Wednesday

A reading to celebrate Prismatic Publics: Innovative Canadian Women’s Poetry and Poetics edited by Kate Eichhorn and Heather Milne, published by Coach House. The anthology provides an opportunity to trace the diverse networks, influences, dialogues, dialectics, and interventions that continue make the work of Canada’s innovative women writers a powerful force in avant-garde writing around the world.

Nicole Brossard has published more than thirty books, including Museum of Bone and Water, The Aerial Letter and Mauve Desert. Her contribution and influence to Quebec and francophone poetry is major. In 1965, she co-founded the literary periodical La barre du jour and, in 1976, the feminist journal Les têtes de pioche. In 2006, she won the Canada Council’s prestigious Molson Prize for lifetime achievement. Her collection Notebook of Roses and Civilization was shortlisted for the 2008 Griffin Poetry Prize. Her most recent book is the novel Fences in Breathing. Brossard will be introduced by Susan Holbrook.

Margaret Christakos’ work has shown consistent interest in feminist and recombinant poetics, process writing and seriality. She is the author of seven books of poetry and a novel. A new collection, Purple, is forthcoming in 2010. She runs ‘Influency: A Toronto Poetry Salon’ twice annually, through the University of Toronto’s School of Continuing Studies. Christakos will be introduced by Rachel Zolf.

Catriona Strang‘s latest book, co-written with the late Nancy Shaw, is  Light Sweet Crude. Other works include Cold Trip and Busted, both co-written with  Nancy Shaw. She is a founding member of the Institute for Domestic Research, and frequently collaborates with fellow institute member, composer Jacqueline Leggatt, and with clarinetist François Houle, with whom she recorded ‘The Clamourous Alphabet’ (Periplum). She is currently working on ‘Extrafine Imperial Twankay’, a long work based on the history of tea. Strang will be introduced by Kate Eichhorn.

This event is co-presented with Coach House Books and Délégation générale du Québec.