Griffin Art Projects is holding an exhibition about art and poetry in Vancouver, 1960 to present.

January 26, 2019 – April 27, 2019
Opening Reception, Friday, January 25, 7–9 pm
1174 Welch Street
North Vancouver, BC V7P 2R5
Canada

This exhibition explores common methods and musings of poets and artists in Vancouver since 1960 and gestures to the deep influence of the San Francisco Renaissance Poets on local writers. This project presents key moments from this entwined history of visual and textual poets through examples of publications alongside focused presentations of artist’s work. A conversation emerges through similar modes of cut-up reference and shared formal experimentation.

The exhibition features Marian Penner Bancroft, bill bissett, Robin Blaser, Judy Chartrand, Judith Copithorne, Pierre Coupey, Peter Culley, Christos Dikeakos, Stan Douglas, Beau Dick, Geoffrey Farmer, Fran Herndon, Carole Itter, Roy Kiyooka, Tiziana La Melia, Al Neil, Judy Radul, Rhoda Rosenfeld, Trudy Rubenfeld, Nancy Shaw with many more.

More info here.

Calendar of events

Friday, January 25
Opening reception, 7-9pm

Saturday, January 26
Curators tour – 1pm

Saturday, February 9
Tiziana La Melia, Judith Penner and Renee Rodin – 3pm

Saturday, February 16
Andrea Actis, Danielle La France and Dorothy Trujillio Lusk – 3pm

Saturday, February 23
Mackenzie Ground, Rhoda Rosenfeld and Fenn Stewart, organized by Catriona Strang – 3pm

Saturday and Sunday, March, 9-10
Poets’ Theatre Workshop
with Dodie Bellamy and Kevin Killian
in co-production with The Capilano Review

Saturday, March 23
Clint Burnham, Mark Laba/ Cop Puppett – 3pm

Saturday, March 30
Travis O’Brian ‘Raven with Robin’s Egg’

Saturday, April 6
George Bowering, Daphne Marlett, Maria Hindsmith, Fred Wah reading from TISH – 3pm

Between 1914 and 1918, over four thousand Indigenous men volunteered to fight and die for Canada in WWI. Redpatch tells a part of this story through the eyes of a soldier from the Nuu-chah-nulth nation of Vancouver Island. From his childhood home to the battlefields of France, follow him as he endures the horrors of the Great War in a new play that uses dance, myth, and mask to tell both a universal and a personal tale. More info here.

March 7 to 31, 2019
Arts Club
Goldcorp Stage at the BMO Theatre Centre
203 – 162 West 1st Avenue
Vancouver, BC V5Y 0H6

Catch a new adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Richard III. Camyar Chai ’s new adaptation for Seven Tyrants Theatre explores Richard III’s relationship with the powerful women surrounding this famous king. More info here.

March 8–30, 2019
at Seven Tyrants Theatre
1019 Seymour Street
Vancouver, BC

In Morris Panych’s fast-paced, sophisticated and hilarious play 7 Stories, a man contemplating suicide on a seventh-storey building ledge confronts the stories of the people who live inside the building. These “seven stories” lead to a charming and surprising ending. More information here.

March 14–23, 2019
Directed by Fran Gebhard
Phoenix Theatre
University of Victoria
3800 Finnerty Road
Victoria, BC
V8P 5C2

Written & Directed by Morris Panych
With Ellen David, Laurent McCuaig-Pitre, Marie-Ève Perron & Michel Perron

March 19 to April 7, 2019
at the Centaur Theatre
Montreal, Quebec

“Otiot” and “This Poem” exhibited at Concrete Is Porous; Act I: Visual at VERSefest: Ottawa International Poetry Festival.

March 26, 2019
Ottawa, Ontario

EMPIRE OF THE SON at the Persephone theatre.

A Vancouver Asian Canadian Theatre Production
Written and Performed by Tetsuro Shigematsu, Produced by Donna Yamamoto

March 27 to April 10, 2019

As father and son, Akira and Tetsuro Shigematsu shared the same profession as public radio broadcasters. Each of them reveled in communicating with millions of their listeners, but they never spoke with each other. When Akira’s health begins to falter in his old age, Tetsuro bridges the gap between them with the only object they both understand: a microphone. Through visually striking live, cinematic vignettes, Shigematsu re-enacts moments from his father’s incredible personal history, from the ashes of Hiroshima to swinging 1960s London, and paints an intimate portrait of their evolving connection and the deep-seated love for each other that they both struggle to express.

Adeena Karasick performs at VERSEfest in Ottawa.

