Dead Poets Society Night
The Art Bar Poetry Series returns to in-person events, starting with the 18th annual meeting of The Dead Poets Society. The Dead Poets Society Night is an annual tradition at the Art Bar Poetry Series. It normally is held as the last Art Bar of the calendar year, usually in mid-December. The poets performing read from the poetry of dead poets. There are normally three sets of four readers and no open stage. Readers generally read for 6-8 minutes each. The first one was held on December 17, 2003. It has three influences: first, the film, the Dead Poets Society; second, a Poems of the Century Night organized by Allan Briesmaster that was held at the Art Bar in December 1999; and third, a Dead Poets night organized by Alex Boyd at the I.V. Lounge Reading Series, which was held in 2002. Readers (Dead Poets). See Below For More Info.
Reader List
Marsha Barber (Dorothy Livesay) Margaret Christakos (bpNichol) George Elliott Clarke (Derek Walcott) Simon Constam (Lawrence Ferlinghetti) Kate Marshall Flaherty (T. S. Eliot) Michael Fraser (Arna Bontemps) Catherine Graham (Brendan Kennelly) Stephen Humphrey (Joe Rosenblatt) Clifton Joseph (Kamau Brathwaite) Bruce Meyer (Mary Oliver & Peter Porter) A. F. Moritz (Robert Bridges) Myna Wallin (Fraser Sutherland) ---
Reader Biographies
Marsha Barber’s third poetry book, Love You to Pieces, was published in 2019 by Ottawa’s Borealis Press. Her writing has appeared in such periodicals as FreeFall, The Literary Review of Canada, The Walrus, The Antigonish Review, The New Quarterly, Juniper and The Prairie Journal. Marsha has won many awards for her poetry and been longlisted for the Canadian ReLit prize and shortlisted for the international Bridport Poetry Prize and the Montreal International Poetry Prize. She works as a professor in Toronto.
Margaret Christakos is attached to this earth. She is a poet and image-maker of settler ancestry born and raised in Sudbury, living in Toronto and engaged since the late 1980s in an experimental lyric poetics of relationality, direct and indirect address, voice and touch, order and disorder, memory and public listening. Her recent books are charger from TalonBooks and Dear Birch, from Palimpsest. You can find her at margaretchristakos.com
The 4th Poet Laureate of Toronto (2012-15) and the 7th Parliamentary/Canadian Poet Laureate (2016-17), George Elliott Clarke’s recognitions include the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Fellows Prize, the Archibald Lampman Award for Poetry, the Governor-General’s Award for Poetry, and the National Magazine Gold Award for Poetry. Since 1983, Clarke has published more than 25 poetry works, numbering 7 collections, 5 verse-plays, 5 narrative-lyric suites, 4 epic tomes, and 1 title each in Chinese, Italian, and Romanian.
Simon Constam is a Toronto poet and aphorist. His poetry has been published in a number of magazines and websites among them: LongCon Mag, The Jewish Literary Journal, Poetica, and The Mark Literary Review. His first book of poetry, a book of Jewish poems, entitled Brought Down will be published by Wipf and Stock Publishers in the Spring.
He publishes, under the moniker Daily Ferocity, a new, original aphorism every day on Instagram and to an email list.
Kate Marshall Flaherty was recently shortlisted for the Mitchell Prize. She has five books of poetry and has had poems published in numerous journals and anthologies. She guides StillPoint Prompted Writing and Poetry Editing workshops online. She inaugurated “Poetry in Union” with the League of Canadian Poets in 2018, and now writes spontaneous “Poems Of the Extraordinary Moment” for folks for charity. Poetry’s her lifeline. See her performance poetry set to music on her website https://katemarshallflaherty.ca/
Michael Fraser is published in various national and international journals and anthologies. He is published in Best Canadian Poetry in English 2013 and 2018. He has won numerous awards, including Freefall Magazine’s 2014 and 2015 poetry contests, the 2016 CBC Poetry Prize, and the 2018 Gwendolyn MacEwen Poetry Competition. His third poetry book, The Day Breakers, is forthcoming from Biblioasis in spring 2022.
Catherine Graham’s poetry collection, Aether: An Out-of-Body Lyric, was a finalist for the Toronto Book Award and The Celery Forest was named a CBC Best Book of the Year and was a finalist for the Fred Cogswell Award. Her Red Hair Rises with the Wings of Insects was a finalist for the Raymond Souster and CAA Poetry Award. Her second novel, The Most Cunning Heart appears this spring. She teaches at U of T. www.catherinegraham.com @catgrahampoet
Stephen Humphrey is a writer and citizen naturalist who has volunteered around Toronto poetry for more than two decades. In recent years he’s done four radio documentaries for CBC radio. ‘Dancing In the Dark’, about bee intelligence was nominated for the New York Festival award in 2012. He is currently missing a lot of sleep trying to finish a nonfiction book for deadline. He also messes around with electronic music, but don’t tell anyone.
dubzz/poet/at-large! Clifton Joseph is an Antiguan-born Toronto-based poet, journalist and artist! one of the founders of the dub-poetry movement in Canada, he has performed numerously around Toronto, across Canada and world-wide. untrustful of agencies of legacies and canons, Eye believe poets need to bring their poetry "to life" in peoples and their communities against the ballast of "the system" & general "unfunkiness", dig!; that eye wanna have an impact NOW, in/real-time, seen! Latest singles "Not Poem" & "Where're the Politicians" are available at www.cliftonjoseph.com".
Bruce Meyer is author of 68 books of poetry, short stories, flash fiction, and non-fiction. His most recent collections are Toast Soldiers (Crowsnest Books, 2021 -- stories), The Hours (Ace of Swords, 2021 -- stories), and Grace of Falling Stars (Black Moss, 2021 -- poems). He has another ten books signed and completed, some of which will appear in 2022 including two collections of poems.
A. F. Moritz's most recent books of poems are The Garden: a poem and an essay (Gordon Hill, 2021), As Far As You Know (Anansi, 2020) and The Sparrow: Selected Poems (Anansi, 2018), as well as a new edition of poems in Greek translation selected from The Sparrow (Vakxikon, 2021). He has published twenty-three volumes of poetry. He is presently the Poet Laureate of the City of Toronto (2019-2023), the sixth poet to hold that office.
Myna Wallin is a Toronto poet and prose writer. She has had three books published: A Thousand Profane Pieces and Confessions of A Reluctant Cougar (both with Tightrope Books), followed by another poetry collection, Anatomy of An Injury (Inanna Publications, 2018).
Wallin has poems appearing soon in The Institutionalized Review, Anti-Heroin Chic and The Antigonish Review. Myna has a master’s degree in English from the University of Toronto.
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Event Information
When
Tuesday, December 14, 2021
- Food from 6 pm
- Doors open at 6:30 pm
- Event starts at ~7 p.m.
Where
Clinton’s – 693 Bloor St. West
[exit at Christie Subway Station]
Cover
$12.00
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Covid Measures in Place
Clinton's will follow whatever protocols and capacity limits that are in place at the time. Under current limits, they say they are looking at fully-vaccinated attendees with proof of vaccinations, approx. 25 tables of 3-4 people per table.
Host/Organizer: David Clink