Arc 60, the Dog-eared issue, hits newsstands June 30, 2008. Sample online poems by Carmine Starnino, Mary Dalton, and Rocco de Giacomo, and an essay by Sonnet L’Abbé on her thirty favourite books. Katia Grubisic reviews S.E. Venart’s Woodshedding. Peruse the Table of Contents of the print issue and glimpse the Contributors in aspect of turning 30.
Thirtieth Anniversary Issue, 1978-2008
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[Correction: the 30th Anniversary Celebration on October 23, 2008 starts at 8:30pm]
October is an exciting month at Arc, with four very different literary events planned that promise to be stimulating, thought-provoking and entertaining: the Lampman-Scott Award Reading, the Ottawa Book Awards where the winner of the Lampman-Scott Award for 2008 will be announced, Arc’s 30th Anniversary Celebration, and the Montreal Launch of Arc 60—the 30th anniversary issue! (phew)
The Lampman-Scott Award, administered by the Arc Poetry Society, honours the poetry and friendship of Archibald Lampman and Duncan Campbell Scott. Their literary friendship helped foster Ottawa’s now thriving and diverse literary community. Like its predecessor, the Archibald Lampman Award, the Lampman-Scott award recognizes an outstanding book of English-language poetry by an author living in the National Capital Region with a $1,500 prize for first place.
The Lampman-Scott Award Reading will feature readings from a wide selection of the contenders for the 2008 award at on Wednesday October 15, 2008 at 7pm at Collected Works Book Store (1242 Wellington Street West, Ottawa). Everyone is welcome to join us for good cheer and some fantastic poetry!
The full list of contenders for the 2008 Lampman-Scott Award are:
Michael Blouin for I’m not going to lie to you
Stephen Brockwell for The Real Made Up
Anne Le Dressay for Old Winter
Nicholas Lea for Everything is Movies
Luis Lama for Alien Land
Nadine McInnis for Two Hemispheres
rob mclennan for The Ottawa City Project
Colin Morton for The Cabbage of Paradise
Shane Rhodes for The Bindery
Ian Roy for Red Bird
Asoka Weerasinghe for Mayan Love Songs
The winner of the Lampman-Scott Award will be announced three short days later at the Ottawa Book Awards. The Ottawa Book Awards celebrate literary achievement in Ottawa. Founded in 1986, this annual award shines the spotlight on outstanding books written by Ottawa’s finest authors in categories of English fiction, English non-fiction, French fiction, and French non-fiction. Arc is very pleased to join in this celebration by adding the Lampman-Scott Award to the evening’s program. Everyone is welcome to join us in celebrating the finalists and winners on Saturday, October 18, 2008, 8pm at Library and Archives Canada (395 Wellington Street, Exhibition Hall A). The MC will be Alan Neal, Host of CBC Radio’s Bandwidth and Canada Live, and Anne Michaud, cultural reporter for La Première Cha&icrc;ne, of Radio-Canada Ottawa-Gatineau 90,7 FM.
Arc would like to invite you to its grand 30th Anniversary Celebration. Thirty years of Arc Poetry Magazine will be celebrated at the launch of the Thirtieth Anniversary Issue at the Ottawa International Writers Festival on Thursday, October 23, 2008 at 8:30pm at Library and Archives Canada (395 Wellington Street, Ottawa). Canada’s top poets will commemorate three decades of Arc’s existence at a celebration that will include readings by some of Arc’s most notable contributors over the past thirty years: Roo Borson, Mary Dalton, Sonnet L’Abbe and Steven Heighton. For tickets and more information, please visit www.arcpoetry.ca.
The Montreal launch of Arc 60—which is Arc’s 30th anniversary issue —will take place Sunday October 26, at 7:30pm at Ye Olde Orchard Pub (20 Prince Arthur West, Montreal). This is a co-launch with Montreal publisher Biblioasis for Arc 60 and the already acclaimed anthology Jailbreaks: 99 Canadian Sonnets, edited by Zach Wells. The event will feature a musical set by the Montreal duo Orillia Opry, and readings by Montreal poets and Arc 60 contributors Stephanie Bolster, Asa Boxer, Susan Gillis, Robyn Sarah and Carmine Starnino—in addition to readings by select Jailbreaks contributors.
