The Marguerite Pigeon reading is fast approaching! Tuesday, November 10th at Leva Cappuccino Bar (11053 86th Ave).

Click on the poster to the left for larger image.

Hope to see you there!

Angela Carr’s chapbook is now available! Click the image below to read.

The next Olive Reading will be on Tuesday, November 10th at Leva Cappuccino Bar (11053 86th ave), featuring M. Pigeon. Events begin @ 7pm!

Bio: Marguerite Pigeon is a writer of poetry and fiction. Her first book of poems, Inventory, appeared this spring with Anvil Press. She has also recently completed the manuscript of her first novel, Open Pit. A former journalist, she holds an MFA in Creative Writing from UBC, where she was the fiction editor for PRISM international. Originally from Blind River, Northern Ontario, she now lives in Vancouver and works as an editor of academic publications.

Look forward to the poster and chapbook when available.

So it took me a while to deliver on my promise, but here it is. Ken Belford’s affinities is a fine piece of post-modern eco-poetry. We here at the Olive truly hope you enjoy it as much as we do.

affinities

Thanks to everyone who came out to the first reading of our tenth season. We were treated to an intimate and reflective reading by Prince George eco-poet Ken Belford. We hope to post a pdf of his chapbook “affinities” in the next couple weeks, so keep checking back with us.

Also, we are pleased to announce that we have found our new home at Cafe Leva (11053-86ave). Be sure to check out our new digs on October 13th when we host Angela Carr.

Come celebrate the return of founding Olive alumi Adam Dickinson and Andy Weaver, along with illustrious guests Rachel Blau Duplessis and  Steve McCaffery. Special thanks to NeWest Press, local publishing heros.

On Thursday, May 14, from 7:00 pm till we all go home, The ARTery will be where this very special Olive reading goes down!

The ARTery
9535 Jasper Avenue

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The Olive Reading Series, in conjunction with Poetries of Numerousness: Singularities/Movements/Idealities (Grant MacEwan College) invites you to a supernumerary, extra special Olive event.

Come early and have a refreshing beverage or a tasty snack. Check out the gallery space and score a primo seat to experience these celebrated figures in contemporary poetry.

Doors open at 7:00 PM / Readings at 8:00 PM.

Limited-edition broadsides showcasing some of the headliners’ poetry will be for sale in lieu of our usual free chapbook. The very modest amount we charge will also help pay for this extraordinary event.

McCaffery and Duplessis are taking part in readings and talks at the conference, as well as Australian poet Les Murray, and Canadian wunderkind Erin Mouré.

Poetries of Numerousness Conference information can be found at: http://www.macewan.ca/web/services/poetries/home/index.cfm

The Olive Reading Series gratefully acknowledges the support of our community and sponsors. In particular, this event is made possible by the generous sponsorship of the wonderful folks at NeWest Press who have championed award winning Canadian authors for over 30 years. Please visit them at:
http://www.newestpress.com

We look forward to seeing you on May 14th!

With the slow bleed of so many Edmonton poets/artists to the West Coast, it is rare and most welcome when a Vancouverite of Catherine Owen’s talent and infectious level of community engagement (and fondness for the vino) blows into town to put down roots. I am not sure that was her plan when she and bandmates of the blackmetal group INHUMAN arrived in wintry Edmonton, but it’s a few winters later and she’s showing no signs of flying the coop.

When not writing lyrics and exercising (exorcising?) her Warwick Vampyre bass as The Abbess of Abjection for INHUMAN, Catherine hosts the refreshingly eclectic 44th Avenue Troubador salon series in her and partner/INHUMAN frontman & guitarist Chris Matzigkeit’s livingroom at Bermview Manor (down the road a spell from Thrushcross Grange). Visual artists, musicians, and poets—oh my—join forces to bring a convivial evening of performance, presentation and talk. The series has just wrapped for the summer, but I know many aficionados of the local culture scene are already eager for what’s in store next season.

Catherine has been writing for a very very long time despite her being even younger than me. Lately she’s been plumbing the depths of troubador/trobairitz poetry, coming up with some pretty innovative takes on a little known mode of versifying by Occitan women from around the 13th century. The cansos in 13 Lovers will tease you with some of the astounding possibilities of this medieval form, presented here and now by a most capable trobairitz.

Thank-you so much, Catherine!

Shortly after Jason Christie headlined at the September 2006 Olive, i-ROBOT (Edge/Tesseract) went viral. That a poetry manuscript had been picked up by one of Canada’s pre-eminent sci-fi publishers signalled i-ROBOT was something distinct in Canadian literature.

Two years later, i-ROBOT continues to challenge us as readers and writers to think about what is possible in literature and to push ourselves into these remote spaces. i-ROBOT has received a great deal of critical acclaim and has since been interpreted/animated by Lisa Mann with Curtis Wehrfritz (with Frantic Films) and Janice Blaine (with Justyn Perry).

We are very proud to have had Jason read for our little series and thankful he has agreed to let us publish Like Wolves online—the complimentary chapbook we made for his reading two years ago.

All the best, Jason!

June 7—A gala at the Royal Alberta Museum after the Writer’s Guild of Alberta’s day-long AGM and mini-conference celebrated some outstanding achievements by Alberta writers working across many genres, three of whom have been Olive Series feature poets.

• Myrna Kostash received the Golden Pen Award for Lifetime Achievement; she read for The Olive in September, 2003.
• Tim Bowling won the Wilfred Eggleston Award for Non-fiction after his recent hiatus from poetry to write The Lost Coast: Salmon, Memory and the Death of Wild Culture (Nightwood); he read for The Olive in February, 2001, and again in September, 2001.
• Bert Almon, who recently took the City of Edmonton Book Prize, won the Stephan G. Stephannson Award for Poetry for A Ghost in Waterloo Station (Brindle & Glass); he read for The Olive in September, 2002, and again in September, 2007.

We would like to extend a hearty congratulations to Myrna, Tim, Bert, and to all the WGA’s 2008 Alberta Literary Award winners! More information can be found on the Writer’s Guild of Alberta website and on their official media release about this year’s Alberta Literary Awards.

Kudos!

Olga Costopoulos has read for The Olive two times now—once in February of 2006 and once back in March of 2002. When she is not teaching English literature or Creative Writing at the University of Alberta (or looking after her garden; or introducing students and friends to authentic Greek cuisine; or terrorizing the high seas with her swashbuckling partner in crime as a pirate…) Olga writes poetry.

We are thrilled to present once again these two chapbooks: Radius and Stones. They show enough of Olga’s wide-ranging style and indelible observations to leave us wanting more. Her work has appeared in journals far and wide, and you can find her first two books of poetry at Ekstasis Editions.

Thank-you Olga!