Award-Winning Poets Roo Borson and Angela Rawlings Read at UBC

VANCOUVER—Step out of the windy rain and into the warmth of the Piano Lounge in the Graham House of Green College for a poetry reading by two great Canadian poets. The Play Chthonics Reading Series and the greater UBC community welcome award-winning poets Roo Borson and a.rawlings to read their work and discuss their poetics.

Date: Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Time: 7:30 p.m.
Location: Graham House at Green College, 6201 Cecil Green Park Road
Cost: Free

a.rawlings’ first book, Wide slumber for lepidopterists (Coach House Books, 2006), documents a night in the life of Northern Ontario. rawlings co-edited Shift & Switch: New Canadian Poetry (The Mercury Press, 2005), co-organized The Lexiconjury Reading Series (2001-6), hosted Heart of a Poet (2005), and facilitates sound/text/movement workshops (2003-present). She is the recipient of the bpNichol Award for Distinction in Writing (2001) and a Chalmers Arts Fellowship (2008). rawlings is on the board of directors for the multidisciplinary performance company bluemouth inc. and frequently collaborates with improvising musicians.

Roo Borson is a poet and essayist. Her most recent book of poetry, Short Journey Upriver Toward Oishida, received the Griffin Poetry Prize, the Governor General's Award, and the Pat Lowther Award. Her book of literary non-fiction, Personal History, was published in 2008. She is currently working on a new book of poetry, as well as a collaborative project with poet Kim Maltman under the pen name Baziju.

The Play Chthonics reading series showcases innovative poetry, narrative, and cross-genre writing. We encourage creative, interdisciplinary conversations among writers, students, faculty, theorists, and community members in Vancouver. The series is sponsored by The English Department, The International Canadian Studies Centre at UBC, Green College and the Canada Council. We are grateful for their support.

For more information, see http://playchthonics.blogspot.com/

Poets derek beaulieu and Fiona Tinwei Lam Read at UBC

VANCOUVER—Step out of the cold and into the warmth of the Graham House at Green College for a poetry reading by two of Canada’s most provocative poets. The Play Chthonics Reading Series and the greater UBC community welcome award-winning poets Derek Beaulieu and Fiona Tinwei Lam to read their work and discuss their poetics.

Date: Friday, November 20, 2009
Time: 7:30 p.m.
Location: Graham House at Green College, 6201 Cecil Green Park Road
Cost: Free

Fiona Tinwei Lam's first book of poetry, Intimate Distances (Nightwood Editions), was shortlisted for the City of Vancouver Book Prize. She is the co-editor and contributor to the non-fiction anthology Double Lives (McGill-Queen's). Her work has appeared in literary journals across Canada and is included in over a dozen anthologies. Her latest book of poetry is Enter the Chrysanthemum.

derek beaulieu’s four books of poetry all engage with textual production and the way that composition informs comprehension. His first book, with wax, was published by Coach House Books in 2003, and was followed-up by frogments from the frag pool: haiku after basho (Mercury Press, 2005) co-written with Gary Barwin and frfactal economies (talonbooks, 2006). His most recent book is chains (paper kite, 2008) which explores the relationship of meaning-making between the author and the reader through non-semantic concrete poetry. beaulieu is also the co-editor of the best-selling anthology Shift & Switch: new Canadian poetry. His collection of conceptual short fiction, How To Write is forthcoming from Talonbooks in 2010.

The Play Chthonics reading series showcases innovative poetry, narrative, and cross-genre writing. We encourage creative, interdisciplinary conversations among writers, students, faculty, theorists, and community members in Vancouver.

The series is based in the English Department at UBC.For more information, see http://playchthonics.blogspot.com/ or contact Gillian Jerome at gjerome@interchange.ubc.ca.

FUNDRAISCHTHONICS!

FUNDRAISCHTHONICS! A POETRY PERFORMANCE AND FUNDRAISER

Hey grammar geeks and philes of phonics - you're invited to sip hip poetics and gin and tonics at Fundraischthonics! Come support the UBC poetry series that maps tectonic shifts in textCanlit, on Wednesday, February 25, 2009 at 7 p.m. at Thea's Lounge, Thea Koerner House, UBC, 6371 Crescent Road.

The evening will feature special guest Taien Ng-Chan reading from her work. Also reading will be poets Mike Borkent, Ray Hsu, Sonnet L'Abbé, and Moberly Luger.

