A B Series Presents

Join us for readings & conversation with

Sharon Harris and Christian Bök!

8pm

Sunday, May 11, 2014

Daily Grind Café

601 Somerset Street West

Ottawa, Ont.

Free

A hat will be passed.

More info: abseries.org

Christian Bök is the author not only of Crystallography (Coach House Press, 1994), a pataphysical encyclopedia nominated for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award, but also of Eunoia (Coach House Books, 2001), a bestselling work of experimental literature, which has gone on to win the Griffin Prize for Poetic Excellence. Bök has created artificial languages for two television shows: Gene Roddenberry’s Earth: Final Conflict and Peter Benchley’s Amazon. Bök has also earned many accolades for his virtuoso performances of sound poetry (particularly DieUrsonate by Kurt Schwitters). His conceptual artworks (which include books built out of Rubik’s cubes and Lego bricks) have appeared at the Marianne Boesky Gallery in New York City as part of the exhibit Poetry Plastique. The Utne Reader has recently included Bök in its list of “50 Visionaries Who Are Changing Your World.” Bök teaches English at the University of Calgary.

Sharon Harris is a Toronto artist/writer whose poems have been anthologized in The Broadview Introduction to Literature, The Last Vispo, and Shift & Switch: New Canadian Poetry. She is the author of chapbooks from bookthug, In Case of Emergency Press, and above/ground, and her first full-length collection, Avatar, was published by The Mercury Press. She has written articles for Geist, The Globe & Mail, and Open Book Toronto; is a past contributor to Torontoist and Word Magazine; and her work has been published in The National Post, dANDelion, The Capilano Review, Drunken Boat, The Volta, broken pencil, and Vallum. I Love You Toronto, her exhibition of photographs, appeared in newspapers, magazines, and on radio and television across Canada.

BISSETT, KARASICK & NUOTIO - an A B XMAS!

A B Series 3rd Annual Xmas Party with BILL BISSETT!

Poetry by bissett & ADEENA KARASICK!

Music by GLENN NUOTIO
& MELODY McKIVER!

PRIZES!

8pm
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 14, 2013

RAW SUGAR CAFE
692 Somerset West
Ottawa, Ont.

Buy tickets on Eventbrite: ab-xmas-14dec.eventbrite.ca

More info: abseries.org

bill bissett's charged readings, which never fail to amaze his audiences, incorporate chanting, sound poetry and singing, the verve of which is matched only by his prolific writing career: over 70 books of bissett's poetry have been published. An energetic "man-child mystic," bill bissett is living proof of William Blake's adage "the spirit of sweet delight can never be defiled."

Combining chamber music and folk, Glenn Nuotio delivers unnervingly complex pop. As Ottawa Xtra! notes, "he channels it through an indie musician's paper heart and the results are invariably stirring."

Adeena Karasick is a poet, cultural theorist, media artist and the critically acclaimed author of seven books of poetry and poetic theory, and Professor of Pop Culture and Media Theory at Fordham University in New York. Writing at the intersection of Conceptualism and neo-Fluxus performatics, her urban, Jewish feminist mashups have been described as “electricity in language” (Nicole Brossard).

BLOOD IS BLOOD: THE BATTLE LINES ARE DRAWN

ENDRE FARKAS and CAROLYN MARIE SOUAID are taking poetry to the next level! The two major Montreal poets have come together to create BLOOD IS BLOOD. Both a film and a book, BLOOD IS BLOOD draws on the authors' diametrically opposed backgrounds, whose cultural and personal lives intersect, clash and confront the truths and fictions that have become the destructive reality of Jews and Arabs trying to co-exist in the Middle East.

A B SERIES PRESENTS A SCREENING OF BLOOD IS BLOOD + READINGS & CONVERSATION WITH THE AUTHORS!

8pm
Thursday, November 28, 2013

Ottawa Art Gallery
Arts Court
2 Daly Ave.
Ottawa, Ont.

Free
A hat will be passed.

More info:
abseries.org

The trailer for Blood is Blood:

STEVE McCAFFERY in A B Series!

 

A B Series Presents

A Reading and Performance by founding member of the Four Horsemen, author of more than thirty books and current David Gray Professor of Poetry and Letters at SUNY Buffalo:

STEVE McCAFFERY

8:00pm
October 19, 2013

Arts Court
Courtroom
2nd Floor
2 Daly Avenue
Ottawa, Ont.

Free
A hat will be passed.

More info: abseries.org

Steve McCaffery is the author of more than 35 books  and chapbooks of poetry and criticism, most recently The Darkness of the Present (University of Alabama Press, 2012).  Twice nominated for the Governor General’s Award, his many titles include: Paradigm of the Tinctures with illustrations by Alan Halsey (New York: Granary Books) and Slightly Left of Thinking. Poems and Postcognitions (Tucson: Chax Press). He teaches at the State University of New York at Buffalo where he is David Gray Professor of Poetry and Letters and Director of the UB Poetics Program.

