Argo Bookshop -

Sunday, January 22nd @ 7PM!

Norm Sibum

&

Richard Greene

Richard Greene, winner of the 2010 Governor General’s award for English language poetry for his collection Boxing the Compass, will be visiting from Cobourg, Ontario to give a reading at the Argo. Alongside Greene, we’ll have the prolific Norm Sibum, author of more than 15 (that number again, 15+!) poetry collections published in Canada and England.

People, the opportunity to hear from writers as esteemed as Greene & Sibum is too good to pass up:

Aside from his work as a poet, Richard Greene is a biographer, having been commissioned by Time Warner to write a biography of the British poet Edith Sitwell; he’s a critic and professor of English Literature at the University of Toronto; he is the editor of Graham Greene: A Life in Letters (2007), and is a contributing editor to Books in Canada with reviews of contemporary poetry published in numerous journals in Canada and abroad! Check out his Wiki page here (if the blackout is over by now…), and a new poem by Greene here, at the Encore Literary Magazine.

Here’s an excerpt from Greene’s Boxing the Compass (the spacing of which is inaccurate, but the words!…):

“Great-grandfather,
whaler out of Nantucket,
the harder sort
who threw the harpoon,
drew warm blood,
made huge death on the open sea.

Came home one year
to find his land fenced
for ecclesiastical uses,
tore it all down,
told the priest to go to hell,
and would do his own praying
after that.”

Now, Norm Sibum: Born in Oberammergau, Germany in 1947, Norm has grown and lived in Germany, Alaska, Missouri, Utah and Washinton. Since 1994, he’s called Montreal home. Founder of the Vancouver Review in 1989 alongside Bruce Serafin, winner of the QWF’s A.M. Klein Award for Poetry for his collection Girls and Handsome Dogs (Porcupine’s Quill, 2002) and author of The Pangborn Defence (Biblioasis 2008) which was short-listed for the same award, Norm has many, many books acting as testament to the devotion of his craft: Check out his CV on his website. For a glance at his work as of late, Norm writes a daily blog entitled Ephemeris, with topics spanning across the literary, the everyday, the historical and political. Here’s one piece from Norm’s Gardens of Interregnum, Canto 20.

I particularly like this line of Norm’s from Girls and Handsome Dogs…

“I do not know what governs / Our business in this life. / I suspect a tin god speaks / For the old sovereignty of chance.”

Doors @ 7, the show starts shortly after that time.

Free for all, refreshments to be served, and inspiring times to be had.

Hope to see you there!

Monday, January 16th!:

Poets Zachariah Wells, Kasper Hartman, John Eric Bennett and Jesse Eckerlin will be the featured writers for the Argo’s second Featured Reading Series.

Zach has been so gracious as to take time from freelancing, editing and acting as a passenger train attendant in Halifax to drop in and… read from his latest book of poems, Track & Trace. It’s a great collection of poems based around our notions of legacy and nature, and including personal work of a sincere and visceral quality. He is also the author of the poetry collection Unsettled, and editor of both Jailbreaks: 99 Canadian Sonnets and The Essential Kenneth Leslie. Originally from PEI, he has lived in many parts of the country, including Montreal. Check out Argo co-owner Jesse Eckerlin’s interview with Zach on the subject of his latest book here… Oh, and here’s Zach’s blog.

Preceding Zach, there’s Kasper Hartman, recent first place winner of the QWF’s Quebec Writing Competition for his short story Someone Has to Save Us From This, which is available to read on Maisonneuve magazine’s website.  Aside from his prose and poetry, he is a Montreal-based translator, and editor of the Encore Literary Magazine. Apparently, he is an extraordinary poker player.

As for our emerging introductory poets, firstly we’ll have John Eric Bennett, a good friend of the Argo. An undergraduate student at Concordia University, Eric has been living and writing in Montreal for the last five years, calling London, Ontario home before that. For now, we’re wishing him the best of luck to see his work in print soon, but we think it fantastic enough to kick off the night.

We’ll also have Jesse Eckerlin, co-owner of the Argo, read some of his work as well. Aside from his current work in poetry (with pieces published in Existere Magazine, killauthor, Willowswept Review), reviews and editing for our very own Argo Press (more on that later), he writes for his blog Rusty Allegations and has forthcoming work/work appearing in The Antigonish Review, Prairie Fire, and the Wascana Review.

Now, as per usual:

The reading is free and open to all.
Doors @ 8PM, and the reading will begin shortly afterwards.
Space is limited, so we stress you come on time if you’d like a place to sit.

Coffee, tea, and those little cookies with red gelatin sugar-coated centres will be served.

For more information, please call: 514-931-3442

ps. If you can’t make it, invite your friends!

Hello y’all,

Your friendly neighbourhood bookstore would like to remind you and everyone you know to forget whatever academic, familial and/or professional obligations you may have on January 11th @ 8PM, because the Argo Open Mic is back up and running for its second reading! We hope to see old faces alongside new ones; November’s turn-out was so spectacular, we here at the Argo hope to not just match the last attendance rate, but double it! We want people hanging off the shelves! Climbing on top of each other! Pressing against the display window, all to get an ear-and-eyeful of great local emerging and professional authors!

So, let’s get some orderly anarchy in motion. Single-file, please: Bring your poetry, your prose, your scripts and screenplays, your essays and lectures, your musical talent. Bring your best, bring your worst. I (JP) am personally aiming for fun times with Fetish 23′s Cut-Up Machine, which “[works] along similar principles to those used by Burroughs in his own work”.

As per usual, there’ll be the option to check out some of Concordia and Montreal’s jazz musicians jam at Grumpy’s on Bishop Street afterward.

Remember, that’s January 11th. Doors at 8, readings begin not long afterwards. Make sure you sign the reading list if you want to perform!