THURSDAY NIGHT POETS  JANUARY 19TH

CLAIRE CALDWELL Invasive Species

LAURA K. McRAE Distributaries

MICHAEL PRIOR Model Disciple

Doors 6:30PM  Poetry 7-ish

Claire Caldwell is a poet and editor living in Toronto. Her first book is Invasive Species, part of the Buckrider Books imprint at Wolsak and Wynn. Claire was the 2013 winner of the Malahat Review‘s Long Poem Prize, and her work has appeared in many magazines and journals, including This Magazine, Maisonneuve and Prism International. She also runs SmallPrintTO’s Rhyme Stew, a rap-poetry workshop for kids. Claire holds an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph. Find her on Twitter @cpmcaldwell or send her an email at clairepmcaldwell (at) gmail (dot) com.

Laura Kathryn McRae is a teacher in Toronto, Ontario where she lives and writes. Her debut chapbook, Distributaries (Frog Hollow Press, 2016).  Her work has appeared in The Antigonish Review, PIF Magazine, Northwind Magazine, and Room Magazine, and is forthcoming in Emerge Literary Journal and in Contemporary Verse 2. 

Michael Prior‘s first collection is Model Disciple (Vehicule/Signal, 2016). His poems have appeared in many publications across North America and the UK. Winner of The Walrus‘s Poetry Prize, Matrix Magazine’s LitPop Award, Grain’s Short Grain Contest, Magma Poetry’s Editors’ Prize and Vallum’s Poetry Prize, Michael currently resides in Ithaca, New York, where he is an MFA candidate in poetry at Cornell University.

FRIDAY NIGHT PROTEST READING  JANUARY 20TH  7-9PM

MOEZ SURANI  Operations

knife fork book & BookThug present a global reading of the epic list poem in its entirely. In/outdoors (dress for the weather)

Moez Surani earned a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) degree in Biology and English Language and Literature from Queen’s University. He moved to Montreal and earned a Master of Arts from Concordia University in English Language and Literature and Creative Writing. Following these degrees, he travelled and worked abroad and his writing was published in journals and anthologies across Europe and North America. His first poetry collection, Reticent Bodies, was published in 2009. One critic assessed the book’s impact: “Reticent Bodies is that rare book that has the power to be a lynchpin, a hinge in the history of Canadian poetry.” Another critic focused on the book’s voice: “he is capable of shifting effortlessly from a terse, monosyllabic, style to enormously complex syntactic compositions resulting in a very expressive language.” Later in 2009, he won a Chalmers Arts Fellowship that supported a research stint to India and East Africa. He walked the Camino Santiago across Spain and climbed Mount Kilimanjaro and attended artists residencies in Italy, Finland, Canada, Latvia, Switzerland and Taiwan. In 2012, he published his second poetry collection, Floating Life, which was praised for its “stunning, simple images.” He’s now working on collaborations and on interdisciplinary art and performance art pieces.

knife | fork | book @ Rick’s Cafe | 281 Augusta Avenue | Kensington Market