Smart & Pirie in A B Series at Raw Sugar January 10 2012

abseries.org

A B Series Presents

Pearl Pirie & Carolyn Smart

Reading
8pm
Thursday, January 10, 2012

Raw Sugar Café
692 Somerset West
Ottawa, Ont.

Pearl Pirie has poems in a number of chapbooks and in 2 poetry collections, Thirsts (Snare) and been shed bore(Chaudiere). She has 2 more looking for a good home where they will be fed and watered and taken for walks. She makes mini chapbooks with her micro press Phafours. She been organizing the Tree Seed Workshop Series for the Tree Reading Series since 2009. She tweets, photographs and verbs about Ottawa, the luckiest town for literature in most anywhere.

Carolyn Smart's fifth collection of poems, Hooked - Seven Poems was published in 2009 by Brick Books. An excerpt from her memoir At the End of the Day won first prize in the 1993 CBC Literary Contest. She is the founder of the RBC Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging writers, and since 1989 has taught Creative Writing at Queen's University. Her work-in-progress is a series of poems about the Barrow Gang entitled 'Careen.'

KATALIN LADIK & GERRY SHIKATANI

ABSERIES.ORG

On November 21 at Arts Court Theatre, join us for a multimedia extravaganza featuring the Canadian premiere of Budapest artist, KATALIN LADIK! Presented by A B Series, Ladik comes direct from Hungary for this exclusive engagement. Her performance will incorporate voice, multimedia and on-stage action.

GERRY SHIKATANI, Canadian innovator of multimedia poetry, joins Ladik on the program. Shikatani screens excerpts from his film, 'Kokoro is for Heart' as part of the event.

7:30pm

Weds, November 21, 2012

Arts Court Theatre

2 Daly Avenue

Ottawa, Ont.

Tickets available through the Arts Court box office in person at 2 Daly Avenue, by phone at 613 564 7240 and online at artscourtottawa.ca/en/events/

A polymath artist accomplished in theatrical, literary and visual disciplines, Katalin Ladik’s appearances incorporate voice, multimedia and on-stage action. Author of more than twenty poetry collections, Ladik’s work has been translated into a dozen languages. She is the winner of numerous awards including the bestowal this year of the Laurel Wreath of Hungary. Since her ground-breaking performance at the 10th International Festival of Sound Poetry in Amsterdam in 1977, she has been at the forefront of Europe’s vibrant sound-poetry scene. 

Gerry Shikatani’s most recent poetry collection, The Port's Seasonal Rental, was published last year by Mercury Press/Teksteditions. Shikatani’s diverse writing projects include poetry, prose, text-sound performance, concrete poetry as well as collaboration in experimental film. His journalism has involved sports, travel and international culinary criticism.

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A B Series - Ottawa's Nexus for Global Poetry

Jenny Sampirisi & kevin mcpherson eckhoff

More info: abseries.org

Join us for an evening of visual poetry and poly-vocal performance!

8pm
Saturday, October 20, 2012

Ottawa Art Gallery
Arts Court
2 Daly Ave.
Ottawa, Ont.

Jenny Sampirisi is the author of the novel is/was from Insomniac Press. She is the former Managing Editor of BookThug and current co-director of the Toronto New School of Writing, a series of reading and writing workshops designed and facilitated by working writers. She teaches English Literature, Creative Writing and Composition at Ryerson University. She is the 2011 recipient of the K.M. Hunter Artist Award for Literature. Croak, a libretto of hermaphroditic Frogirls, is her first poetry collection. It is a poetic narrative of love, loss, and compromise played out on a Beckettian stage. She will present a poly-vocal rendering of the text at the A B Series.

kevin mcpherson eckhoff equals rhapsodomancy plus easy peasy! Will he win the ReLit award this year? Join whobet.com to make it interesting. His bestfriend is named Jake Kennedy; together they enjoy art, popcorn, hugs, Open Letter, musick, kindness, whey protein, students at Okanagan College, clinamen, Tim & Eric, Denny's, pretend violence, and eventually finishing their community-written novel, Death Valley. kevin’s words have been made for real totes in-print, like, within West Wind Review, Fact*Simile and Descant. He lives & loves in Armstrong, BC, with some rescue dogs and a dog-rescuing super-lady, Laurel. She & he are merely weeks away from welcoming their first & craziest collaboration ever, which remains, as of yet, untitled.

More info: abseries.org

Geof Huth launches A B Series Season #6

More info at abseries.org

A B Series launches its sixth autumn to spring programming season with a multimedia presentation by renowned visual poet, archivist and popular blogger, Geof Huth!

