Poets without Borders

In conjunction with MAYWORKS, the labour arts festival, National Poetry Month presents five world-travelling and genre-bending Ottawa area poets in a free reading to be held at Cube Gallery, around the corner from the Parkdale Market at 7 Hamilton Ave. North, beginning at 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, April 30.

Ottawa’s poets cross borders regularly, in their work as in their lives. Between Quebec and Ontario, between Canada and the U.S. and beyond, between poetry and music, between the privileged and those who struggle to survive. Share in the lyricism, the questioning and the excitement that the human voice can inspire at the annual MayWorks poetry evening.

The Poets

Born in Chile, Luciano Diaz became a writer after emigrating to Canada in his youth. In the 1990s, he edited two Symbiosis anthologies of poetry and fiction from Ottawa’s diverse cultural communities. He is organizer of the El Dorado reading series in Ottawa. His second book of poetry, Nomados/Nomads, is forthcoming from Split Quotation press.

Rhonda Douglas lives in Ottawa. Her work has been published in literary journals across Canada and overseas. In 2006, she won both the Malahat Review’s Far Horizons Award for Poetry and Arc Magazine’s Diana Brebner Prize. Rhonda is a graduate of the Humber School for Writers and is completing the Optional-Residency MFA Program in Creative Writing at UBC. Her first book, The Cassandra Poems, is forthcoming from Signature Editions.

Anita Lahey's collection of poetry, Out to Dry in Cape Breton, published by Signal Editions in 2006, was nominated for the Ottawa Book Award and the Trillium Book Award for Poetry. She writes for Maisonneuve, Ottawa Magazine and other publications, and is the editor of Arc Poetry Magazine.

Born in Saskatchewan and a long-time resident of Alberta, Monty Reid has lived in the Ottawa area since 1999. His first publications appeared in 1979. Since then he has published 14 books, most recently Disappontment Island (Chaudiere), Lost in the Owl Woods (BookThug) and The Luskville Reductions (Brick). His poetry has won numerous accolades, including the Lampman-Scott Award, and has been nominated for the Governor-General’s Award on three occasions. He lives in Ottawa and works at the Canadian Museum of Nature.

Armand Garnet Ruffo’s collection of poetry At Geronimo’s Grave won the Archibald Lampman Award in 2002. His work includes editing a collection of essays, (Ad)Dressing Our Words, and a feature film production of his CBC award winning play, “A Windigo Tale.” Ruffo’s poetry has appeared in numerous literary anthologies, including An Anthology of Native Literature in Canada and Making A Difference: Canadian Multicultural Literatures in English. A selection of his latest work, Norval Morrisseau: Man Changing Into Thunderbird, appeared in the National Gallery’s catalogue for the “Shaman Artist” exhibition in 2006. He teaches at Carleton University.