Announcing our spring project: a multi-week online mini reading series featuring poets from across Canada! Video posts will happen on Wednesdays at 7:00pm. First episode took place May 20th. If you miss the initial posting time, don’t worry: all videos will remain on our Poetry London YouTube page.
Please check our Facebook and YouTube for updates.
Reading Episodes
Episode 5 – June 24th 2020 – Kaie Kellough, Adam Pottle, Tom Prime & Gary Barwin
Episode 4 – June 17th 2020 – Lindsay Bird, Raoul Fernandes, and Rebecca Păpucaru
Episode 3 – June 3rd 2020 – Dominique Bernier-Cormier, Ayesha Chatterjee & Smokii Sumac
Episode 2 – May 27th 2020 – Kayla Czaga, Annick MacAskill & Tyler Pennock
Episode 1 – May 20th 2020 – Joanna Lilley, Robin Richardson, and Gillian Sze.
Bios
Gary Barwin is a writer, composer, and multidisciplinary artist. His latest books include For It is a Pleasure and a Surprise to Breathe: New and Selected Poems (ed. Alessandro Porco), A Cemetery for Holes (with Tom Prime), and his national bestselling novel Yiddish for Pirates which won the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour and was also a finalist for both the Governor General’s Award for Fiction and the Scotiabank Giller Prize. A new novel, Nothing the Same, Everything Haunted: The Ballad of Motl the Cowboy will appear from Random House in 2021. A PhD in music composition, his writing, music, media works and visuals have been presented and broadcast internationally, including a year-long multimedia installation at the Art Gallery of Hamilton. He is a prolific collaborator having regularly worked with writers, musicians, artists, filmmakers, and dancers. He lives in Hamilton, Ontario and at garybarwin.com
Ayesha Chatterjee is the author of two poetry collections, The Clarity of Distance and Bottles and Bones. Her work has appeared in journals across the world and been translated into French, Slovene and Russian. Chatterjee is past president of the League of Canadian Poets and chair of the League’s Feminist Caucus. She is poetry advisor to Exile Quarterly magazine. She lives in Toronto.
Instagram: @ayeshachatterjeepoet
Twitter: @profoundpapaya
Purchase Ayesha’s books: https://bayeux.com/clarity-of-distance/
Kayla Czaga is the author of two collections of poetry—most recently Dunk Tank, which is a 2020 finalist for the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. Her work has appeared in The Fiddlehead, Forklift, Ohio, Maisonneuve, The Next Wave: An Anthology of 21st Century Canadian Poetry, and elsewhere. She lives in Victoria, B.C. and serves as the online poetry mentor for Simon Fraser University’s The Writer’s Studio.
Homepage: https://www.kaylaczaga.com/
Twitter: @kaylaczaga
Purchase Kayla’s new book: https://houseofanansi.com/products/dunk-tank
Joanna Lilley is the author of three poetry collections: Endlings (Turnstone Press), If There Were Roads (Turnstone Press) and The Fleece Era (Brick Books) which was nominated for the Fred Cogswell Award for Excellence in Poetry. She’s also the author of a novel, Worry Stones (Ronsdale Press), which was longlisted for the Caledonia Novel Award, and a short story collection, The Birthday Books (Hagios Press). Joanna has given readings all across Canada and in the US and UK and has delivered workshops as far afield as Alaska and Iceland. She’s from Britain and moved to Canada in 2006, 15 years after cycling alone across the country from Nova Scotia to Inuvik in the Northwest Territories. She lives in Whitehorse, Yukon, where she co-founded the Yukon Writers’ Collective Ink, and is grateful to reside on the Traditional Territories of the Kwanlin Dün First Nation and the Ta’an Kwäch’än Council.
Find Joanna online at www.joannalilley.com.
Twitter: @circumpolarjo
Purchase Joanna’s new book: turnstonepress.com/books/poetry/endlings.html
Annick MacAskill’s poems have appeared in journals and anthologies across Canada and abroad, including Arc, Canadian Notes & Queries, The Fiddlehead, Plenitude, The Stinging Fly, and Best Canadian Poetry 2019. Her debut collection, No Meeting Without Body, was nominated for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award and shortlisted for the J.M. Abraham Award. Originally from Southwestern Ontario, she now lives in K’jipuktuk/Halifax, Nova Scotia, on the ancestral and unceded territory of the Mi’kmaq people.
Homepage: annickmacaskill.com
Publisher website: gaspereau.com
Buy Annick’s books at either of the above websites or at independent bookstores!
Tyler Pennock is a two-spirit adoptee from a Cree and Métis family around the Lesser Slave Lake area of Alberta. He is a graduate of Guelph University’s Creative Writing MFA program. He currently lives in Toronto, where he has worked as an educator and community worker for over ten years. His first book is Bones (Brick Books, 2020).
Purchase Tyler’s book: brickbooks.ca/books/bones
Homepage: tylerpennock.ca
Twitter: @onanankkwaap
Instagram: @onanankkwaap
Facebook: facebook.com/pennocktyler
Tom Prime is starting his second year in the PhD program at Western University in English. He has an MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Victoria (Specializing in Poetry). He has a BA at Western University. He has been published in Brave New Word, Carousel, Ditch, Fjords Review, The Northern Testicle, The Rusty Toque, and Vallum. He has two poems accepted for forthcoming publication in Lana Turner Journal. He has a forthcoming essay in Canadian Literature Journal.
His first chapbook, A Strange Hospital, was published on Proper Tales Press. His chapbook, Gravitynipplemilkplanet Anthroposcenesters, was published on above/ground press. This along with the two Serif of Nottingham chapbooks (Birds are the birthmarks of flight and Throat Fixtures: The Almanack of Dazzle) are collaborations with Gary Barwin. He has a forthcoming mini chapbook on Blasted Tree Press. His collaborative collection of poems written with Gary Barwin, A Cemetery for Holes, is available from Gordon Hill Press.
