-stone. She pulled us into the everyday, reminding us of Boudicca’s and our own vulnerability.

In contrast, Bilodeau followed the path of Boudicca’s two daughters, named here as “Raven” and “Lark” although their true names were never recorded by historians. Raven and Lark represented the extreme poles of rage and reluctance, a perhaps predictable choice. Bilodeau’s delivery was uneven in the second half of the performance which also distracted.

In the end, Hunt poems brought us to an unexpected and inspiring place, with the warrior queen escaping from her suicide pact and ending up a grey-haired crone by a fireside telling her tale in peace, as we perhaps would wish her.

The mix of poetry, narrative and music created a strong tale that lent a different take on the Warrior Queen.

Next up:

Friday, January 28 at 7 p.m.: Once Upon a Slam, is a new monthly story slam series at Mercury Lounge Underground (aka Bar 56), the last Friday every month, and emceed by the talented Ruthanne Edward. The Ottawa Storytellers will also be featuring storytellers after the slam.

$7 cover charge for listeners (slam participants get in free)

Nichole McGill is an author who is enjoying her newfound love of attending storytelling events. She blogs at http://www.nicholemcgill.com

Performance storyteller Ben Haggarty (Photo credit: Richard Stanton)

Storytelling is a difficult art to peg.

Oscilliating between theatre and literature, the best examples of this arguably most common and least accoladed art encompass the best of both disciplines.

Ben Haggarty‘s and Sianed Jones‘s telling of Frankenstein last Saturday, November 20 at the 21st Ottawa Storytelling Festival, was such a performance. Their intelligent and dramatic retelling of the Mary Shelley classic, stripped the often misinterpreted story to its narrative bones and brought new life to the original author’s impassioned concepts. (pun unintended)

Haggarty is not called a performance storytelling for nothing. In Frankenstein, he inhabits a pantheon of characters all the while never straying from traditional prose banter with a few stretches of dialogue. Carny showman, a misguided youth, a broken father, a tortured Creature, all are fully realized in seconds as Haggarty expertly flips from one character to another. Why see a play with a cast of characters when one man can play the cast so expertly?

Musician Sianed Jones (Photo credit: Richard Stanton)

For her part, Sianed Jones not only complemented Haggarty’s performance with musical pauses and mood, she would take the next step in the narrative, shrieking or cooing the inner mantras of its characters aloud. She also drew from a creative mix of instruments: violin, hurdy-gurdy, synthesizer, electric bass including playing the latter with a violin bow. The two had its attentive audience of nearly 200 spellbound over two acts and more than 90 minutes.

Saint Brigid’s Centre for the Arts, once again, proved herself to be an excellent and appropriate host. Her basement walls have been spruced up, an open foyer has been built and art for purchase lines the walls. Then there is her civilized and practical policy of allowing its audience to bring paid beverages into the performance area, which is appreciated by her audience.

The telling of this science fiction classic also attracted members of Ottawa’s steampunk community, moving Haggarty and Jones to remark that they had never performed for such a well-dressed audience before. ‘Twas a fine evening of culture on all accounts.

Ottawa StoryTellers

Ottawa StoryTellers, the organization that is at the heart of this annual festival, also holds several other events over the calendar year at various locations across the city including the Shenkman Arts Centre, the National Library and the Billings Estate Museum.

Upcoming Ottawa StoryTellers shows include “Tales of Christmas Past and Present” (December 16, 2010) and “The Warrior Queen: Chasing Boudicca” (January 20, 2011), both taking place at the National Arts Centre’s 4th Stage. Book now to get your fix of story performance.

Nichole McGill is an author, a former reading series organizer and a woman-about-town. She blogs about books and electronic culture at www.nicholemcgill.com

The Canadian Museum of Civilization invites you to broaden your mind and expand your horizons, on November 25, with a conference by journalist and author Andrew Potter.

