Calgary ArtsCommon’s Stephen Magazine has just published my reflections on being the first artist-in-residence in the Lightbox Studio. Pick up a free copy today!
Archives for category: performances / readings
2014 has been one heck of a year:
– on April 28th I was named Calgary’s Poet Laureate, an incredible honour. This position has helped me initiate a number of events and programs (some of which are still cooking and thus aren’t quite ready to be plated) which work to recognize, celebrate and build upon Calgary’s literary history and community. Huge thanks to Emiko Muraki, Christine Armstrong and all the amazing folks at CADA for their amazing work and dedication since April — and for all the ways that CADA helps the city’s arts communities.
– i have been lucky to have conducted readings at talks at Mount Royal University, The University of Calgary, Brock University (St.Catharines, ON), and Roehampton University (London, UK) and at public events in Lethbridge, Manchester and Calgary (sixteen events in Calgary alone this year). Thank you so much to all of the organizers, hosts, colleagues, freinds and audiences with whom i’ve shared these experiences.
– My students and colleagues recognized and awarded my teaching with the Alberta College of Art + Design Student Association Appreciation Award and the inaugural Robert Kroetsch Teaching Innovation Award from the Canadian Creative Writers and Writing Programs (CCWWP). Thank you. I was thrilled to share with students at Mount Royal, ACAD and at Wordsworth Teen Summer Camp (8 courses & the camp over the year)
– i’ve been lucky to have work published magazines, journals and books in Canada, the US, Germany, England and France and work included in gallery exhibitions in Canada, Austria, the Netherlands, England and the US. I was also the first artist-in-residence in the Lightbox Studio in Calgary’s Epcor Centre for the Performing Arts (now the Arts Commons) – thank you Natasha Jensen for all the organizational acumen. My work was projected on the side of the Calgary Tower and posted on billboards on Calgary’s busiest freeways thanks to the initiatives of Calgary’s Wordfest.
– Los Angeles-based press Les Figues published my latest volume of visual poetry, KERN, and for that i am incredibly grateful. thank you Andrew, Vanessa and Teresa.
– through No press I published 19 different editions of poetry and prose from international, national and local emerging and established writers. each book was meant to help spread the word of risk-taking work being written internationally. Thank you for trusting me with your work.
– lastly, i capped the year off with a trip to London with my family in order to defend my Phd dissertation in Creative Writing at Roehampton University under the supervision of Dr. Peter Jaeger and Mr. Jeff Hilson – both of whom have been exceptional teachers and mentors.
None of this would have been possible without my incredible partner, Kristen, and my amazing daughter Maddie. My parents and in-laws have also been a steady voice of support and love; thank you.
In so many ways i can only excel because of the strength and support of my community of freinds and colleagues, especially Christian Bok, Sina Queyras, Darren Wershler, Kenneth Goldsmith, Tony Trehy, Jordan Scott, Greg Betts, Lori Emerson, Jo Steffens, Kit Dobson, Helen Hajnoczky … and so many others. Thank you. And thank you to my students who always encourage me to listen, to share, to push my practice and my pedagogy. You rock.
I’m proud to announce that I have been named the Epcor Centre for the Performing Arts‘s Lightbox Studio’s inaugural Artist-in-Residence.
During my residency, which will take place from Aug 19 through Oct 24, I will be working on a series of text-art pieces and hosting a number of events.
My tenure as artist-in-residence coincides with Nuit Blanche Calgary (for which Heather Huston of Alberta Printmakers Society and I are creating a series of limited edition silkscreen prints), Alberta Culture Days (for which I will be speaking at the Calgary Public Library) and some other great events to be announced soon…
The residency space will feature excerpts from my book-length visual projects Flatland, Local Colour and Prose of the Trans-Canada. There will also be a number of manual typewriters which the public are free to experiment upon. Through-out my residency I will be working on a number of projects and welcome conversation…
My thanks to Natasha Jensen and everyone at the Epcor Centre for the Performing Arts for this great opportunity.
As Calgary’s Poet Laureate, I’m pleased as penguins to be hosting performances by Larissa Lai and Sarah Kelly!
