THE SPRING 2008 LIAR!

Launch party for Capilano's creative writing magazine, with readings and live music:

April 17th, 8:00pm
HOKO Restaurant
362 Powell St., Van
free

For info:
liarsarebetterlovers@gmail.com

~

OPEN TEXT READING SERIES: REG JOHANSON

Sponsored by the Canada Council for the Arts
& the Creative Writing Degree Program at Capilano College

The Spring 2008 OPEN TEXT series at Capilano College concludes on April 1st, 2008 with a reading by poet and critic Reg Johanson.

Library 321 @ 12:30
Capilano College
2055 Purcell Way
North Vancouver

Born in Leduc, Alberta, REG JOHANSON lives in East Vancouver, BC. Courage, My Love (Line Books, 2006) brings together a selection of works that have appeared over the last decade in W magazine, the chapbook Chips (Thuja, 2001), and in the anthologies Shift and Switch: New Canadian Poetry (Mercury, 2005) and Companions and Horizons (WCL, 2005). Critical work on Standard English as a classist and racializing disciplinary practice and on the political economy of "cheating" and plagiarism has appeared in XCP: Cross Cultural Poetics and as "Working Papers in Critical Practice #1" (recomposition.net); other essays on liquor policy, on "the radical" in poetry, on representations of missing women, and on global urbanization appear in West Coast Line and The Rain Review. A former member of the Kootenay School of Writing collective and current co-director of the Pacific Institute for Language and Literacy Studies, Johanson teaches comp and lit at Capilano College.

"Sometimes

I want the State so bad

I can taste it.

'The world needs committed, naïve people' -- Honourable Mr. Justice Stewart, Provincial Court of BC

The Revolution will not be?

'Populist Islam and Pentecostal Christianity occupy a social space analogous to that of early twentieth century socialism and anarchism'

Could be worse. Could be The Ruckus Society.

'Canadians do not tolerate orgies or other Canadians participating in orgies.' -- Québec Judge Denis Boisvert

Bring out the pedagogue."

-- Reg Johanson, from "Variations for Jean Carle"

For info:
Roger Farr
rfarr@capcollege.bc.ca
604.986.1911 (2554)

Creative Writing @ Cap College: Reading & Info-session

Tuesday March 18th
7:00 - 9:00pm
Library Room 322

Please join Capilano Creative Writing faculty and students in the Creative Writing Concentration for an evening of readings and discussion about the Associate of Arts Degree in Creative Writing at Capilano College.

Current Creative Writing faculty and students will read from their work. Faculty will discuss the structure of the CRWR Degree, ask students what courses they might like to see offered in the future, and talk about recent developments, including new courses, a new $1000 entrance scholarship for high-school students, and internships with The Capilano Review. Representatives from two student-run publications, The Capilano Courier and The Liar, will also be present to talk about how to get involved in Capilano’s lively writing community.

Open to all!

For more information contact:
Roger Farr
Creative Writing Convener

604.986.1911 (2554)

OPEN TEXT READING SERIES: ROB BUDDE

Sponsored by The Canada Council for the Arts
& the Creative Writing Degree Program at Capilano College


The Spring 2008 OPEN TEXT series at Capilano College continues on Thursday, March 13th, 2008 with a reading by Prince George poet Rob Budde:

Library 321 @ 12:30
Capilano College
2055 Purcell Way
North Vancouver

ROB BUDDE teaches Creative Writing and Postcolonial Literature at the University of Northern BC. His books include traffick (Turnstone, 1994), Misshapen (NeWest Press, 1997) and The Dying Poem (Coach House, 2002), and, most recently, Flicker. In 2002, Rob facilitated a collection of interviews (In Muddy Water: Conversations with 11 Poets). His most recent book of poetry is Finding Ft. George (Harbour, 2007), a collection of poems about his growing relationship with Prince George and Northern BC. Budde edits an online literary journal, stonestone, and a poetry blog writingwaynorth.

