“Princess Nut” CD launch celebration!

. . . and AURAL Heather’s Vancouver debut

Media Club, 695 Cambie Street, Vancouver

Thursday, May 29

8 PM

Please join us for an evening of stellar music and spoken word with special guests Kate Newman, Susan Cormier, Beth Southwell and her band, Tony Bardach, Kedrick James and emcee Kyle Hawke.

AURAL Heather is Heather Haley, Roderick Shoolbraid and ³a unique, sublime fusion of song and spoken word.² Shoolbraid is a dazzling guitarist, composer, sound designer and DJ. Old school and proud of it, Haley is a maverick poet, singer, author and media artist often found pushing boundaries and always on the vanguard. ³A Canadian national treasure,² Haley started writing verse in high school influenced by poets like bp Nichol, ee cummings and Susan Musgrave.

Her life as a bona fide artist began on the stage of the infamous Smilin¹ Buddha fronting the all-girl punk band the Zellots. She was a member of the 45s with Randy Rampage and Brad Kent of DOA and the Avengers. Later she formed HHZ‹Heather Haley & the Zellots‹praised by LA Weekly music critic Craig Lee as one of the city’s ³Ten Great Bands.”

Haley is a gutsy and compelling performer who enjoyed a stint as an official BC Transit busker and has appeared at the Burning Word Festival, the Vancouver International Writers Festival, Crush Champagne Lounge, the Lamplighter Pub, Rime, Thundering Word Heard, the Art Bar in Toronto, Words & Music in Montreal, the Bowery Poetry Club in New York City, Red Sky Poetry Theatre in Seattle, Shakespeare & Sons in Prague, the Roar Lit Crawl with Edmonton¹s Raving Poets band and on CBC and Book Television.

In 2004, she teamed up with Shoolbraid to produce a series of live shows and their first cd, “Surfing Season.” As Haley returns to her roots, their sound has evolved into the spoken word songs of AURAL Heather. There is nothing precious or flowery about the poetry on ³Princess Nut.² It rocks, in more ways than one!

Tix ten $ available at Zulu Records and the door

Praise for Surfing Season: ³Beautiful. A credit to the genre.²-Ian Ferrier, Wired on Words ³Great job! An auspicious disc. One of the best albums of its kind.² ­Kurt Heintz, e-poets ³Important work.²­Poseybeat

Further information on AURAL Heather and Heather Haley is available through her website, http://www.heatherhaley.com as well as four tracks from “Princess Nut.”

Heather Haley  POET  SINGER  AUTHOR   MEDIA ARTIST

€ ONLINE: http://www.heatherhaley.com

€ ON PAPER: “Sideways” and the forthcoming “Window Seat”

€ ON DISC: “Princess Nut “ by AURAL Heather on RPW Records, launch May 29 @ the Media Club

€ ON SCREEN: videopoems “Dying for the Pleasure “and “Purple Lipstick“

€ ON STAGE: “Unique, sublime fusion of song and spoken word.”-ZULA Presents

April 14th, 2008 by Michael

It’s not often that the Consul-General of South Africa drives two and a half hours from Toronto to the town of Clinton, located in the heart of Huron County and the Lake Huron shoreline. And perhaps even less often does she do it to attend a poetry reading at a Legion Hall. But that’s exactly what Nogolide Nojozi did on April 12, 2008.

Hosted by SkyWing Press, Clinton’s very own poetry publishing house owned and operated by the indefatigable Ronda Wicks, Crossing The Lines: Poetry Without Borders brought together six poets for an afternoon of multicultural, multilingual, multi-genre and multi-vocal readings that definitely did away with the stereotypical expectations (some would call them “prejudices”) that all too often keep people away from poetry.

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Dear LPG Canada group members:

The Literary Press Group of Canada announces its national reading campaign, FIERY FIRST FICTION, in the month of May 2008.

Fiery First Fiction features 14 of the season’s hot new first-fiction titles from literary presses across Canada. The idea came about from the desire to support independent publishers who often take great risks by believing in and signing on new literary voices in a small industry burgeoning with bestselling books from south of the border.

The selected short story and long fiction titles feature a roster of new talent from various backgrounds, including magazine editors Nathan Whitlock, Arjun Basu, and Naomi K. Lewis; playwright Claudia Dey; university professors and poets Richard Lemm and Lesley Belleau; creative writing program graduates Shari Lapeña and Nila Gupta; screenwriter Jason Brink; and illustrator Jim Westergard.

IT’S A WIN-WIN SITUATION!
Look for readings in your cities: Montreal, Toronto, Edmonton, North Bay, and Vancouver. Walk into any participating independent bookstore (see our web site for locations), buy a Fiery First Fiction book, and get a beautiful limited edition FFF canvas bag FREE. Best of all, participate in the Open Book Toronto month-long May contest, and win a set of FFF books + bag each week!

Join us at:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Fiery-First-Fiction/11756151503

where you can get the latest updates on events for May.

Best,
Kulsum
Publicist, The Literary Press Group of Canada
Website: http://fieryfirstfiction.blogspot.com

ACORN-PLANTOS AWARD

The Acorn-Plantos Award for Peoples Poetry is awarded annually to a
Canadian poet, based on a book published in the previous calendar year.
The work should follow in the tradition of Acorn, Livesay, Purdy, Plantos and
Others by being accessible to all people in its use of language and image.

The award is open to any living poet who is a Canadian citizen or landed
immigrant. The work may be entered by the poet or the publisher. The award
itself honours the poet.

The award consists of a cheque for $500.00 CDN and a medallion.

The deadline for entries published in 2007 is June 30, 2008, received.

