Poetry Goes Public With Viva’s Help
Frank Viva is an in-demand illustrator and branding expert whose work has appeared on the cover of The New Yorker, in Time and Esquire, the New York Times and Toronto Life: commercial clients include Butterfield and Robinson, New York Life and Le Creuset. But busy as he is, Viva found the time to do a pro bono job being unveiled today (August 26) at the Toronto Reference Library (789 Yonge Street); the OCAD-educated artist has lent his talent to Poet Laureate Dionne Brand’s Poetry is Public is Poetry project, an initiative designed to etch some of Canada’s most celebrated poetry into public spaces.
A collaboration between City of Toronto’s Cultural Services, Transportation Services and the Toronto Public Library and the TPL Foundation, the project will embed two to four installations per year in outdoor library spaces. Viva’s hoarding design (above) blends his whimsical art with snippets of poems by 34 Canadian poets.
Lisa Pasold’s Literary Yorkville
Strolling the posh sidewalks of Yorkville, it’s hard to imagine that this quaint former village was a slightly derelict, bohemian drag as recently as 40 years ago. Best known for its 1960s and early ’70s coffee house scene, Yorkville was the launching pad for music talents like Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Gordon Lightfoot, Ronnie Hawkins and so many more.
But the area also has a rich literary history, which is what author and tour guide Lisa Pasold will be focusing on tomorrow afternoon (3 – 5 pm), as she leads local and international guests through the streets and laneways that gave rise to literary lights like Milton Acorn, Matt Cohen, Margaret Atwood, Michael Ondaatje, bpNichol, Dennis Lee and others.
Pasold’s tour (email her for details, advance reservations are required), is part of a week-long “vacation for the soul” called Classical Pursuits organized by Ann Kirkland. Every summer in Toronto, more than 100 individuals from around the world retreat from the hurly-burly of daily life to engage in unhurried discussion and personal reflection about the world’s great literature, music, and art. Taking place all this week on the leafy campus of UofT’s Victoria College, Classical Pursuits features a variety of guest lecturers and tour guides; Kirkland likens the week to “slow food for the intellect.”
Yesterday, Pasold gave me a preview of her walk, which digs back into Yorkville’s 19th century history before fleshing out the literary side of things. We strolled past the sites of former coffee houses like the Riverboat, above, and the Mynah Bird, where authors rivaled the folkies with readings of seminal Canadian works.
Coffee, Tea or . . . Poetry?
It makes so much sense that a café named Ezra’s Pound should sport a vending machine that dispenses poems. Installed last month, Toronto Poetry Vendors is a repurposed gum machine that pumps out poems by 10 local writers for $2 apiece.
Curious, I fed a toonie into the slot and out popped “Grave Mistake” by Stuart Ross. Café regulars were a bit excited to see me photographing and using the machine. “Does it work?” asked one. “I thought it was an art piece,” remarked another.
When I showed them my poem they seemed impressed, if not necessarily by Ross’s work, then at least by the fact that the machine performs as advertised.
The brainchild of writers Carey Toane and Elisabeth de Mariaffi, the first two TPV’s were unveiled at This Ain’t the Rosedale Library and Type Books in April to coincide with poetry month. The third “permanent” machine was installed at Ezra’s Pound last month and is currently dispensing poems by Ross, Toane and de Mariaffi, as well as by Kevin Connolly, Dani Couture, Andrew Faulkner, Jacob McArthur Mooney, Jenny Sampirisi, Meaghan Strimas and Paul Vermeersch.
Toane and de Mariaffi have also created a mobile machine, which they inaugurated at last weekend’s Meet the Presses Indie Literary Market at Clinton’s Tavern. Watch for it again July 8 at The Scream Literary Festival’s Bureaucracy Night.
TPV operates “exactly like a poetry journal,” explains de Mariaffi, “it’s just a different format. Twice a year we’ll publish 10 new poems and the poets are told up-front exactly what they’ll be paid and in what time frame.”
“So far we haven’t applied for, or received, any grant funding, this is just something Carey and I did off the cuff, out of our own pockets. Aside from paying the poets, we’d love to recoup some of our capital costs before we invest in any more machines, but I could probably place three machines right now just based on the interest we’ve had so far.”
Click through to read Stuart Ross’s “Grave Mistake” . . .
Lords Know Why Culture Changes
Barry Lord literally wrote the book on museum planning — 1983’s Planning Our Museums was the first text of its kind and it launched the author and his editor, wife and business partner, Gail Dexter Lord, on a hugely successful international career planning and advising museums and galleries around the globe. In the ensuing 27 years, Lord Cultural Resources has consulted on 17,000 cultural institutions in 45 countries, including Toronto’s own Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, which is where I interviewed Barry, left (with David LaChappelle’s Lady Gaga: Electric Chair, 2009, courtesy of the artist and Fred Torres Collaborations), and where the Lords’ latest book, Artists, Patrons and the Public: Why Culture Changes, will be launched on Thursday.
Lord Cultural Resources is based in Toronto with offices in New York, Paris and Madrid plus project offices in Beijing and Bahrain. The company’s global ambitions could not have flowered at a better time; while Toronto has undergone a spectacular cultural renaissance during the past decade, other cities large and small are equally determined to compete in the cultural marketplace and that has meant lots of work for the Lords.
TOK on the Rock
A group of contributors to the latest Diaspora Dialogues anthology TOK: Writing the New Toronto, Book 5 converged on “the rock” in Yorkville today at lunch hour to read their entries in this engaging new collection of poetry and short stories. From left to right (back row) are Marni Van Dyk, Nalo Hopkinson, Chang Liu, Leslie Shimotakahara and Dawn Promislow (reading); front row, Karishma Kripalani, Sandy Pool, Chelsea Gamble, Michael Fraser and Mayank Bhatt.
In the book preface, Diaspora Dialogues founder Helen Walsh promises “a dynamic mix of voices [from] across the city . . . stories and poems about journeys to fantastic places and deep into the heart and about the sometimes uneasy space one occupies between multiple identities.” TOK 5 gets its official launch Thursday (May 20) with a celebration and reading at the Toronto Reference Library at 7:30 pm; free.
Photo by Christopher Jones