“holes filled bilaterally

landed self-serve or immigrant;

promise, missile, demise


Capital expansion and deficit re-election orders of the delay and consumer relations department making strange bedfellows in fiscal mission position, the hard headboard of directors knocking up the catch phrase, knocking down our dormant queues, ballot-boxed. The party system the morning after and fragments of memory missing.


this mission, locked

me, missing-in-action again

the prom’s dead”


-- from “3 Promises; A Renegue”

For info:
Roger Farr
rfarr@capcollege.bc.ca
604.986.1911 (2554)

--

http://www.capilanocreativewriting.blogspot.com

OPEN TEXT READING SERIES: DONATO MANCINI

Sponsored by The Canada Council for the Arts
& the Creative Writing Degree Program at Capilano College

The Spring 2008 OPEN TEXT series at Capilano College continues on Tuesday, March 4th, 2008 with a reading by Vancouver poet Donato Mancini:

Library 321 @ 12:30
Capilano College
2055 Purcell Way
North Vancouver

DONATO MANCINI's first book of poetry Ligatures (New Star Books 2005) was shortlisted for a ReLit award. His second book, Æthel, appeared in the Fall of 2007. A graduate student at Simon Fraser University, he is now at work on a study of reviews of postmodern poetry in Canada since 1961, and recently edited the new website for the Kootenay School of Writing.

"Reports from the reality-based community
sound out: Ronald Reagan
was a really nice guy,
much nicer than Khrushchev,
Gorbachev, Nardwuar, or
which modernist shut-in was it
who threw his sculpture –
or was it his wife? – out the window,
in which period of architecture
at what stage of empire?"

-- from "Hot Peace" (West Coast Line 51)

For info:
Roger Farr
rfarr@capcollege.bc.ca
604.986.1911 (2554)

OPEN TEXT READING SERIES: LARISSA LAI

Sponsored by The Canada Council for the Arts
& the Creative Writing Degree Program at Capilano College


The Spring 2008 OPEN TEXT series at Capilano College continues on Thursday, February 21st, 2008 with a reading by Vancouver poet, novelist, and critic Larissa Lai:

Library 321 @ 12:30
Capilano College
2055 Purcell Way
North Vancouver

LARISSA LAI is the author of two novels When Fox Is a Thousand (Press Gang 1995, Arsenal Pulp 2004) and Salt Fish Girl (Thomas Allen Publishers 2002). She holds a PhD in English from the University of Calgary. From January to June 2006, she was a Writer-in-Residence in the English Department at Simon Fraser University. She recently held a SSHRC Post-doctoral Fellowship in the English Department at the University of British Columbia, and is currently an Assistant Professor in Canadian Literature there. She is currently working on a sequel to Salt Fish Girl, a collection of long poems called automaton biographies, and a critical book called The "I" of the Storm about strategies of subject production. Forthcoming from LINEbooks is Sybil Unrest, a long poem in collaboration with Rita Wong.

"see them drudge
your sensitive ignorance
pressures mechanical
engines steam temperature's limit
we race clocks
labour abstracts more labour
cogs flash lights
in blue boilers they
repeat your fear
in mathematics of your own making"

-- from "Maria" (West Coast Line 44)

For info:
Roger Farr
rfarr@capcollege.bc.ca
604.986.1911 (2554)

--

OPEN TEXT READING SERIES: CLAIRE HUOT & ROBERT MAJZELS, FEB 12th

Sponsored by Writer's Union of Canada
& the Creative Writing Degree Program at Capilano College

The Spring 2008 OPEN TEXT series at Capilano College continues on February 12th, 2008 with a presentation by Calgary & Montreal poets, playwrights, novelists, and translators Claire Huot and Robert Majzels. Majzels and Huot will present a collaborative, multi-media talk that addresses the reception of classical Chinese poetry into English.

