Monthly Archives: May 2011

June 1, 1533: Ann Boleyn is crowned Queen of England. June 1, 1974: the Heimlich Maneuver technique is published in Emergency Medicine. June 1, 2011: Julie Berry, Claire Caldwell and Elisabeth de Mariaffi read for Pivot. Come mark these momentous world events with us at the Press Club.

Julie Berry is the author of the poetry collections worn thresholds, published by Brick in 1995 and reprinted in 2006, and the walnut-cracking machine (Buscheck 2010). Her work appeared in numerous anthologies including Open Wide a Wilderness from Wilfred Laurier University Press (2008). She is the winner of the 2006 short Grain prose poem contest. Julie lives outside of St. Thomas, Ontario. Since leaving the teaching profession she has been dabbling in the art of radio documentary-making. She has produced a children’s radio program that aired last year in southern Ontario. Her writing projects include a journaling partnership with Gilbert White, a naturalist who lived in southern-central England during the mid to late 1700’s.

from The Walnut Cracking Machine

the machine broke up the shells
spit them out one side
the meat of the walnuts dropped into
a small china bowl underneath

uncle ingersoll reached down
turned the machine off
the silence was a solid embraceable thing
i carried home
sometimes i take it out and hold it
and dream of someday making something
as loud and useful
as the walnut-cracking machine

*

Claire Caldwell is a poet living in Toronto, where she is pursuing her MFA in creative writing through the University of Guelph. Her poetry has appeared in the Scrivener Creative Review, and is forthcoming in Prism and Misunderstandings Magazine. She is the 2010 recipient of the Lionel Shapiro Award for Creative Writing from McGill University.

They Will Take My Island

before reading their soles. Our island won’t sink
if it’s sailing, he’d say every time. I chose to believe him.

*

Elisabeth de Mariaffi is the author of one poetry chapbook, Letter on St. Valentines Day (TERU, 2010) and her poetry and fiction are widely published in Canadian magazines. Recent work has appeared in The New Quarterly, Descant, Misunderstandings Magazine and online at The Puritan.
No Poem for Manitoulin Island

You envy nothing. Not the firm riot
of trees casting closer
as boat pulls to shore. Not
shore. Not road. October’s

chroma wash blank
against the shoulder, does anything
but make you touch
tongue to window-flare,

orange pure as burnt salt.
First time you walked
alone, heavy with four o’clock
darkness, the long slide off
the aperture, pupils soaking

blackly around. Reach in your pocket and throw
those crumbs out. Want no one. Want
no home. Cramped fist. Lump of ice
wedged in the throat. Wait for it
to melt, or choke.

*

Pivot Readings at the Press Club
Featuring Julie Berry, Claire Caldwell, and Elisabeth de Mariaffi
Wednesday, June 1
8 PM
The Press Club
850 Dundas Street West
PWYC.

If April is the cruelest month, what is May? The most frustrating? The promise of summer, the lingering chill. (How would The Wasteland be different if Eliot were a Torontonian? Discuss.)

Ahem. Rough winds may keep shaking our darling buds, but that won’t stop Pivot. We’re a hardy folk. Some of us even made it out onto the Press Club patio last Wednesday… Join us on the 18th as we welcome the cool poetic breezes of Maureen Hynes, Stan Rogel, and that warm, lingering glow of fiction, Matthew J. Trafford. We’ll brave, or bask, but we’ll do it together.

Maureen Hynes is a past winner of the Gerald Lampert Award and the Petra Kenney Poetry Award (London, England). Her poetry was shortlisted for the 2007 CBC Literary Awards and has been selected for Best Canadian Poetry 2010. She has published two books of poetry, Harm’s Way (Brick Books) and Rough Skin (Wolsak & Wynn), and her third collection, Marrow, Willow, is forthcoming from Pedlar Press. She is poetry editor for Our Times magazine.

Stan Rogal is the author of 15 books: three novels, three short story and nine poetry collections. He is active in the alternative theatre scene and has had plays produced variously across Canada. A fourth novel, Bloodline, will appear with Insomniac Press in spring 2012.  Tonight he reads from his recent Selected Works of poetry, also from Insomniac Press, Dance, Monster.

Matthew J. Trafford’s is the author of The Divinity Gene: Stories. His fiction has appeared in The Malahat Review and Matrix and has been anthologized in I.V. Lounge Nights and Darwin’s Bastards: Astounding Tales from Tomorrow. He has won the Far Horizons Award for Short Fiction and an honourable mention at the National Magazine Awards and has twice been shortlisted for the CBC Literary Prize. He lives in Toronto, where he works with Deaf college students.

Pivot Readings at the Press Club
Featuring Maureen Hynes, Stan Rogal, and Matthew J. Trafford
Wednesday, May 18
The Press Club
850 Dundas Street West
PWYC.