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Articles, Interviews

Peculiar Radiance: An Interview with Sue Sinclair

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Sue Sinclair Author PhotoSue Sinclair’s latest collection of poetry is Breaker, published by Brick Books and nominated for the Atlantic Poetry Prize and the Pat Lowther Award. Sue is currently critic-in-residence for CWILA (Canadian Women in the Literary Arts) and is living in Montreal, where she’s practising her wobbly French.

EVENT published one of her poems in 41/2, and Elena E. Johnson was curious to ask her a few questions—about beauty, criticism, her current influences, and the new collection of poems she’s working on at the moment.

Articles, Interviews

Go Away, I’m Reading. Really: EVENT in conversation with author Anne Fleming

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One year Anne Fleming gave her nephew a book for Christmas and watched from the sidelines as the volume captivated him for the next three hours. Though she hadn’t seen him in months, though she gave him the book that spellbound him, though she would have loved to talk to him about the book, he commenced to read the book from cover to cover, oblivious to everyone around him. Reminded of her own childhood, of not being available to her father or anyone else while she read, she realized that perhaps this ‘was the real reason [her] father turfed [her] out of doors time and again, bookless, to participate in things of this world.’ This is the ‘aha moment’ she recalls in EVENT magazine’s latest Notes on Writing issue (42/1) in her brilliant essay ‘Novels Are for Children.’ After reading countless stories, and writing many of her own, Anne recognizes that becoming wholly lost in a book rarely happens to her anymore. ‘Hyperaware’ of the tricks authors are up to, she reflects on how often our best experiences of reading are the ones we have while we are still wide-eyed children, easily and utterly swept away by a good story. Luckily for us at EVENT, we don’t have any trouble being swept away by her writing.

Announcements, Articles

The Automated Poetry Project

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APPRemember gumball machines? Of course you do. For me, their draw was never really about the gumball. It was the process. It was putting the coin into the twisty thing and twisting it, and, (blop!), incidentally, out comes a gumball. At some point in time, this must have been considered high-tech and an indication of a promising/horrifying future.

What if I told you that you could get something way better, something healthier for your teeth, something with more lasting value, out of a similar, re-conditioned machine? Yes, I am referring to poetry.

This is the Automated Poetry Project, by the Literary Press Group of Canada, which uses gumball-machine technology to fund literary arts in Vancouver, one toonie at a time. So, what do you get for your toonie? Maybe you’ll get a poem from some of your favourite EVENT authors, or even EVENT editor Elizabeth Bachinsky. But it’s random. Just like you can’t choose the green gumball, you can’t choose a Calvin Wharton poem. Maybe you’ll get something new. Maybe you’ll find your new favourite poet. For a complete list of participants, click here.

Articles, Interviews

Pretending I Don’t Write At All: EVENT Interviews Souvankham Thammavongsa

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Souvankham Thammavongsa was born in Nong Khai, Thailand in 1978. She is the author of two poetry books, one of which, Small Arguments, won a ReLit prize, and the other, Found, was made into a short film and screened at film festivals worldwide including the Toronto International Film Festival, L.A. Shorts Fest, and Dok Leipzig. Her third poetry collection, Light, is out this fall.

Elena Johnson was impressed by the careful structural aesthetic and sensitive approach in Thammavongsa’s individual poems, as well as in Found, her most recent collection. EVENT published Thammavongsa’s poem “Perfect” in issue 41.3, and Johnson took this opportunity to talk to her about the poem, her new manuscript and her other creative work.

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