| What's so cruel about poetry month?
April being Poetry Month, you'd expect to see poets busting out all over like spring flowers, backed-up storm drains and other signs of the season. And in fact there are several poetry events in town this month, starting with last week's Quartet poetry book launch at Memorial Park Library. Watch for more later this month. Meanwhile, the League of Canadian Poets will announce the shortlist for the Gerald Lampert and the Pat Lowther Memorial Awards on April 9.
Here's a vote of confidence for performance poetry: Calgary poet Sheri-D Wilson's poetry video "Airplane Paula" is still at Number 3 on the video chart at Bravo! TV, after sitting at Number 1 for a while. As the opera-goers say: brava!
If you have a long bus ride ahead of you and want to swot (as the English say) up on your knowledge of poets, then pomegranate.com has the passenger's perfect passe-temps: Knowledge Cards about poets. On one side you get quotations, on the back you get all kinds of pertinent info. Ideally, some impertinent info as well. There are 48 of them featuring poets like Emily Dickinson, Langston Hughes, Federico Garcia Lorca, and Allen Ginsberg. Guess they're still working on the Canadians, or maybe Rick Mercer hasn't yet announced the abundance of poets here. (These things cost about $10 U.S., and if you think that's expensive, try Ignorance Cards.)
If you write non-fiction on almost any topic, then you have until April 15 to submit a piece for the Calgary Writers Association's Arrol Award For Non-Fiction. There's a 1,500 word limit, and you should specify the publication you have in mind for the piece because the judges consider how well you've matched your writing to its destination. You could win $100, which is probably more than Bill Gates made on all his stocks in the last three months. Get all the details at www.writtenword.org/cwa. Lots of handy links there, too, so look around a bit.
Pages on Kensington has two readings this week. Timothy Taylor's novel Stanley Park brings together a murder mystery and gourmet cooking – now there's an adventurous taste combination. See if it works when Taylor reads at Pages on Wednesday, April 18 at 7:30 p.m. Then the next night hear Shannon Cowan read from her first novel, Leaving Winter. (Isn't that exactly what we've been trying to do for weeks?). Barbara Scott will also read – you'll remember that Scott won not only the Writer’s Guild of Alberta Best Short Fiction Award, but also the City of Calgary W.O. Mitchell Prize for The Quick, her 1999 collection of short stories. Cowan and Scott appear on Thursday, April 19 at 7:30 p.m. |