Tuesday, February 12th
Library 321 @ 3:30
Capilano College
2055 Purcell Way
North Vancouver

CLAIRE HUOT has lived in and out of China for the past 20 years. Fully trilingual (French, English and Mandarin), she has written two books on contemporary Chinese culture— La Petite révolution culturelle, (Arles, France, 1994) and China's New Cultural Scene (Duke University Press, USA, 2000). The Prison Tangram is her first book of fiction. Huot is currently teaching Chinese film at the University of Calgary and has a feature column, in Chinese, in New World, a Chinese cultural magazine.

ROBERT MAJZELS is a novelist, playwright, poet and translator, born in Montréal, Québec. The Humbugs Diet is his fourth novel. In 2007, he won the Alcuin Society Prize for Excellence in Book Design for the limited edition of his book, Apikoros Sleuth. This Night the Kapo, his award winning full-length play, was produced at the Berkley Street Theatre in Toronto, in March 2004. He was attributed the Governor General's Award of Canada for his translation of France Daigle's Just Fine in 2000. With Erin Moure, Robert has also translated several books of poetry by Nicole Brossard. He is presently an Associate Professor in the English Department of the University of Calgary.

For info: Roger Farr
rfarr@capcollege.bc.ca
604.986.1911 (2554)

OPEN TEXT READING: JAMIE REID

Sponsored by the Canada Council for the Arts
& the Capilano College Creative Writing Program

The SPRING 2008 OPEN TEXT series at Capilano College continues on Thursday January 24th, 2008 with a reading by North Vancouver poet, editor, and cultural organizer Jamie Reid.

Thursday, January 24th
Cedar 148 @ 12:30
Capilano College
2055 Purcell Way
North Vancouver

JAMIE REID was one of the founding editors of TISH, the well-known West Coast poetry magazine from the early 1960s. After publishing his first book, The Man Whose Path Was On Fire in 1969, he became a political activist for nearly twenty years, returning to the West Coast and the the practice of poetry in 1987. He has published three collections of poetry since while acting for several years as editor and publisher of DaDaBaBy, a magazine of poetry and commentary. I. Another. The Space Between, his most recent poetry collection, was published by Talonbooks in 2004.


"At this very moment the forces
calling themselves the forces of civilization,
of progress and of order are preparing
a chaotic disaster
for millions of poor people
far from their centres of power and influence,
all of this accompanied by the widespread use of
dangerous substances, death-dealing metals and chemicals. etc.
And still they have now begun to talk
of cleaning up the earth,
as if we should believe them."


-- Jamie Reid


For more info, contact:

Roger Farr, Capilano College
rfarr@capcollege.bc.ca
604.986.1911 (2554)

FIRST OPEN TEXT READING OF 2008: OANA AVASILICHIOAEI

The 2008 OPEN TEXT series at Capilano College begins on Tuesday, January 15th, 2008 with a reading by Montreal poet and translator Oana Avasilichioaei.

LB 321 @ 12:30
Capilano College
2055 Purcell Way
North Vancouver

OANA AVASILICHIOAEI is poet and translator. She has published a collection of poems (Abandon, Wolsak & Wynn, 2005), and a translation of Romanian poet Nichita Stanescu (Occupational Sickness, BuschekBooks, 2006). Her next book, feria: a poempark will be coming out in 2009 (Wolsak & Wynn). She has given readings and talks in Canada, USA, Spain and Slovenia and frequently teaches creative writing courses at Dawson College in Montreal, where she also coordinates the Atwater Poetry Project reading series ( www.atwaterlibrary.ca/poetry). Currently, she is translating some work from French Quebecois poets, collaborating with Erín Moure on a dialogic work involving translation, and working on a new project of her own poetry that explores and entangles the language of fairytales. She lives in Montreal.


I thought I could loose language and think freely like an animal. I fought with my own tongue.

Then language allowed me other linguas and limbs and I was free once more.

I loved again.


For a time the sky was an opera and we all listened.

For one brief moment no boundary was at war.

For one brief moment no boundary was a boundary.


-- from, "Il Giardino Italiano" (feria: a poempark, forthcoming)



For info:
Roger Farr
rfarr@capcollege.bc.ca
604.986.1911 (2554)

OPEN TEXT READING SERIES: THREE NORTHERN POETS

Sponsored by the Canada Council for the Arts
& the Creative Writing Concentration at Capilano College


"The north moves north. / The song is an article of evidence."

