Join us Wednesday, February 16 at 7:30 virtually for Randy Lundy and Selena Boan
Due to Omicron, we are once again virtual. To register, click on this link:
 Award-winning writer Randy Lundy is Cree, Irish, and Norwegian and is a member of the Barren Lands First Nation, Brochet, MB, in Treaty 10 territory.
He has published four books of poetry, most recently Field Notes for the Self (2020) and Blackbird Song(2018) with the University of Regina Press, where he currently serves as editor for the Oskana Poetry and Poetics series. His poems have been widely anthologized, in Canada and abroad.
In 2020, Randy joined the English Department at University of Toronto, Scarborough.
Selina Boan is a white settler-nehiyaw writer living on the traditional, unceded territories of thexʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), səl̓ilwətaɁɬ (Tsleil-waututh), and sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish) peoples. Her debut poetry collection, Undoing Hours, was published in Spring 2021 by Nightwood Editions. Her work has been published widely, including The Best Canadian Poetry 2018 and 2020. She has received several honours, including the 2017 National Magazine Award for Poetry, and was a finalist for the 2020 CBC poetry award.
Our January Reading
 Our first reading of 2022 definitely did not disappoint. Our open mic was a smorgasbord of images featuring caves of silence, used coiled condoms, tears of powdered donuts and a stick-wielding jungle Buddha. Emerging from the blackness of the surface of the pond of the beginning portion of the evening, Shauna Paull’s poetry presented stark images the violence of our society, the waterways of songblood and light, and our drum circle of terrible knowledge. Paull’s poetry is uncomfortable, and urges us to create rooms full of listening, and travel through our anger at the violence our society inflicts on women to find something that can help, reminding us that poetry is an important element of healing. 
Our second feature poet, Ellie Sawatsky, who may or may not have been wearing sweatpants, lifted us out of the sombreness to treat us to images of soft eggs, the smell of boy sweat and a very weird nanny trip to Burning Man. Sawatsky, it seems, has been collecting outlandish experiences, like suburban basement S & M training sessions, for the sole purpose of transforming them into poetry. If you can’t get the wall of sex spatulas out of your mind, don’t worry. We can’t either!
Procedure for Open Mic
There will be an open mic, but we will do the signup at the beginning of the reading. The zoom doors open at 7:15 for socializing. People who want to sign up for open mic can arrive early and put a message in the chat box.
One Minute Poem Series Lives!
This month, catch Ellie Sawatsky reading "Sun Valley Lodge" on our One Minute Poem Series. Head to our YouTube channel at: https://www.youtube.com/channel/.
Along with our Twitter feed, we’ll be posting here up-to-the-minute reminders of upcoming readings, and features of our guest poets.
On our website, you'll find all of the information you’ll need to find out who we are and where to find our series. We’ve also created new pages for poetry-related news, our upcoming readings (events), an archive of older posts, and information about the series and team members. We hope to eventually upload a page featuring a list of the poets who have read with our series in the past, and our archive of past newsletters.
Keep on Donating!
Thank you to our generous donors! Your donations are what allow us to pay our poets and bring you top shelf poetry readings every week. You can donate on our website at https://poetscorner.ca/. If you have donated regularly, we thank you from the bottom of our hearts. If you haven't donated yet, but you have a little cash burning a hole in your bank account because you haven't been able to go out anywhere to spend it, we will put it to good use!
More Thanks
Thank you to the Canada Council for the Arts, the League of Canadian Poets and the Writers' Union of Canada for their funding. We at Poets Corner, and especially our feature readers and one-minute poets, appreciate the support.
 
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