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September 2010

Wednesday September 8, 2010
Pivot Readings - Jesse Huisken, rob mclennan and Meaghan Strimas

Thursday September 9, 2010
Tear the Curtain! - Jonathon Young and Kevin Kerr

Thursday September 9, 2010
Vigil - Morris Panych

Tuesday September 14, 2010
The Trespassers by Morris Panych - Belfry Theatre

Tuesday September 14, 2010
The Olive Reading Series presents a night with Robert Kroetsch

Friday September 17, 2010
The Refugee Hotel - Passe Muraille

Friday September 24, 2010
David Homel at the Kingston WritersFest

Friday September 24, 2010
Adeena Karasick at the Kingston WritersFest

Sunday September 26, 2010
Carmen Aguirre - Word on the Street

Tuesday September 28, 2010
Ali & Ali: The Deportation Hearings

B.C. Battle for the "Spirit" of the Arts

(Marcus Youssef, hosting Black Eye Dinner Party during 2010 Olympics)

Already long ago, from when we sold our vote to no man, the People have abdicated our duties; for the People who once upon a time handed out military command, high civil office, legions — everything, now restrains itself and anxiously hopes for just two things: bread and circuses…

- Juvenal (The Satires)

The decision to fund a series of art-related festivals called “spirit festivals” throughout B.C. in February is meeting with a fair amount of opposition from members of the Arts community. Of course, planning a three-year $30-million program to fund these aforementioned festivals in order to help people cope with the sad state of the economy does not sound like the most logical use of taxpayer loonies.

Amir Ali Alibhai, the executive director of the Alliance for Arts and Culture, said he is “concerned about the [government’s] apparent lack of consultation with the broader arts community” before committing financing for the events.

Here are some additional responses to the “spirit festivals” initiative:

“You get the symphony orchestra in Prince George losing its funding to a spirit festival up there in February that celebrates the Olympic spirit…Is that good use of taxpayers’ money?”

- Sandy Garossino (Alliance for Arts and Culture’s advocacy task force)

“You devastate these groups and then announce something called spirit festivals without any consultation with the people who are struggling to get by as it is,”

- Spencer Chandra Herbert (New Democratic Party MLA)

“There has been absolutely no consultation with the arts community about this…This is the worst relationship with a government we have ever had.”

- Lindsay Brown (Stop BC Arts Cuts)

“What makes this indie theatre community so unique, and nationally and internationally recognized, is its commitment to collaboration and a belief that together we are stronger. We challenge the provincial government to see this, and to invest in a sector that their provincial counterparts from Nunavut to Nova Scotia have recognized is key to economic development and to a healthy, engaged citizenry.”

- Marcus Youssef (Neworld Theatre Artistic Producer).

The key issue appears to be whether the money should be spent at all, and if so, why not upon artists who endeavour to provide not only cathartic forms of entertainment in troubling times but also diverses voices expressing public issues, instead of spending it upon political fêtes galantes and glossy photo-ops. According to Tourism, Culture and Arts Minister Kevin Krueger, these festivals are a way for cultural organizations to get over recent cutbacks in their funding.

However, this latest result of governmental brainstorming, the decision to squander millions of dollars on a few giant parties, does not immediately strike one as the best use of public funds.

Read more about cuts to the B.C. arts organizations.

