1915 Ste Catherine W.
Montreal, Quebec
Tel: 514-931-3442
A quick note: For those of you who have not signed up for our newsletter, tomorrow night is our 6th Open Mic! Come on out, bring your work, and if you have nothing to share, you’re always welcome to read a passage of a beloved book! The doors will be open at 7PM, and the reading will begin within half an hour. Afterwards, we’ll go out for drinks.
Hope to see you there!
“Begin anywhere. Stop anywhere. Everything that can possibly be written now is a drop of rain upon its vast syncretic ocean. The interior of this network is the ur -Art: permanent and all-devouring until the power goes out. A universal forced collaboration consuming the individual artist, drowning out spirit and talent alike against the background tone, incorporating everything that can be communicated into that which we do not have a name for yet, as art. Self-induced personalized sequences of aesthetic meaning – arranged at will. Incorporeal tesserae for the personalized mosaic of a deity. This future of our shared media Byzantium is obscenely bright.”
- Jason Price Everett, Hypodrome
On May 24th, Jason Price Everett (author of Unfictions, 8th House Publishing 2009) will be launching a book of poetry tracing his writing from 1990 to 2010 at Casa del Popolo.
However!
In anticipation of this event, Jason Price Everett has decided to give a sneak preview of his work at the Argo Bookshop! If you won’t be able to make it to the launch, it’s highly recommended you try to come to this and enjoy his provocative work!
To get a preemptive sense of his work, co-owner Jesse Eckerlin of the Argo has said that Everett is an author whose notes on today’s continuing transition into the increasingly technological will hopefully be present as time goes on. Everett is a “…trickster, social critic, collagist, plunderer and pirate, reigning over his intricate gallery of unmitigated chaos and grotesques, where one might be forgiven for finding an exit, but never quite offered up the key.” (Antigonish Review, Issue 167, Autumn 2011)
Open and free to all, the reading starts at 7PM. Hope to see you there!
Hello folks! Here’s our Argo Bookshop May 2012 Newsletter (just click on the link). If you’d like to receive our newsletter by email, just send us an email at argobookshop@gmail.com. Here’s some shop news for the month:
One of the most influential thinkers of the contemporary world, Michel Foucault’s work has affected disciplines ranging from literary criticism to the history of criminology. The Foucault Readeroffers an excellent introduction to the entire body of his work, containing selections from each area of the man’s work, as well as previously unpublished writings including the preface to the long-awaited second volume of The History of Sexuality and interviews with Foucault himself.
His philosophy is comprised of a fantastic intellectual breadth, stemming from a minute and ongoing investigation of the nature of power in society. Foucault’s analyses of power as it manifests itself in the organized forms that compose society (schools, factories, the family schema, etc.) are brought together in The Foucault Reader, creating an overview of his perspectives on power, and the broad social and political visions that underlie them.
Hope to see you in the shop!
Poet Walid Bitar (The Empire’s Missing Links), acclaimed poet launches his fifth book, Divide and Rule, a new collection of dramatic monologues, variations on the theme of power structured in rhymed quatrains alongside the launch of the wonderful poet Anita Lahey’s (Out to Dry in Cape Breton) second book of poems, Spinning Side Kick. Come out and listen to these fantastic writers read their work on April 30th at our fine shop @ 7PM.
c/o Coach House: In Divide and Rule, Walid Bitar delivers a sequence of dramatic monologues, variations on the theme of power, each in rhymed quatrains. Though the pieces grow out of Bitar’s personal experiences over the last decade, both in North America and the Middle East, he is not primarily a confessional writer. His work might be called cubist, the perspectives constantly shifting, point followed by counterpoint, subtle phrase by savage outburst. Bitar’s enigmatic speakers are partially rational creatures, have some need to explain, and may succeed in partially explaining, but, in the end, communication and subterfuge are inseparable – must, so to speak, co-exist.
