24 May 2006 12am - 12am

Mercer Union presents:

Test Reading Series

Stephen Cain and Lisa Robertson

a launch for Lisa Robertson’s The Men: A Lyric Book (BookThug)

Wednesday May 24, 6pm* (Please note early start.)

Curated by Mark Truscott

Admission: PWYC ($5 recommended, all of which benefits the readers)

Each monthly installment of Test features two poets, each of whom reads for 30-40 minutes. The readings are followed by a brief question and answer period.

* Please note that because of Brian Joseph Davis’s CD launch later in
the evening, the readings will be from 6:30 to 8:30 pm, earlier than
normal, and will begin promptly at 6:30. Doors will open at 6:00 pm.
You’re welcome to relax and have a drink before the readings. Please
also note that this time is revised slightly from earlier announcements.

Stephen Cain is the author of American Standard/Canada Dry, a new collection of poetry from Coach House Books. Previous full-length books include Torontology (ECW, 2001) and dyslexicon (Coach House, 1999). Cain’s work has been anthologized in The Common Sky: Canadian Writers Against the War, Career Suicide!: Contemporary Literary Humour and side/lines: a new Canadian poetics. His poems have appeared internationally, including in such journals as Rampike, Open Letter, Jacket (Australia), Matrix, filling station, Essex (U.S.), dANDelion,
eye weekly and QSQ. Since 1995 he has operated the micropress Kitsch in Ink, and has published numerous chapbooks and broadsides in the small and micro press communities. Cain’s sound poetry can be heard on the CD Carnivocal (Red Deer, 1999), and he is also recognized as a significant visual poet. He has been a literary editor at the late lamented
literary journal Queen Street Quarterly and is currently a fiction editor at Insomniac Press.

Lisa Robertson was born in Toronto and for many years lived in
Vancouver, where she was a member of the Kootenay School of Writing and Artspeak Gallery. She is the author of The Apothecary (1991), XEclogue (1993), Debbie: An Epic, which was nominated for the Governor General’s Award in 1998, The Weather, awarded the ReLit Poetry Prize in 2002, Occasional Work and Seven Walks from the Office for Soft Architecture, a Village Voice top book of 2004, and Rousseau’s Boat, which won the 2005 bpNichol Chapbook Award. She now lives in France. Roberston is a juror for the 2006 Griffin Poetry Prize.

Please visit www.testreading.org for author biographies, updates and details. Most readings will be recorded, and sound files will be posted on http://www.testreading.org, which will also feature contextual documentation for each reader.

Mercer Union Centre for Contemporary Art

37 Lisgar Street, Toronto ON M6J 3T3 CANADA

(west of Dovercourt, south of Queen)

416 536 1519 info@mercerunion.org

Mercer Union >> Contemporary Art Centred