Dead Poets Reading Series-November

On Sunday, November 17th at 3pm, join Massy Arts Society and three fantastic readers for a bi-monthly literary seance: Dead Poets Reading Series.

Readers act as a medium, inviting us to time travel by reading a selection of work by their favourite dead poet. Previously held in North Vancouver and the Vancouver Public Library, Massy Arts Society offers a new home for this longstanding series since it first kicked off in 2007.

This month:

Charles Simic (1938 – 2023) read by Jami Macarty

E.D. (Ted) Blodgett (1935-2018) read by Susan McCaslin

Gibran Khalil Gibran(January 6, 1883 – April 10, 1931) read by Johnny D Trinh

Venue & Accessibility

The event will be hosted at the Massy Arts Gallery, at 23 East Pender Street in Chinatown, Vancouver.

Registration is free, open to all and required for entrance. The gallery is wheelchair accessible and a gender-neutral washroom is on-site. Please refrain from wearing scents or heavy perfumes.

For more on accessibility including parking, seating, venue measurements and floor plan, and how to request ASL interpretation please visit: massyarts.com/accessibility

Covid Protocols: Masks keep our community safe and are mandatory (N95 masks are recommended as they offer the best protection). We ask if you are showing symptoms, that you stay home. Thank you kindly.

THE DEAD POETS:

Charles Simic (1938 – 2023) was born in Belgrade, grew up during WWII, and immigrated to the United States when he was 15 years old. A professor at the University of New Hampshire, co-poetry editor of the Paris Review, recipient of the 1990 Pulitzer Prize for The World Doesn't End (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1989), and fifteenth Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress (2007) was known for writing minimalist, taut, and bawdy imagistic poems.

E.D. (Ted) Blodgett (1935-2018), was a poet who published close to thirty volumes of poetry for which he received two Governor General’s Awards as well as awards from the Writers’ Guild of Alberta and the Canadian Author Association. In 1966 he began a long teaching career at the University of Alberta and, as a scholar and literary critic, wrote extensively about, and promoted Canadian and medieval literature. Ted served as Writer in Residence at MacEwan University (2004) and was Edmonton’s Poet Laureate (2007-09). During his retirement on the west coast of British Columbia he sung in choirs, played the renaissance lute, travelled, read, and continued writing poetry to the end of his life.

Gibran Khalil Gibran(January 6, 1883 – April 10, 1931) usually referred to in English as Kahlil Gibran was a Lebanese-American writer, poet and visual artist; he was also considered a philosopher, although he himself rejected the title. He is best known as the author of , which was first published in the United States in 1923 and has since become one of the best-selling books of all time, having been translated into more than 100 languages.

THE READERS:

Jami Macarty teaches creative writing at Simon Fraser University, writes essays, reviews, and poetry. Jami is the author of The Long Now Conditions Permit (forthcoming University of Nevada Press), winner of the 2023 Test Site Poetry Series, The Minuses (Center for Literary Publishing, 2020), winner of the 2020 New Mexico/Arizona Book Award - Poetry Arizona, and four chapbooks, including The Whole Catastrophe (Vallum Chapbook Series, 2024) and Mind of Spring (Vallum Chapbook Series, 2017), winner of the 2017 Vallum Chapbook Award. To learn more, visit: www.jamimacarty.com

Susan McCaslin has authored seventeen volumes of poetry including, her most recent, Consider (Aeolus House, 2023). Sentient Stones, a hand-made chapbook was recently published by Raven Chapbooks (Salt Spring Island). She completed her Ph.D. in English Literature at UBC in 1984 and taught English and Creative Writing at Douglas College in New Westminster, BC for 23 years. In 2022 she edited her friend E.D. Blodgett’s posthumous volume of poetry titled Walking Into God (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2024) from which she will be reading. www.susanmccaslin.ca

Johnny D Trinh is the Artistic Director of Vancouver Poetry House. Johnny is also the founder and Artistic Producer of Stage to Page Performance Society, and 2023 Writer-in-Residence at the Moberly Arts & Cultural Centre, and an Artist-in-Residence at the Lionsgate Community Centre in North Vancouver. Johnny holds a MFA in Interdisciplinary Studies with a focus on Community-Engaged Art through autoethnographic performance. Trinh’s current project, ‘Quiet Kitchen’ is especially focused on culinary storytelling, and unpacking the intersections of Asian, queer diaspora in relation to Indigenous and shared histories on these unceded lands. “It takes a community to build an artist ... whether we are nurtured by it, or resist against it."

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

Massy Arts Society, 23 East Pender Street, Vancouver, Canada