Robin Richardson is the founder of CITADEL – an online resource for writers. Find out more here: https://citadelcollective.com/
Robin is also author of four collections of poetry, including Sit How You Want (winner of the Trillium Book Award / named one of the best books of the year by CBC), and is Editor-in-Chief at Minola Review. Her work has appeared in Salon, POETRY, The American Poetry Review, The Walrus, Hazlitt, Best Canadian Poetry, and Tin House, among others. She holds an MFA in Writing from Sarah Lawrence College, has won the Fortnight Poetry Prize in the U.K., The John B. Santorini Award, The Joan T. Baldwin Award, and has been shortlisted for the CBC, Walrus, and ARC Poetry Prizes, among others. Robin is a McDowell Fellow and acknowledges and is deeply grateful for the support of The Ontario Arts Council, The Toronto Arts Council, and the Canada Council for the Arts.
Twitter: @CitadelRetreat and @robin_r_r
Purchase Robin’s new book: bookhugpress.ca/shop/author/robin-richardson/try-not-to-get-too-attached-by-robin-richardson
Smokii Sumac is a proud member of the Ktunaxa nation, a poet, and a PhD Candidate in Indigenous Studies at Trent University. His first poetry collection you are enough: love poems for the end of the world (Kegedonce Press) won an Indigenous Voices Award in 2019. This past fall, Smokii has been overjoyed to return to ʔamakʔis Ktunaxa to teach Indigenous Studies at the College of the Rockies in Cranbrook, British Columbia. He has found home a little ways up the mountain, in Kimberley, where he lives with his newly adopted #pandemicpuppy, Kootenay Lou, and his old grey cat friend who has been with him over a decade, Miss Magoo.
Homepage: smokiisumac.com
Publisher site: kegedonce.com/
Purchase Smokii’s book here: alllitup.ca/books/Y/You-are-Enough
Gillian Sze is the author of multiple poetry collections, including Panicle (ECW 2017). She studied Creative Writing and English Literature at Concordia University and received a Ph.D. in Études anglaises from Université de Montréal. Originally from Winnipeg, she now resides in Montreal where she teaches creative writing and literature. Her first picture book, The Night is Deep and Wide, will be published by Orca Book in 2021.
Homepage: gilliansze.com
Twitter: @gilliansze
Purchase Gillian’s most recent book: ecwpress.com/products/panicle
Dominique Bernier-Cormier is a Québecois/Acadian poet. His first book, Correspondent (Goose Lane, 2018), was a hybrid work of poetry and journalism and was longlisted for the Raymond Souster Award. He is currently working on a book of bilingual poetry about his ancestor’s escape from jail, multilingual identity and the effects of climate change in southwestern Louisiana.
Twitter: @DBernierCormier
Purchase Dominique’s book: gooselane.com/collections/icehouse-poetry/products/correspondent
Lindsay Bird is a poet and journalist in Corner Brook, NL. Her first collection, Boom Time (Gaspereau Press, 2019), was long listed for the Winterset Award, the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award and the Raymond Souster Award. Her poetry has appeared in Event, The Newfoundland Quarterly, CV2, and Geist.
Homepage: lindsaybird.ca/
Twitter: @daycrossing
Purchase Lindsay’s book: gaspereau.com/bookInfo.php?AID=179&AISBN=0
Raoul Fernandes lives and writes in Vancouver, with his wife and two sons. He first collection of poems, Transmitter and Receiver (Nightwood Editions, 2015) won the Dorothy Livesay Award and the Debut-litzer Award for Poetry in 2016 and was a finalist for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award and the Canadian Authors Association Award for Poetry. He has been published in numerous literary journals and anthologies, including The Best of the Best Canadian Poetry in English.
Homepage: raoulfernandes.com Twitter: @raoulcfernandes
Purchase Raoul’s book: harbourpublishing.com/title/TransmitterandReceiver
Kaie Kellough is a poet, sound performer, and fiction writer based in Montréal. His latest book of poetry, Magnetic Equator (McClelland & Stewart, 2019), won the Griffin Poetry Prize. His collection of short stories Dominoes at the Crossroads appeared earlier this year (Véhicule Press, 2020). He has written for large and small musical ensembles, and his work has been performed internationally.
Homepage: kaie.ca/ Twitter: @kkaaiiee
Purchase Kaie’s books: vehiculepress.com/q.php?EAN=9781550655315
penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/599494/magnetic-equator-by-kaie-kellough/9780771043116
Rebecca Păpucaru’s short story “Yentas” won The Malahat Review’s 2020 Novella Prize and will appear in the summer issue. Her short story, “Tropical Conversation” was shortlisted for the Penguin Random House Canada Student Award for Fiction. Her first book, The Panic Room, was awarded the 2018 Canadian Jewish Literary Award for Poetry and was also a finalist for the A.M. Klein Prize for Poetry and longlisted for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award.
Purchase Rebecca’s book: harbourpublishing.com/title/ThePanicRoom
Adam Pottle’s writing explores the fiery beauty of Deafness and disability. His most recent book Voice has been nominated for two Saskatchewan Book Awards, and his play The Black Drum, the world’s first all-Deaf musical, was performed in Toronto and France to rave reviews. His other books include the novel Mantis Dreams and the award-winning novella The Bus. He lives in Saskatoon.
Homepage: adampottle.com/
Twitter: @AddyPottle
Instagram: instagram.com/adam.pottle
Purchase Adam’s books: uofrpress.ca/Books/V/Voice
caitlin-press.com/our-books/beautiful-mutants
caitlin-press.com/our-books/mantis-dreams