Five Readers on December 2, 2007

At Lit Live, poetry month falls in December!

Daphne Marlatt is currently writer in residence at McMaster University and her last book was the poetry collection This Tremor Love Is.

Colin Morton will read from The Cabbage of Paradise:The Merzbook and other poems, published in 2007 by Seraphim Editions.

Ruth Roach Pierson has a new book of poetry entitled Aide-memoire, published by Buschek Books.

Nadine McInnis will read from her latest collection of poems, Two Hemispheres, recently published by Brick Books.

Elizabeth Glenny reads from A Periodic Sentence, her second collection of poetry.

Daphne Marlatt

Daphne Marlatt was born in Australia. After moving from Malaysia to Vancouver in 1951, she obtained a BA from the University of British Columbia in 1964, an MA in Comparative Literature from Indiana University in 1968, and Ph.D. from the University of Western Ontario in 1996. After publishing poetry for many years, she published two novels, Ana Historic (1988) and Taken (1996), and numerous critical articles. She is currently writer-in- residence at McMaster University. Daphne Marlatt’s last book of poetry was This Tremor Love Is. It is a memory book—an album of love poems spanning twenty-five years, from her first writing of what was to become the opening section, “A Lost Book,” to later, more recent sequences.

Colin Morton

Colin Morton has lived in Ottawa since 1981. He has published seven books of poetry and a novel, and has collaborated with other writers and artists in a variety of inter-media performances, including the animated film Primiti Too Taa. Two of his poetry books have won the Archibald Lampman Poetry Award: This Won't Last Forever in 1986, and Coastlines of the Archipelago in 2000.

His 2003 book, Dance, Misery, published by Hamilton's Seraphim Editions was short listed for the same award. His second Seraphim book, The Cabbage of Paradise: The Merzbook and Other Poems, is a new edition of his best-known work, after a decade out of print. An excerpt from The Merzbook received a CBC award in the 1980s. The Cabbage of Paradise combines Morton's visual and experimental poetry with his narrative series about the early 20th-century German artist Kurt Schwitters, creator of a one-man art movement he called Merz. In reviving the spirit of Schwitters, Morton's book also builds on the experimental poetic tradition in Canada.

Ruth Roach Pierson

Ruth Roach Pierson has had two careers: for thirty-one years she was a teacher, historian, and feminist scholar. She is the author of They’re Still Women After All: The Second World War and Canadian Womanhood (which came out with McClelland & Stewart in 1986) and has written many other academic studies.

Her first book of poems, Where No Window Was, was published by BuschekBooks of Ottawa in the spring of 2002, a year after she retired from academia. Her poems have appeared in ARC, Event, The Fiddlehead, Malahat Review, Pagitica, Prism International, Queen’s Feminist Review, Quills, and A Room of One’s Own, as well as a number of anthologies. In 2002, she won first place in the annual poetry contest sponsored by Word: Toronto’s Literary Calendar; in 2003 she was a finalist in the Pagitica literary contest; and she received honourable mention in The Fiddlehead’s 2003/2004 Ralph Gustafson poetry contest. Aide-mémoire, also published by BuschekBooks, is her second book of poems.

Nadine McInnis

Nadine McInnis is the author of seven books, including Quicksilver (short stories), Hand to Hand (poetry), and Poetics of Desire: Essays on Dorothy Livesay. Her work has appeared in a variety of journals, including The Malahat Review, The New Quarterly, Event, and Room of One’s Own. She lives in Ottawa where she teaches in the Professional Writing Program at Algonquin College. Her latest book of poetry is Two Hemispheres which was recently published by Brick Books.

"Two Hemispheres acts as a causeway between past and present, health and illness, and the supposed vastly different worlds of arts and biomedicine." -– Dr. J.T.H. Connor, Faculty of Medicine, Memorial University.

Elizabeth Glenny

Elizabeth Glenny lives on the banks of the Niagara River with an orange cat, a reincarnation of her husband, which is jealously guarding her from the ghost of her first husband. She is working on her second poetry collection titled Legs. Elizabeth will read from her first collection of poetry, A Periodic Sentence.