Poets

No pre-registration required. Location: BMFA Arts Centre 163 Hurontario Street

Poets attending Wordstock 2011:

Brendan McLeod

A novelist, playwright, musician, and poet, Brendan McLeod performs literature in many different guises. One of the country's most accomplished competitive performance poets, Brendan McLeod is a former Canadian SLAM poetry champion, Vancouver SLAM champion, and the runner up at the 2005 World SLAM poetry championship. Since then, he has performed at over 400 events in 10 countries, touring a combination of music, comedy, and dynamic storytelling to an international audience. Brendan’s first novel, ‘The Convictions of Leonard McKinley’, was nominated for the 2008 Re:Lit Award, Canada's top prize for independent fiction. Two years later, his first play, ‘The Big Oops’ toured Western Canada, earning four-star reviews from CBC, the Winnipeg Free Press, and the Edmonton Journal. His most recent project is a full-length monologue, The Fruit Machine, which combines high energy stories about Canadian history with comedic asides about everything from Facebook to Iron Maiden.

Judy Lowry

Judy Lowry hasn’t stopped writing since she began in her early teens. However, it was during a self-funded sabbatical from her work as a teacher of ceramics at George Brown College that she passionately embraced it again. When Judy returned to Ontario, she moved to Grey County, establishing a permanent studio with her partner, ceramic artist Jim Louie. She self-published “The Last Nine” in 2004, and Ginger Press published “Exile No More”, her first book of poetry, in 2006.

Judy has done everything over the years from tree planting, painting houses and fences, and working retail, to Learning Through the Arts teaching. She presently works as a dyer of wool to help fund a bit of time in her studio, and at her typewriter. A member of the Words Aloud Collective since its inception, Judy performs poetry whenever possible.

Bonnie Gardiner

Writer, painter, and photographer Bonnie Gardiner is a lifelong resident of Grey County, disregarding a couple of years of city-life which she likes to think of as “temporary” insanity. Bonnie currently resides at “A Brush With Words”, a four-acre property, along with her partner, landscape artist and sculptor, Peter John Reid. Bonnie attempts to capture ordinary life experiences and transcend them to the extraordinary, either with pen or with paintbrush. She is the self-published author of several children’s books and two collections of vignettes and poetry, “Growing in Grey”, and “Human Beings Being Human”, illustrated with her own original artwork.

Named Owen Sound’s poet of the month for February 2008, Bonnie was also a recipient of the Haliburton School of the Arts Stanley F. Dance Scholarship, and is a member of the Highway 4 Writer’s Group. Her art can be found at Matilda Swanson Gallery in Clarksburg and at Ann Wylie-Toal’s Spirit Space in Flesherton.

Antony Christie

Antony Christie was born in Bolton, England and grew up in the London area. He has studied at Oxford, Toronto and UNB (Fredericton) and since 1966 has taught literature, creative writing and drama in schools and colleges both in England and Ontario. He has edited the Ontario English Teachers' magazine indirections and co-founded a small press and a poets' workshop near Barrow in the English Lake District.

At present Antony divides his time between Northumberland in England and Grey County in Ontario, working mainly on his third poetry collection The Holding Place, which is edging towards completion. For relaxation he renovates old buildings, working in stone and timber, walks, reads, travels and enjoys film and theatre.

His work has been published in magazines in England, Ireland and Canada, including The Antigonish Review, Fiddlehead, and Grain, and in two chapbooks, two full -length collections and several anthologies. Antony is a member of the League of Canadian Poets.

John Robert Colombo

John Robert Colombo has written, compiled and translated more books than any other serious Canadian author. Since 1960, he has also edited or co-written over 200 books for Toronto-based publishers. Some of these books have appeared under the names of other Canadians, many of them household names. He has taught at York University, and served as writer-in-residence at Mohawk College.

John’s poetry appears in many anthologies and magazines, including Atlantic Monthly, and he is an honourary member of the League of Canadian Poets. In 2005 and 2006, the Battered Silicon Dispatch Box issued three volumes of “The Poems of John Robert Colombo”, consisting of works composed between the late 1950s and the early 2000s. He has established literary readings at the now-legendary Toronto institution the Bohemian Embassy, and organized the first literary readings at Toronto’s Harbourfront, the foundation of its famous International Festival of Authors and Weekly Reading Series. “In a very real way you have become the guardian of perpetuating the Canadian psyche.” – Peter C. Newman

What is a Poetry Slam?

The poetry slam, a relatively new phenomenon in North America, emerged out of inner city Chicago in the mid 1980s. Since that time, it has made its way into the mainstream, attracting diverse crowds and committed followers. A poetry slam is a live competition in which poets perform original poetry and are judged by preselected audience members. Its focus is not the written word; rather, it is a celebration of the art of oral interpretation and performance with emphasis on the interaction between the poet and the audience. Because each poet must perform an original piece within the time constraints of the competition, he/she must seize the audience’s attention and captivate them with words alone. The content of slam poetry is as diverse as the poets who perform, often leaving us with a “snapshot” of a particular time, place, and culture. It is this relationship between slam poetry and community that makes it particularly compelling and relevant. This year WORDSTOCK welcomes back host David Silverberg and the newly minted Toronto Poetry Slam Team, who will go head to head with area poets (2:30 pm, Saturday, September 10, free at the BMFA Arts Centre). A ‘don’t miss’ event!

Toronto Poetry Slam Team