For more information on any of these events, coming attractions, or our next issue Arc 61 please see: www.arcpoetry.ca or email: arc@arcpoetry.ca.
Release Dates: July through December 2008
(In Bookstores, Newsstands or Order On-line through www.ArcPoetry.ca)
Arc Poetry Magazine celebrates 30 years of publishing the best Canadian contemporary poetry with the Thirtieth Anniversary Issue, 1978-2008. Arc’s 30th birthday issue features well-crafted, spirited, engaging and compelling poetry and essays by 30 Canadian poets. Topics include being 30, turning 30, activities or aspects of life that seem particularly thirtysomething in nature, objects that have been owned (or lost) for 30 years (or by 30 people), and anything that has lasted three decades.
“Arc Poetry Magazine has never failed to show off what it has held between its varied covers for nearly three decades: the finest new poetry, and the most comprehensive selection of poetic discourse and criticism in the country,” said Arc Poetry Magazine’s Editor Anita Lahey. “With Arc’s 30th birthday looming, we decided it would be a good idea to poll today’s poets on the state of being 30. We set the parameters wide. The essence of 30 is a dubious quality to grasp.”
George Elliott Clarke’s contribution to Arc’s Thirtieth Anniversary Issue is an excerpt from a lengthy autobiographical poem on his first 30 years as a poet. Mary Dalton contributed a “cento,” which is a collage of the 30th line of 30 other poems by literary legends, such as T.S. Eliot, Elizabeth Bishop, Sylvia Plath, Robert Lowell, Anne Sexton, Ted Hughes and Joseph Brodsky. Carmine Starnino imagines the early mid-life crisis of a gladiator. Steven Heighton composes a free translation of a piece from 1830 by the Russian poet Fyodor Tyutchev. Montreal poet Asa Boxer, whose first collection The Mechanical Bird recently won the CAA Poetry Award, offers a harrowing descent into “Dante’s Ikea”—an experience most Canadian thirtysomethings will find painfully familiar! Entertaining and thoughtful essays by notable poets Sonnet L’Abbé and Adam Sol explore 30 poetry books that most influenced them. Gary Geddes (poet, teacher and editor of the widely known “15 Canadian Poets” anthologies and Oxford’s 20th Century Poetry and Poetics) contributed an essay on the battle of “Story versus Song” over the past 30 years in Canadian poetry. Poetry on the age, experience and mindset of 30-year-olds also includes works by acclaimed poets Robyn Sarah, Stephanie Bolster, Susan Gillis and Alison Pick.
Thirty years of Arc Poetry Magazine will be celebrated at the launch of the Thirtieth Anniversary Issue at the Ottawa International Writers Festival on Thursday, October 23, 2008 at 7:30 pm (Library and Archives Canada, 395 Wellington Street, Ottawa). Canada’s top poets will commemorate three decades of Arc’s existence at a celebration that will include readings by some of Arc’s most notable contributors over the past thirty years. For tickets and information, please visit www.ArcPoetry.ca.
Excerpt from Feature Essay: L’Abbé’s Top Thirty
… The other morning my friend Reza and I were on a bus in Vancouver, and as we turned from East King Edward onto Kingsway, he told me that when he first came to the city he had taken a room in one of the houses nearby. “This,” he said, indicating the small, boxish bungalows and stamp-sized lawns we were passing, “is my first impression of Canada.” He has been in B.C. for four years, I for less than six months. Strange, that a relative newcomer from Iran should be showing the Canadian around East Van. Reza has also been on several Transcanada trips, as far as the Maritimes, all the way up to Labrador; I have never been east of Quebec city. Which of us can say they know Canada?
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