Okay folks! Start gargling with honey and lemon and get those vocal chords loosened up because Wednesday is Battle of the Bards! Twenty poets, one stage, one winner. The prize is a spot at the International Authors Festival in the fall - who'd say no to that? So come on down and cheer for me!

7.30 pm Wednesday March 30th at the Brigantine Room, Harbourfront in Toronto!

Sharpen your pencils and grab your date book, I've got a bunch of readings coming up!

Sunday, March 27th at 7 pm

The Secret Handshake Art Gallery's Mutual Readings

189 b Mutual Street, Toronto

Wednesday, March 30th at 7.30 pm

3rd Annual Battle of the Bards

Harbourfront's Brigantine Room, Toronto

Sunday, April 10th at 3 pm

Draft Reading Series

The Merchants of Green Coffee
2 Matilda Street, Toronto

And also an appearance at the 3rd POW Festival in Cobourg, but more about that later!

Second draft of the Dion McGregor script is complete!! So I'm celebrating by going to Panama on Saturday to write some poems longhand in my notebook! Back to the olden days!

Last week I had PL duties, reading a poem for the Cobourg Civic Awards - people seemed to like it!

And some exciting news which I can't announce till Thursday, so stay tuned!

After a successful improv session at Array Music last week I switched gears from poetry and performance to playwriting. I have finished a first draft of The Somniloquies of Dion McGregor and am half way through a second draft. I'm quite pleased with how it is coming along! But the writing is the easy part! Now I have to start looking around for partners to workshop and further develop the project. Stay tuned for more news!

Hello Friends on this snowy morning!

This Saturday I’m part of a little improv session at the Array Studio. I’ll be performing a couple of poems I wrote for a collaboration with Rick Sacks. Should be cool!

Time
05 February · 20:00 - 23:00
Location
The Array Studio
60 Atlantic Avenue suite 218
Toronto, ON
Description
An evening of experimental improvised music with special guests poet Jill Battson, vocalist Lara Solnicki, guitarist Nilan Perera. Rick Sacks will leave his DAW up after the afternoon workshop to add electronics and manipulate the live players' sounds.

More info here: http://www.arraymusic.com/

Hope to see you there!

Just completed the first draft of a cycle of poems about the carnival during the depression era for my collaboration with Rick Sacks. It's going to be a performance piece, and you can take a peek on Saturday February 5th at Array New Music Centre when we will perform a snippet - stay tuned for more deets.

Now that my cupboards are bare of all the Christmas goodies, and the food fog is lifting, I am starting to work on my various writing projects again. Today the sun is beaming in the windows and it's time to start thinking about the nature of dreams.....

Happy New Year, dear readers!

I started the year off right when I delivered a poem for the Mayor's Levee in Cobourg on the afternoon of January 1st. The Mayor's Levee is a tradition that dates way back to Louis XIV who would invite gentlemen to his chamber on new year's day so they could hear what his plans were for the coming year. A room full of gentlemen is something many of us can only dream about ;) . The reading set up a kind of resolution for me to buckle down to writing the myriad projects I have simmering on various back burners. I actually need an Aga to accommodate all those pots!