2012 Lecture Series, Part Two

WHAT: The Present of Poetics, the Poetics of the Present

WHEN: Thursday, February 9th, at 7:30 PM

WHERE: The Auburn Saloon, #163 115 9^th Ave SE

How does poetry respond to the current moment? In a time of increasingly global economic disparity, ecological disaster, and seemingly endless social and political challenges, poets note and record the era. How they do so remains a matter for discussion -- as well as a very fertile terrain for aesthetics. This event, curated by Mount Royal University's Kit Dobson, features Rita Wong, Rachel Zolf, and Sharron Proulx-Turner.

About the participants:

Kit Dobson specializes in Canadian literature and globalization studies. After growing up in Calgary, Kit studied at the universities of Victoria, York (UK), and Toronto before joining Mount Royal University. His first book, Transnational Canadas: Anglo-Canadian Literature and Globalization, was published in 2009 by Wilfrid Laurier University Press. His teaching interests include twentieth-century and contemporary Canadian literature, film studies, and writing.

Rita Wong is the author of three books of poetry: sybil unrest (co-written with Larissa Lai, Line Books, 2008), forage (Nightwood 2007), and monkeypuzzle (Press Gang 1998). forage won Canada Reads Poetry 2011. Wong received the Asian Canadian Writers Workshop Emerging Writer Award in 1997, and the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize in 2008. An Associate Professor in Critical + Cultural Studies at the Emily Carr University of Art + Design, she has developed a humanities course focused on water, for which she received a fellowship from the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society. She is currently researching the poetics of water with the support of a SSHRC Research/Creation grant.

Rachel Zolf is a poet and editor from Toronto who is presently living in New York. Her third full-length collection Human Resources won the 2008 Trillium Book Award for Poetry and was a finalist for a Lambda Award. Previous collections include Shoot & Weep (Nomados), Human Resources (Belladonna books), Masque (The Mercury Press) and Her absence, this wanderer (BuschekBooks).

Sharron Proulx-Turner is a member of the Métis Nation of Alberta. Originally from the Ottawa river valley, she’s from Mohawk, Algonquin, Wyandot, Ojibwe, Mi’kmaw, French, Scottish and Irish ancestry. Her previously published memoir, Where the Rivers Join (1995), written under a pseudonym, was a finalist for the Edna Staebler award for creative non-fiction, and her second book, what the auntys say (2002), was a finalist for the League of Canadian Poets’ Gerald Lampert Prize for best first book of poetry. Sharron’s work appears in several anthologies and journals. Her latest book, she walks for days/ inside a thousand eyes/ (a two-spirit story), was released by Turnstone press.

We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, The League of Canadian Poets and Calgary Arts Development.

2012 Lecture Series - Part One

With the Support of Calgary Arts Development, Single Onion is proud to present the 2012 Single Onion Lecture Series. The Lecture Series is a three part program, featuring three critical poetry topics with entertainment and enlightenment.

SINGLE ONION #90 – LECTURE SERIES (Part I of III)

WHAT: Reckless Enchantment: The Art of Poetic Charge

WHEN: Thursday, January 19th, at 7:30 PM

WHERE: The Auburn Saloon, #163 115 9^th Ave SE

COST: FREE!

The event will feature an introductory lecture by Jeramy Dodds, the current Writer-in-Residence at the University of Calgary, followed by featured poet Joshua Trotter and two other acclaimed poets.

The Participants:

Jeramy Dodds grew up in Orono, Ontario. His first book, Crabwise to the Hounds (Coach House, 2008) was shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize and won the Trillium Book Award for Poetry. He is currently the Canadian writer-in-residence of the Calgary Distinguished Writers Program.

Brecken Hancock is a poet and essayist originally from Saskatchewan. Her work has appeared in Grain, CV2, The Fiddlehead, PRISM, Arc, and Studies in Canadian Literature. Over the past two years, she's lived in Kyoto, Japan and Reykjavik, Iceland; but she's also been home to hold an artist's residency at The Bruno Arts Bank, a converted historical building in rural Saskatchewan. Her chapbook Strung appeared with JackPine Press and she's currently finishing her first full-length manuscript of poems, Broom Broom.

