KFB | FRIDAY MAY 3RD 7PM

 

 

“In Q&A Adrienne Gruber annotates the condition of the pre- and post-partum body, training her ruthless poetic eye on division: cell by cell, mother from daughter, fact from misguided historical tendency. Is this a love poem / or a poem of grief? / When we make something / we lose, she writes. Throughout these poems and their namesake childhood interrogatives, fluids course, sutures tear, ducts leak. Gruber’s ability to command the language of sublime physicality draws motherhood’s grotesque fears close, turning them over like an infant on a lap, examining perfections and dangers with intimate scrutiny.” —ELEE KRALJII GARDINER, author of Trauma Head and serpentine loop

“War / Torn mourns, loves and burns all the derogatory impulses of our continuous present. This book is of and against our time. War / Torn is a breathless elegy in the most defiantly tender poetics you can imagine.”
—JORDAN SCOTT, author of Night & Ox, and winner of the Latner Poetry Prize by the Writer’s Trust of Canada

KHASHAYAR MOHAMMADI DEAR KESTREL KFB CHAPBOOK LAUNCH

 w/Special Guest Poets

ADRIENNE GRUBER

+ HASAN NAMIR

ADRIENNE GRUBER is the author of two books of poetry, Buoyancy Control (BookThug) and This is the Nightmare (Thistledown Press), and five chapbooks. She won The Antigonish Review’s Great Blue Heron poetry contest in 2015, SubTerrain’s Lush Triumphant poetry contest in 2017 and has been shortlisted for the CBC Literary Awards, ARC’s Poem of the Year contest, Descant’s Winston Collins Best Canadian Poem contest and Matrix Magazine’s Lit POP poetry contest. In 2012, her chapbook, Mimic was awarded the bpNichol Chapbook Award. Originally from Saskatoon, Adrienne lives in Vancouver with her partner and two daughters. Q & A is her third book.

HASAN NAMIR was born in Iraq in 1987. He graduated from Simon Fraser University with a BA in English and received the Ying Chen Creative Writing Student Award. He is the author of God in Pink (2015), which won the Lambda Literary Award for Best Gay Fiction and was chosen as one of the Top 100 Books of 2015 by The Globe and Mail. His work has also been featured on Huffington Post, Shaw TV, Airbnb, and in the film God in Pink: A Documentary. He lives with his husband in Vancouver.

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 KFB | SATURDAY MAY 4TH 3PM 

 

 

“WE COULD BE ANYTHING is a child’s tongue lashed by the desecrations of humanity, a shard of apocalypse buried in the ordinary montages of suburban life, scraps of love songs set aflame by death neuroses. To read it is to enter dystopic tableaux where forgetfulness brings both disaster and sweet relief; where worlds crack faster than the exhausted could mourn them; where hope, not yet insensate, still answers to beauty.”

– FAN WU, author of Hoarfrost & Solace

“WE COULD BE ANYTHING is a book that is not afraid to employ as many of the currently unfashionable, yet necessary elements of poetry, in order to deliver what I consider, truly transcendent, visionary work in this emergency present. We Could Be Anything is lush, surrealistic and courageous.”

– MARC DI SAVERIO, author of Sanatorium Songs

STANFORD CHEUNG ALVIN WONG [SCOTT HUNTER] WE COULD BE ANYTHING (CREVASSE, JAPAN)

ALVIN WONG has published work in literary journals including /Temz/Review, Half a Grapefruit Magazine and Ricepaper. He studies theatre and creative writing at York University. Born in Toronto, he is the senior editor of the publisher, Inspiritus Press and typesets at Guernica Editions.  https://caraparcel.neocities.org/  

STANFORD CHEUNG stands at the intersection of music and poetry where he cultivates diverse collaborations with both writers, visual and musical artists. His first book of poems Structures from the Still, was released by Akinoga Press in 2018. Among his chapbooks include Any Seam or Needlework (Operating System, 2016) and Kite Extension (words(on)pages, 2017). His work appears in places such as Nomadic Journal, Tokyo Poetry Journal, Ricepaper Magazine, and Prompt. Born in Toronto, he freelances as a pianist.  https://stanfordcheung.com/ 

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KFB | SATURDAY MAY 4TH 8PM

KIRBY

THIS IS WHERE I GET OFF

PERMANENT SLEEP PRESS

LAUNCH

 

 

 

 

w/SPECIAL GUEST POETS

CODY CAETANO + PAUL DANIEL TORRES

KIRBY’s earlier chapbooks include Cock & Soul, Bob’s boy, The World Is Fucked and Sometimes Beautiful, and She’s Having a Doris Day (KFB, 2017). Kirby is the owner/publisher of  knife | fork | book.

CODY ALEXANDER JOSEPH CAETANO is an Anishinaabe and Portuguese writer. Cody is finishing his MA in Creative Writing at the University of Toronto, where he facilitates workshops, serves as the co-editor (‘echo-lo-chief’) for Echolocation literary journal, and is at work on a nonfiction manuscript under the mentorship of Sto:lo writer Lee Maracle. Their debut chapbook, Pleasure Dome Poems is published/available at knife | fork | book.

What’s up! The name’s PAUL-DANIEL TORRES (or danny depending and where and how you know me) I’m twenty years old, with a love for film and making people happy. I’m a Toronto native, born from Ecuadorean parents. I try to embody the elements of the immigrant dream in my life and in my work. With things such as; Hope and resilience in the face of adversity and the quest for happiness, that’s what it’s all about.

knife | fork | book
at The Dark Side Studio | 244 Augusta Avenue | 2nd Floor | Kensington Market | Toronto

Doors 1/2 hour before event. We are timely. No entry once program begins.

Access: We are a second floor walk-up with two all-gender washrooms. Please remove your shoes upon entrance.