Archive for February, 2010

It’s Freedom to Read Week, a week where we celebrate the  intellectual freedom that we have and advocate for its continued importance. Here are a few events happening around the country. You can find more at their website.

Monday, January 25, 2010–Monday, March 01, 2010  [Kitchener, ON]

Altered Books Display
In celebration of Freedom to Read Week, the grade 12 visual arts class at Forest Heights Collegiate Institute have created an exhibit of sculptures made from discarded books, all meant to bring attention to issues of intellectual freedom. Free. Forest Heights Community Library, 251 Fischer Hallman Road, Kitchener, ON.
Contact: 519-743-0644.

Monday, February 22, 2010–Friday, February 26, 2010  [Toronto, ON]

Banned Book Contest
The Harbord Collegiate Institute library holds a guess the banned book contest. A book is wrapped in paper and chained and put on display. During the week various clues are posted and the first student to guess the correct book is given a gift certificate. A collection of banned books will be on display in the library during Freedom to Read Week. Free. Harbord Collegiate Institute, 286 Harbord Street, Toronto, ON.
Contact: 416-393-1650.

Friday, February 26, 2010  [Toronto, ON]

Child Soldier: Banned in Canada?
In celebration of Freedom to Read Week 2010, PEN Canada, in association with Toronto Public Library, presents Child Soldier: Banned in Canada? Orwellian language and our human rights obligations. A panel discussion with: Afua Cooper, scholar, author and poet; Mark Kingwell, philosopher and critic; Judy Rebick, social justice expert and activist; moderated by Carol Off, author and broadcaster. $10 at the door, all proceeds go to PEN Canada. 7:30 pm (doors open at 7 pm). Toronto Reference Library, Atrium, 789 Yonge Street, Toronto, ON.
Contact: 416-393-7131.
Web: www.torontopubliclibrary.ca/pro_2010_freedom_read.jsp

Saturday, February 27, 2010  [Saskatoon, SK]

Shhhhhhh! A Selection of Readings from Challenged Works
Join the Library, the Saskatchewan Writers Guild (SWG)and the University of Saskatchewan in affirming Saskatoon’s commitment to intellectual freedom during Freedom to Read Week 2010. The program will include readings by authors Mansel Robinson, Anne Simpson, Lisa Wilson, and Lori Tkachuk (Children’s Librarian) from a variety of challenged works. Hosted by Pam Bustin of the SWG. Free. 2 pm. Frances Morrison Library, 311 – 23rd Street East, Saskatoon, SK.
Contact: Pam Bustin at 306-955-5513 or saskatoon@skwriter.com

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We continue to grow the Laurier Poetry series with the latest volume, Verse and Worse: Selected and New Poems of Steve McCaffery 1989–2009, selected with an introduction by Darren Wershler.  Here’s a sample. Please ask for the book in your local bookstore to read more. Have you considered using these books to teach Canadian poetry? Ask us about a price bundle.

Correlata for a Cryptogram

It looks like California outside
the mudslides of pure mascara
but it’s been said before:
you can’t give an inch a new nail.

Curious, however,
the return to the mystic writing pad
for just the briefest scribble
of top-right Celtomania.

Around these parts
simultaneity in claws is
the puma’s best form of disappearance
just follow the arrow from the national diagonals
to reach the correlata for a cyrptogram
around the throat of America

the way milk escapes the entire history
of its blackness.

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