The Ossington (61 Ossington Ave.)
AvantGarden is celebrating one whole year of innovation, art and agitation and we’d love you to join us.
This month, in the spirit of making places for art and feminism, emerging and established voices, we are featuring poets who double as arts organizers and small press publishers.
Did we mention, there will be cake?
rob mclennan is the author of more than 20 trade books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction in a number of countries, and has published work in over two hundred trade journals in 14 countries and three languages. His most recent poetry titles are Glengarry (Vancouver: Talon, 2011), kate street (Chicago: Moira, 2011) and Wild Horses (Univ of Alberta Press, 2010), and a second novel, missing persons (Toronto: The Mercury Press, 2009). He spent the 2007-8 academic year in Edmonton as writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta, and maintains an active blog for reviews, essays, interviews and other notices (http://robmclennan.blogspot.com/). In 2008, ECW Press released a collection of his literary essays, Subverting the lyric: essays, the same year Arsenal Pulp Press produced his expansive tourist guide, Ottawa: The Unknown City. In 2012, Ireland’s Salmon Publishing will be producing a volume of selected poems. After nearly eight months of producing chapbooks under different press names, above/ground press officially started with its first two publications in August 1993, and has published over 550 publications. The press includes chapbooks, broadsides, nearly 50 issues of the long poem magazine STANZAS, 6 issues of Missing Jacket and drop, and many of the 15 issues of the writers group occasional, The Peter F. Yacht Club. In addition to his small press, mclennan co-edited two years of Carleton University’s The Carleton Arts Review (1993-1995), founded the semi-annual ottawa small press book fair in 1994, the Ottawa poetry pdf annual ottawater in 2005, the online poetics journal Poetics.ca (with Stephen Brockwell), the trade publishing house Chaudiere Books (with Jennifer Mulligan) in 2006, The Garneau Review (2008), and seventeen seconds: a journal of poetry and poetics. He has also edited numerous books, journals and anthologies for Insomniac Press, Black Moss Press, Broken Jaw Press, Vehicule, unarmed journal, Jacket magazine, Dusie and Guernica Editions.
Heather Loretta Curley is a musician and poet born in Toronto, Ontario. Currently she has a recording to be released on Pleasance Records (a Toronto label), and has been featured in the punk/experimental groups DD/MM/YYYY, rotbottyrot (Edmonton, AB) and MAGIC CHEEZIES. Her work has previously been featured on ditchpoetry.com.
Melissa Major is a poet, playwright, director and performer. Her writing has been published in CanPlay, Open Book Toronto, an anthology called Shades of Grey, Sydney Law Society Journal & International Psychogeriatrics. She has worked on almost forty stage productions and her scripts have been produced in Canada, USA, Hong Kong and India. Her plays include: Art is a Cupboard (Winner of 2 awards), Even Burning (4 stars in Eye Magazine), Floozy: The Musical (standing ovations every performance) and Unicorn Horns (5 Ns in Now Magazine). The Toronto Star has recommended her work and Eye Magazine has said that “Major’s energy is unflagging.” Her collection includes 4 university degrees (Theatre, Psychology and Fine Arts Education from York University) and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing at University of Guelph. She is the Artistic Director of The Cheshire Unicorn Theatre Company (who’s upcoming events include: *Bring Your Own Vintage: Retro Dance Party* on May 28 featuring some of Toronto’s best Musical Theatre Talent and *Infinitum*-a impressionist response to the concept of Infinity and repetition through dance, aerial, butoh, contortion and other abstract physical feats). She is the Director of Education and Outreach and Rentals Manager at the Randolph Centre for the Arts, the Chair of the Ontario Caucus of the Playwrights Guild of Canada and runs a performance studio called MAJORspace at Queen and Dovercourt.
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