Sandy Pool is a poet and multi-disciplinary artist who lives in Calgary. Sandy holds a degree in Theatre Performance and English from the University of Toronto, as well as a Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from the University Guelph. Currently, she is a doctoral student at the University of Calgary, where she is the editor of Dandelion Magazine. Sandy has been published in various international literary journals and was most recently anthologized in The Best Canadian Poems in 2011, published by Tightrope Books. Her first book Exploding Into Night published by Guernica Editions, was recently longlisted for the 2010 re-lit award and short-listed for the 2010 Governor General’s Award for poetry. Sandy also works as a librettist and voice work artist, and is the Writer-In- Residence at Tapestry New Opera Works.

Joshua Trotter lives and cooks in Montreal. All This Could Be Yours is his first book.

We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, The League of Canadian Poets and Calgary Arts Development.

A Special Event at Pages Books

Pages Books & Frontenac House

invite you to celebrate:

In This Place

Calgary 2004 - 2011

Photographs by George Webber

Words by Aritha van Herk

7:30, Friday, December 16, 2011

Pages on Kensington

1135 Kensington Road NW

(403) 283-6655

November Onions

WHAT: The Single Onion reading series presents an evening of poetry with Vivian Hansen. The featured readings will be preceded by an open mic. Please come early to sign up if you are interested in reading for the open mic.

WHEN: Thursday, November 17th, at 7:30 p.m.

WHERE: The Auburn Saloon, #163 115 9th Ave SE

COST: FREE!

About the Reader:

Vivian Hansen is a Calgary poet and activist. She has run poetry workshops for the John Howard Society/Inn From the Cold Literacy initiatives. Her fiction and nonfiction have appeared in many anthologies, most recently in The Madwoman in the Academy and Writing the Terrain. She has recently edited a collection of poetry entitled Rubbing-Stone: A Nose Hill Anthology, to be published by Passwords Enterprises in 2012. Her chapbook of poetry Never Call It Bird: the Melodies of Aids came out in 1998. Her first full-length book of poetry Leylines of My Flesh was published by Touchwood Press in 2002. In 2004, she published Angel Alley, a chapbook about the victims of Jack the Ripper. She has just completed her MFA in Creative Writing with the University of British Columbia.

Single Onion happens the third Thursday of the month, ten times a year. Our event schedule can always be found at: http://thesingleonion.blogspot.com

For the most up to date Single Onion news check us out on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/singleonion

We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, The League of Canadian Poets and Calgary Arts Development.

Apologetic for Joy - Calgary Launch

WHAT: The Single Onion reading series presents an evening of poetry with Jessica Hiemstra-van der Horst. The featured readings will be preceded by an open mic. Please come early to sign up if you are interested in reading for the open mic.

WHEN: Thursday, October 20th, at 7:30 p.m.

WHERE: The Auburn Saloon, #163 115 9th Ave SE

COST: FREE!

About the Reader:

Jessica Hiemstra-van der Horst is a visual artist and writer. Her work has appeared in several Canadian journals, including Descant, Room, Arc, and The Malahat Review. Her poems have also been anthologized in Approaches to Poetry: the pre-poem moment.

Her first book of poems, Apologetic for Joy, is a lush collection from a unique new voice whose palette of subject matter ranges from artistic anatomy to dislocation. Hiemstra-van der Horst's poems reveal a sensual awareness and an imaginative escape into intricately woven poetic worlds, rich in sensual detail and metaphor. Her gentler sketches of quotidian moments peel away to reveal an artist and poet whose careful observations of the world undertake the difficult translation to page and canvas.

"‘No one,’ Jessica Hiemstra van-der Host claims, ‘has ‘the reins on radiance,' but she is a poet stepping into the sun, wielding a magnifying glass. Her voice is a beam that sings and dazzles, and these are poems to set heart ablaze." — Sachiko Murakami, author of The Invisibility Exhibit

Single Onion happens the third Thursday of the month, ten times a year. Our event schedule can always be found at: http://thesingleonion.blogspot.com

For the most up to date Single Onion news check us out on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/singleonion

We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, The League of Canadian Poets and Calgary Arts Development.

100 Poets!

2011 Calgary Spoken Word Society & Single Onion

100 Poets for Change

The Calgary Spoken Word Society & Single Onion come together

to present the first annual 100 Poets for Change event in Calgary.

