October 14 – November 26
Emily Carr University, South Building 410B
each session : 7-9 pm
schedule below
To register, please send an email to InfluencyWest [at] gmail.com . In your email please confirm that you would like to register and provide us with a little background about yourself, your interests, and writers that you enjoy reading. Cost: $20-$30 (sliding) per registrant for all 8 sessions. We are open to all registrants and will not turn anyone away. If the cost is prohibitive please let us know. Also, please register even if you can’t make all the readings / lectures.
InfluencyWest is a unique lecture and reading salon modeled on the highly successful Influency series organised by Margaret Christakos. We share her enthusiasm for critical engagement with poetry and her desire to foster a connection between writers and readers. With this in mind, we are offering lectures and public readings once a week during the months of October and November. Each night will feature an intro by facilitators Jason Christie and Jordan Scott, an original 30-minute lecture by one of the participating poets on the work of one of their colleague poets, and a half-hour live reading by the poet under discussion. To round out each night, a dedicated period for discussion will follow to give everyone a chance to offer insights and share thoughts.
Participants in InfluencyWest read a book of poetry each week to prepare for the evening`s guest poet. In the week after a lecture / reading, participants are encouraged to compose written responses to the poetics and the ideas encountered during class and email, post to the InfluencyWest blog, or orally present their responses in order to increase the complexity and dynamism of the dialogue. This, of course, is optional.
Facilitated by: Jason Christie and Jordan Scott
Presented by: The Kootenay School of Writing, Down Stream Project and the Canada Council
WEBSITES
http://www.kswnet.org/
http://influencywest.wordpress.com/
COMPLETE SCHEDULE
Wednesday, October 14th: Introductory Session
Monday, October 19th: Ken Belford on Lisa Robertson
Tuesday, October 20th: Lisa Robertson on Ken Belford
Wednesday, October 28th: Kim Duff on Larissa Lai and Rita Wong
Wednesday, November 10th: Larissa Lai and Rita Wong on Kim Duff
Thursday, November 12th: Steve Collis on Oana Avasilichioaei
Thursday, November 19th: Oana Avasilichioaei on Steve Collis
Thursday, November 26th: Final Session
THE BOOKS BEING DISCUSSED
Lan(d)guage: a sequence of poetics by Ken Belford. Caitlin (2008)
Lisa Robertson’s Magneta Soul Whip by Lisa Robertson. Coach House Books (2009)
Tube Sock Army by Kim Duff. LINE BOOKS (2008)
sybil unrest. By Larisa Lai and Rita Wong. LINEbooks (2008)
feria: a poempark by Oana Avasilchioaei. Wolsak & Wynn (2008)
The Commons. Stephen Collis. Talon Books (2008)
All these books can be purchased at the People’s Co-op Bookstore at 1391 Commercial Drive, Vancouver, BC.
AUTHOR BIOS
Oana Avasilichioaei is a poet and translator (French and Romanian). She has published two collections of poems, feria: a poempark (Wolsak & Wynn, 2008) and Abandon (Wolsak & Wynn, 2005), as well as a translation of Romanian poet Nichita Stănescu, Occupational Sickness (BuschekBooks, 2006). A collaborative, book-length work with Erín Moure, Expeditions of a Chimæra, involving translational and authorial impossibilities is just out this fall (BookThug). She has given readings and talks on poetry and translation in Canada, USA, Mexico and Europe, and she was the founder and curator of the Atwater Poetry Project reading series in Montreal from 2004 to 2009. She is currently the writer-in-residence at Green College, UBC.
Ken Belford has published four books of poetry: Fireweed, The Post Electric Caveman, Pathways Into the Mountains, and ecologue, as well as 15 chapbooks. Belford’s poetics blend borders. He is a self-educated “Lan(d)guage” poet who mixes an earned back country experience with the questions, failures, and linguistic particulars of these times.
Stephen Collis is the author of four books of poetry, Mine (New Star 2001), Anarchive (New Star 2005), which was nominated for the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize, The Commons (Talonbooks 2008)—the latter two form parts of the on-going “Barricades Project”—and On the Material (Talonbooks 2010). He is also the author of two book-length studies, Phyllis Webb and the Common Good (Talonbooks 2007) and Through Words of Others: Susan Howe and Anarcho-Scholasticism (ELS Editions 2006). He is currently editing a collection of essays, Reading Duncan Reading, organizing the Charles Olson Centenary Conference (June 4-6 2010), and continuing to work on “The Barricades Project.” A member of the Kootenay School of Writing, he teaches American literature, poetry, and poetics at Simon Fraser University.
Kim Duff is a PhD student at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, BC. Her previous research has included avant-garde poetry and global spatial logic. Her dissertation will focus on contemporary British literature with a particular focus on literature that engages with Thatcherism, privitization and urban spatial theory. She has also recently published a book of poetry, Tube Sock Army, through LINEbooks.
Larissa Lai is currently an Assistant Professor in Canadian Literature at the University of British Columbia. She holds a PhD in English from the University of Calgary and an MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia. She is also the author of two novels When Fox Is a Thousand (Press Gang 1995 and Arsenal Pulp 2004) Salt Fish Girl (Thomas Allen Publishers 2002) and two poetry books, Sybil Unrest (with Rita Wong) (Line Books 2009) and Automaton Biographies (Arsenal Pulp 2009). Her chapbook Eggs in the Basement was recently published by Nomados.
Lisa Robertson was born in Toronto and lived for many years in Vancouver, before moving to France, and then California. Her most recent book is Lisa Robertson’s Magenta Soul Whip (Coach House 2009). R’s Boat will be out with University of California Press in 2010. She has been the recipient of the Relit Award and the bp Nichol Chapbook Award, and has taught and held residencies at the Kootenay School of Writing, California College of the Arts, University of Cambridge, Capilano College, University of California Berkeley, University of California San Diego, American University of Paris and the Naropa Institute. She is currently working collaboratively on sound and video-based projects.
Rita Wong has written three books: sybil unrest (with Larissa Lai, 2008), forage (2007), and monkeypuzzle (1998). Wong has received the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize and the Asian Canadian Writers’ Workshop Emerging Writer Award. An Assistant Professor at Emily Carr, she is currently researching the poetics of water.