Larissa Lai is the author of two novels (Salt Fish Girl and When Fox Is a Thousand), one book of poetry (Automaton Biographies) and co-author, with Rita Wong, of Sybil Unrest. Her most recent book is Slanting I, Imagining We: Asian Canadian Literary Production in the 1980s and 1990s (Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2014). She has recently returned to Calgary and is the new Tier 2 Canadian Research Chair in Creative Writing at the University of Calgary.
Sarah Kelly’s one-woman band Tigerwing blends the human voice with technology to wind its way through the listener. She recently performed at Sled Island and is awesome.
(free admission, donations welcome)
August 27, 7pm
LOFT 112
#112, 535 8 Ave SE
Calgary, Alberta
As Calgary’s Poet Laureate, I’m pleased as potatoes to be hosting a reading by Helen Hajnoczky and Victoria Braun!
Helen Hajnoczky is the author of Poets & Killers (Snare Books). Currently living in Montreal, she is back in Calgary for just a short period. Helen Hajnoczky holds a BA(Hon) from the University of Calgary, where her research focused on contemporary feminist avant-garde poetics as well as an MA and an MLIS, both from McGill. Her work has appeared in filling Station, Matrix, NoD, Rampike, and Speechless magazines, as well as in a variety of chapbooks. She has served as assistant editor of NoD magazine, as poetry editor of filling Station magazine, and has been a weekly contributor to the literary blog Lemon Hound. Hajnoczky blogs at: http://ateacozyisasometimes.blogspot.ca/
Victoria Braun is the author of #girlproblems (89+/LUMA foundation) and a small leaflet from No press. Braun’s work navigates the private/public dichotomy, concerned with the relationship between the personal and political. Using personal experience and social media, Braun researches the social climate of her generation, gathering information regarding gender dynamics and intimacy. Braun is currently finishing her BFA at the Alberta College of Art and Design. #girlproblems can be found online here: http://poetrywillbemadebyall.ch/book/girlproblems/
(free admission, donations welcome)
August 6, 7pm
LOFT 112
#112, 535 8 Ave SE
Calgary, Alberta
Counterpath is seeking performance, film, sound, writing, and
visual work that directly responds to or reads Writing Surfaces: The
Selected Fiction of John Riddell (2012, Wilfrid Laurier University
Press).
John Riddell’s work embraces game play, unreadability and
illegibility, procedural work, non-representational narrative,
photocopy degeneration, collage, handwritten texts, and gestural
work. His self-aware and meta-textual short fiction challenges the
limits of machine-based composition and his reception as a
media-based poet.
Riddell is best known for “H” and “Pope Leo, El ELoPE,” a pair of
graphic fictions written in collaboration with, or dedicated to,
bpNichol, but his work moves well beyond comic strips into a
series of radical fictions. In Writing Surfaces, derek beaulieu and
Lori Emerson present “Pope Leo, El ELoPE” and many other works
in a collection that showcases Riddell’s remarkable mix of largely
typewriter-based concrete poetry mixed with fiction and drawings.
Riddell’s oeuvre fell out of popular attention, but it has recently
garnered interest among poets and critics engaged in media studies
(especially studies of the typewriter) and experimental writing. As
media studies increasingly turns to “media archaeology” and the
reading and study of antiquated, analogue-based modes of
composition (typified by the photocopier and the fax machine as
well as the typewriter), Riddell is a perfect candidate for renewed
appreciation and study by new generations of readers, authors, and
scholars.
Counterpath will host an evening of approximately 5 performances of 10-15 minutes each on
December 14, 2013, at 7 p.m.
Please send a proposal of not more than 250 words to Counterpath
program coordinator Oren Silverman (os@counterpathpress.org) by October 31, 2013.