– Ken Belford


The FALL 2007 OPEN TEXT series at Capilano College continues on November 20th, 2007 with a reading by three Northern poets: Ken Belford, Rob Budde, and Si Transken.

Tuesday, November 20th
Library 197 @ 12:30
Capilano College
2055 Purcell Way
North Vancouver

KEN BELFORD was born to a farming family near DeBolt, Alberta, and grew up in East Vancouver. For 35 years he lived in the remote, unroaded Nass River headwaters at Damdochax Lake. His gaze is of subsistence and the other, in that he looks out at the consumptive habits of western culture from the mountains. In addition to 15 chapbooks. he has published four books of poetry; Fireweed, The Post Electric Caveman, Pathways Into the Mountains, and ecologue. His most recent chapbook, from Nomados, is When Snakes Awaken. Difficult to categorize, Belford's poetics blend borders. He is a self-educated land(d)guage poet who mixes a learned pre-industrial knowledge with the push and pull of the questions, conversations, and what he sees as new linguistic possibilities.

ROB BUDDE teaches Creative Writing at the University of Northern BC. He has published five books (two poetry - Catch as Catch and traffick - two novels - Misshapen and The Dying Poem - and, most recently, short fiction - Flicker). In 2002, Rob facilitated a collection of interviews (In Muddy Water: Conversations with 11 Poets). Finding Ft. George (Caitlin 2007) is a collection of poems about Rob's growing relationship with Prince George and Northern BC. He lives in Prince George with his partner, Debbie Keahey and four children: Robin, Erin, Quinlan, and Anya. Check out his online literary journal called stonestone <http://stonestone.unbc.ca> and his poetry blog writingwaynorth <http://writingwaynorth.blogspot.com>.

SI TRANSKEN uses her creative writing to educate, vent, stir up troubles and joys, have fun and accomplish solidarity. She reads at Gay Pride, Women's fundraisers and other social justice events. She has been an activist in these movements for more than two decades. Si works at a shelter with drug addicted/ homeless/ survival sex trade workers. In her ivory tower roles she teaches for two universities in sociology, women's studies and social work. Entirely unbelievably she gets people laughing. Her work has been published in scholarly contexts such as Cultural Studies & Critical Methodologies, Atlantis, Canadian Women's Studies and her funky stuff has been published in contexts such as This Ain¹t Your Patriarchs' Poetry Book; Groping Beyond Grief; Stress (Full) Sister (Hood); and Battle Chants.


For info:
Roger Farr
rfarr@capcollege.bc.ca
604.986.1911 (2554)

OPEN TEXT READING: JEFF DERKSEN

Sponsored by the Canada Council for the Arts
& the Creative Writing Concentration at Capilano College


The Fall 2007 OPEN TEXT series at Capilano College continues on November 19th, 2007 with a reading by Vancouver poet and critic Jeff Derksen.

LIBRARY 195 @ 12:30
2055 Purcell Way
North Vancouver

JEFF DERKSEN's first book Downtime (Talon, 1991), received the Dorothy Livesay B.C. Poetry Prize. Other works include Until (Tsunami, 1987), Dwell (Talonbooks, 1993), and Transnational Muscle Cars (Talonbooks, 2003). A founder of the Kootenay School of Writing in Vancouver, Derksen is also a highly regarded critic of globalization, culture and urbanization. He teaches writing and literature at Simon Fraser University.

"Phatic Weather"

I just want
the connection to be
inked in or intruded
on. So I can enter

an individual history
of my group.

The truck driving
beside the bus
appears not to move, mimicking
a model of one culture
viewing another.

Here the light
of heavy industry
doesn't mar the river
as much as it now
makes it.

New. Compensation's body
is a green image, arms
filled with lumber. But production's
miracle is its occurrence, oiling
a century. Our role
is the crisis. Sliding
so I can clarify
a centralized management

in this continuous present
of product, "excess," resource.

