WRONG BAR @ WRONGBAR 25 NOVEMBER 8PM

Wednesday November 25, 2009 8pm
Wrongbar 1279 Queen Street West, 416-516-8677

Official launch and reading. Music 10pm. Hosted by Nathaniel G. Moore

Order the book.

Event listing

NO WAY OUT: OCTOBER 26 @ OSSINGTON

No Way Out: (A Reading At The Ossington during the International Festival of Authors)
Monday October 26th, 2009 8pm
The Ossington, 61 Ossington Ave, (just north of Queen) 416-850-0161

Featuring:
Sean Stanley
Robin Richardson
Sachiko Murakami
Angela Hibbs
Stacey May Fowles
Spencer Gordon
and others TBA
hosted by Nathaniel G. Moore

In the pre-dawn chaos of Halloween, Canzine, IFOA, and what is the fall book season, The Ossington proudly presents: NO WAY OUT an hour and ten minutes of the best poetry and prose you won't find at any red carpet gala by a thankless poluted lake. Not that there is anything wrong with ungrateful poluted lakes, or red carpet galas going on in October in Toronto. Back to the lecture at hand: for these writers, and the literary-crazed audience at The Ossington, there is NO WAY OUT! There will however be snacks, books, and beverages. Dress up and win a prize! Author bios may or may not be announced during the reading, but distinctions will be made well in advance of each reader.

Existere

A poem from my new collection is in the new issue of Existere. Check it out here: http://www.yorku.ca/existere/

wrong bar reading 21 October

Wrong
Bar

Sneak
Peek

Reading


Before launching the book in November officially, Nathaniel G. Moore will make his third appearance at the Pivot Reading Series this year and promises to deliver something special from his new novel Wrong Bar (Tightrope Books, 2009). Come check it out on Wednesday October 21st, 2009 at 8 p.m. at the Press Club, 850 Dundas Street West in Toronto just west of Bathurst. The event is free.

ART BAR READING: NOVEMBER 10

I will be reading as part of The Art Bar Poetry Series on Tuesday November 10th, more on this as the facts become non-fiction. What I do know is this: the reading is at Clinton's on Bloor and Clinton. I will be reading new material from my new books.

The Art Bar Poetry Series is recognized as the longest running
poetry-only reading series in Canada.

Official site http://www.artbar.org

CANZINE IS COMING

Canada's Largest Zine Fair and Festival of Alternative Culture
Sunday, November 1, 2009
1pm - 7pm
The Gladstone Hotel
1214 Queen St. West (Queen just East of Dufferin)
Toronto

Canzine Olympics
This year, $5 at the door gets you the Olympic issue of Broken Pencil plus access to hundreds of zines, the upstairs art rooms, the Canzine olympics and other thrilling events.

PASTELS ARE PRETTY MUCH THE POLAR OPPOSITE OF CHALK (THE TORONTO SHOW)

Sunday, October 25th
at Mitzi's Sister 7pm
1554 Queen St. W., Toronto
Insomniac Press and Punchy Writers Series
launch new books by Angela Hibbs and Nathaniel G. Moore.
Wanton by Angela Hibbs (Insomniac Press)
Pastels Are Pretty Much The Polar Opposite of Chalk
by Nathaniel G. Moore (Punchy Writers)
With special guests Jason Camlot (The Debaucher) and David McGimpsey(Sitcom, Certifiable)and music by Puggy Hammer

Pick Up The Phone: Dragonette

'Pick Up The Phone' - New Single from Dragonette.
Dragonette has a new video for 'Pick Up The Phone', the next single from their forthcoming album 'Fixin' To Thrill'. The video is perfect for back to school and being confident, blonde and possibly a D student.

Lead lady Martina explains how the video came about. "A little while ago we shot a faux advert for our scent URIN, with the directional genius that is Drew Lightfoot. Aside from it being a hilarious experience just by virtue of being such a ridiculous idea, it actually looked really rad. So it was our sheer delight to work with Drew again - this time for a real live music video instead of just goofin' around making fun of celebrity perfume lines."

INFLUENCY 7

Influency 7: A Toronto Poetry Salon SCS 1777
Featuring eight guest poets:
Ronna BLOOM • Stephen CAIN • Christopher DODA • Kate EICHHORN •
Nathaniel G MOORE • Lisa ROBERTSON • Trish SALAH • Jacqueline TURNER
Eleven weeks, Wednesday evenings:
Sept 30 to Dec 9, 2009, 7pm to 9:30pm (conversation may go to 10 pm)
Location: University of Toronto St. George Campus, location TBA (downtown, central)
Instructor: Margaret Christakos, mchristakos@hotmail.com
Fee: $235, plus $120 book package
University of Toronto School of Continuing Studies Creative Writing Program
www.learn.utoronto.ca or tel: 416-978-2400, Press 2.

