The Power Plant

READINGS BY

Gary Barwin
Sonja Greckol
Jenny Sampirisi
Adam Seelig

*Please note that unfortunately M. NourbeSe Philip has canceled her performance for this evening.

MODERATED AND CURATED BY

Margaret Christakos

Five accomplished Toronto-based writers will perform their own conceptual poetic texts in response to works they each have selected from the exhibition Postscript: Writing After Conceptual Art. Gary Barwin, Sonja Greckol, M. NourbeSe Philip, Jenny Sampirisi and Adam Seelig are Canadian writers whose compositional innovation and post-lyric stance situate them within the larger conceptual writing movements celebrated by this exhibition. Springboarding from works in Postscript as source material, these poets will create a lively dialogue that copies lavishly, compromises originality, steals associations, reroutes meaning, and translates through local interpretations. Moderated by Margaret Christakos, the readings will take place in the galleries alongside of selected works, and will include audience discussion.

		Gary Barwin is a writer, composer, multimedia artist, and educator and the author of 15 books of poetry and fiction. His books include Franzlations (with Craig Conley and Hugh Thomas; New Star), The Obvious Flap (with Gregory Betts; BookThug), and The Porcupinity of the Stars (Coach House). He is winner of the 2013 City of Hamilton Arts Award (Writing), the Hamilton Poetry Book of the Year 2011, co-winner of 2011 Harbourfront Poetry NOW competition, the 2010 bpNichol chapbook award, and the KM Hunter Artist Award. Barwin has given hundreds of readings in Canada and internationally. He received a PhD in music composition from SUNY at Buffalo. He lives in Hamilton, Ontario. Photo: Geof Huth
		Sonja Greckol has harvested newspaper headlines, magazine tables of contents and GG-winning poetry along with physics text and song titles to construct Skein of Days, forthcoming from Pedlar Press in 2014. She is collaborating with visual artist Donna Fierle on a series of digital stills and time-based pieces derived from Skein. Greckol’s first book of poetry, Gravity Matters, was published by Inanna Press in 2009. Her work has appeared in Literary Review of Canada, Canadian Literature, Dalhousie Review, CV2, Canadian Women’s Studies, Fiddlehead and Matrix. Her long poem, 'Emilie Explains Newton to Voltaire', was short-listed for the CBC Poetry Prize in 2008. She edits poetry for Women and Environments International and is a founding member of the Influencysalon.ca Editorial Group.
		M. NourbeSe Philip is a Canadian poet, novelist, and essayist who is renowned for her experimentation with literary form and for her commitment to social justice. Her published poetry includes the widely praised Zong! (Wesleyan 2008), She Tries her Tongue; Her Silence Softly Breaks (1989), Salmon Courage (1983) and Thorns (1980). While still in manuscript form, She Tries Her Tongue won the Cuban Casa de Las Americas prize in 1988. Her prose works include a novel for young adults, titled Harriet's Daughter (1988); essays and articles published in Frontiers (1992) and Showing Grit (1993); and Looking for Livingstone: An Odyssey of Silence (1991), a narrative about the metaphoric return to Africa. She has taught at York University and the University of Toronto, was a Guggenheim Fellow for poetry in 1990-1991, and received the Toronto Arts Award for Writing and Publishing in 1995. Photo: Lawrence Schwartzwald
		Jenny Sampirisi is the author of the novel is/was (Insomniac Press 2008) and the poem-play Croak (Coach House Books 2011; a Globe 100 Book). Her visual poetry has been featured in galleries in Buffalo, Belgium, London, San Francisco, Toronto and in The Last Vispo Anthology (Fantagraphics Books 2012). Her poetry has been published in magazines, journals and anthologies including Detours: an anthology of poets from Windsor & Essex County (Palimpsest Press 2013) and has been featured on the CBC. She is the recipient of the 2011 K.M. Hunter Artist Award for Literature. She is a past director of the Scream Literary Festival and was co-founder of the Toronto New School of Writing. She has staged Croak in Toronto and Ottawa with musicians and dancers and continues to develop a staged version of the text. She is an instructor of English Literature and Creative Writing at Ryerson University and teaches on First Nations reserves throughout Ontario through the First Nations Technical Institute, a program offered in conjunction with Ryerson. She is currently at work on her second poetry collection, tentatively titled Possum Play. Photo: Aaron Tucker
		Adam Seelig is a poet, playwright, stage director, and the founder of One Little Goat Theatre Company in Toronto, with which he has premiered works by poet-playwrights Yehuda Amichai, Thomas Bernhard, Jon Fosse, Claude Gauvreau, Luigi Pirandello and himself. Seelig is the author of Every Day in the Morning (slow), a fully continuous concrete-lyric-drop-poem-novella (New Star Books, shortlisted for the 2011 ReLit Award), and his plays include All Is Almost Still (New York 2004), Antigone:Insurgency (Toronto 2007), Talking Masks: Oedipussy (Toronto 2009, published by BookThug) and Like the First Time (2011, published by BookThug). Seelig’s writings have appeared in various journals, including World Literature Today, Open Letter and Poetry. He is the recipient of a Canadian Commonwealth Scholarship for drama, and of a Stanford University Golden Award for his study of Samuel Beckett’s original manuscripts (published in Modern Drama). Born and raised in Vancouver, Seelig has also lived in northern California, New York, England and Israel. Photo: Yuri Dojc
		Margaret Christakos is a literary educator, independent curator and the author of eight collections of poetry and a novel, nominated for the Trillium Book Award. Her poetry books include What Stirs (2010) and Sooner (2008), both from Coach House Books and nominated for the Pat Lowther Award. Her 2002 collection Excessive Love Prostheses won the Relit Award for Poetry. From 2006-2012, Christakos designed and facilitated “Influency: A Toronto Poetry Salon” at the University of Toronto School of Continuing Studies. In 2012 she received a major Chalmers fellowship. Her new book Multitudes is forthcoming from Coach House this fall.