Sunday April 25, at 2 pm, at Artword Artbar, 15 Colbourne Street — Nine poets connected with Quattro Books celebrate National Poetry Month €“ with thanks to the League of Canadian Poets. This year€™s theme is Climate Changes. As a society we continue to change: politically, ecologically, culturally and economically. In a wide variety of voices the poets will address the issue of how changing climates affect them, their community, and the larger communities of Canada…and the world. Readers include: Gregory Betts, Allan Briesmaster, Rocco de Giacomo, Caroline Morgan Di Giovanni, Luciano Iacobelli, Barbara Landry, Gianna Patriarca, Rob Rolfe, Paul Zemokhol. http://www.quattrobooks.ca/
For biographies of the poets, click more
Gregory Betts is a poet, editor, and scholar at Brock University in St. Catharines. He has published three books of poetry, including most recently Psychic Geographies (Quattro Books, 2010), and edited four volumes of work by early Canadian experimentalists. He is currently working a history of early Canadian avant-gardism.
Allan Briesmaster is a freelance editor, publisher, and literary consultant. His most recent full-length books of poetry are Interstellar (Quattro Books, 2007) and Confluences (Seraphim Editions, 2009). He lives in Thornhill with his wife Holly, a visual artist who has collaborated with him several times on book projects.
Rocco de Giacomo is a widely published poet whose work has most recently been accepted in the literary journals The Prairie Journal and Asian Cha and has recently appeared in The Carolina Quarterly and The Antigonish Review. In October 18th, 2009, his first full-length poetry collection, Ten Thousand Miles Between Us was launched through Quattro Books. Also, his fifth and latest chapbook, Catching Dawn’s Breath (LyricalMyrical Press) was launched in 2008. He is a member of the council for the Art Bar Poetry Series and a member of the bpNichol Coordinating Committee.
Caroline Morgan Di Giovanni moved to Canada from the US in 1972. She lives in Toronto with her husband and family, and works as a writer and editor. Her first book, Looking at Renaissance Paintings and Other Poems, was published by Quattro Books in 2008. She contributed to the Al Purdy anthology, And Left a Place to Stand On, in 2009.
Luciano Iacobelli is a poet, playwright and visual artist. In 2000 he founded Lyricalmyrical Press, a grass-roots publishing company specializing in handcrafted chapbooks. He is also one of the founders of Quattro Books. Author of 7 chapbooks, The Angel Notebook, his first full-length poetry collection, was published in 2007 by Seraphim Editions. He has completed a second full-length book entitled The Gambler€™s Notebook.
Barbara Landry was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She grew up in Canada and studied piano and English literature at McGill University. She spent the next ten years in Mexico, where she taught school-age children music and literature. Since returning to Canada she has been teaching ESL in Toronto. She is the author of the chapbooks Love Letters and Heart-shaped Rock with Lyricalmyrical Press, and of This Is How I Love You with Quattro Books in 2008.
Gianna Patriarca was born in the region of Lazio, Italy and came to Canada as a child. She has published 6 books of poetry and one children€™s book. Her first collection Italian Women and Other Tragedies was runner-up for the Milton Acorn People€™s Poetry Award and in 2009 was translated into Italian and launched at the university of Bologna and Naples. My Etruscan Face was short listed for the Bressani Literary Award in 2009. Her work has been extensively anthologized and has been adapted for Canada Stage theatre and for CBC radio drama. Her work has been featured in numerous documentaries including Enigmatico, Pier 21, The Italian/Canadians and Three Women, which will have its release on OMNI in 2010. Gianna€™s books appear on the course lists of Canadian, American and Italian universities. She is currently working on a new collection of poems entitled Too Much Love and continues to work on her novel The Sicilian€™s Bride.
Rob Rolfe is a librarian, and has been very active in the labour movement for many years. Social justice issues play a part in his writing, as does the relationship of human society to the natural world. He has published one book of poetry, The Hawk (Quattro Books, 2008), two poetry chapbooks (Lyricalmyrical Press), and his poems have appeared in a number of Canadian literary and political magazines over several decades.
Paul Zemokhol was born in Heliopolis, Egypt and has lived in Canada since he was six years old. He was raised in Montreal and then moved to Ontario, finally settling in Toronto, where he is a teacher in the alternative school system. He has two chapbooks with Lyricalmyrical Press, Apocrypha and No Hope, No Help, No Tea, and the full-length book A River at Night from Quattro Books in 2009.