Walid’s Bio:
Walid Bitar was born in Beirut, Lebanon, in 1961. He immigrated to Canada in 1969. His previous poetry collections are Maps with Moving Parts, 2 Guys on Holy Land, Bastardi Puri and The Empire’s Missing Links. He lives in Toronto. His latest book, published by Coach House Books this April, is Divide and Rule.
c/o Vehicule: Anita Lahey’s second collection, Spinning Side Kick (Vehicule Press), is a hard-knuckled look at the other half. These lively poems mix a girl-about-town cockiness with an all-too-rare emotional honesty about men, love, and relationships. Whether the subject is a one-man chimney demolition, the lifelong fidelity of seahorses, a lover at war in Afghanistan or a kickboxing match, Lahey confronts the enduring disconnect between the sexes in a language that is slangy and quick, punctuated with jabs. She eyes those moments–in a day, in a life–when the normal clues we rely on disappear, shifting the line between domesticity and danger. In Spinning Side Kick, a talented poet returns with sharper aim.
Anita’s Bio:
Anita Lahey’s second collection of poems, Spinning Side Kick, was released by Véhicule Press in 2011. Her first book, Out to Dry in Cape Breton, was nominated for the Trillium Book Award for Poetry and the Ottawa Book Award, and she is a past winner of the Great Blue Heron Poetry Prize and the Ralph Gustafson Prize for Best Poem, among others. Her work has been shortlisted several times for the CBC Literary Award for Poetry. She worked as editor of Arc Poetry Magazine from 2004 to 2011, and is also a journalist who has written on a wide range of topics for Canadian publications such as The Walrus, Cottage Life, Maisonneuve, Canadian Geographic, Quill & Quire, and several others. She has lived in Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal, and currently lives in Fredericton, New Brunswick.
The event will be hosted by poet and editor Carmine Starnino. Doors @ 7PM, reading @ 7:30PM. Admission is free.
To celebrate the release of two new books devoted to Glassco, ‘John Glassco and the Other Montreal’ (a new selected poems/essay edited and selected by Carmine Starnino) and Brian Busby’s lauded authoritative biography ‘A Gentleman of Pleasure’ (currently a finalist for the Gabrielle Roy Prize for Canadian Literary Criticism), the two authors of said books will be holding a lively discussion on Glassco’s work. Among these fantastic authors, there will be surprise guests!
Wine and food will be served, admission is free, and the following three books will be for sale, which can be purchased for $85, saving $10:
1. “John Glassco and the Other Montreal“, selections and essay by Carmine Starnino and an original portrait by Wesley W. Bates… This limited edition book is one of the few collections of Glassco’s work currently available. “The bindings and print are made with archival and acid-free 80 lb. Mohawk Eggshell Text. Typeset in ‘Filosofia’ designed by Zuzana Licko of Émigré Fonts with titling in ‘Tisa’ designed by Mitja Miklavcic. 88 pgs.” (Frog Hollow Press)
The price is $35 ($5 off the online price).
2. “A Gentleman of Pleasure: One Life of John Glassco, Poet, Memoirist, Translator, and Pornographer” by Brian Busby… “In a lively account of a man given to deception, who took delight in hoaxes, Busby manages to substantiate many of the often unreliable statements Glassco made about his life and work. A Gentleman of Pleasure is a remarkable biography that captures the knowable truth about a fascinatingly complex and secretive man.” (McGill-Queens Univeristy Press)
The price $40 for the hardcover edition (paperback has not been released).
3. “Memoirs of Montparnasse” by John Glassco, “…a delicious book about being young, restless, reckless, and without cares. It is also the best and liveliest of the many chronicles of 1920s Paris and the exploits of the lost generation. In 1928, nineteen-year-old John Glassco escaped Montreal and his overbearing father for the wilder shores of Montparnasse. He remained there until his money ran out and his health collapsed, and he enjoyed every minute of his stay. Remarkable for their candor and humor, Glassco’s memoirs have the daft logic of a wild but utterly absorbing adventure, a tale of desire set free that is only faintly shadowed by sadness at the inevitable passage of time.” (New York Times Book Review)
The price is $20.