March 27, 2019
9 p.m.
Versefest in Ottawa
Knox Presbyterian Church
120 Lisgar Street
Ottawa, Ontario

Thursday March 28, 2019
12:30 p.m. to 10 p.m.
Writer In Residence / Filming and Interviews
Beet Manor
Thousand Islands, ON

Catriona Strang reads at the Aspen Room at Capilano University at 11:30 am as part of the Colour + Voice reading series.

Thursday, March 28
11:30 am
Aspen Room at Capilano University
North Vancouver, BC

On Thursday, March 28, Clint Burnham will be giving a talk, “All My Non-Relations”; this talk brings together Indigenous concepts of kinship – the appeal to “all my relations” recently theorized by UBC scholar Daniel Heath Justice in Why Indigenous Literatures Matter – with Jacques Lacan’s dialectics of the “non-relation,” as worked out with reference to decolonizing adaptations of Sophocles’ Antigone. The talk is at UBC’s Green College at 5 pm, and is part of the Critical Nationalisms and Counterpublics series organized by dina al-kassim and Maddie Reddon. More info here.

Thursday, March 28
5pm
Coach House, Green College, UBC
6201 Cecil Green Park Road
Vancouver, BC
V6T 1Z1

March 31, 2019
2 p.m.
Secret Handshake Poetry Series
2nd Floor, 170 Baldwin Street
Toronto, ON

Join us on Wednesday, April 3, at 7 p.m. at Pyatt Hall in Vancouver, where Talon authors bill bissett (breth), Dina Del Bucchia (It’s a Big Deal!), M.A.C. Farrant (The Great Happiness), Nicole Raziya Fong (PEЯFACT), and Nikki Reimer (My Heart Is a Rose Manhattan) will read from their hot-off-the-presses books. Admission is free (bring money for books!), and the venue is fully accessible.

Wednesday, April 3
Doors at 7 p.m., readings at 7:30 p.m.
Pyatt Hall
843 Seymour Street
Vancouver, BC V6B 3L4

Morris Panych’s Girl in the Goldfish Bowl opens with Iris, a precocious girl of ten, proclaiming, “These are the last few days of my childhood.” The death of her goldfish, Amal, she is sure, has been announced by the air-raid sirens during the day’s school drill. For Iris, there remain a few more days of life in a universe that is inherently ordered, where the spirit of her departed and ritually interred goldfish can, of course, be reincarnated in a lost and amnesiac drifter given to rhetorical questions of seemingly deep philosophical import. More info here.

April 4 to April 20, 2019
at the KordaZone Theatre
2520 Seminole Street
Windsor, ON

“An uncommon, quirky blend of humour and compassion.”
—National Post

Friday, April 6
4 p.m.
Poetry Vermont (with Maria Damon)
The White River Craft Center
50 Randolph Avenue
Randolph, Vermont

Nikki Reimer will be reading from My Heart Is a Rose Manhattan at the Pony Cabaret in Kelowna, BC. The cabaret will be a fundraiser, and other acts include the Juno-nominated musician Tariq, local impresario Erin Scott, comedian Peter Navratil, Evan the juggler, at least one drag queen, and more! Tickets will be available at the door. The event is 19+, tickets are $5 for students and $10-20 for non-students. More info here.

Saturday, April 6, 2019
8 pm to 10 pm
Black Box Theatre
1375 Water Street
Kelowna, British Columbia
V1Y 9P4

Things that are a Big Deal: Dina Del Bucchia, her new book, “Daniel Zomparelli”: , and the the upcoming launch of It’s a Big Deal! at Shenanigans Pub in Vancouver on April 7! More info here.

Sunday, April 7
6:30 pm to 9:30 pm
Shenanigans
1225 Robson Street
Vancouver, British Columbia
V6E 1C3

bill bissett reads with Geoff Inverarity and Stephen Roxborough at the Hive Emporium on Gabriola Island for the Orbits 2019 Mini Poetry Festival. Tickets $15 for non-members, $10 for members. More information here.

Sunday, April 7, 2019
7 pm
HIVE Emporium
9–575 North Road
Gabriola Island, BC V0R 1X1

April is National Poetry Month! Come celebrate as WordStorm presents an exciting poetry reading event, featuring bill bissett, Geoff Invararity, Stephen Roxborough, Carla Stein, and Hilary Peach. More information here.

Monday, April 8, 2019
12 pm to 2 pm
Nanaimo Harbourfront Library Branch
90 Commercial Street
Nanaimo, BC V9R 5G4

M.A.C. Farrant will be launching her new book, The Great Happiness, with Marita Dachsel at Munro’s Books in Victoria.

Tuesday, April 9, 2019
7 p.m.
Munro’s Books
1108 Government Street
Victoria, BC

bill bissett reads with Geoff Inverarity, Linda Rogers Van Krugel, Stephen Roxborough, and Rick Van Krugel at the Victoria Arts Council Gallery.