• The Collected Books of Artie Gold Have Arrived!
• Jamie Reid reads from PREZ: Homage to Lester Young
• Vancouver Opera presents Lillian Alling
• The Remarkable Emily Carr
• Muthologos is here!
• Charles Olson reads 'The Librarian' (Mar 1966)
• Steve McCaffery reading from Carnival @ Instal 09, Glasgow
• On Healing Family
• The Book of Esther
• The Road Forward
• Tear the Curtain!
• Adeena Karasick at the Kingston WritersFest
• Des Walsh on Rocking the Cradle
• 8th Annual George Ryga Award Shortlist Announced
• Dramas Illumine Dark Matter
• For the Pleasure
• Trigger Premieres at TIFF
• Dear Betty,
• Charles Olson reads from The Maximus Poems
• 12 Hour Marathon Reading of George Bowering's Burning Water
• How High Is the City, 
How Deep Is Our Love
• A Good Sign for Faith Fraud & Minimum Wage
• B.C. Battle for the "Spirit" of the Arts
• 20th Anniversary of the Oka Crisis
• Hair-Tickling Tales of Torment and Teenagers
• Pantsing and Love in a Kitchen
• Of Strange Comfort
• Until The Unsung Sings
• Tomson Highway For Prime Minister?
• Our Summer Sale: 8 New Books of Poetry for $100
• True Story at the Jessies
• Fahrenheit 2010: The Steady Burn Out Of Independent Booksellers
• The Long Anti-lyrical Movement
• Halo Over Shanghai
• 1963 Poetry Conference (Recordings)
• Scream
• Breaking Down Decompositions
• Another Home Invasion Strikes Home
• The George Ryga Papers
• Dora Mavor Moore Award Nominations
• Got Proprioception?
• Video Clips From Talon’s 2010 Cross-Canada Poetry Tour: Vancouver
• Where Do You Stand On Canadian Writing?
• Jessie Richardson Nominations for Three Talonbooks Dramaturges
• Playwright Daniel MacIvor wins Siminovitch Prize
• Imperial Canada: Talon statement on "libel chill"
• Talon Spring Launch at the Edmonton Poetry Festival
• Talonbooks Spring Poetry Launch in Calgary
• Talon Spring Poetry Night in Vancouver
• Joan MacLeod Charms at Kogawa House
• Getting to Know Noh
• Prior to Robert Capa’s Falling Soldier was Louis Riel's North-west Rebellion
• Fred Wah could be Kazuo Ishiguro’s guide to understanding Poetry

If Nothing Was to Happen in Autumn: Something on The Collected Books of Artie Gold

Garry Thomas Morse discovers Gold:

He imbues this particular book with a wonderful nonchalance that tempers the sense of desperation about—what else but the difficulty and often failure of language to serve as a vehicle for our thoughts and emotions, at least not without a great deal of tinkering. Artie Gold leaves behind one poem after another for us, “like a cake placed in a two hour oven / in a building with a bomb, not caring.”

> Go to story...

Terrorism: Today’s ‘Yellow Peril’?

Author Roy Miki studied the official language that stripped his Japanese Canadian family of rights. He sees lessons for today.

> Go to story...

Rational Babblerap with BABA Brinkman

Creator of the first peer-reviewed hip-hop show, Darwin devotee and science celebrant Baba Brinkman is intent on spreading the word, discovers Roger Cox

> Go to story...

Artie Gold - from The Collected Books of Artie Gold

Preview a poem from The Collected Books of Artie Gold (coming this fall).

> Go to story...

For The Pleasure of Seeing Her Again, and Again

It is a rare thing to make a love letter both dramatic and moving. There are plenty of mothers on the stage who get their moment of love and recognition at the end – even Mama Rose gets hers – but only after two and a half hours of battle.

> Go to story...

George Bowering - from My Darling Nellie Grey

Those / flimsy shoes / would never get / anyone through hell

- from the month of August (According to Brueghel)

> Go to story...

A View of The Madonna Painter

In his introductory note, Michel Marc Bouchard, ably assisted by Linda Gaboriau’s translation, warns us that his play “is writ in scarlet pigments, in holy wine and haemoglobin, all the shades of red that flow through us, from our sex to our souls. It is a collision of ecstasies, a bouquet of lies disguised as a fable.”

> Go to story...

The Seminal Transmission of Orphic Ghosts: A Review of Garry Thomas Morse's After Jack

Before Morse was a mote, Spicer delivered a series of lectures in Vancouver (Morse’s stomping grounds) in which he revealed the poet as medium more than artist, and inferring a certain talent—nay, absolutism—to receptivity as priority over composition. Far too clever for its own good, After Jack is a large rabbit-eared radio, indeed.

> Go to story...

Looking Back at They Write Their Dreams on the Rock Forever

York’s voice is never far from anywhere in this text. She explains how these rock writings were the records of people who recorded the results of their spirit quests, dreams and visions on the rock walls of the Stein Valley, and how they could be read and interpreted by any one who was properly trained to “read” them.

> Go to story...

Artie Gold - from The Collected Books of Artie Gold

Preview a poem from The Collected Books of Artie Gold (coming this fall).

> Go to story...