Eight accomplished poets working in distinctive styles will appear as both guest readers and peer critics in this unique lecture-reading series hosted by Margaret Christakos. Each poet's critique of a colleague’s work will be followed with a reading by the poet under discussion. A group discussion led by Christakos will follow. Students will accumulate critical vocabulary to discuss more fluently the divergences of approach, motive, process and product typical of Toronto's multitraditional literary culture.

Schedule Sept-Dec 2009
Sept 30: Introductory Talk by Margaret Christakos; book distribution; small group formation and activities
Oct 7: Trish SALAH on Ronna BLOOM’s Permiso (Pedlar)
Oct 14: Kate EICHHORN on Stephen CAIN’s American Standard/Canada Dry (Coach House)
Oct 21: Margaret CHRISTAKOS on Christopher DODA’s Aesthetics Lesson (Mansfield)
Oct 28: Christopher DODA on Nathaniel G MOORE’s Let’s Pretend We Never Met (Pedlar)
Nov 4: Nathaniel G MOORE on Lisa ROBERTSON’s The Men (Bookthug)
Nov 11: Stephen CAIN on Lisa ROBERTSON’s Lisa Robertson’s Magenta Soul Whip (Coach House)
Nov 18: Lisa ROBERTSON on Trish SALAH’s Wanting in Arabic (Tsar)
Nov 25: Jacqueline TURNER on Kate EICHHORN’s Fond (Bookthug)
Dec 2: Ronna BLOOM on Jacqueline TURNER’s Seven into Even (ECW)
Dec 9: Registrants’ Intertext Presentations and Salon Closing Party

Course Description:
Influency 7: A Toronto Poetry Salon follows on the six successful previous salons inaugurated in Fall 2006, housed in the Creative Writing program at the U of T School of Continuing Studies. This unique lecture-reading course features a flow-chart series of lectures and readings by eight contemporary Toronto guest poets in person. This Fall 2009 session runs eleven weeks, with Weeks 2 through 10 feature an intro by facilitator Margaret Christakos, an original 40-minute lecture by one of the participating poets on the work of one of their colleague poets, and a half-hour live reading by the poet under discussion. A 40-min (plus) facilitated exchange of responses and ideas then takes place among the “critic,” poet and course registrants.
Students buy a book package of 9 titles at the first class. The class reads an assigned book of poetry each week in preparation for the evening’s guest poet. There will be nine books studied this session. In the week after a given lecture/reading, registrants compose written responses to the poetics and ideas encountered during the class and during their own consideration of the poetry being studied. Registrants may email their weekly responses to the whole class thereby increasing the level and complexity of conversation.
The last class is devoted to the delivery by registrants of their own prepared observations on the interesting interrelationships they find among some of the poets’ works studied.

Who takes Influency?
Some registrants are contemporary writers engaged in the forward edge of their own innovative writing, others are former poetry fans returning to the study of contemporary poetry after years of being separated from it, still others are wondering if poetry could be a pleasurable way to jumpstart their thinking. The salon generally includes a mix of registrants of all ages, producing a stimulating field of audience and opinion. The form of learning in the class is respectful of students at all levels; those beginning will find a learning curve steep and yet full of excitement. There is no prerequisite for this course and registrants may return for multiple salons as the roster of poets changes each term— generally about one third to one half of the class are return registrants, making the class socially fun and warm. The class atmosphere tends to be lively, supportive, inquiring and hospitable. Small group structure in the class pairs up newcomers and experienced poetry readers, capitalizing on diversity.

Course Objectives:
Influency has been designed to create a contemporary cultural space of discussion and contemplation about what poetry “means” and how it activates aesthetic response in various readers. It emerged as a strategy to allow audiences to enlarge their taste in styles and forms of poetry, and to help produce conversation and community across divergent notions of what “poetry” has been, is and can include. The active engagement of the listener/reader/respondent is crucial to a healthy poetry scene; Too often we read and hear other people’s writing but do not count our own responsive contribution as an equal part of how poems produce cultural dialogue.
Over this eleven-week course, there is an opportunity for registrants at all levels to broaden the field for the critical reception of contemporary poetry, and to build readerly and writerly community.