DJ Simon Rolston will spin tunes.

WHAT: A night of readings and tunes in support of Play Chthonics

WHEN: Wednesday, February 25, 7 p.m. Festivities begin 7:30 p.m.

WHERE: Thea's Lounge, Thea Koerner House, UBC, 6371 Crescent Road.

The Play Chthonics reading series showcases innovative poetry, narrative, and cross-genre writing. We encourage creative, interdisciplinary conversations among writers, students, faculty, theorists, and community members in Vancouver. The series is based in the English Department at UBC, and is in the midst of a six-reading season for 2008-9. We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Institute for Canadian Studies at UBC, the Department of English at UBC and Green College.

Dionne Brand and Rita Wong Read January 21

Step out of the cold and into the warmth of the the Coach House at Green College for a reading by two of Canada’s most provocative writers. The Play Chthonics Reading Series and the greater UBC community welcome award-winning writers Dionne Brand and Rita Wong to read their work and discuss their poetics.

Date: Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Time: Doors open at 7:00 p.m. Reading starts at 7:30 p.m.
Location: The Coach House at Green College, 6201 Cecil Green Park Road
Cost: Free

Rita Wong is the author of monkeypuzzle (Press Gang, 1998) and forage (Nightwood, 2007). She received the Asian Canadian Writer’s Workshop Emerging Writer Award in 1997, and the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize for forage in 2008. She teaches Critical and Cultural Studies at the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design in Vancouver and is also a visiting instructor at the University of Miami.

Dionne Brand won the Governor General’s Award for Land to Light On (McClelland & Stewart, 1997). No Language Is Neutral (M&S, 1998) and Inventory (M&S, 2006) were also nominated for the G.G. Award. She has won the Pat Lowther Award for poetry, and her volume thirsty (M&S, 2002) was nominated for the Griffin Poetry Prize in 2003. She is the author of three acclaimed novels: In Another Place, Not Here (Vintage, 1997), At the Full and Change of the Moon (Vintage, 2000), and What We All Long For (Vintage, 2005). She lives in Toronto and holds a Research Chair at the University of Guelph.

The Play Chthonics reading series showcases innovative poetry, narrative, and cross-genre writing. We encourage creative, interdisciplinary conversations among writers, students, faculty, theorists, and community members in Vancouver. The series is sponsored by UBC’s English Department, Green College, The International Canadian Studies Centre at UBC and The Canada Council.

Mark your calendar for our fundraiser on February 25, with special guest Taien Ng-Chan.

The last reading of the season will feature Ray Hsu and Karen Solie on March 18.

Watch this site for details.

Susan Holbrook and Mari-Lou Rowley this Wednesday at 4pm

Play Chthonics: Contemporary Canadian Readings presents
Mari-Lou Rowley & Susan Holbrook
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Green College, Graham House 4 pm

Please join us for a poetry reading and conversation with poets Mari-Lou Rowley & Susan Holbrook in the parlour of the Graham House at UBC’s Green College.

Mari-Lou Rowley has published six collections of poetry, most recently CosmoSonnets (JackPine 2007) and Viral Suite (Anvil Press 2004), and her work has appeared in journals anthologies in Canada and the US. A Globe and Mail critic called her work a place where “the subatomic world is a model of spiritual grace.” Uptown Magazine called her poems “haunting” pieces that are sometimes “horrific” in their articulation of nature fighting back.

Susan Holbrook is a poet and fiction writer whose first book, misled (1999) was short listed for the Pat Lowther Memorial Award and the Stephen J. Stephensson Award. Her long poem chapbook, Good Egg, Bad Seed, was released in the Spring of 2004. One critic called the poems in this chapbook, “a ping pong game you’ll never forget – where the tables keep flipping and players’ ironic bats spin the banal into deadly mischievous curves.” Holbrook teaches English at the University of Windsor.

The Play Chthonics reading series showcases innovative poetry, narrative, and cross-genre writing. We encourage creative, interdisciplinary conversations among writers, students, faculty, theorists, and community members in Vancouver.

We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Institute for Canadian Studies at UBC, the Department of English at UBC and Green College.