A company's head office
puts down roots: "Caring Hands
Extended out to Our Multicultural
Community." The question

of "also" is contextual.

-- from "Dwell" (Talon, 1993)

For info:
Roger Farr
rfarr@capcollege.bc.ca
604.986.1911 (2554)

Creative Writing at Capilano: Spring 2008

Spring 2008 Creative Writing Courses will be registering soon -- here is some course information:


English 191-01 Creative Writing II - Crystal Hurdle
When is a poem really a story? When should you leave a draft alone? Through in-class writing, weekly homework assignments, and personal projects, you will write up a storm in a number of genres. You’ll be introduced to professional writers, from Lorna Crozier to bp Nichol, from Thomas King to Gabriel Garcia Márquez, all in aid of developing your own style.


Required Texts:

• Gary Geddes, ed. 20^th-Century Poetry & Poetics
• Gary Geddes, ed. The Art of Short Fiction
• The Capilano College issue of TCR (Winter/Spring 2007)
  

===============

English 191-02 Creative Writing II - Ryan Knighton
In English 191 we will continue to develop our skills by asking how writing can be made, not what it might mean. Specifically, we will further engage with questions of poetry, microfiction, and so-called creative non-fiction, as directed by their form and history. Our workshops, however, are neither roundtable editing sessions, nor, worse, copyediting boot camps. Rather, we will share draft examples of our own work in order to further our discussions, to expose new questions, and to seek the effects of craft. Some case examples from published works may be provided in class, but our own writing will serve as the primary texts. So will Stephen King’s memoir, On Writing, which is pretty damned fine. By the final class, students should have at least one reworked submission of writing ready for a magazine or periodical. To that end we will survey some of the nuts-and-bolts of pitching and publishing, too.

===============

English 191-03 Creative Writing II - Reg Johanson
This course will focus on poetry and fiction. Our interests in fiction will be on the sub-genre of “biofiction.” Our interests in poetry will be very broad, including the sonnet, the “social,” documentary forms, aleatorics, and work inspired by “language” poetics. We will also be attending the OpenText reading series sponsored by the College and the Canada Council. We will read as much as we write, finding out what we can about the work and methods of the writers we read.

Required Texts:

• Wah, Fred. Diamond Grill.
• Farr, Roger. Surplus.
• The Capilano College issue of TCR (Winter/Spring 2007)

===============


English 290-01 - Creative Writing (Poetry) – Roger Farr
Poetry and Poetics of the Small Press: The small press revolutionized poetry in the second half of the twentieth century by shifting attention away from an earlier obsession with “the well-wrought urn, or “the perfect poem,” and focusing instead on the poem as the interface between a writer’s process, the process of print production, and a literary community. In this spirit, ENGL 290 will give students practice in both the writing of poetry and in small press production, in both print and digital forms. Thus, in addition to our class discussions and practice with poetic forms and techniques, we will consider the material and visual aspects of poetry: the page, the book, fonts, layout, paper, the fold, etc., and how these aspects contribute to our sense of what a poem is, or can be. We will attend readings by poets visiting the campus as part of the Open Text Series and discuss their work with them; and, to familiarize ourselves with the printing process, we will tour a print-shop which uses the latest “print on demand” technology to produce small runs of high-quality books. Finally, if we can muster sufficient resources, we might experiment with this technology by publishing a collection of our own poems in book form.

Required Texts:

• Farr, Roger ed. The Open Text Reader: Fall 2007.
• Other small-press texts will be available from the instructor in-class.
  

OPEN TEXT READING SERIES: LISSA WOLSAK

Sponsored by the Canada Council for the Arts
& the Creative Writing Concentration at Capilano College

The FALL 2007 OPEN TEXT series at Capilano College continues on October 18th, 2007 with a reading by Lissa Wolsak.

