Pivot Readings at the Press Club

Variety, people. Pivot’s got it. From Chris Eaton’s identity-obsessed narrative experiment to Shannon Maguire’s eclectic intellectualism to the sneakily  emotive sublimeness in the new Peter Norman collection, we have the stuff that frees you from other stuff. Last week, Phil Hall gave us maybe the best single-line literature manifesto ever we ever heard: “The failure of order is the work / disorder is not the work.” Amen. Break out the tattoo needles. Also, how’s that for a teaser for these next serving of disorderists?

Chris Eaton is an artist from New Brunswick, currently living in Toronto. He is the author of three novels, one book of short fiction and four CDs (under the name Rock Plaza Central). His latest book is called Chris Eaton, a Biography, using parts of other Chris Eatons researched online to form one giant Voltron of Chris Eatons.

Shannon Maguire grew up on the mouth of Lake Superior and now lives in Guelph Ontario. Her poetry has appeared in CV2, Ditch, Gultch: An Assemblage of Poetry and Prose (2009), as well as other places. She is the author of three chapbooks: Vowel Wolves & Other Knots (2011), Fruit Machine (2012), and A Web of Holes (2012). A selection of poems from her debut collection Fur(l) Parachute was a finalist for the Manitoba Magazine Awards in the category of Best Poem or Suite of Poems (2012) and it was shortlisted for the Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry (2011).

Born and raised in Vancouver, where he completed a Creative Writing BFA at the University of British Columbia, Peter Norman has since lived in Ottawa, Calgary and Halifax. His poetry and fiction have appeared in several periodicals and anthologies, including Jailbreaks: 99 Canadian Sonnets and the 2008 and 2009 editions of The Best Canadian Poetry. His first novel, Emberton, is forthcoming in 2014 from Douglas & McIntyre. His debut poetry collection, At the Gates of the Theme Park, was shortlisted for the 2011 Trillium Poetry Prize.

*Note: Shane Neilson and Dave Seymour were scheduled for this show, but commitments beyond Pivot have kept them away. We wish them well and will book them in sometime soon.

Pivot Readings at the Press Club
Featuring Chris Eaton, Shannon Maguire, and David Seymour
Wednesday, May 22nd
8 PM
850 Dundas Street West
PWYC. Suggested donation of $5.
Hosted by Jacob McArthur Mooney

Pivot is glad it won’t be April anymore. It’ll be May, the month in which Toronto resets its attempt at spring, the new books stack up on all our bedside tables, and the students & teachers among us get to exhale a bit. We have quite the show to get it started. Margaret Christakos will bring works in progress, and there are three new books to showcase: Adam Dickinson talkin’ plastics, John Goldbach talkin’ crime, and Phil Hall talkin’ through his ten-foot-high pile of poetry awards. Come have a pint on the patio and listen to the breeze.

Cast List:

Margaret Christakos has been a worker in the field of letters. Her ninth poetry collection, called Multitudes, will be published in fall 2013 by Coach House Books.

Adam Dickinson is a writer, researcher and teacher. His poems have appeared in literary journals in Canada and internationally as well as in anthologies such as Breathing Fire 2: Canada’s New Poets and The Shape of Content: Creative Writing in Mathematics and Science. His collection Kingdom, Phylum was a finalist for the Trillium Book Award for Poetry. He is the author most recently of The Polymers (Anansi 2013). He is also working on another poetry project that involves testing his blood and body for chemicals and microbes. When not giving his body to science, he teaches at Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario.

John Goldbach is the author of Selected Blackouts, a collection of stories. He lives in Montreal. Goldbach’s new novel, The Devil and the Detective, is noir about the biggest mystery of all – that of consciousness. It’s an unorthodox meditation on writing, love, violence and ideology – imagine The Big Sleep via Fernando Pessoa, with a side of Buster Keaton.

Phil Hall was the 2011 winner of the Governor General’s Literary Award for Poetry in English for his book of essay-poems, Killdeer. In 2012, Killdeer also won Ontario’s Trillium Book Award, an Alcuin Design Award, and was nominated for the Griffin Poetry Prize. Previously, Trouble Sleeping (2001) was nominated for the Governor General’s Award, and An Oak Hunch (2005) was nominated for the Griffin Poetry Prize. Hall has recently been writer-in-residence at Queens University & the University of Windsor. In fall 2013 he will be an instructor at the Banff Cenre for the Arts, in the Wired Writing Program. Currently, he offers a manuscript mentoring service for the Toronto New School of Writing. His new book is called The Small Nouns Crying Faith and is now available from BookThug. He lives near Perth, Ontario.

