23 January 2008 12am - 12am
Please join us on Wednesday January 23rd at 8pm for the TEST READING Series featuring Phil Hall and Michael Maranda.
PHIL HALL was born in 1953 and raised on farms in the Kawarthas region of Ontario. He attended the University of Windsor in the 70s, where he received an MA in English and Creative Writing. His first book, Eighteen Poems , was published in Mexico City in 1973. Since then he has published 13 other books of poems, four chapbooks, and a cassette of labour songs. He is also a publisher of broadsides and chapbooks under his Flat Singles Press imprint. In the early 80s he was a member of the Vancouver Industrial Writers’ Union. In the early 90s he was Literary Editor at This Magazine, and also edited a shortlived literary journal called Don’t Quit Yr Day-Job. Among his titles are Homes (1979), Old Enemy Juice (1988), The Unsaid (1992), Hearthedral—A Folk-Hermetic (1996), and Trouble Sleeping (2000), which was nominated for the Governor General’s Award for poetry. In 2005, Brick Books (celebrating 20 years as Hall’s publisher) brought out An Oak Hunch, which was nominated for the Griffin Poetry Prize in 2006. Hall has taught writing and literature at the Kootenay School of Writing, York University, Ryerson Polytechnical University, and many colleges. He has been poet-in-residence at the University of Western Ontario, the Sage Hill Writing Experience (Sask.), the Berton House in Dawson City, Yukon, and elsewhere. This fall, 2007, BookThug has published Hall’s long poem, White Porcupine, and also a revised second edition of his essay/poem, The Bad Sequence. Over the years, Hall has collected two full decks of random playing cards from the streets, and numerous albums of found photographs. He calls all of this ephemera his “Pedestrian Archives.” He is learning to play clawhammer banjo.
MICHAEL MARANDA lives in Toronto.
He edits professionally, vocationally, and recreationally.
His day-job on week-days is assistant curator (for the Art Gallery of York University).
His day-job on alternate weekends is proprietor of Parasitic Ventures Press, a small artist-books publisher.
His job in evenings and other alternate weekends is as a visual artist.
He hasn’t written much of late beyond grant applications, and this bio.
He has a half a share in a grey cat.
www.michaelmaranda.com
www.parasiticventurespress.com
Wednesday, 23 January 2008, 8 pm
Mercer Union, A Centre for Contemporary Art
37 Lisgar Street, Toronto
A map and more information on the readers: www.testreading.org.
The Test Reading series is curated by Mark Truscott.