OIW: A Talk on Contemporary Poetry Feat. rob mclennan and Pearl Pirie

 “Be careful not to scratch and make too much noise with that,” said Brian, motioning to the pen and paper I’d removed from my bag. “I might be trying to commune or something!” Maybe it was due to the fact that I’d only met him minutes earlier in line to attend Ottawa Independent Writers’ latest discussion but gauging whether Brian was kidding or not proved difficult. In either case, writers young, old, experienced and curious alike had convened to soak up the wisdom of two of Ottawa’s foremost poets, robmclennan and Pearl Pirie – scratching away with my pen felt as natural a reaction as listening in.

It takes a poet-publisher of considerable expertise to tackle a topic as broad and massive as Contemporary Poetry but, as luck would have it, this evening delivered two. Calling upon proven skills and noteworthy anecdotes from careers waist-deep in the literary arts, mclennan and Pirie discussed some of the many poetic forms (examples being haiku, tanka) that stream and intersect contemporary verse. Those in attendance were encouraged to ask questions or even interrupt the flow of conversation, the latter option proving popular when the introduction of visual poetry came under fire. Make no mistake, the OIW isn’t a group of starry-eyed pacifists; for some members, the art of arranging letters in a way that deepens the author’s intent sparked a vocal debate on the merits of certain poetic styles. A surprising change of pace for the event, perhaps, but these stubborn viewpoints and insightful defenses provided even the quiet attendees with some food for thought.

At the very least, no one could refute the effectiveness of visual poetry any longer with so many convictions flying about!  One writer stood and passionately recited his criteria for good poetry, to which everyone applauded. Another scoffed at the example of several contemporary forms but took detailed notes on each. Even my new colleague Brian, who had worried about the sound of my pen on paper, stood arms-crossed away from the table, peppering the guest speakers with questions. Now this was unfiltered discussion! And as one of those demure individuals taking it all in, I found the heated yet respectful exchange life-affirming to any poetry-lover’s ears.

The immeasurable size of the topic at hand allowed mclennan and Pirie freedom to dive into certain facets or styles upon the whim of the audience. Some inquiries had concrete solutions, such as Pearl Pirie’s insightful breakdown of approaches that distinguish and shape a writer – a classification that caused the group to pause and consider their work’s intention. Concentrated dialogues also arose on the subject of prose poems – and by extension, knowing when to keep poetry and prose apart – plus ways of promoting one’s work in a changing industry.

Other questions were impossibly pointed; when asked to define poetry in two or three words, rob mclennan enunciated as though counting each word: “I don’t know”.  It was one of many refreshing exchanges during an evening dedicated to uncovering the joy of poetry’s borderless playground. Riffing off of each other’s leads and shedding light on how the expectations on contemporary poetry have changed from an editor’s perspective, mclennan and Pirie defied expectations with an engaging talk that refused to pull punches.

As a non-member, I witnessed many potential perks to enrolling with the OIW, including notice on inclusive submissions, writer’s retreats and a whole lot of local support. Get more information here: www.oiw.ca

A choir like no other makes Ottawa debut

OTTAWA's FERAL CHOIR conducted by PHIL MINTON

See local participants perform in Ottawa's Feral Choir premiere!

8pm

Saturday, May 12, 2012

Church of St. John the Evangelist

Corner of Elgin & Somerset Streets

Entrance on Elgin Street

Ottawa, Ontario

Following dozens of stunning productions around the globe, Feral Choir comes to Ottawa!

A Feral Choir - photo by Bryony McIntyre

An A B Series Presentation

For more information and online advance tickets, visit A B Series’ website. Advance tickets are also available from Octopus Books at 116 Third Avenue and 251 Bank Street, 2nd Floor.

A UK singer and conductor, MINTON has taken Feral Choir around the world, hosting over one hundred workshops and transforming the lives of thousands of people. The project is comprised of a series of workshops open to everyone, amateurs and professionals, young and old, singers and non-singers. MINTON encourages participants to take a vocal leap and explore all vocal possibilities through exercises and improvisations, over the workshop period and in performance. Ottawa participants enjoy an unprecedented opportunity for voice exploration with the world’s leading sound-singing choral conductor. There is, indeed, something feral about MINTON’s approach, a primal scream philosophy to free participants from the limits of orthodox singing. The culminating choir performance, with dozens of local feral singers, premieres a public art project as never before staged in Ottawa.

MINTON notes that “the human voice is capable of so much more than is generally understood. In the workshops, I have encouraged participants to realize that anyone who can breathe is capable of producing sounds that give a positive aesthetic contribution to the human condition and many of these contributions are without any cultural influence or reference.”

“For over twenty years, with Feral Choir, MINTON has been helping people’s inner voice to break free!”