Wednesday, April 10, 2019
7 pm
Victoria Arts Council Gallery
747 Fort Street
Victoria, BC

bill bissett reads with Stephen Roxborough for the Magick Fantastic Galactic Portal Book Launch Tour.

Friday, April 12, 2019
7:30 pm
Black Box Theater
Whidbey Island County Fairgrounds
819 Camano Ave
Langley, WA 98260, USA

Talonbooks’ Spring Poetry Showcase comes to Calgary! Nikki Reimer, Dina Del Bucchia, and Nicole Raziya Fong will be reading from their new books – My Heart Is a Rose Manhattan, It’s a Big Deal!, and Perfact – at Shelf Life books. More info here.

Tuesday, April 16
7pm to 9:30pm
Shelf Life Books
1302 4 St SW # 100
Calgary, Alberta T2R 0X8

Jordan Abel will give a craft talk and performance of his Griffin Prize–winning long poem Injun, which investigates racist depictions of Indigenous peoples by using western novels published between 1840 and 1950 as source material for erasure, collage, and other poetic techniques that undermine the colonized notion of the “Indian.” More info here.

April 20, 2019
3 pm
Elizabeth Kray Hall, Poets House
10 River Terrace
New York, NY 10282

Written and Performed by Tetsuro Shigematsu
A Vancouver Asian Canadian Theatre Production

April 25 – May 4, 2019
Pavilion Theatre
Kamloops, British Columbia

A funny and poignant one-man show by former CBC broadcaster Tetsuro Shigematsu about his rocky relationship with his emotionally reserved father, Akira. From the ashes of Hiroshima to swinging 1960s London, this acclaimed play shows how Akira’s incredible personal history has influenced two generations. Through visually striking live, cinematic vignettes, Tetsuro paints an intimate portrait of the evolving connection between father and son, and the deep-seated love for one another that they both struggle to express.

“A celebration of the extraordinary in the ordinary”—Ottawa Citizen

More information available from Western Canada Theatre.

Friday, April 26
Scenes Screams Screens and Semes: The Salomaic Elasticity of the Page and the Stage for TEXT/SOUND/PERFORMANCE: Making in Canadian Space University College Dublin
Dublin, Ireland

Saturday, April 27
From Checking In
for TEXT/SOUND/PERFORMANCE: Making in Canadian Space
University College Dublin
Dublin, Ireland

Monday, May 13
SPOKEN WORD PARIS
Au Chat Noir
76 rue Jean-Pierre Timbaud
Paris, 75011

More info here.

Friday, May 17
Arts Night
Sweet and Savoury Café
237 Kilburn high road
London, UK

Thursday, June 27
Mapping the Terrortory of Media Ecology: A FEMPOETICS
The 20th Annual Convention of the Media Ecology Association: MEDIAETHICS HUMAN ECOLOGY IN A CONNECTED WORLD
University of Toronto
St. Michael’s College
Toronto, Ontario

Friday, June 28
The Poetry of Media Ecology
The 20th Annual Convention of the Media Ecology Association: MEDIAETHICS HUMAN ECOLOGY IN A CONNECTED WORLD
University of Toronto
St. Michael’s College
Toronto, Ontario

Saturday, June 29
Speaking Jewish: The Talmudy Blues of Semantic and Semitic Environments
The 20th Annual Convention of the Media Ecology Association: MEDIAETHICS HUMAN ECOLOGY IN A CONNECTED WORLD
University of Toronto
St. Michael’s College
Toronto, Ontario

July 10 to 16
23rd Annual International Festival
“Curtea de Argeş Poetry Nights”
The Foundation and Cultural Organization International Academy Orient-Occident
Bucharest, Curtea de Arges, Romania

Morris Panych’s The Shoplifters stars Alma, a seasoned career shoplifter who prefers the five-finger discount over some lousy seniors’ day deal. But it’s not just an empty wallet that leads Alma to a life of petty crime – it’s also her strong convictions about social justice and economic equality. More information here.

July 11 to August 18, 2019
at Theatre Baddeck
24 Queen Street
Baddeck NS
B0E1B0

Cottagers and Indians takes a sincere and pragmatic look at the current conflicts between First Nations traditional water usage and property owners in cottage country who are looking to enjoy an undisturbed summer getaway. Written by Drew Hayden Taylor, an award-winning playwright, journalist, novelist and filmmaker, Cottagers and Indians had a successful debut at Tarragon Theatre in 2017. More info here.

November 26 to December 15, 2019
at the Great Canadian Theatre Company
300–1227 Wellington Street West
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
K1Y 0G7

“A deft touch for mixing comedy and commentary in an entertaining all-Canadian form of social satire.“—Vancouver Sun