Our response

One of my favourite shops in the city is closing. Good Egg, delightful purveyor of fine books and all things cookery, riveting storefront window displays, for many a must stop destination, directly across the street from us, in Kensington Market. Their lease was up. Word is the landlord/s asking for $35,000 more a year. So long, Good Egg.

So long, Elliots, Pages, The Cookbook Shop, Britnells, Nicholas Hoare, This Ain’t the Rosedale Library. The [glorious] Silver Rail.

“Why is the measure of love loss?”*

That’s Toronto.

Here’s the real “deal.” We’re a poetry-only bookshop with one of the most vibrant reading schedules on the face of the earth. In Toronto. You can’t get that online. We’re worth the actual retail cost of a book. And a little more. – @itsakirby @verbicide https://t.co/of8yjPnhM6 pic.twitter.com/iJPhpjuI3P

— knifeforkbook (@knifeforkbook) April 17, 2018

knife | fork | book is not a monthly reading series, nor are we funded. We’re an upstart, bricks and mortar, poetry-only independent bookshop (the only one in Canada) entering our second year. The fact that we’re able to coexist in a second-floor shared artists space anywhere in Toronto is a miracle. 

It took our friends at Glad Day Books 25 years to land a street-level space (to some, not entirely accessible), not to mention they became a bar to do so.

KFB has a 5 to 10 year plan in the works to become a fully accessible not-for-profit housing cooperative for poets, including a storefront for the shop and a printing house. 

Meanwhile, we have held offsite readings upon request in [more] accessible venues and we’re looking into livestreaming our events (I know, it’s not the same).

We’re a poetry-only bookshop. Our fledgling business, at this time, is wondrously here. In this space. Small, with a mighty heart and vision.

How queer.

I’ve already stated our policy regarding social media, how we use it (and don’t use it).

Here, I’d like to fill in a bit more.

Upon graduating from university, my first job was to create a performance and movement arts company with severely disabled artists, many who came into their own voice, moving from dependent to independent living as a result. In 5 years I worked myself out of that job with the artists themselves continuing to direct the project.

I then entered an international program (housed at U of T) learning a modality that would increase my own mobilty and the mobility of those I’ve worked with (the Feldenkrais Method) which is what brought me to Canada. My first employment here was as an attendent assisting those with spinal cord injuries living in independent housing.

Soon after, I established a bodywork practice opening a business called MindBody Resources, again focused on breaking any barriers to physical mobility and choice. During this period, two-thirds of my clients became physically disabled with AIDS/HIV, and we established The Nourish Project meeting weekly in each other’s homes, preparing nutritious meals together for the week, washing each other’s hair, sharing current treatment information, fighting, attending memorials, shopping and delivering for each other, choosing love and intimacy over isolation.

It’s amazing what many of us have lived through. Continue to live through. Such odds.

It’s a courageous choice/act to continue. I bow.

I have been called many things. Go ahead, toss epithets at me #ableprivileged #whitegay #canlit

Yes, I am. White. Gay. Privileged. Approaching 60. Fortunate. Still here.

I am also radical, queer, poet, fairy, faggot, warrior, princess.

“Unprincipled?” “Indecent?,” (well, she’s been called that, too).

No excuses. No exemptions. Cast your stone.

*Jeanette Winterson Written on the Body