Phil Minton by Francesca Pfeffer

Celebrated creator of visual poetry, derek beaulieu is in Ottawa to give a special presentation of his work in a slide show format. Join us for a thought-provoking evening of visual poetry display and discussion. It happens at Gallery 101 as part of A B Series programming.

Saturday, March 31, 2012

Admission begins at 7:30pm

Presentation at 8pm

Gallery 101

301 1/2 Bank Street

Ottawa, Ont.

More info: ABSERIES.ORG

Ron Silliman in an A B Series Presentation

RON SILLIMAN

in an A B Series presentation

at Gallery 101 

301 1/2 Bank Street

Ottawa, Ontario

Seating commences at 7:30pm 

Reading at 8pm

Saturday, March 10, 2012

RON SILLIMAN is an internationally renowned USA poet, editor and blogger. He has written and edited over 30 books, most recently Wharf Hypothesis from Lines Press, and has had his poetry and criticism translated into 12 languages. His long poem, Ketjak, has evolved in stages rather like nested Russian dolls: the first and innermost being collected in The Age of Huts, the second in Tjanting, the third in The Alphabet. He is now at work on Universe. His anthology, In the American Tree, published in 1986, is still the definitive anthology of language poetry, and his collection of essays, The New Sentence, has stayed in print for 25 years. Silliman’s Blog has received over 3 million visits.

Co-sponsored with the U.S. Embassy. A B Series gratefully acknowledges support from Gallery 101, City of Ottawa, Ontario Arts Council and Canada Council for the Arts. Last year, the Canada Council invested $154 million to bring the arts to Canadians throughout the country.

Admission for this special event is free.

More info ABSERIES.ORG

GEODE Music & Poetry

The poster for the February 16 GEODE show -- pictured left to right are JENNIFER GILES (keyboards), ALRICK HUEBNER (bass) and SUSAN McMASTER (poet). They'll be joined in performance on February 16 by DAVID BROSCOE (winds), JOHN HIGNEY (steel guitar) and MIKE ESSOUDRY (percussion). GEODE's inimitable repertoire blends poetry with music drawn from a variety of genres including jazz, blues, new music, world music, contemporary and classical. And  see a performance of WordMusic with special guest DEAN STEADMAN!

8:00pm

(Admission and seating begin at 7:30pm.)

Thursday, February 16, 2012

Gallery 101

301 1/2 Bank Street

Ottawa, Ontario

$9 admission / $7 for students

ABSERIES.ORG

A B Series Presents

Cat Kidd 

& Kaie Kellough

in performance 

Gallery 101 

301 1/2  Bank Street

Ottawa, Ontario

8pm

Friday, January 20, 2012

More info: ABSERIES.ORG

From Icarus to Idi Amin:

A Retrospective Reading by Henry Beissel

7:30pm

Doors open at 7:00pm

Tea and scones served by Laurier House

Thursday, January 12, 2012

Laurier House

A National Historic Site

335 Laurier Avenue East

Ottawa, Ontario

More info: ABSERIES.ORG

ABSERIES.ORG

PETER NORMAN & STUART ROSS in the A B Series

THE A B SERIES launches its Fifth Season of autumn to spring events with PETER NORMAN & STUART ROSS

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 1, 2011
Doors open 7:00pm
Readings start at 7:30pm (with intermission & cash bar) 
Gallery 101
301 ½ Bank Street (up the stairs)
Ottawa, Ontario 


Peter Norman’s poetry and fiction have appeared in numerous magazines, anthologies and other publications, including Arc, Industrial Sabotage, Bywords and the first two editions of The Best Canadian Poetry. His first book, At the Gates of the Theme Park, was published last year by Mansfield Press.

Stuart Ross published his first literary pamphlet on the photocopier in his dad’s office one night in 1979. Through the 1980s, he stood on Toronto’s Yonge Street and sold over 7,000 poetry and fiction chapbooks. In addition to dozens of chapbooks and two sound-poetry cassettes, he is the author of two collaborative novels, two story collections, and six full-length poetry books. He has published a collection of essays, Confessions of a Small Press Racketeer (Anvil Press), edited Surreal Estate: 13 Canadian Poets Under the Influence (The Mercury Press), and co-edited Rogue Stimulus: A Stephen Harper Holiday Anthology for a Prorogued Parliament(Mansfield Press). His story collection Buying Cigarettes for the Dog (Freehand Books, 2009) won the 2010 ReLit Award for Short Fiction. In spring 2011, ECW Press released his first novel, Snowball, Dragonfly, Jew. He lives in Cobourg, Ontario.

Stuart Ross

For more information abseries.org

With financial assistance from the Canada Council for the Arts through the Writers' Union of CanadaThe A B Series gratefully acknowledges the support of the City of Ottawa, the Ontario Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts and Gallery 101.