45 Pure Poetry

Martín Espada United States	John Glenday Scotland	Fanny Howe United States
Sachiko Murakami Ontario	Olive Senior Ontario / Jamaica	Sharon Thesen British Columbia

Martín Espada, United States

Martín Espada is the author of more than 15 books. His latest collection of poems, The Trouble Ball, was released in 2011 by Norton. His previous collection, The Republic of Poetry (Norton, 2006), was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a USA Simon Fellowship and the National Hispanic Cultural Center Literary Award, Espada is a professor of English at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Read more

John Glenday, Scotland

John Glenday was born near Broughty Ferry, Scotland, in 1952. His first collection, The Apple Ghost, won a Scottish Arts Council Book Award and his second, Undark, was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. His most recent collection, Grain, was shortlisted for both the Ted Hughes Award and the Griffin Poetry Prize. He is a board member of the Scottish Poetry Library and currently lives near Loch Ness in the Scottish Highlands.

John Glenday’s appearance is made possible by Creative Scotland. Read more

Fanny Howe, United States

Fanny Howe is one of the most widely read of American experimental poets. She has also published several volumes of prose, including Lives of the Spirit/Glasstown: Where Something Got Broken and The Wedding Dress: Meditations on Word and Life, a collection of essays. Her awards include the 2005 Griffin Poetry Prize and the 2009 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, presented annually by the Poetry Foundation to a living U.S. poet whose lifetime accomplishments warrant extraordinary recognition. Read more

Sachiko Murakami, Ontario

Sachiko Murakami’s first poetry collection, The Invisibility Exhibit, was a finalist for the Governor General’s Award for Poetry and the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. She has been a literary worker for various publishers, magazines and organizations, and is a past member of the Kootenay School of Writing, a Vancouver-based writers’ collective. Her new poetry collection, Rebuild, approaches the city of Vancouver through its inhabitants’ greatest passion: real estate. She lives in Toronto where she co-hosts the Pivot Reading Series. Read more

Olive Senior, Ontario / Jamaica

Olive Senior is a fiction writer, poet, journalist and editor. Her short story collection Summer Lightning won the inaugural Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for best book in 1987, and her poetry collection Over the Roofs of the World was a finalist for the 2005 Governor General’s Award for poetry. Born in Jamaica, she has lived in Portugal, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom; she now spends her time in Jamaica and Toronto. Dancing Lessons is her latest novel. Read more

Sharon Thesen, British Columbia

Sharon Thesen is the author of nine previous books of poetry, including The Good Bacteria, which was a finalist for the Governor General’s Award for Poetry, the Pat Lowther Memorial Award, the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize and the ReLit Award. She received the Pat Lowther Memorial Award for her collection A Pair of Scissors, and she has been a finalist for the BC Book Prize. Her new poetry collection is Oyama Pink Shale. Read more

Friday, October 21, 2011 - 1:00pm - 2:30pm
Waterfront Theatre
$17 / $8.50 for student groups

This celebration of poetry is a perennial favourite with students, teachers and poetry fans. This year, six stellar poets from Scotland, Canada and the US will show off the power of the well chosen word. They’ll converge on Granville Island to get you excited about the melodic line and the insights that grow out of keen observation. Poetry is the distillation of life and experience through language, and each of these poets promises to deliver fresh and startling takes on the world we share.

Tickets are still available and can be purchased at the door 45 minutes before the event begins.

45 Pure Poetry

2011 Festival