The complete course outline for SCS 17777 Influency 7: A Toronto Poetry Salon may be obtained by emailing mchristakos@hotmail.com. Registration is open NOW.

LOHAN BURGLARY

The hunt is on for suspects in the burglary of Lindsay Lohan's Hollywood Hills house. Many suspect Lohan of making copies of her keys and leaving them in drink-bottoms. The LAPD released surveillance camera footage of the Sunday break-in at the Mean Girls star's house which shows three people, all wearing denim, faces covered with wooly scarves, walking through a gate and entering a courtyard at around 1 a.m. They appeared to be carrying Lindsay Lohan who was described as "vocally present" and "ransack-ready".

130 detectives believe the suspects -- one male and two females, all 18 to 25 years old -- entered the house through an unlocked door, then ransacked it and took property.

Despite neighbours claims of Lohan leading the heist herself, Lohan's spokeswoman, Leslie Sloane-Zelnik, said the break-in happened while the actress and her younger sister were away. Sloane-Zelnik said many of Lohan's ``personal belongings were taken without remorse.''

Lohan -- who's been accused of pilfering a few things herself -- tweeted that she didn't think it was a robbery because ``things that a certain old friend knew meant a lot to me, and lotto tickets and stuff, stuffed animals, and crackers'' were taken. Her father was not one of these things taken, though no one has seen him in the news lately. Also stolen were several lyric books, including lyrics for her new album Where Went You Yesterday Today? which is believed to be Lohan's first venture into spoken word, though no one can be certain. "She's been serious about a few things, none of which she has ever spoken about," says a close neighbour. "She keeps repeating 'I'm going to do that today,' but no one knows what that is."

Savage: Reading August 26

A part of "Savage" is being published in Taddle Creek and I'm reading from it next week. This book has not yet been published or sold. But I thought I would make a new order type cover page for it because it looks cool.

August 26: Taddle Creek showcase

Pivot has jumped in a canoe on Taddle Creek – the literary magazine, that is – for the August 26 event. Join TC editor Conan Tobias and six (!!) of the magazine’s readers for a very special night.

Evie Christie lives in downtown Toronto. She is the author of the poetry collection Gutted and the hottest mom on Yonge Street.

Heather Hogan lives in the Annex and Taddle Creek has high hopes for her.


Alexandra Leggat lives in Riverdale. She instructs creative writing classes and writes a sports-themed blog. Her most recent book is the short story collection Animal.


Nathaniel G. Moore lives in Dovercourt Village. His next book, Wrong Bar, will be published in September. This fall he will officially retire as Taddle Creek’s most-rejected author.


Adrienne Weiss lives in Parkdale. She is the author of the poetry collection Awful Gestures and recently completed an M.A. in English at York University. She now wishes only to be addressed as “Master.”


Tony Burgess lives in Stayner, Ontario. A feature film based on his novel Pontypool Changes Everything, directed by Bruce MacDonald, has been fabulously successful, much like Tony himself.

Hosted by Carey Toane
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
8 p.m. at the Press Club
850 Dundas Street West
PWYC.

TORONTO ISLAND, SCHOOL OF FIRE

It has come to my attention that the Toronto Islands were not always islands but actually a series of non-cold glacial-type moving sand-bars, or “littoral drift deposits”, originating from the Scarborough Bluffs and carried westward by Lake Ontario currents. Scarborough Town Centre, Oakville and parts of Buffalo have been said to make up large or no parts of these “deposits” who have now transacted their way into a more permenant status across from the city of Toronto. By the early 1800s, the longest of these bars extended nearly 9 kilometres south-west from Woodbine Avenue, causing the streetcars to submerge in a strange netherworld of concern.

Getting back to fires and their centenials, the first school on the Toronto Islands, a one room school house, was built in 1888 near the Gibraltar Lighthouse. In 1909 the school burned to the ground and was replaced with a new building that opened for classes in September 1909, so we must assume the fire took place almost a hundred years ago, and that classes were succesful ways of keeping kids from arson fetish or gasoline smuggling, whatever it was that kept so much of the island in flames during the early 20th century.

In 1956 the city decided to remove the residential areas at Centre Island and Hanlan's Point to make a park, and as a result there was a big drop in student enrollment, and a large enrollment at the newly made park which historical groups dubbed “Club Ed” for some reason. It was latter dubbed “Special Ed” and then moved to Bathurst and Bloor and became a famous low-tech, low-priced retail shop.

