Poetry Cabaret – $20

[gdlr_button href="https://www.artscommons.ca/WhatsOn/ShowDetails.aspx?show_id=489167B9-1FD3-43BA-87F5-AC20CAEB3B5B" target="_self" size="medium" background="#358CCB" color="#ffffff" border_color="#999999"]Buy Tickets[/gdlr_button] [gdlr_space height="20px"] Anything can happen when award-winning poets and master storytellers use the stage as the page, cabaret-style, and push the limits of the spoken and written word. Hosted by Dymphny Dronyk. [gdlr_divider type="solid" size="100%" ]

Featured Books & Artists

Congotronic by Shane Book

Congotronic is the second collection from Canadian poet and filmmaker Shane Book. At once original, strange, funny and unnerving, Congotronic takes the reader into unstable territory, where multiple layers of voice, diction and music collide. Some of these poems have the sparse directness of a kind of bleak prayer; others mingle the earthbound rhythms of hip-hop with the will-to-transcendence of high Romanticism.

Acquired Community by Jane Byers

Jane Byers’ Acquired Community is both a collection of narrative poems about seminal moments in North American lesbian and gay history, mostly post-World War II, and a series of first person poems that act as a touchstone to compare the narrator’s coming out experience within the larger context of the gay liberation movement. In this second book by Byers, her poems go beyond the historical perspective of LGBT rights to examine and celebrate community resilience.

"Black Feminist" by Jillian Christmas

The slam poem “Black Feminist“ was performed by Jillian Christmas in 2015. For a long time, the feminist movement has turned to straight, white, cisgender, middle-class and otherwise privileged women as its default source of inspiration and identity. But this trend is beginning to reverse itself thanks in large part to women of colour (as well as women from other marginalized groups) who speak out about the problem. “Black Feminist” highlights the way black women are often treated in feminist spaces. This slam poem is a must-listen for feminists everywhere.

Poemw by Anne Fleming

In Poemw, the third finger of the left hand hits ‘w’ instead of ‘s’ and makes up a new kind of poem, the sort-of poem, the approxi-lyric, the poem that doesn’t want to claim poemness. Poemw are about daily things — graffiti, hair, sea gulls, second-hand clothes — and rarer things — dead crows, baked mice, ski accidents, Judith Butler. They’re jokes-and-not-jokes, cheeky, goofy and tender.

Magyarázni by Helen Hajnoczky

The word "magyarázni" (pronounced MUG-yar-az-knee) means "to explain" in Hungarian, but translates literally as "make it Hungarian." This faux-Hungarian language primer, written in direct address, invites readers to experience what it is like to be "made Hungarian" by growing up with a parent who immigrated to North America as a refugee. In forty-five folk-art visual poems each paired with a written poem, Hajnoczky reveals the beauty and tension of first-generation cultural identity.

On Not Losing My Father's Ashes in the Flood by Richard Harrison

In On Not Losing My Father's Ashes in the Flood, Richard Harrison reflects on his father's death, the Alberta Flood and what poetry offers a life lived around it. In his final years, Harrison’s father suffered from a form of dementia, but he died without ever forgetting the poems he had memorized as a student and taught his son. The fear that his father's ashes had been lost in the flood water that ravaged Alberta in 2013 becomes the inciting event and central theme of this collection. Combining elements of memoir, elegy, lyrical essay and personal correspondence with appreciations of literary works ranging from haiku to comic books, Richard Harrison has written a book of great intellectual depth that is as generous as it is enchanting.

Caribou Run by Richard Kelly Kemick

In Caribou Run, Richard Kelly Kemick orchestrates a suite of poems both encyclopedic and lyrical, in which the caribou is both metaphor and phenomenon; both text and exegesis. He explores what we share with this creature of blood and bone and what is hidden, alien and ineffable.

Talking to the Diaspora by Lee Maracle

Talking to the Diaspora, Lee Maracle’s second book of poetry, is at once personal and profound. From the revolutionary “Where Is that Odd Dandelion Looking-Flower” to the tender poem “Salmon Dance,” from the biting “Language” to the elegiac “Boy in the Archives,” these poems embody the fearless passion and spirited wit for which Maracle is beloved and revered.

Silvija by Sandra Ridley

In a sequence of five feverish elegies, Sandra Ridley’s Silvija combines the styles of narrative lyric and experimental verse to manifest dark themes related to love and loss, the traumas of psychological suffering, physical abuse, terminal illness, revelation, resolution and healing. Pulsing with the award-winning writer’s signature blend of fervour and sangfroid, the serial poems in Silvija accrue into a book-length testament to a grief both personal and human, leaving readers with the redemptive grace that comes from poetry’s ability to wrestle chaos into meaning. [gdlr_button href="https://www.artscommons.ca/WhatsOn/ShowDetails.aspx?show_id=489167B9-1FD3-43BA-87F5-AC20CAEB3B5B" target="_self" size="medium" background="#358CCB" color="#ffffff" border_color="#999999"]Buy Tickets[/gdlr_button]