Readings & Events

Blending Genres Panel 71, Vancouver Writers Fest

Each of these authors combine the unexpected—either writing in many genres across works, or blending multiple genres in one book. The result, in every case, is a work as fascinating for its form as for its story. We delve into these kaleidoscopic offerings before a ceremony for the VMI Betsy Warland Between Genres Award. Alison McCreesh’s Degrees of Separation and Sarah Leavitt’s Something, Not Nothing both defy expectations of what a graphic novel can be, and the depths of creativity and poignancy they exude. Canisia Lubrin’s Code Noir is a masterpiece of 59 braided fictions that speak to the colonial empire and those who transcend it. Michael Turner’s Playlist blends poetry, memoir, and music journalism to consider a writing life immersed in music. Discover new horizons in writing and celebrate craft with these talents. Moderated by Elee Kraljii Gardiner.

At the end of the panel Steve Collis and Betsy Warland will announce the winner of the 2024 VMI Betsy Warland Between Genres Award.

Off the Shelf—A SOUNDSCAPE + READING LABORATORY

Elee Kraljii Gardiner and Chris Turnbull read from their ongoing ecollaboration, LINEN, written into and through multiple outdoor habitats in BC and Ontario. LINEN considers disintegration, types of markings, and tended abandon/ment, such as clothing or forensic tracings left or found in forests. For this evening of investigation into environments, poems are loosened from the page’s verso-recto, as if footsteps, and are surrounded with sound.

Composer Giorgio Magnanensi will diffuse an improvisational soundscape made of field recordings gathered in part from the Tuwanek Spring Forest on the Sunshine Coast, a place under threat of clearcutting. Using eight resonators built from discarded piles of wood: Red Cedar, Yellow Cedar, Pacific Maple and Sitka Spruce (also called tone wood) Giorgio will amplify sound in multiple directions allowing the listener to be within the soundscape itself.

Chris Turnbull is the author of cipher (Beautiful Outlaw Press 2024), [ untitled ] in own (CUE Books), and Continua (Chaudiere Books/Invisible). Her chapbooks include x/° (Gap Riot), notes from recently (Trainwreck Press), and, in collaboration with Portuguese text artist Bruno Neiva, Undertones (Low Frequency Press). Recent writing has been published in SOME, Imminent and Touch the Donkey. Other work can be found in print, online, and within landscapes. She curates a footpress, rout/e, whereby poetry can be found on trails (www.etuor.wordpress.com).

Elee Kraljii Gardiner is an author, editor, and creative mentor living in Vancouver, Canada. She is the author of two poetry books, Trauma Head, winner of the Cogswell Award for Literary Excellence, and serpentine loop, nominated for the Souster Award. She is editor of the anthologies Against Death: 35 Essays on Living and V6A: Writing from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. A frequent collaborator with choreographers, musicians, and visual artists, Elee is currently collaborating with nature via a series of durational art installations that investigate the law of thermodynamics and cultural ideas regarding the passing of time. eleekg.com

Giorgio Magnanensi is a sound artist, composer and conductor. His diverse artistic practice includes electroacoustic improvisation, circuit bending, instrument making and video art. He is artistic director of Vancouver New Music, Laboratorio Arts Society and lecturer at the School of Music of The Vancouver Community College. https://giorgiomagnanensi.com/

Located in the Ink

A joint art exhibit of visual work by Elee Kraljii Gardiner and Gary Barwin, WATCHER, with Inside Outside Chinatown  by Isabella Wang. More info here.

And join us for the mid-show reception on November 23 2:00 pm – 4:00 pm PST. RSVP HERE

We are grateful for the generous and skilled support of Printmaker Studio in making the WATCHER prints!

Book Launch: I feel that way too by jaz papadopoulas and Signal Infinities by Melanie Siebert

I’ll be hosting the double book launch of jaz papadopoulas’ I FEEL THAT WAY TOO from Nightwood Editions and Melanie Siebert’s SIGNAL INFINITIES from McClelland & Stewart on Thursday Sep 12 at Cross and Crows in Vancouver. Readings, conversation, general hijinx!

