Milkcraters of the Moon Reading Series with Michael Turner
Date:
Thu, Sep 20th, 2018Time:
7:00 pm
Description:
This is the fifth reading in the Milkcraters of the Moon (MOM) Reading series.
MOM is a collaboration between Kelowna non-profit arts organization, The Inspired Word Cafe, and the UBCO Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies. The goal of the series is to foster community and coalition building between our local and institutional art communities by pairing notable Canadian authors from out of town with writers from our own community, and to provide a short open mic for other creators to share their work.
About 9x11
‘A small room behind a bay window. A single bed, a table and chair, and a sink. I could manage something larger, with more conveniences, but I could never match the view.’
How you view 21st century life depends largely on the view from your place, which depends on where you can afford to live. In this suite of texts and poems written over twenty years that span the infamous towers, Michael Turner drops in to see what condition he's in, a subject whipped into insistence by the rhythms that shape his city, his neighbourhood, his universe.
What arises out of the debris of these towers is a vision of contemporary history that sees them — their creation and destruction — existing within a web of capital relations that leave no landlord or office worker unturned.
In her Globe and Mail review of Turner's “startlingly straightforward and minimalist” 8x10 (2009), Zoe Whitall concludes: “8x10 is an unsettling and daring work, a tangible symbol of our anxious world and the stark emotional devastation of war. I hope Turner starts a trend in Canadian literature, because Canada needs more writers like him.”
"Reading Michael Turner's extraordinary 9x11 I was reminded of Christa Wolf's Accident, how global crisis intensifies the daily — except that in Turner's/our current state disruption has become the new norm. Disruption both terrifies and excites the poet — the stacked monotony of skyscrapers is broken both by the horror of people leaping out of buildings and by Mallarme's thrilling abandonment of vertical structure in "Un coup de des jamais n'abolira le hasard" (1897). All the reflections and contemplative rhymes add up to a holographic text that begs repeated reading. 9 x 11 is a date, a disaster, and the measurements of the poet's room. For Turner architecture is a form of poetic divination, and poetry is a form of architecture. Living in a city, community is inevitable — coffee house / apartment building / poetry peers — and despite his caution, Turner's tense heart proves very big."
––– Dodie Bellamy
About Michael Turner
Michael Turner is Vancouver–based writer whose multigenre books include Company Town (1991), Hard Core Logo (1993), Kingsway (1995), American Whisky Bar (1997) and The Pornographer's Poem (1999). A frequent collaborator, he has written scripts with Stan Douglas, poems with Geoffrey Farmer, and songs with cub, Dream Warriors, Fishbone and Kinnie Starr.
9 x 11 is his latest book.
Venue:
Milkcrate Records
Address:527 Lawrence Ave., Kelowna
Cost:
For more info:
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