Poetry Postscript

Speakers for this event

• Gary Barwin

  Gary Barwin

  Gary Barwin is the author of 31 books including Scandal at the Alphorn Factory: New and Selected Short Fiction 2024-1984 and the national bestselling novel Yiddish for Pirates which won the Leacock Medal and the Canadian Jewish Literary Award, was a finalist for the Governor General’s Award and the Giller Prize and was long listed for Canada Reads. He lives in Hamilton. 

  URL https://garybarwin.com/

• Gregory Betts

  Gregory Betts

  Gregory Betts is a poet and professor whose work consistently explores concrete, constrained, or collaborative poetics. He is the author of 11 books of poetry, including BardCode (2024) a visual rendering of the sound patterns in Shakespeare’s sonnets. His poems have been stenciled into the sidewalks of St. Catharines and selected by the SETI Institute to be implanted into the surface of the moon. He performed at the Vancouver 2010 Olympics, as part of the Cultural Olympiad. He is the curator of the bpNichol.ca Digital Archive, and author of the award-winning books Finding Nothing: the VanGardes 1959-1975 and Avant-Garde Canadian Literature.

• Lillian Allen

  Lillian Allen

  Toronto’s seventh poet laureate, Lillian Allen is an acclaimed foremother of Canadian Poetry. She received an Honourary Doctor of Letters from Wilfrid Laurier University for her significant contribution and impact on Canadian literature.A poet, writer/performer, and a long-time arts activist, she is a leading international exponent of dub poetry with its politically charged reggae-infused aesthetic of resistance and poetic calls for justice, peace, joy, pleasure and revolution. Lillian has also been a successful Cultural Strategist, advising three levels of government and played a key role in transforming the Toronto and Canadian cultural landscapes. A mentor to the mentors for individuals and groups across many cultures, she brings her critical and effective equity and community building strategies to institution such as OCAD University. A creative writing professor at OCAD University, she initiated and led the development of a BFA in Creative Writing Program that acknowledges community connected writing, traditional, non-traditional and new writing forms.Over the decades, she created opportunities for new generations of artists and initiated and led community-building youth-supporting arts programs such as Fresh Elements and Fresh Arts. She has received numerous accolades, citations and awards, and is the recipient of The Toronto Cultural Champions Award, The Margo Bindhardt Award for significantly impacting the arts in Toronto through both creative work and activism, the William P. Hubbard Award for Race. She is the recipient of the Writer’s Trust Margaret Laurence Lecture Award, 2020/ and a recipient of the Gustafson Distinguished Poet award 2021.Lillian’s newest collection is Make the World New- selected works, old & new, edited by Ronald Cummings, WLU Press 2021, other books include Women Do this Every Day, Psychic Unrest, plus books and recordings for children and young people. Also, a globally recognized recording artist, Ms. Allen is a two-time Canadian Juno award winner for her recordings Conditions Critical, and for Revolutionary Tea Party which was recently nominated for the prestigious Polaris Heritage Prize in Canada.