60 The Poetry Bash

Martín Espada United States	John Glenday Scotland	Fanny Howe United States
John Pass British Columbia	Sharon Thesen British Columbia	Jan Zwicky 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

John Pass, British Columbia

John Pass has had his work published widely in Canada, as well as in the US, the UK and Ireland. His most recent books, comprising the quartet At Large, are The Hour's Acropolis, Radical Innocence, Water Stair, shortlisted for the Governor General's Award, and Stumbling in the Bloom, winner of the Governor General's Award. He lives with his wife, writer Theresa Kishkan, on BC’s Sunshine Coast. His new poetry collection is crawlspace. 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

Jan Zwicky, British Columbia

Jan Zwicky has published more than 10 books of poetry and philosophy, and this year has released two more: Forge, her newest collection of poetry and a revised edition of her landmark philosophical meditation, Lyric Philosophy. Read more

Saturday, October 22, 2011 - 8:00pm
Performance Works
$26

Always a Festival favourite, the Poetry Bash brings to Vancouver’s stage six celebrated poets, including Griffin Poetry Prize winner Fanny Howe, Pulitzer Prize finalist Martín Espada, two Governor General’s Award winners for poetry, Jan Zwicky and John Pass, Scotland’s John Glenday, who has been shortlisted for both the Ted Hughes Award and the Griffin Poetry Prize and Sharon Thesen, winner of the Pat Lowther Memorial Award. This is a formidable line-up, hosted by the irrepressible Billeh Nickerson, and sure to please the ear of language lovers everywhere!

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

60 The Poetry Bash

2011 Festival