100 YEARS AFTER THE FIRE

In 1894, an ambitious lakefill project by the Toronto Ferry Company added space for an amusement park that included an exciting roller-coaster called the Big Scream. And a cursed baseball stadium, built in 1909 and destroyed by fire one year later, (bullshit, the fire was August 10, 1909, a hundred years have passed us by) was rebuilt to hold 10,000 spectators. Babe Ruth, a baseball legend, hit his first professional home run here. The role of Hanlan's Point as a centre of recreation declined after the 1930's when the stadium was closed and the Maple Leaf baseball team moved to a new facility at the foot of Bathurst Street. The amusement park was demolished and in 1937 Toronto Island Airport was constructed. On August 10, 2009, a hundred years after the fire, Babe Ruth returned with a gasoline-drenched baseball mitten, a pack of matches and started swimming with his gloved hand extended out of the lake, in a beautiful tribute to arson and memory.

A dearth of fires on Hanlan's Point have also contributed to many blog posts and angler fishing stats not meeting snuff. Many baseball teams have suffered as well, though not directly linked to no fires for a century policy implimented by historical island folk.
A poetry reading series was planned to commemorate the anniversary of the fire, but the poets were lost en route via ferry.

Stripped Mall: Don Mills Edition 14 August

Well, I didn't write this. The italic stuff. It's about the Don Mills Centre at Lawrence and Don Mills, where I used to buy all my Polo, Chaps, Star Wars, GiJoes, wrestlers, Nintendo and Atari things. It was a mall that died. I found this on Facebook even though I'm not on Facebook, I think it's fitting considering there is a new bookstore there and they are having cool readings and events. To get there (on Friday 14 August 2009 for example, when this book, pictured above is featured with author and illustrator combined) you go to Eglinton subway and take the Lawrence 54 bus to Don Mills. Or go to Pape subway and take the Don Mills 25 to Lawrence:

Well, to say that the loss of Eatons killed the Don Mills Centre isn't exactly accurate. Don Mills had been dying a long, slow death since the beginning of the 1990s. Once upon a time, back in the glorious early 1980s, Don Mills had many of the high-end fashion stores that you still find today on the main level of the Eaton Centre (between Sears and Indigo Books). It had a very large Birks that was more than double the size of the one that replaced it in the 1990s. There was the Toyman, a bonafide toy store where you could buy all the latest G.I. Joe's, Transformers, and Nintendo games that your parents would open their wallets for. There was even a real electronics store -- not the cheapo discounters that later came. And there was Kellen's -- Owned by Mr. Kellen until recently -- who'd give you a lollypop while he cut your parents' steaks. It was a VERY GOOD mall.

But then a few things happened... Somewhat in order of importance.

#1
Cadillac Fairview renovated Fairview in the last 1980s / early 1990s and it became THE mall for the kids and the parents who had to drive them there. A number of DMC stores moved up the road at that point.

#2
We had the recession of 91/92.

#3
Birks filed for bankruptcy. The new owners closed a lot of locations and really cut back on merchandise. Today's Birks doesn't sell half of what it used to.

#4
Future Shop and some earlier electronics chains took off and killed most of the independents -- including the one in the DMC -- and the Eatons electronics dept.

#5
Toys R Us killed independents like the Toyman (who held out for a surprisingly long time) and the Eatons toy section (which was actually hit-and-miss on a year-to-year basis at Don Mills)

#6 - The population of Don Mills got a lot older

#7 - Cadillac Fairview attempted to save Don Mils Centre with a renovation. They were successful in the sense that they filled up all the empty storefronts, but ruined the character of the mall when they filled in wading pool / community meeting area in front of Eatons. (Where we all got our pictures taken with Santa.)

#8 - And yes, most of the replacement stores were junk.

#9 - Finally, NUMBER 9, Eatons went bankrupt... And bankrupt again... And became a Sears Outlet.

#10 - And they let Cinnabun get away. Thus ensuring that the Don Mills Centre would never be cool again.

I'm sad to see it gone, but I miss what it was in the 1980s, not what it became in the 1990s. A fresh start is definitely needed. After all, the Don Mills Centre started as a strip mall back in the 1950s or 1960s (Where did you think those trees came from?)

SHAWN

amanda sampson sketch...

You’ve got to be joking me. A little teenager in the ground, buried like a piece of fat in a cross-section of my mother’s toxicology meatloaf? Relatively few people realize that the common earthworm, of which the best known species, but not always the most common, is called Lumbricus terrestris by biologists, are just as much newcomers to North America as we are. In fact, there are many areas in Canada where earthworms are absent and where the productivity of the soil could be substantially increased if they were introduced.