Pivot Readings at the Press Club
Featuring Margaret Christakos, Adam Dickinson, John Goldbach, and Phil Hall
Wednesday, May 8th
8 PM
850 Dundas Street West
PWYC. Suggested donation of $5.
Hosted by Jacob McArthur Mooney

Pivot is going local. Pivot is going national. Pivot is bringing poets from the farthest capitals in the country (Whitehorse, St. John’s) and series regulars from just down the Street. That’s Bookthug Street and Mercury Press Street. It’ll be late April. The kitsch of Poetry Month will be flapping in the wind behind us. The patio will be open. Those of you involved in the noble pursuits of the academy will be free of exams and marking. Everything is something to celebrate.

Cast List:

Mary Dalton is the author of five books of poetry, The most recent of which are Merrybegot, Red Ledger, and Hooking, just released by Vehicule Press. Merrybegot, winner of the E. J. Pratt Poetry Award and a nominee for the Pat Lowther Award, is also an audiobook produced by Rattling Books. Red Ledger was short-listed for the Atlantic Poetry Prize and the E. J. Pratt Poetry Award and was named a Top Book of the Year by The Globe and Mail. Dalton’s work has been anthologized throughout Canada, in Ireland, England, Belgium and the U.S. She lives in St. John’s, where she teaches in the Department of English at Memorial University of Newfoundland.  She was an editor and co-publisher of the literary magazine TickleAce and an editor of the interdisciplinary journal Newfoundland Studies. She has been a poetry mentor at the Banff Centre and at Piper’s Frith in Newfoundland. She is the founder and director of the SPARKS Literary Festival, held annually in St. John’s.

Guy Ewing was a community literacy worker in Toronto, mainly in Parkdale, from 1982 until 2012.  He is the author of two books of poetry, Hearing, and answering with music, published by The Mercury Press in 2009, and Earth Becoming Sky, published by Teksteditions in 2012.

Jay MillAr is a Toronto poet, editor, publisher, teacher and virtual bookseller. He is the author of several books, the most recent of which are the small blue (2008), esp : accumulation sonnets (2009), Other Poems (2010), and Timely Irreverence (2013). He is also the author of several privately published editions, such as Lack Lyrics, which tied to win the 2008 bpNichol Chapbook Award. MillAr is the shadowy figure behind BookThug, a publishing house dedicated to exploratory work by well-known and emerging North American writers, as well as Apollinaire’s Bookshoppe, a virtual bookstore that specializes in the books that no one wants to buy. Currently Jay teaches creative writing and poetics at George Brown College and Toronto New School of Writing.

Michael Eden Reynolds was born in Ottawa in 1973 and has lived in Whitehorse for 18 years. He has received the Ralph Gustafson Poetry Prize, and the John Haines Award for Poetry and was anthologized in The Best of Canadian Poetry in English.  His book Slant Room was published in 2009 by Porcupine’s Quill.

Pivot Readings at the Press Club
Featuring Mary Dalton, Guy Ewing, Jay MillAr, and Michael Eden Reynolds
Wednesday, April 24th
8 PM
850 Dundas Street West
PWYC. Suggested donation of $5.
Hosted by Jacob McArthur Mooney

April. I know right? April! We get moving into the spring with three very different poets with addresses in Ottawa and Toronto. A translator. A novelist. A book doctor. A newlywed. A blogger. A follow-up collection. A debut collection. If Pivot cared about National Poetry Month, we’d mention that April is also National Poetry Month. But we don’t, really. Every month is our National Poetry Month.

Cast List:

Roseanne Carrara is the author of A Newer Wilderness, poems, Insomniac Press, 2007. She holds a Ph.D. in English from the University of Toronto. She is now completing an “opera novel set in Toronto” entitled, The Week In Radio, a second book of poems, Spectral Evidence, and, with her husband, Blaise Moritz, a translation of Silences, the poetry of Jacques Ellul. She also works as a professional writer and educator.

Jessica Hiemstra is a visual artist and writer living in Toronto. She’s is the winner of two Malahat Review Open Season Awards (2011) and the Room Magazine Annual Poetry Contest (2009). She’s published two full-length collections, Apologetic for Joy (Goose Lane Editions, 2011) and Self-Portrait Without a Bicycle (Biblioasis, 2012). Like many writers, she’s writing a novel she can’t see the end of. Like many poets, she goes for long walks. Like many artists, she believes art gives us the courage to live. She has a virtual address: jessicahiemstra.ca.

Christine McNair’s work has appeared in Arc, Descant, Prairie Fire, Poetry is Dead, and sundry other places. Her first book Conflict was published by BookThug in 2012. She works as a book doctor in Ottawa.