October 18th
Library 195 @ 12:30
Capilano College
2055 Purcell Way
North Vancouver

LISSA WOLSAK lives in Vancouver, British Columbia where she works as an energy/thought-field therapist and as a goldsmith. A poet and essayist, she has has authored several long poem sequences including: Pen Chants or nth or 12 spirit-like impermanences (Roof, 2000), An Heuristic Prolusion (Documents in Poetics, 2000), The Garcia Family Co-Mercy (Tsunami, 1994), A Defence of Being, and THRALL. Squeezed Light: Collected Works 1995 - 2007 is forthcoming from Station Hill Press.


from its desto, adualurescence

from its hair-space, azimuth

confessional yields

victims winched to a tortoise

spreadeaglism.. posture-sur-

faces escape into the cloth,

dress-groups inter-marry....

so throve close-woven


Come, vapour-bath, come.


-- from Pen Chants

For info:
Roger Farr
rfarr@capcollege.bc.ca
604.986.1911 (2554)

http://capilanocreativewriting.blogspot.com

Capilano Creative Writing Program Kick-Off!

Pat's Pub, 403 E. Hastings
Tuesday Sept. 18th
8:00 pm

Please join past, present, and future students of Capilano College for an open-mic reading to celebrate the new Associate of Arts Degree in Creative Writing. All past and present Capilano creative writing students and faculty are invited to sign up to read.

To sign up, or for more information, contact Reg Johanson:

E: <rjohanso@capcollege.bc.ca>
T: 604. 986. 1911 (2428)

~

The Associate of Arts degree with a Creative Writing Concentration combines instruction and practice in both creative and critical writing, hosts the Open Text Reading Series, supports a student magazine (The Liar), and provides internships, scholarships, bursaries, and awards. Students who complete the program obtain first and second-year transfer credit in both English and Creative Writing, allowing them to major or minor in either subject should they decide to transfer to university.

Check out: <http://www.capcollege.bc.ca/programs/english/creative-writing.html>

~

The Capilano Review Celebrates its 100th Issue

Celebrate TCR's 100th issue and 30th series with readings by past and present Capilano College writers Daphne Marlatt, Lisa Robertson, Clint Burnham, Sharon Thesen, Ryan Knighton, George Stanley, Crystal Hurdle, Roger Farr, Reg Johanson, Meredith Quartermain, and others.

Vancouver East Cultural Centre
Thurs Sept 13 at 7:30pm
tickets at the door $8, students $5

604.984.1712
contact@thecapilanoreview.ca

OPEN TEXT READING SERIES #4: ANNE STONE

OPEN TEXT READING SERIES #4: ANNE STONE
Sponsored by the Canada Council for the Arts
& the Creative Writing Concentration at Capilano College

The Spring 2007 OPEN TEXT series at Capilano College continues on Thursday, March 22nd, 2007 with a reading by Vancouver author Anne Stone.

Cedar 148 @ 12:30
Capilano College
2055 Purcell Way
North Vancouver

Anne Stone is an editor of Matrix Magazine. Together with Amber Dean, she is currently guest editing a special issue of West Coast Line on representations of murdered and missing women. Her novels include, jacks (DC Books 1998), Hush (Insomniac Press 1999) and Delible (forthcoming, Insomniac, 2007), which tells the story of Melora Sprague, a 15-year-old girl whose sister has gone missing. Stone teaches creative writing & literature at Capilano College in North Vancouver, and at Concordia University in Montreal.

"Everything has a beginning. My sister's disappearance has to have one. There has to be a time, a moment, in which she began to disappear.

I've looked for some sign that Mel was poised to leave. Maybe it was there in the world she saw around us, the one that was slowly dying as we pretended not to see. Or in her dreams of the a-bomb, quietly imploding in our mouths as we slept, shattering millions on millions of teeth. A city's worth of polished bone, demolished in an instant. And what could any of us do but stir in our sleep, lick at broken mouths, and feel ourselves already dead, this as the fire consumed the part of us that could dream of bombs to begin with."

-- from Delible

For info:
Roger Farr
rfarr@capcollege.bc.ca
604.986.1911 (2554)

[Coming soon: Maxine Gadd, March 29th]