| This week, "Canada's game" finally comes to Calgary. I'm not talking about NHL hockey, I'm talking about CBC-backed literary showdowns. Is it only in Canada that we line up writers and other articulate people, like Olympic fencer Sherraine MacKay, to champion chunks of the national literature in events such as Canada Reads?
It's probably not just us. It's all too easy to picture a French rock climber-philosopher debating a film producer about recent fiction on TV5. But maybe Canada brings the BBC tradition from the 1930s, when Louis MacNeice and Dylan Thomas built up poetry audiences on the wireless, to that Gallic intellectual combat tradition.
This calls for more research, but in the meantime, CBC's Poetry Faceoff is here. There's no ice, the action is mainly verbal, but at least the players have their teeth. The Calgary part of this national word-joust pits T. Crane, Christian Bök, Ali Riley, Richard Stevenson and Nancy Jo Cullen against one another in search of audience plaudits. You were no doubt thinking, "My, what a dizzyingly various group of poets, testifying to the healthy diversity of Calgary's literary eco-system." You'd be right. And that's just five of the 60 poets facing off in 13 Canadian cities.
Here's how the Faceoff works. Each local competition produces an audience-selected victor, who goes on to the national final. From April 4 to 7, the all-stars compete on CBC's Roundup show. At that stage you can vote via toll-free phone or the CBC website. The winner is announced April 14, right in the middle of Poetry Month. Will punster Ron MacLean turn out to be the mysterious Calgary host? Will Adrienne Clarkson shift her strategy and advocate that the League of Canadian Poets be allowed to award this year's dust-gathering Stanley Cup? Will the Faceoff format be proposed as a model for electoral reform? These questions may or may not be answered at the event, at McNally Robinson on Tuesday, March 8 at 7 p.m.
If you're one of Calgary's smaller readers and you're about to rip up this page to make papier mâché or something, wait! First tell your parents that Robert Munsch is coming to town on Sunday, March 6 at 2 p.m. Parents just love Robert Munsch: maybe you do, too. He'll be at McNally Robinson. His reading is free, and you don't have to register or anything. OK, now you can rip away. Just don't look at those back pages too closely.
Filling Station's Flywheel reading series takes over McNally Robinson on March 10 at 7 p.m. Who's reading? Can't tell you yet. Watch this space next Thursday or check for updates at www.fillingstation.ca.
At the Calgary Public Library, it's a big week for books about facing up to daunting challenges. Bill Corbett presents a slide show based on his book The Eleven-Thousanders. It's about Canada's 54 mountains over 11,000 feet tall, and the stories of those who climbed them. That's at the Alexander Calhoun branch on Wednesday, March 9 from 7 to 8:30 p.m. You need to register in person or by calling 221-2010. And at the Fish Creek branch, dragon boater and breast cancer survivor Carolyn Parks reads from her book The Eye of the Dragon: Women, Cancer and Courage. That's Tuesday, March 8 from 7 to 8:30 p.m. and again, you should either register in person or call 221-2090.
Best-sellers
Best-selling books for February 18 to 24 at McNally Robinson
Fiction
1. Seduction
by Catherine Gildiner
2. Small Island
by Andrea Levy
3. Saturday
by Ian McEwan
4. No Crystal Stair
by Mairuth Sarsfield
5. A Complicated Kindness
by Miriam Toews
6. Runaway
by Alice Munro
7. The Five People You Meet in Heaven
by Mitch Albom
8. Sideways
by Rex Pickett
9. Million Dollar Baby
by F.X. Toole
10. Chainfire
by Terry Goodkind
Non-fiction
1. He's Just Not That Into You
by Greg Behrendt
2. Hot Commodities
by Jim Rogers
3. A Short History of Nearly Everything
by Bill Bryson
4. Collapse
by Jared Diamond
5. Eats, Shoots and Leaves
by Lynne Truss
6. Blink
by Malcolm Gladwell
7. Hidden Messages in Water
by Masaru Emoto
8. Hegemony or Survival
by Noam Chomsky
9. 1,000 Places to See Before You Die
by Patricia Schultz
10. The End of Faith
by Sam Harris |
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