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AVANT CANADA > 5-7 NOVEMBER

the sound of roy’s typewriter
the image of your face
this sense of place which is canada
everything strung out in a line
narrative runs thru
all life a sphere we move within
poets friends lovers saints
caught up in
caught out on
the current of a we which is history
language our currency
banked in time
laying down the base for what’s to come

— bpNichol, The Martyology Book 3

Avant Canada: Artists, Prophets, and Revolutionaries is a three-day conference to be held at Brock University in November 2014. The event will include two days devoted to the historical, current, and emerging avant-garde in Canada interrogating the interfusion of experimental poetics and radical, disruptive politics, followed by one day devoted to the English Canadian avant-garde poet, publisher, and cultural innovator bpNichol (1944-1988). This Editing Modernism in Canada event, hosted at Rodman Hall and the Niagara Artists Centre in downtown St. Catharines, will serve as a marquee event of Brock University’s 50th anniversary. It will include plenary speakers, roundtable discussions, special topics panels, practical-skills workshops, an exhibition of First Nations digital art by Skawennati, a keynote address by Stó:lō author and philosopher Lee Maracle that is free and open to the public, and a creative evening of poetry readings, musical performances, and wearable-arts.

 


SCHEDULE

WEDNESDAY at Rodman Hall
Wednesday evening keynote address by Lee Maracle.

THURSDAY at Rodman Hall
Thursday evening conference banquette at the Niagara Artists Centre, followed by a screening and artist talk of the Indigenous Futurist mini-series TimeTraveller™ by Skawennati

FRIDAY at NAC
Friday evening launch of the new Telephone Books edition of bpNichol’s Translating Translating Apollinaire, followed by a poetry reading,  and a ‘Dance Your Cares Away’ party with DJ Marinko Marinkov. Readers include: Christian Bök, a rawlings, Natalie Simpson, derek beaulieu, Stephen Cain, Margaret Christakos, Adeena Karasick, and more to be announced.