CV2’s Summer Issue

This one hour online celebration of the new issue of CV2 has registration and other details coming…but includes:

– Closed captioning
– Live ASL interpretation
– Visual descriptions (provided by speakers as they introduce themselves)

With readings by contributors Hari Alluri, Michael Chang, Elee Kraljii Gardiner, Mubanga Kalimamukwento, kimberley orton, Tazi Rodrigues, & Rose Zinnia!

This online event is free to attend, but advance registration is required. You can register now here: https://us06web.zoom.us/…/tZEude….

We prioritize making our events as accessible as possible. If you would like to attend and have access needs we should accommodate, please let us know!

Poetry in The Park

I’ll be leading a free, drop-in poetry creative writing workshop at the park house in Oppenheimer Park sponsored by Carnegie Community Centre. Please join us!

Poetry in The Park

I’ll be leading a free, open-to-all poetry creative writing workshop as part of this wonderful series hosted by The Gathering Place Community Centre.

Gothenburg: …I am changed and changing…Invitation to Contribute to the Creation of a Sound Poem

Canadian poet Elee Kraljii Gardiner and Denmark-based sound artist Eduardo Abrantes seek 5-12 vocalists, poets, musicians, or people who have curiosity about creative processes, to explore the recording a visual poem as a sound piece.

When: Friday, May 31, 2024, 10:00-13:00
Where:  Gathenhielmska Huset, Gothenburg, Sweden
Stigbergstorget 7, 414 63 Göteborg
RSVP here via link

This investigative and improvisational FREE session will be held in English. Light vegetarian lunch will be provided. We welcome people of all backgrounds, languages, disciplines, and experiences.

The session will be recorded and participants will be credited in the final work which may appear on websites or installations. We begin promptly at 10:00, so please be on time.

The poem, written by Elee, is related to a project published in the Canadian literary journal SOME  with poet Chris Turnbull. Elee explains, “I’ve been collaborating with nature doing durational installations based on pieces of clothing and poems left outdoors in the temperate rainforest of Vancouver, Canada. I monitor the sites to see how they are changed or weathered by the elements and wildlife and record how the poem becomes tattered, covered in fungus, and softened by rain. How might we echo this aspect of the text in a sound piece?”

Please contact us with any questions. We look forward to creating with you!

Elee Kraljii Gardiner
eleethursdays@gmail.com www.eleekg.com
Eduardo Abrantes
eduardoabrantes@gmail.com https://eduardoabrantes.com/

“…I am changed and changing…”: Collective Creation of a Sound Poem

Canadian poet Elee Kraljii Gardiner and Denmark-based sound artist Eduardo Abrantes invite vocalists, poets, musicians, or people who have curiosity about creative processes, to explore recording a visual poem as a sound piece. This investigative and improvisational session will be held in English. Light refreshments will be provided. We welcome people of all backgrounds, languages, disciplines, and ages. The session will be audio recorded and participants will be credited in the final work. We begin promptly at 14:00, so please be on time.

The poem, written by Elee, is related to a project published in the Canadian literary journal SOME  with poet Chris Turnbull. Elee explains, “I’ve been collaborating with nature doing durational installations based on pieces of clothing and poems left outdoors in the temperate rainforest of Vancouver, Canada. I monitor the sites to see how they are changed or weathered by the elements and wildlife and record how the poem becomes tattered, covered in fungus, and softened by rain. How might we echo this aspect of the text in a sound piece?”

Elee and Eduardo will facilitate the group’s experiments at vocalizing the poem after which Eduardo will set/alter the recordings.

Please RSVP to participate at: https://forms.gle/1JMPku4EdawtEtfaA

Book launch: Adrienne Gruber’s Monsters, Martyrs and Marionettes

I’ll be hosting Adrienne Gruber’s launch of the essay collection “Monsters, Martyrs and Marionettes” from Book*hug Press.

