I am so happy to be working with poets again. (it has been a while!) Please read the information and come out to the event below...The Trane is a really good spot to see a show like this too. Please let your friends who like music and/or poetry know about this too.

thanks,
tim
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R))I))F))F)))
R))A))F))T)))

RACHEL ZOLF
GERRY SHIKATANI
a. rawlings
JORDAN SCOTT
JENNY SAMPIRISI
SONNET L’ABBE
MARGARET CHRISTAKOS
Special Guest Musician TIM POSGATE

A night of poetry moving onto the raft of music
and seven poets riffing with each other’s poetries

Each poet will present one original 3 min piece and
be joined by 3 other poets onstage with musician Tim Posgate
for an extended improv-based interpretation

The Trane Studio
964 Bathurst St., Toronto (north of Bloor)
416.913.8197

April 5, 2007
7 - 10 pm

$5 minimum, pwyc / your support is appreciated; Some poets remunerated through The Canada Council National Poetry Month (through the League of Canadian Poets)
A POETRY COLLEGE PROGRAM More info mchristakos@hotmail.com
PLUS Coach House Books will be on site with their latest offerings.


RIFF RAFT
Writer Bios

SONNET L’ABBÉ won The Malahat Review Long Poem Prize in 1999, and the Bronwen Wallace Memorial Award for most promising writer under 35, in 2000. Her first collection of poetry was A Strange Relief (M&S, 2001). Her new collection Killarnoe has just been published by M & S. She writes poetry reviews for The Globe and Mail and teaches Creative Writing within the University of Toronto School of Continuing Studies.

TIM POSGATE is a Toronto based guitarist, banjo player, jazz composer and bandleader (blogger and podcaster too!). He runs his own label called Guildwood Records on which he recently released his sixth Cd; Tim Posgate Hornband featuring Howard Johnson and also performs with Jazzstory and the Rob Clutton Band. Tim has performed at all of the major Canadian jazz festivals as well as touring Europe and is a regular on the Toronto live music scene. He is very interested in Canadian music, poetry, theatre, visual art etc. and is married with two children. (Also notable is his second last recording; In the Future of Your Dream featuring the words of Peter McPhee)

Recently lauded “a profound new talent” by eye Magazine, a.rawlings is a poet, editor, and multidisciplinary artist. In 2001, angela received the bpNichol Award for Distinction in Writing when she graduated from York University. She has worked with many literary organizations, including The Mercury Press and The Lexiconjury Reading Series. angela is the co-editor of Shift & Switch: New Canadian Poetry (The Mercury Press, Fall 2005), an anthology featuring innovative poets. angela’s first book-length poem, Wide slumber for lepidopterists (Coach House Books, Spring 2006), featured in The Globe and Mail's top 100 books of 2006. Wide slumber for lepidopterists was translated from page to stage by Theatre Commutiny in November 2006.

JENNY SAMPIRISI is a Toronto poet and fiction writer. She recently completed her MA in Creative Writing at the University of Windsor. Her thesis, “Like Bone from Skin,” was nominated for the Governor General’s Gold Medal Award in the Humanities category. Currently she is the publisher relations coordinator for the Scream literary festival and is hard at work in the margins of a manuscript. Her visual work, poetry and prose have appeared in a number of literary journals including Minimalist Concrete Poetry, Filling Station, Carousel and dANDelion.

JORDAN SCOTT completed his MA in Creative Writing at the University of Calgary. His first book of poetry, Silt, was published by Vancouver’s New Star Books in January 2005. He is currently working on a manuscript titled blert which explores the poetics of stuttering. Excerpts from this work have been published by No Press and elsewhere.

GERRY SHIKATANI is an internationally known text-sound performance artist who has performed in Canada, the United States and Europe for over 20 years. His book of poems, AQUEDUCT: poems and texts from Europe, 1979-87,was released in 1996 in Canada and France, along with his book of short fiction, LAKE and other stories. AQUEDUCT,three books in a volume of 412 pages, was co-published by three presses, The Mercury Press (Stratford), Underwich Editions (Toronto-Saskatoon) and Wolsak and Wynn (Toronto), an unprecedented publishing event in Canadian literature. His work also appears in Premonitions: The Kaya Anthology of New Asian North American Poetry, and Carnival: a reader from Scream in High Park (Insomniac Press). A Passion for Food, a book of his interviews with some of Canada's leading chefs, was published by The Mercury Press in 1999.Opening Series, a collaborative film work in which Shikatani performs, was made with acclaimed experimental filmaker Phillip Hoffman of Ontario, and was screened at the Toronto International Film Festival in 1999. A restaurant critic for twenty years, for an extended time at The Toronto Star, his recipes have appeared in magazines and cookbooks. He has taught creative writing for over ten years at Sheridan College and the creative writing departments of York University, Toronto and Montreal's Concordia University. Since 1991, he has been working on a major literary project, based on writing done in gardens in Spain and Japan. In 2003, the Capilano Review devoted its spring issue exclusively to his most recent poems, texts, photos and collages done in the gardens of Andalucia, Spain. His most recent project is a book of memoirs, reflections and essays on cuisine. Gerry Shikatani has lived in Montreal and Paris, and is currently based in Toronto.

RACHEL ZOLF is the author of the poetry collections Human Resources, brand new from Coach House Books, 2007, Masque (The Mercury Press, 2004), which was shortlisted for the 2005 Trillium Book Award for Poetry, and Her absence, this wanderer (BuschekBooks, 1999), which was a finalist in the CBC Literary Competition. Zolf lives in Toronto and was the founding poetry editor for Walrus magazine.

MARGARET CHRISTAKOS has published six collections of poetry and a novel. Her most recent poetry books were published by Coach House Books: Sooner (2005), nominated for the Pat Lowther Memorial Award, and Excessive Love Prostheses (2002), winner of the ReLit Award. Her novel Charisma was shortlisted for the Trillium Book Award in 2001. Two recent poetry chapbooks reveal her experimental edge and workings of gender: Adult Video, from Nomados in 2006, and Retreat Diary, from Book Thug in 2005. Christakos curates and facilitates poetry projects in the Toronto community (such as Poetry College, Crepes of Consciousness, Refuge & Reimagination, and Nuit blanche: Night Bulb), and facilitates a course with University of Toronto School of Continuing Studies called Influency: A Toronto Poetry Salon. She has taught creative writing at the Ontario College of Art and Design, Writers in Electronic Residence (WIER) and (currently) Glendon College. She has worked as an editor and production coordinator with cultural magazines and publishers. Margaret has given readings and seminars across Canada since the early 1990s and was Canada Council Writer in Residence at the University of Windsor in 2004-2005.

For more information
contact Margaret Christakos at 416 924 7066.