100 Poets for Change is a worldwide event on September 24th, uniting artists and poets in a simultaneous celebration to promote social, environmental and political change.

The idea is purposefully broad – each community touching on their own local issues. Encouraging people to get out and meet their neighbors in times of ever-growing alienation. Come out and change how you see your local and global community!

Join us at the Bassbuss at Riley Park

On September 24^th from 1:00pm to 3:00pm

Guest Readers and Open Mic

100 Poets for Change is happening in cities all over the world (around 60 countries so far) on September 24th please visit http://www.100tpc.org/

Thanks to Michael Rothenberg for spearheading this project on the much larger scale. Here's what he has to say about 100 Thousand Poets for Change on the universal event page he created at http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=106999432715571

The first order of change is for poets, writers, artists, anybody, to actually get together to create and perform, educate and demonstrate, simultaneously, with other communities around the world. This will change how we see our local community and the global community. We have all become incredibly alienated in recent years. We hardly know our neighbors down the street let alone our creative allies who live and share our concerns in other countries. We need to feel this kind of global solidarity. I think it will be empowering.

And of course there is the political/social change that many of us are talking about these days. There is trouble in the world. Wars, ecocide, the lack of affordable medical care, racism, the list goes on. It appears that transformation towards a more sustainable world is a major concern and could be a global guiding principle for this event. Peace also seems to be a common cause. War is not sustainable. There is an increasing sense that we need to move forward and stop moving backwards. But I am trying not to be dogmatic. I am hoping that together we can develop our ideas of the "change/transformation" we are looking for as a group, and that each community group will decide their own specific area of focus for change for their particular event.

Our Fall Kickoff Event

The Single Onion reading series presents an evening of poetry with Lorna Crozier, Kirk Ramdath, and Midnight Yoga for Alcoholics. The featured readings will be preceded by an open mic. Please come early to sign up if are interested in reading for the open mic. This event kicks off the exciting fall season.

WHEN: Thursday, September 15th, at 7:30 p.m.

WHERE: The Auburn Saloon, #163 115 9th Ave SE

About the Readers:

Lorna Crozier was born in 1948 in Swift Current, Saskatchewan. As a child growing up in a prairie community where the local heroes were hockey players and curlers, she “never once thought of being a writer.” After university, Lorna went on to teach high school English and work as a guidance counsellor. During these years, Lorna published her first poem in Grain magazine, a publication that turned her life toward writing. Her first collection, Inside in the Sky, was published in 1976. Since then, she has authored 14 books of poetry, including The Garden Going on Without Us, Angels of Flesh, Angels of Silence, Inventing the Hawk (winner of the 1992 Governor-General’s Award), Everything Arrives at the Light, Apocrypha of Light, What the Living Won’t Let Go, and most recently Small Mechanics. Whether Lorna is writing about angels, aging, or Louis Armstrong’s trout sandwich, she continues to engage readers and writers across Canada and the world with her grace, wisdom and wit. She is, as Margaret Laurence wrote, “a poet to be grateful for.”

Kirk Ramdath is a mainstay among Calgary’s poets and spoken-word artists. His “Passion Pitch” poetry series has brought together a wide range of writers to share their words and music, drinks and discussion in an era when the open mic reading, so fertile a ground for many writers practicing today, has been abandoned. He has organized poetry-in-the-park readings, as well as some of the readings in the Single Onion series. Kirk’s poetry has appeared in chapbooks, journals, and on stage – he was one of the first readers in the Calgary Spoken-Word Festival’s “Smart Men, Hot Words” readings. His poetry is noted, appropriately, given the reading series he founded, for its passion and sensuality. His first collection, Love in a Handful of Dust, was published this spring by Frontenac House.

Midnight Yoga for Alcoholics (Kirk Miles & Ken Sinclair): To enrol for classes take these three simple steps. Step One: Grab a back-porch gut-bucket of blues – the kind that creeps out of the Mississippi delta like a snake-tongued slide guitar. The label should read old-school and include equal chunks of stone hoodoo, nightshade, and ghost trains. Step Two: Into the bucket, blend the modern cadences of incisive spoken word. Make sure that you can taste the city. Step Three (How to serve): Garnish with a jazzed penny whistle. Age for at least five decades and serve cold. You are now enrolled in sound fusion. You are making the culture with words. As old as the poet and as new as the microphone.