Pivot Readings at the Press Club
Featuring Roseanne Carrara, Jessica Hiemstra, and Christine McNair
Wednesday, April 10th
8 PM
850 Dundas Street West
PWYC. Suggested donation of $5.
Hosted by Jacob McArthur Mooney

Things are getting serious. The days are longer, the air is warmer, and there are book launches every day. It’s late March in Toronto, and we have a quartet of authors ranging from cosmopolitans to localists, from rookies to veterans. I’m holding out some sickly little hope that it’ll be nice enough out to have a beverage on the patio. Am I dreaming, or is it the week before baseball season?

Cast List:

KEN BABSTOCK was born in Newfoundland and raised in the Ottawa Valley. He is the author of four collections, the most recent of which are Airstream Land Yacht, which won the Trillium Book Award, and Methodist Hatchet, which won the Griffin Poetry Prize.

ANDREW J. BORKOWSKI’s critically acclaimed debut short story collection, Copernicus Avenue, published by Cormorant Books, won the 2012 Toronto Book Award and was shortlisted for the 2012 Danuta Gleed Literary Award for short fiction. His work has been published in Grain, The New Quarterly, Dragnet, and in Storyteller magazine. His short story “Twelve Versions of Lech” was a finalist for the 2007 Writer’s Trust/McClelland and Stewart Journey Prize. Andrew’s arts, travel, and human interest journalism has appeared in publications including the Globe and Mail, the Canadian Forum, Quill & Quire, TV Guide, and the Los Angeles Times. As an editor and proofreader, he has contributed to nonfiction titles for McGraw-Hill Ryerson, John Wiley & Sons Canada, Pearson Publishing, and D&M Publishers.

JESSICA MOORE is a writer and translator. Her translation of Turkana Boy by Jean-Francois Beauchemin won a 2008 PEN America Translation Award. She also writes songs – her debut solo album will be released in spring 2013. Everything, now (Brick Books) is her first poetry collection.

STAN ROGAL‘s work has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies in Canada, the US and Europe. He’s also the author of 17 books: 4 novels, 3 story and 10 poetry collections. His latest book of poems (almost printed) is titled, “Love’s Not The Way To” — and he hopes the ink is dry for this reading — a collection of urban haiku dedicated to the life and works of Richard Brautigan. Stan is also a playwright and hopes to have a piece accepted in this year’s SummerWorks program.

Pivot Readings at the Press Club
Featuring Ken Babstock, Andrew J. Borkowski, Jessica Moore, & Stan Rogal
Wednesday, March 27th
8 PM
850 Dundas Street West
PWYC. Suggested donation of $5.
Hosted by Jacob McArthur Mooney

It’s practically spring. A day after our one-off Tuesday night show in celebration of our Irish guests, Pivot gets back on schedule with a trio of Canadian authors with diverse interests, concerns, and styles. Some of this will be funny and some of it will probably be quite sad and I can’t predict with any certainty which’ll be which.

Cast List:

Dave Cameron was nominated for two National Magazine Awards for his 2010 memoir, “Approximate Directions to a Burial.” He’s a semi-regular contributor to The Walrus, and is working on a story about the psychology of the goaltender. Dave lives in Hamilton (birthplace of Canadiens’ legend Ken Dryden, he will have you know).

Cary Fagan is the author of ‘Valentine’s Fall’ (finalist for the Toronto Book Award), ‘The Mermaid of Paris, ‘Felix Roth’, and other novels. His latest story collection, ‘My Life Among the Apes,’ was long-listed for the Giller Prize. He has also written many books for children. He lives in Toronto where he plays in a bluegrass band and helps to run the literary press, paperplates books.

Rachel Lebowitz is the author of Hannus (Pedlar Press, 2006) which was shortlisted for the 2007 Roderick Haig-Brown Regional BC Book Prize and the Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction. She is also the co-author, with Zachariah Wells, of the children’s picture book Anything But Hank! (Biblioasis, 2008, illustrated by Eric Orchard). She lives in Halifax. Cottonopolis is a sequence of prose and found poems about the Industrial Revolution, in particular the links between the cotton industry in Lancashire, slavery in the Americas and the colonization of India. From the Irish slums of Manchester to the forts of the Slave Coast to the ruins of Dacca, India; from Civil War battlefields to Lancashire factory floors, from slave ship sailors to machine-breakers to child labourers, these poems tell the stories of the industrial age.

Pivot Readings at the Press Club
Featuring Dave Cameron, Cary Fagan and Rachel Lebowitz
Wednesday, March 13th
8 PM
850 Dundas Street West
PWYC. Suggested donation of $5.
Hosted by Jacob McArthur Mooney