Tag Archives: Shannon Maguire

Of bagpipes and pumpkin beer

Photo: Amanda Roth

“Martin’s quick-paced tempo led the audience through a whirlwind of intimate and surreal thought that was entirely engaging.”
— Amanda Roth, Grey Borders Reading Series

         The September 23 Grey Borders Reading began on a surreal note as the poets were ushered onto the stage by Shelby, a young woman playing bagpipes. She happened to be at the Niagara Artists Centre before the reading, preparing for the next day’s annual parade through downtown St. Catharines to celebrate grapes and wine, without which the history of surrealism just wouldn’t have been the same.
         And the surreality of the evening, fueled by wine and spiraling into the weirdness that poetry fiends crave, intensified with the poets’ readings: Shannon Maguire, Aisha Sasha John, Zorras, and yours untruly.
         Afterward, we spilled into the night and settled in a pub lined with giant vats of pumpkin beer, spinning ever more exquisite corpses.


Thanks to Shelby, Eric Schmaltz (curator), the Niagara Artists Centre, and also to Amanda Roth for her photos and report on the evening.


Camille Martin

Camille Martin, Beatriz Hausner, and Claire Lacey at AvantGarden (Toronto)

Please join Beatriz Hausner, Claire Lacey, and me next Tuesday, June 7, for our AvantGarden reading at The Ossington (Toronto).

I’ll read never-before-aired poems from my new manuscript “Looms.” Copies of my recently-published Sonnets (Shearsman Books, 2010) will be available for purchase.

A big thanks to hosts Liz Howard and Shannon Maguire!

Time: Tuesday, June 7, 6:30 pm—9:30 pm
Location: The Ossington (61 Ossington Avenue, Toronto)

Beatriz Hausner’s (Toronto, ON) poetry is rooted in the legacy of international surrealism, especially its Spanish American expression. Hausner’s extensive work as a translator has focused on the writers of that literature, including Rosamel del Valle, Enrique Molina, Olga Orozco, César Moro, the poets of Mandrágora, among many others. Hausner’s work has been anthologized and published in journals both in Canada and internationally, in French, Spanish and Portuguese translation. Recent publications of her poetry include: The Wardrobe Mistress (2003), Towards the Ideal Man Poems (2003), The Stitched Heart (2004), The Archival Stone (2005) and Sew Him Up (2010). Hausner is one of the publishers of Quattro Books (www.quattrobooks.ca). She works as a public librarian in Toronto.

Camille Martin, a Toronto poet, is the author of three books of poetry: Sonnets, Codes of Public Sleep, and Sesame Kiosk. Her work has been widely and internationally published in journals and translated into Spanish and German. Her current works in progress are “Looms,” a collection of layered narratives, and “The Evangeline Papers,” a poetic sequence based on her Cajun/Acadian heritage.

Claire Lacey blogs as poetactics. Claire studied English language and literature at Glendon College then headed west to cause a ruckus as a patagrad at the University of Calgary, where she writes poetry about linguistics and birds and bridges. Claire spent the last year working as writer-in-residence at a Calgary high school to convince students that poetry isn’t boring. Claire is poetry editor of Dandelion magazine.


 


 

Camille Martin