Tell your friends and family, all are welcome. Doors are open and the sign-up sheet begins at 7PM. The reading will begin at 7:30PM… and if you can’t make it, invite some of your Montreal pals out in your stead!
And if this won’t be your cup of tea, check out Art’s Stars in Hollywood-Screening and readings @ 2 rue Sainte-Catherine Est, local 301, Montréal (www.artext
April is National Poetry Month!
We here at the Argo are celebrating by offering
a 20% discount off all poetry throughout the month.
Check out our great selection of
national and international titles…
Rumi! Wendell Berry! Zach Wells! Norm Sibum! Irving Layton! Bryan Sentes! Gerard Hopkins! Don Coles! Ezra Pound! Anglea Carr! Gillian Sze! Petrarch! Edmund Spenser! Erin Moure! Ken Babstock! Christian Bok! Robert Lowell! John Donne! Jack Kerouac! Dante! Phil Hall! Michael Ondaatje! Jorge Luis Borges! Osip Mandelshtam! Baudelaire! Asa Boxer! Allen Ginsberg! E.J. Pratt! Pablo Neruda! Carmine Starnino! Goethe! Gary Synder! Basho! Jay MillAr! Homer! Robert Frost! Mark Goldstein! Chaucer! bp Nichol! E.E. Cummings! Robbie Burns! William Blake! Wallace Stevens! D.H. Lawrence! Gregory Corso! Langston Hughes! Robinson Jeffers! John Milton! Arthur Rimbaud! John Dryden! John Keats! Christopher Logue! Jon Paul Fiorentino! Rilke! Kate Eichorn!…
…and much, much more!
Just so you know, if we don’t have the poetry you’re looking for,
we can order it for you, also at 20% off!
Come on in before it’s too late!
If “BookThug seeks to publish innovative books of poetry, prose and creative criticism that extend the tradition of experimental literature”, then they have succeeded. With a stellar avant-garde/experimental catalogue and a “vision… to enrich and advance the tradition of experimental literature,” BookThug is emerging as one of the most dynamic small presses in Canada, with works that have received Governor General’s nominations and awards alike this past year.
For a limited time, the Argo will be hosting a table devoted to the productions of this fine publisher. We currently carry the following 11 titles:
Kate Eichorn’s Fieldnotes, a Forensic
H.D.’s Narthex & Other Stories
Meredith Quartermain’s Recipes from the Red Planet
Angela Carr’s The Rose Concordance
Jørgen Leth’s Trivial Everyday Things
Mark Goldsteins’s Tracelanguage
Catherine Mavrikakis’ Flowers of Spit
&
bp Nichol’s The Captain Poetry Poems Complete
BookThug’s publisher, Jay MillAr, has been working within and with the streams and communities of contemporary and experimental poetry in Canada for over fifteen years (we’re currently carrying his Mycological Studies and The Small Blue: Poems). A devoted soul if there ever was one: He is the author of five books, published by Coach House Books, Nightwood Editions, Mercury Press, and Snare Books; the co-editor of the magazine BafterC; and the propreitor of the online/itinerant bookstore Apollinaire’s Bookshoppe. He works alongside the accomplished and prolific (and beautiful!) editor and poet Jenny Sampirisi. Check out her online lit magazine Other Cl/utter, which displays superb plays with image and language, here.
Anyone looking for exciting and daring contemporary poetry from this country should check it out!
…Still skeptical? Let the authors of these fine books speak for themselves here, on BookThug’s website.
March 28th @ 7PM: A week from today, Bryan Sentes will be reading from and signing copies of his latest publication of poetry, March End Prill, published by Book Thug last year. Copies will be selling for $18.