Cecile Bjørgås Jordheim has a new performance of her “First of All There is Blue” which was inspired by my novel Local Colour: Ghosts, variations:
Konsert–performance
Torsdag 19. september kl. 21.00
Kunstnernes Hus, Foajé
Gratis inngang
Cecile Bjørgås Jordheim, Stine Janvin Motland (vokal) og Jo Fougner Skaansar (kontrabass)
The project is based on the first paragraph in Paul Auster’s novella Ghosts. The composition consists of 3 short movements. The first movement is the original text straight from the book, the two following movements are versions of the paragraph that has been trough Google Translate so many times that the text is altered into strange sentences and meanings. The composition was done by isolating the letters C, D, E, F, G, A, B in the text and using them in a notational system to indicate pitch. The absence of the characters in between the chosen letters indicate the durations/note values.
More information, and a recording of a previous iteration of the performance, can be found here.
The project was initiated by Canadian poet Derek Beaulieu and In Edit Mode Press in Malmö, Sweden and is entitled Local Colour: Ghosts, variations. The collection takes as its point of departure Paul Auster’s novella Ghosts, and Beaulieu’s reworking of Auster’s text, Local Colour. It invites a number of writers, poets, musicians and artists to contribute with further reworkings, intermedial translations and editing projects exploring various intersections between Auster’s text and Beaulieu’s graphic interpretation. The resulting volume consists of four bound volumes, a series of pamphlets and prints, an audio-CD and a piece of computer software.
On Friday April 12, 2013 at 7:00pm at Calgary’s Pages Books (1135 Kensington Rd NW) we will be celebrating the launch of Please, No more poetry: the poetry of derek beaulieu and Writing Surafces: selected fiction of john riddell (both from Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2013). Local writers Christian Bök, Richard Harrison, Natalie Simpson, Kathleen Brown, Karis Shearer and others will read /respond to / perform beaulieu’s works and good times will be had. Hosted by Kit Dobson, the editor of Please, No More Poetry.
More about Please, No more poetry: the poetry of derek beaulieu:
Since the beginning of his poetic career in the 1990s, derek beaulieu has created works that have challenged readers to understand in new ways the possibilities of poetry. With nine books currently to his credit, and many works appearing in chapbooks, broadsides, and magazines, beaulieu continues to push experimental poetry, both in Canada and internationally, in new directions. Please, No More Poetry is the first selected works of derek beaulieu.
As the publisher of first housepress and, more recently, No Press, beaulieu has continually highlighted the possibilities for experimental work in a variety of writing communities. His own work can be classified as visual poetry, as concrete poetry, as conceptual work, and beyond. His work is not to be read in any traditional sense, as it challenges the very idea of reading; rather, it may be understood as a practice that forces readers to reconsider what they think they know. As beaulieu continues to push himself in new directions, readers will appreciate the work that he has created to date, much of which has become unavailable in Canada.
With an introduction by Kit Dobson and an interview with derek beaulieu by Lori Emerson as an afterword, Please, No More Poetry offers readers an opportunity to gain access to a complex experimental poetic practice through thirty-five selected representative works.
More about Writing Surfaces: Selected Fiction of John Riddell:
John Riddell is best known for “H” and “Pope Leo, El ELoPE,” a pair of graphic fictions written in collaboration with, or dedicated to, bpNichol, but his work moves well beyond comic strips into a series of radical fictions. In Writing Surfaces, derek beaulieu and Lori Emerson present “Pope Leo, El ELoPE” and many other works in a collection that showcases Riddell’s remarkable mix of largely typewriter-based concrete poetry mixed with fiction and drawings.
Riddell’s work embraces game play, unreadability and illegibility, procedural work, non-representational narrative, photocopy degeneration, collage, handwritten texts, and gestural work. His self-aware and meta-textual short fiction challenges the limits of machine-based composition and his reception as a media-based poet.
Riddell’s oeuvre fell out of popular attention, but it has recently garnered interest among poets and critics engaged in media studies (especially studies of the typewriter) and experimental writing. As media studies increasingly turns to “media archaeology” and the reading and study of antiquated, analogue-based modes of composition (typified by the photocopier and the fax machine as well as the typewriter), Riddell is a perfect candidate for renewed appreciation and study by new generations of readers, authors, and scholars.
derek beaulieu's blog 