Tag Archives: Brad Cran

Poetry in downtown Vancouver (Canada) on March 28, 2012

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Lunchtime poetry readings are being held at Simon Fraser University at its Harbour Centre campus in Vancouver’s downtown core and this one on March 28, 2012 marks the beginning.

Wednesday, March 28, 2012

lunch poems @sfu with poets Evelyn Lau and Daniela Elza

Time: Noon-1 pm

Place: The Teck Gallery, Harbour Centre, 515 West Hastings

Cost: Free

Lunch poems @sfu is a new series of volunteer-run poetry readings held monthly, featuring well-known and new poets. This inaugural event features Evelyn Lau, current Vancouver Poet Laureate, and Daniela Elza.

Evelyn Lau was born in Vancouver in 1971 and is the author of five volumes of poetry, two works of non-fiction, two short story collections and a novel, with works translated into a dozen languages worldwide. She is at work on her sixth collection of poetry. She has received various awards for her work. Runaway: Diary of a Street Kid, published when she was only 18, was a Canadian bestseller and was made into a movie.

Daniela Elza’s work has been published in more than fifty literary and peer-reviewed publications and to date she has released more than 200 poems into the world. In 2011 Daniela received her doctorate in Philosophy of Education from Simon Fraser University.

Here’s a bit more about Poet Laureates in Vancouver, from  the City of Vancouver’s Poet Laureate page,

The Poet Laureate is an honorary position that was established by City Council in December 2006 to honour and celebrate the contribution of literature and poetry to life in Vancouver. The position is funded by a generous endowment established by Dr. Yosef Wosk, OBC [Order of British Columbia], in 2006.

George McWhirter, Professor Emeritus of UBC’s Creative Writing Program was named Vancouver’s first Poet Laureate on March 8, 2007. In 2009, McWhirter published the anthology A Verse Map of Vancouver with Anvil Press, which included upwards of 100 poets who mapped Vancouver’s verse geography.

Brad Cran, Vancouver’s second Poet Laureate, [completed] his term on October 22, 2011. He organized the Vancouver 125 Poetry Conference (October 19-22, 2011), a national gathering of a generation of poets who published their first book after 1990.

Evelyn Lau is Vancouver’s 3rd Poet Laureate. Here’s more from the City of Vancouver Oct. 14, 2011 news release announcing her appointment,

The City of Vancouver, in partnership with the Vancouver Public Library and the Vancouver International Writers Festival, is proud to announce celebrated local poet and author Evelyn Lau as Vancouver’s third Poet Laureate.

…

Ms. Lau plans to raise the profile of local poets and bring poetry into public spaces and public discourse, continuing the work her predecessor. She will also meet with aspiring poets in the community through a series of poet-in-residence consultations and continue to work on her sixth collection of poetry.

….

Runaway: Diary of a Street Kid, published when she was 18, was a Canadian bestseller and was made into a movie. You Are Not Who You Claim won the Milton Acorn People’s Poetry Award, and Oedipal Dreams was nominated for the Governor-General’s Award for poetry. Her poems have been included in Best American Poetry and Best Canadian Poetry and received a National Magazine Award. Her most recent collection, Living Under Plastic, won the Pat Lowther Award for best book of poetry by a woman in Canada.

V125PC

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Vancouver (Canada) is holding a poetry conference (amongst other events) to celebrate its 125th anniversary. Here’s a bit more about the event from an Oct. 19, 2011 article by Cheryl Rossi for the Vancouver Courier,

If the idea of a four-day poetry conference conjures images of men who sport berets pontificating alongside grim women, you might be surprised to learn the Vancouver 125 Poetry Conference, Oct. 19 to 22, [2011] includes one writer who has posted poetic structures that others can “renovate” online and another who aims to embed prose in bacteria.

“Quite frankly, I often don’t even admit I’m a poet because it just sounds so pretentious,” said Brad Cran, the city’s outgoing poet laureate who dreamt up the convention. “But in reality, poetry’s this really dynamic thing. More than anything, that’s what I wanted to show with the curation of this event is that poetry, it can’t really be defined easily and it’s as open and as infinite as any art.”

The ’embedded prose in bacteria’ piece sounds like it might have been inspired by J. Craig Venter who coded a quote from James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man into synthetic DNA (mentioned in my Synthetic biology bumps up against James Joyce and copyright posting in March 2011). Here’s a little more about the ‘renovation’ and ’embedded prose’ projects,

Author Sachiko Murakami is inviting writers to remodel others’ poems with her online Project Rebuild. She’ll read and speak at an event that focuses on future directions in contemporary poetry alongside Calgary’s Christian Bök, whose Xenotext Experiment aims to create a poem in the form of a genetic sequence that would serve as a set of instructions to build a protein that would include another embedded message or a second original poem.

There’s still a couple days left for the conference so here’s a link to the schedule of events.

Vancouver’s new poet laureate

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I just saw and heard Brad Cran’s first event as Vancouver’s poet laureate. The inaugural poet laureate, George McWhirter was present at the City of Vancouver chambers today (May 5, 2009) at 3:45 pm along with the city council, mayor, and many of Cran’s supporters.

I enjoyed the poetry (both Cran’s and that of the children from grade two [not sure which school]). I gather he’s a community activist of some sort although I haven’t come across him before. His first poem was about the violence we’ve had recently. I’m not sure what the title was other than it had the word bullet in it. His poems are relatively brief and the few I’ve heard or read concern themselves with contemporary urban life. Cran made a point of mentioning the Downtown Eastside before reciting his poem about community. Then, it was the kids’ turn. It was about what you’d expect from a group of seven and eight year olds. Charming, funny, ofetn concerned with candy, ice cream, and pets, and with an occasional reference to contemporary social issues e.g. homelessness. Apparently, this is a preview of a longer piece with children that Cran plans to work on as part of his duties as Vancouver’s poet laureate.

Cran thanked everybody and their uncle and made special mention of a new book that George McWhirter edited,  A Verse Map of Vancouver. I think it was one of McWhirter’s poet laureate projects. Cran’s appointment, like McWhirter’s, is for three years.