The book is summarized to be a “periplum [a map constructed in the course of the voyage] songline that charts a way through our S.A.D. Zeitgeist to a thawing of the sources of speech song,” and this description is no shortage of promise for the reading. Sentes has filled his latest collection with rollicking word-work, disjointed phrases and combinations of words that give new meaning to portmanteaux. What we have here is a wonderful recalling of Roman Jakobson’s “organized violence on ordinary speech”, where Sentes is putting the hyper in hypertext, playing with typeface, allusion, personal account and structure, to mention only a few. Here is the first poem of the collection, A Cut to Bear Nigh Thought:
A Cut to Bear Nigh Thought
‘aieZeus I’m mercurial saturnine melancholic
wounduptight hypersensitive hys
terical the smallest slight sets me off
moon low as it gets tonight or not
night always surprisingly early
leaves yellow leprous black spotted
on Mount Royal paths no
rust twig snake warms in the sun
just lean grey squirrels hopping
how much “M39″ freezercoldRussianKartoffelsaft
mgsSSRI/daily melatonin orgone-spikes does it take?!
~
…For some contextualization, here is a link to Bryan Sentes talking about March End Prill. As for the author, he has published two books of poetry, Ladonian Magnitudes (DC Books, 2006) and before that, Grand Gnostic Central & other poems (DC Books, 1998). Sentes was born and raised in Regina, Saskatchewan, earning a B.A. in philosophy (University of Regina, 1986) and an M.A. in English literature (Concordia University, 1990) before, during and after his residence there. Presently, he earns his living teaching English literature and composition at Dawson College and creative writing at Concordia University, both here in Montreal. He has read his poetry widely in both North America and Europe. Aside from poetry, he has published reviews, translations, and scholarship in the sociology of religion, mythology, and popular culture, and has conducted radio interviews with the likes of William Gibson and Martin Amis. He can be found on-line here.
Introducing Bryan Sentes, we have three writers. Here they are in order of appearance:
#1: David Bradford is a man of both mystery and letters.
#2: Jason Freure is a Montreal-based writer, a recent graduate of Concordia University, and a busboy on Crescent Street. He’s the author of Irving Layton Award-winning “St-Laurent Boulevard,” and has been published in The Maynard and the Show Thieves Anthology.
#3: Carina says “I am doing a Masters in Classical Studies. My thesis is going to be about the way that ancient Greek tragedy was used in South Africa during apartheid as a means to protest that regime and then after apartheid as a means to process what was and what could be. I mention Classics and apartheid because these things, though not always apparent, are the main preoccupations and influences in my writing. Besides that, I have lived in Montreal for a while now and like it just fine.”
So please, come on out and witness this extravaganza of excellence! Coffee and tea will be served! A trip to Grumpy’s will ensue!
That’s March 28th, one week from today. Doors at 7PM, and the reading will begin at 7:30PM. Free and open to all.
On Thursday, March 22nd we will be graced by the author Marielle Teasdale, who will be reading from her first book Undercurrents. It’s the story of Julia, a 36-year-old woman leaving urbania for what seems to be the greener pastures of art and rural settings, but gets more than she bargained for.
“Julia’s move to Hudson is an attempt to escape from the past, but she learns that we always carry the past with us. Whenever her paintbrush touches the canvas, lost memories and truths she has avoided for years come flooding back to her with startling clarity. She must draw on her close friends – both old and new – and draw on untapped resources to find a path through the darkness to a more fulfilling life.
As Julia meets and comes to know Stone, the enigmatic owner of the art supply store where she buys her canvases, and Jane, the proprietor of the local coffee shop, she will come to trust those relationships in her time of need. Written to engage, entertain and inspire, the novel is intended for all readers interested in tales of soul-searching and personal discovery.”
Both a wonderful painter and now a entertaining author to boot, the Argo is pleased to have Teasdale come read. The doors will be open at 7PM to receive an audience, and the reader will promptly begin at 7:30. The author will be signing copies of her book (selling for $15), and wine will be served.
Hope to see you there!