To enter, send five copies and a cheque for $25.00 for each title to:

Acorn-Plantos Award

c/o Jeff Seffinga

36 Sunset Avenue

Hamilton, ON

L8R 1V6

For further information contact:  jeffseff@allstream.net

Previous winners include Christine Smart, Ronnie R. Brown,
Laisha Resnau, and Erin Noteboom.

* for those of you who don’t know about poet Milton Acorn and Ted Plantos go to the CPA website for info. Jeff Seffinga was past VP for the CPA. Also James Deahl, who works with Jeff on this award, is a CPA cofounder…ciao Donna

Good Day:

I’m producing a series of documentaries for CBC Radio. One of our
programs is about Bruce Cockburn and I would like to get in touch with
one of his early mentors, poet, William Hawkins of Ottawa. Do you have
any contact information or know how I can get in touch with him? We’re
interested in an interview in the near future.

Thanks for your time.

John Corcelli
Producer, Inside The Music
CBC Radio
Toronto

416-205-8861

Don McKay reading at Hamilton, ON gritLIT event April 3

gritLIT: Readings by Don McKay, Lee Maracle and Marilyn Gear Pilling

Thursday, April 3, 2008 - 7:30pm

Art Gallery of Hamilton
123 King Street West Hamilton, ON
Map to Art Gallery of Hamilton

Details
Poetry readings by Don McKay (Strike/Slip), Lee Maracle (Bent Box) and Marilyn Gear Pilling (Cleavage: A Life in Breasts) at the Art Gallery of Hamilton. Thursday, April 3, 7:30 to 9:30 p.m.
Visit the gritLIT website http://www.gritlit.ca/ for more details.

FB ePost by Janet Russell

Warren Dean Fulton in Ottawa, again

seems like I’m making up for over a decade of not visiting the Nation’s Capital (the place I called home for much of the 80’s & 90’s)

I (& pooka press <lite>), shall have a return visit to the city On SUNDAY APRIL 6, at 2pm I will be the Featured Reader at the Dusty Owl Reading Series at Swizzles Bar & Grill (246-B Queen Street, between Bank and Kent; down the stairs beside the Thai restaurant).

http://www.dustyowl.com/    http://www.swizzles.ca/

there shall be an intimate & interactive poetic experiment for all in attendance

please help spread the word

I am in the process of organsing Polyverse Poetry Festival, which is now a confirmed event, and will take place in the English & Drama department at Loughborough University in the summer of 2009. The exact date should be confirmed any day now.

I am contacting you for two reasons; partly because there is the need to drum up interest in the festival from an early date, and to keep the momentum going. Of course, the formal promotion will begin in earnest in the autumn. A number of excellent published poets have already been confirmed to read/perform and provide workshops, and I am expecting to confirm more imminently. those booked up to now include Sam Smith (author of 12 novels and 7 poetry books), Nigel McLoughlin (author of four poetry books), Angela France, Rosie Lugosi, Bob Mee, and David Bircumshaw, amongst others. Which brings me to the other reason I am contacting you: I am looking for more published poets to perform, and/or offer workshops. The bad news is that the budget is too tight already to offer appearance fees or expenses. However, this is going to be a high-profile event at a major venue, and there will be the opportunity for poets to sell their wares and network, in addition to bringing their work to a wider audience and raising their profile. So there are still plenty of incentives to attend, and/or perform.

Is there any chance this could get a mention on your group, and/or anything else you’re involved with? Please could all of you share this with any and all relelant contact, poets, and poetry lovers, and encourage good poets to volunteer their services?

If you want to know more, and/or keep up to date with the festival, and/or me, please either e-mail me at Radcliff.freeradical@googlemail.com, and/or check out my dedicated Facebook groups Poetry and literary Festival summer 2009 (open group) and Polyverse Poets (closed group, for published/professional poets/performers only). The general public will not be able to access any of your details on Polyverse poets, and I am the sole administrator. If you’re not a member of Facebook, and want to access either or both groups, please e-mail me for an invitation.

Many thanks, and best wishes,

Radcliff

We, at Black Rose Writing, are curious to how we could get on your list of writing/publishing websites?

www.blackrosewriting.com is a new lit. agency and publishing company looking to help new writers on a personal level. We are hungry, trustworthy, and wish to share our knowledge and experience with future authors seeking guidance.

Thanks,

Reagan Rothe
Creator of Black Rose Writing
www.blackrosewriting.com
blackrosewriting@hotmail.com
Author of Misanthropy: Book I: The Tower

Press release March 2008

The Bridport Prize 2 0 0 8

International Creative Writing Competition

 

The Bridport Prize is the richest OPEN writing competition in the English language – with £5000 first prize for a short story (of up to 5000 words); and £5000 first prize for a poem (of up to 42 lines).

 

The Bridport is also known as a tremendous literary stepping stone – the first step in the careers of writers such as: Kate Atkinson, Tobias Hill, Carol Ann Duffy and Helen Dunmore.

 

Anyone can enter – so long as the work is previously unpublished. It costs £6 per story or poem and the closing date is 30th June 2008. Entries can be made by post or online:

www.bridportprize.org.uk

Postal entry forms are available online or by sending an SAE to: The Bridport Prize, PO Box 6910, Dorset DT6 9BQ

 

Judges this year are:            

Helen Simpson – short stories

David Harsent – poems

The prizegiving will be during Bridport Prize Live - Bridport’s Literary Festival in November, in which the judges and other well known writers give readings and masterclasses, plus other live events.

 

The Anthology of the 26 winning stories and poems of 2007, plus judges reports, is now available online or from the above address for £12 (inc UK post, or £14.50 inc overseas post).

 

For more information contact Frances Everitt, Tel: 01308 428333

or email frances@bridportprize.org.uk