The Canadian author examines the paradox of contemporary society, which seeks “authentic” experiences through travel, leisure and pop culture — experiences that often become trends of status-seeking and one-upmanship.

Weaving together threads of pop culture, history and philosophy, Canada’s “hippest and smartest culture critic” reveals the irony in our misguided pursuit of the authentic. What is authentic: organic produce, ecotourism, the cult of Oprah, the political fate of Sarah Palin? Prepare to have your mind changed!

The Authenticity Hoax with Andrew Potter

Thursday, November 25
7 p.m. (in English with simultaneous French translation)

Photo: © McClelland & Stewart

Book signing following lecture. $15, $10 for Members, Children, Seniors and Students.
Tickets are available at the Museum Box Office or by calling 819 776-7000 (service charges).

Andrew Potter is a Canadian philosopher, author, and magazine columnist. He is best known outside Canada for co-authoring The Rebel Sell with Joseph Heath.

For more information, visit www.civilization.ca. Follow us on Twitter: @Civilization.

We are back, for the 2nd year in a row; Ottawa, prepare yourselves for another stellar When Brothers Speak show!

When Brothers Speak is the largest annual event of its kind in North America, and this year we will continue that trend, as we offer up performances from:

2010 World Poetry Slam Champion, Ottawa’s Ian Keteku, Buffalo’s Ntare Ali Gault, Ottawa’s Poetic Speed, Cali’s Andrew Tyree, Ottawa’s Ritallin, and Buffalo’s Q-Boogie, all hosted by yours truly, Dwayne Morgan!

Tickets for the show are $20 in advance, and started selling on Monday at:

BYWARD MARKET
Norml Clothing
184 Rideau Street
(613) 562-2043

CENTRETOWN
Compact Music
190 Bank Street
(613) 233-7626

GLEBE
Compact Music
785 1/2 Bank Street
(613) 233-8922

or by email money transfer to info@upfromtheroots.ca

When Brothers Speak will take place inside of the University of Ottawa Alumni Auditorium, 85 University Street

For info: info@upfromtheroots.ca, 647.284.9135, or www.twitter.com/dwayne_morgan

 on the walls of Raw Sugar Café

during the month of October, 2010

House Band Art Show Preview Video

The House Band Art Show features the framed photographs and chapter books (in shadow boxes) from the novel Up the Ottawa, without despair. Each chapter of the novel  was launched as part of the House Band Reading Series at Raw Sugar Café, with a different photograph on each cover.

“I organized the show as a thank you to, and to promote, the photographers who allowed their work to grace each of the eight chapter covers,” says Brendan McNally, author of the novel and curator of the show. The show features the photography of Scott Fairchild, Eric Schallenberg, Megan Butcher, Jeff Hardill Peter Knippel, Arthur Matson and Don Fex.

Photo on cover of Chapter 5 (Megan Butcher) and shadowbox containing the chapter.

The show runs until October 31^st, 2010 and will feature the book launch of the completed edition of Up the Ottawa, without despair, bound in chapter book format. Says McNally, “As a bonus, the book will include a compact disc featuring the guests of the House Band Reading Series. Again, as a thank you and to help promote local writers.”

The CD includes Amanda Earl, Colin Vincent, Jennifer Whiteford, Nichole McGill, Don Fex, Shannon Beahen, rob mclennan, Megan Butcher, Sandra Ridley, Max Middle, Zoe Roux and Christine McNair.

Also included with the book will be a bonus DVD with material from the House Band Reading Series, which featured DJs who scored the pieces read/performed, and who played along while different voices read/acted out scenes from the novel. The House Band line up changed, depending on availability, and featured Andrew McKean, Eric Schallenberg, Amanda Abdelhadi, Don Fex, Zoe Roux, JP Sadek and Brendan McNally.

Book launch for
Up the Ottawa, without despair:
Tuesday, October 26, 2010, 7-10 pm

Reading: 8:30 pm