Monsters, Martyrs, and Marionettes is a revelatory collection of personal essays that subverts the stereotypes and transcends the platitudes of family life to examine motherhood with blistering insight. Documenting the birth and early life of her three daughters, Adrienne Gruber shares what it really means to use one’s body to bring another life into the world and the lasting ramifications of that act on both parent and child. Each piece peers into the seemingly mundane to show us the mortal and emotional consequences of maternal bonds, placing experiences of “being a mom” within broader contexts-historical, literary, biological, and psychological-to speak to the ugly realities of parenthood often omitted from mainstream conversations. Ultimately, these deeply moving, graceful essays force us to consider how close we are to death, even in the most average of moments, and how beauty is a necessary celebration amidst the chaos of being alive.

Adrienne Gruber is an award-winning writer originally from Saskatoon. She is the author of five chapbooks, three books of poetry, including Q & A, Buoyancy Control, and This is the Nightmare, and the creative nonfiction collection, Monsters, Martyrs, and Marionettes: Essays on Motherhood. She won the 2015 Antigonish Review’s Great Blue Heron poetry contest, SubTerrain’s 2017 Lush Triumphant poetry contest, placed third in Event’s 2020 creative non-fiction contest, and was the runner up in SubTerrain’s 2023 creative non-fiction contest. Both her poetry and non-fiction has been longlisted for the CBC Books awards. In 2012, Mimic was awarded the bp Nichol Chapbook Award. Adrienne lives with her partner and their three daughters on Nex̱wlélex̱m (Bowen Island), B.C., the traditional territory of the Coast Salish peoples.

Info and tickets here.

SOME 8, a journal launch

As a past contributor, I’ll be reading with Daphne Marlatt and Selina Boan at the launch of SOME’s 8th issue.

Daphne Marlatt is a long-time Vancouver poet associated with the TISH movement and a founder of the magazines, periodics and Tessera. Intertidal, a collection of her early poems was published by Talonbooks in 2017. Recent publications from Talonbooks include Then Now (2021) and a Noh-theatre inspired libretto for four composers entitled Shadow Catch (2023).

Selina Boan is a moniyâw/nehiyaw poet whose work has been published widely, including in The Best Canadian Poetry 2018 and 2020. Her book, Undoing Hours (Nightwood Editions) won the 2022 Pat Lowther Memorial Award She is currently a poetry editor for Rahila’s Ghost Press and is a member of the Growing Room Collective.

The Some magazine website can be found at https://robertmanery.ca/some-magazine/

Subscriptions can now be purchased through the website. You can also link to recordings of some of our past readings.

Cross-Pollinations

The Wednesday, November 29 Cross-Pollinations event features poets Elee Kraljii Gardiner and Isabella Wang on the theme of their poetic expressions of medical events. In this conversation between long-time friends of different generations, Elee and Isabella discuss what happens when we shift the paradigm from the idea of “dying for one’s art” to ideas of agency and care, creating art that takes care of its maker. Elee will read from her award-winning collection Trauma Head about vertebral artery dissection and stroke and Isabella will share excerpts from her manuscript in-progress, Subscript: Annotating Long-Illness, a creative auto-theoretical work that speaks to her cancer diagnosis, sifting through her medical documents and the writings of Roland Barthes to express her experiences of navigating the health system as a whole.

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Supported by the Canadian Association for Health Humanities and the Health Arts Research Centre, this Cross-Pollinations virtual rounds feature artists and Health Humanities professionals for multi-faceted conversations about healthcare, art, healing, and humanities.

In this ground-breaking series, health humanities and poetry come together under the same scope, combining artistic expression with health practice and research. The presentations of Cross-Pollinations will illuminate new and emerging insights and perspectives on healthcare opportunities and challenges, healthcare approaches and advances, as well as build bridges of connection between health professionals, humanities and the arts.

This series is ideal for people in arts communities, poets and writers, as well as those working in healthcare.

Cross-Pollinations occurs monthly on the last Wednesday of each month at 6pm EST/3pm PST. Events run for one hour, and include a discussion period for audience engagement.