JOY KOGAWA HOUSE TO HOST AL PURDY PARTY
This is going to be an exciting event, created for BC Book and Magazine Week.
4 poets in an intimate setting with special host Shelagh Rogers. Innaugural Kogawa House writerinresidence John Asfour has invited 3 nominated poets for the BC Book Prizes Dorothy Livesay Poetry Award: George Stanley, Nilofar Shimehr and Daphne Marlatt.
Shelagh Rogers did the last public interview Purdy at the Eden Mills Writers' Festival. Shelagh says “He was awesome,” and will share her Al Purdy memories with the audience.
www.cbc.ca/wordsatlarge/blog/2008/05/al_purdy_an_uncommon_poet_
This will be also be a fundraiser for Save the Al Purdy A Frame… in the Joy
Kogawa childhood home, a house that was saved from demolition to be
turned into a writer in residence program and a historical/literary
landmark for all of Canada
April 21 is National Al Purdy Day.
http://www.poetrymap.ca/news_item.php?NewsID=35
from www.kogawahouse.com
Shelagh Rogers, host of “The Next Chapter” on CBC Radio, to emcee
with John Asfour – inaugural writer in residence at Joy Kogawa House, George Stanley, Nilofar Shidmehr and Daphne Marlatt
George Stanley (Vancouver: A Poem), Nilofar Shidmehr (Shirin and Salt Man) and Daphne Marlatt
When: 7:30 p.m., Monday, April 20
Where: Historic Joy Kogawa House, 1450 West 64th Avenue, Vancouver
Admission by donation. Space is limited. To secure a seat, please RSVP kogawahouse@yahoo.ca
Three
BC Book Prize-nominated poets—George Stanley, Nilofar Shidmehr and
Daphne Marlatt—have accepted an invitation from writer-in-residence
John Asfour to read at Historic Joy Kogawa House on Monday, April 20,
as part of BC Book and Magazine Week.
Asfour,
a Montreal poet, is the first writer-in-residence at Kogawa House and
will present poetry readings to a variety of audiences, in
collaboration with the Canadian National Institute for the Blind, Simon
Fraser University’s Writers Studio, Christianne’s Lyceum of Literature
and Art and the Vancouver Public Library.
Asfour
is the author of four books of poetry in English and two in Arabic. He
translated the poetry of Muhammad al-Maghut into English under the
title Joy Is Not My Profession (Véhicule Press), and he selected, edited and introduced the landmark anthology When the Words Burn: An Anthology of Modern Arabic Poetry, 1945–1987 (Cormorant Books).
CBC
Radio host Shelagh Rogers will emcee the event, which is a
co-presentation of Historic Joy Kogawa House and the West Coast Book
Prize Society. George Stanley (Vancouver: A Poem), Nilofar Shidmehr (Shirin and Salt Man) and Daphne Marlatt (The Given) are finalists for the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize.
The
event takes place the evening before National Al Purdy Day, and the
League of Canadian Poets has invited all Canadian poets and lovers of
Canadian poetry to host a Purdy party to raise funds for the Al Purdy
A-Frame Project—Purdy’s former home on Roblin Lake, Ontario—and to
create a poet-in-residence program there that is similar to the
writer-in-residence program now under way in the childhood home of the
author Joy Kogawa.
This
poetry reading will be held at 7:30 pm at Historic Joy Kogawa House,
located at 1450 West 64th Avenue, Vancouver. Entrance by donation.
Space is limited. To secure a seat, please RSVP kogawahouse@yahoo.ca