Clint Burnham, Aaron Peck and Rishma Dunlop Read on November 12

Play Chthonics: Contemporary Canadian Readings presents

Clint Burnham, Aaron Peck and Rishma Dunlop
Wednesday November 12, 2008
Green College, Graham House 7:30 pm

Clint Burnham's Rental Van is "populated with tangled, pop-littered phrases, a work that is constantly challenging its readers" (Danforth Review)
"a very complex blend of avant garde technique, colloquial vulgarity, and political outrage" (Think Again).


Aaron Peck's first novel: "Bernard Willis was an archivist at work in a residency at Gibraltar Point Centre for the Arts when he mysteriously disappeared. Two unnamed people, lovers, find Willis's manuscript-in-progress and decide to prepare it for publication."


The Toronto Star says about Rishma Dunlop: "Her phrasing can spur leaps of the heart; she's a writer whose passion and large-spiritedness are inspiring." Dunlop "seduc[es] us with a relentless passion for the intangible beauty wrought visible in objects cathected with reverence and desire." - West Coast Line





Clint Burnham's most recent book of poems is Rental Van (Anvil, 2007). He is the author of several other books including the novel Smoke Show (Arsenal Pulp, 2005, shortlisted for the BC Book Prize), Airborne Photo (Anvil, 1999) and The Jamesonian Unconscious (Duke UP, 1995). Burnham taught at UBC from 1996-2002 and currently teaches in Simon Fraser University's English Department and is a freelance art critic for the Vancouver Sun.

Aaron Peck's first novel is The Bewilderments of Bernard Willis (Pedlar Press, 2008). He is also the author of a chapbook, Crepuscule on Mission Street (Nomados, 2006) and of numerous reviews and articles (most recently in Fillip and Canadian Art). He is the co-editor of Doppelganger, an online journal of critical writing on visual art and literature, and has served on the board of directors at Artspeak. Peck holds an MA in English from York University and currently lives in Vancouver.

Rishma Dunlop is an award winning Canadian poet, playwright, essayist, and fiction writer. Her books of poetry are: White Album (Inanna Publications 2008), Metropolis (Mansfield Press, 2005), Reading Like a Girl (Black Moss Press, 2004), and The Body of My Garden (Mansfield Press, 2002). She received the Emily Dickinson Prize for Poetry in 2003, and her radio drama, "The Raj Kumari's Lullaby," was produced by CBC Radio in 2005. She is a professor in the Department of English at York University, Toronto, where she is Coordinator of the Creative Writing Program. She is founding editor of the international poetry journal Studio.

Play Chthonics reading series showcases innovative poetry, narrative, and cross-genre writing. We encourage creative, interdisciplinary conversations among writers, students, faculty, theorists, and community members in Vancouver. The series is based in the English Department at UBC, and is in the midst of a six-reading season for 2008-9.

We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Institute for Canadian Studies at UBC, the Department of English at UBC and Green College.

Christine Stewart and Christian Bok this Wednesday!

Play Chthonics Contemporary Canadian Reading Series presents:

Christian Bök and Christine Stewart

Wednesday October 22 at 7:30pm.

Coach House, Green College, 6201 Cecil Green Park Road, UBC.

Christine Stewart is the author of Pessoa’s July: or the months of astonishments (Nomados, 2006), From Taxonomy (West House, 2003, selections were awarded the Gertrude Stein Award in Innovative Poetry), and Daddy Clean Head (Lumpe, 2000). Her poetry has also appeared in numerous journals including, ecopoetics,Raddle Moon,how2, The Gig, Writing and Big Alice. She currently writes and teaches experimental poetry and poetics in the English and Film Department at the University of Alberta.

Christian Bök is the author of the bestselling experimental work, Eunoia (Coach House, 2001), which won the Griffin Prize for Poetic Excellence. His previous book, Crystallography (Coach House, 1994) was nominated for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. Bök has created artificial languages for two television shows, Gene Roddenberry’s Earth: Final Conflict and Peter Benchley’s Amazon, and has earned accolades for his performances of sound poetry (particularly the Ursonate by Kurt Schwitters). His conceptual artworks have appeared at the Marianne Boesky Gallery in New York as part of the exhibit Poetry Plastique. Bök is a Professor of English at the University of Calgary.

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Play Chthonics reading series showcases innovative poetry, narrative, and cross-genre writing. We encourage creative, interdisciplinary conversations among writers, students, faculty, theorists, and community members in Vancouver.

We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Institute for Canadian Studies at UBC, the Department of English at UBC and Green College.