Poetry NOONERS!

Every spring, the League of Canadian Poets celebrates National Poetry Month, which is dedicated to reading, writing, speaking and promoting poetry.

In 2011, the League of Canadian Poets will also celebrate 25 years of the Public Lending Right in Canada, which attempts to both nurture poets and provide free access to their work.

This spring, explore Poets + Libraries = PLR for National Poetry Month!

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This spring, it fell to me as Manitoba rep to organize the National Poetry Month events. It was natural (nurture-l?) to partner with the Millennium Library, given their support of Manitoba's poetry community but also the PLR tie-in.

Given the daytime population of the library and of the wider downtown area, we thought we'd try a couple of lunchtime events, with two poets per event.

Thanks to the readers, the LCP, and thanks to Tannis Gretzinger at the Millennium Branch of the Winnipeg Public Library for all her help.

So, to sum: Yay to LCP/PLR! And yay to poetry NOONERS!

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National Poetry Month Reading #1
Featuring Charles Leblanc & Alison Calder

When: Tuesday, April 12, 12:00 - 1:00 pm
Where: Main floor, Millennium Library (251 Donald Street)
Cost: FREE!

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Charles Leblanc is a St. Boniface translator, writer, actor and poet. He is a founding member of the Collectif post-néo-rieliste, and helps to create the Foyer des écrivains, the Winnipeg International Writers Festival’s francophone programming. He won Manitoba’s Prix littéraire Rue-Deschambault in 2005 for l’appétit du compteur. Last title: des briques pour un vitrail (collected works) (2008).

Alison Calder’s poetry collection, Wolf Tree (Coteau 2007), won two Manitoba Book Awards and was a finalist for both the Gerald Lampert Award and the Pat Lowther Award. Her collaboration with Jeanette Lynes led to the chapbook Ghost Works: Improvisations in Letters and Poems (Jackpine Press 2007). She’s taught creative writing in Germany and China, and been invited to read her work in France and the United States. Alison lives in Winnipeg, where she teaches Canadian literature and creative writing in the Department of English, Film, and Theatre at the University of Manitoba.

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NPM Reading #2
Featuring Colin Smith & Deborah Schnitzer

When: Tuesday, April 26, 12:00 - 1:00 pm
Where: Main floor, Millennium Library (251 Donald Street)
Cost: FREE!

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Colin Smith is a poetry scalawag. Books = 8X8X7 (Krupskaya, 2008) and Multiple Poses (Tsunami, 1997). More current work pops up in CV2, The Collective Consciousness, and Dandelion. Rarely meets a curse he doesn't like.

Deborah Schnitzer is co-editor of the award-winning collection, The Madwoman in the Academy: 43 Women Boldly Take on the Ivory Tower, whose creative writing includes the long poem, lovinggertrudestein, Loving Gertrude, the novel gertrude unmanageable, and most recently, An Unexpected Break in the Weather, winner of the 2010 Margaret Laurence Award for Fiction. She has collaborated with Shelagh Carter on three short experimental films, rifting/blue, resolve, and Canoe, and with River on the Run North, an eco-arts collective examining environmental challenges to Lake Winnipeg. Deborah is currently at work landscaping a new novel, the woman who swallowed West Hawk Lake and the long poem, water^woman.