Curated by Gavin Barrett. Featuring Tyler Pennock, Keith Garebian and Kate Rogers.
Date and Time
7:00 – 9:30 PM EST, Thursday, April 13, 2023. Book your free tickets now, via Eventbrite!
Curator
Gavin Barrett is a poet, creative entrepreneur, and the author of Understan(Mawenzi House, 2020), a CBC Books recommendation. He was born in Bombay and lived in Hong Kong for several years before immigrating to Canada. Gavin’s poetry has been published in Reasons for Belonging (Viking Penguin India), an anthology of 14 Indian poets; The Joao Roque Literary Journal; the Pen India journal; The Folio; The Independent (Bombay); The Toronto Review of Contemporary Writing Abroad; and Poiesis, the Bombay Poetry Circle journal. He was a contributing writer to This|ability, a book on Canada’s art brut and outsider artists. He is a member of the Advisory Board of the Canadian Authors Association (Toronto), PEN Canada and The League of Canadian Poets. You can read more about Gavin in the organizer note below.
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Featured writers
Tyler Pennock is a two-spirit adoptee from a Cree and Métis family around the Lesser Slave Lake region of Alberta. Tyler is a member of Sturgeon Lake Cree Nation. They graduated from Guelph University’s Creative Writing MFA program in 2013, and currently live in Toronto. Their first book, BONES (Brick Books) was shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award and the Indigenous Voices Award for Poetry in 2021. Their second book, BLOOD was released in September 2022.
Keith Garebian is a theatre and literary scholar, poet, and editor in Mississauga. He has won international acclaim for his books on theatre (especially his Broadway production histories and the biography William Hutt: Soldier Actor), and he has been widely praised for his poetry collections Frida: Paint Me as a Volcano; Blue: The Derek Jarman Poems; Children of Ararat; Poetry is Blood; Against Forgetting; In the Bowl of My Eye; and Finger to Finger. One of his Derek Jarman poems can be heard in Gregory Spears’ “The Tower and the Garden” on CD from Navona Records. His autobiography, Pieces of My Self, is being launched this May by Guernica Editions.
Kate Rogers’ poetry and critical writing have appeared in many literary journals and anthologies both in Canada and abroad, including The Montreal Poetry Prize shortlist (Véhicule Press), Looking Back at Hong Kong (CUHK Press), SubTerrain, ARC, PRISM, and many others. She is the author of three collections of poetry, Out of Place (Aeolus House/Quattro Books, 2017), City of Stairs (Haven Books, 2012), and Painting the Borrowed House (Proverse Press 2008) and was co-editor of the popular anthology, Not a Muse: The Inner Lives of Women (Haven Books, 2009). After living in Hong Kong and mainland China for more than twenty years, and teaching at City University of Hong Kong and in Toronto’s Centennial College China Program, she currently lives in eastern Ontario. Her next poetry collection, The Meaning of Leaving, is forthcoming with Montreal-based Ace of Swords Press in early 2024.
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Open mic
The ambience at our readings is intimate, extremely informal and very supportive. Open mic readers are given 4 minutes in total, including a brief introduction to themselves and their work. They may read any form of creative writing (fiction/poetry/drama/ screenplay) – or a work of reportage or creative non-fiction. The Tartan Turban Secret Readings is not a lecture or motivational speaking series, so no academic or self-help works, please.
There are detailed open mic guidelines posted in our FB group.
Open mic readers who have published works they would like to offer for sale are free to mention it upon finishing their readings
The Tartan Turban Secret Readings 