One Book: Toronto is Reading More
When I wrote to author Austin Clarke requesting an interview, I asked if we could meet in his neighbourhood, “at a favourite café or park bench that might add some local colour to my post.” Boy, did Clarke deliver: upon my arrival at his home bordering Toronto’s troubled Moss Park, the writer suggested we step out to his favorite “ghetto convenience store” for a pack of smokes and a newspaper. Not everyone could get away with using the “g” word but Clarke means no disrespect; he’s lived on this sketchy strip for years and there’s not much he hasn’t seen from his second-story writing room overlooking the park.
Superficially, Clarke’s most recent book, More, is the story of an immigrant woman from Barbados whose life in Canada does not play out as she once dreamed; the book is “a biography of the neighbourhood,” observes Clarke. A sad tale, richly told, More won the 2009 Toronto Book Award and is this year’s pick for the Toronto Public Library’s annual One Book reading celebration. On Thursday (April 22) Clarke will be participating in an online chat about the book and the following week (April 27) he’ll be at Monarch Park Collegiate discussing the story with students there.
Lots Left To Say and Do For Dionne Brand
Poet, novelist, professor Dionne Brand has poured herself into her duties as Toronto’s third Poet Laureate the way she pours herself into her own writing, which is to say, thoroughly.
On April 21, Brand will be front and centre at the Art Gallery of Ontario where she has challenged herself and four other poets (George Elliott Clarke, Lynn Crosbie, Daniel David Moses and Souvankham Thammavongsa) to write about an artwork in the Gallery’s collection. Poets Spell Art promises to be a lively evening as attendees make their way from work to work to hear the poems recited. The event is a fine example of Brand’s determination to use her time as city Poet Laureate to encourage a cross pollenization of poetry with art, music, theatre, you name it.
Just six months into her gig as Poet Laureate and Brand is already hard at work on her legacy project, an endeavour called Poetry is Public is Poetry, in which verses of poems will be permanently embedded in public spaces, initially at least, in approaches to Toronto Public Libraries.
A Literary Carnival for the Midwinter
An underground food court in downtown Toronto may be light years from the Venice Carnival but that was the atmosphere being conjured last Wednesday at BCE Place where Diaspora Dialogues set up shop during the lunch rush to promote A Midwinter Night’s Dream, happening Thursday and Friday at the Park Hyatt’s Roof Salon. Writers, musicians and performance artists will converge on the swish watering hole in an effort to banish the winter blahs.
“It’s an attempt to get out of the drudgery that we usually experience in mid-winter and to just let our minds go,” says artistic manager Philip Adams, “if you can’t physically take your body away, let your mind go.”
At the press preview last week, literary fortune teller Antanas Sileika, above left, had the punters lined up five and six deep to receive a private reading focused on advice gleaned from literature; poet Andrea Thompson, top pic, was composing poems on demand. Both writers will be doing their thing at the Salon this week.
Andrea composed the following poem for me in a minute or two and was adamant that I say as much in this post. “The poem is from you to Toronto,” she explained, as she wrote. “You can’t stop the muse, Christopher, you can’t stop the muse.”
Canada’s Richest Short Story Contest
Thanks to the Toronto Star’s 2010 Short Story Contest, anyone living in Ontario can test their literary chops: the annual contest, now in its 32nd year, is the most lucrative of its kind in Canada with a grand prize of $5,000, plus tuition for the creative writing correspondence program at Humber School for Writers. This year, for the first time, the Toronto Public Library has teamed with the Star to present this prestigious contest. City librarian, Jane Pyper, above left, joined fellow contest judges (from left) Richard Ouzounian, Elyse Friedman, Geoff Pevere and Matthew Church at a press conference Friday, announcing the contest details. Deadline for submissions is February 28 and winners will be announced in April during the TPL’s annual Keep Toronto Reading celebration.
Toronto Through Sarah Elton’s Eyes
The older I get the more I appreciate the extent to which success hinges on enthusiasm rather than talent. Writer Sarah Elton is undoubtedly talented but there are loads, LOADS of talented writers out there going nowhere fast. What sets Elton apart is her passion for her subject whether it be local food or local writing: Elton’s passion is place and her place is Toronto.
As the media landscape contracts — magazine closures, newspaper layoffs — Elton, a freelance journalist, is stepping up, not out. She has two new books under her belt, the just-released City of Words, Toronto Through Her Writer’s Eyes (Cormorant) and the upcoming Locavore: From Farmers Fields to Rooftop Gardens, How Canadians are Changing the Way We Eat (due in March from HaperCollins). Elton may be small of stature — five-foot-nothing if my guess is accurate — but she’s an Energizer bunny dashing from CBC headquarters (where she’s a contributor and former producer) to interviews promoting City of Words.
As busy as she is, the writer conveys the sense that there’s nothing she’d rather be doing than squeezing in a quick tour of downtown Toronto while referencing the streets and scenes she has pulled together for her evocative new book.
