POW Poetry Festival this weekend in Cobourg, Ontario

Below, information for this weekend's Cobourg Poetry Festival. Mike Barnes will be discussing his memoir The Lily Pond on Saturday afternoon, and Diane Kuprel and Marek Kubisa qill be doing a bi-lingual reading from their translation of Ryszard Kapuscinski's I Wrote Stone Saturday evening. On Sunday, I'll be there on a panel with fellow publishers Tim Inkster and Beth Follett on the state of the book.

POETRY'Z OWN WEEKEND Festival
Thu Apr 16 - Sun Apr 19, 2009

With less than a month to go, Cobourg's inaugural 2009 POW! Festival - Poetry'z Own Weekend Festival - is moving into high gear. Some of Canada's finest poets are scheduled to read from their work over the 4-day event. POW! features poetry readings, lecture presentations, discussions exploring the world of poetry, a special session designed for kids, and a panel exploring the subject, "Whither the Book/Wither the Book.

Scheduled for April 17 thru 19, poets Mike Barnes, Jacqueline Larson, Paul Brown, Ted Amsden and Cobourg Poet Laureate Eric Winter are some of the poets signed up for the event. Professional actor David Calderisi will present the works of Robert Service, John Keats and Samuel Taylor Coleridege in an evening of recitation from memory.

POW! celebrates National Poetry Month across Canada. The municipal council of the Town of Cobourg has officially designated April 16 thru 19 as "Poetry Weekend in Cobourg."

Conceived by Cobourg poet James Pickersgill, the idea for the festival was inspired by an annual weekend festival held in Cobalt, Ontario. "If they can have a successful festival way up there," he thought, "why not in Cobourg?", a town that has become a sought after venue for out-of-town poets to read their work through the auspices of the Cobourg Poetry Workshop which holds monthly public readings of the work of local poets. Such a CPW evening will precede the festival on Thursday April 16 with poets Edward Carson, Carla Johnson and Grahame Woods presenting their work at "Meet At 66 King East," where the POW! Fesitval will be held in the inviting surroundings of a unique bistro overlooking Victoria Park and, beyond that, Lake Ontario.

"Many out-of-town poets and publishers already view Cobourg as a poetry place," Pickersgill noted, "but they will be convinced of that now that Town Council has declared POW's Thursday to Sunday as Poetry Weekend in Cobourg."

Admission to the 6 festival events is $6 each or a Weekend Pass can be purchased for $30.00. Admission to the 6.30 pm Opening Reception on Friday April 17 is $10 which includes a glass of wine and hors d'oeuvres. All tickets can be purchased by going to Meet at 66 King East, by phoning (905) 372-7616 or by emailing poetryzownweekend@sympatico.ca

Other poets in the full weekend line-up are: Carmine Starnino, JonArno Lawson, Art Cockerill, Linda Hutsell-Manning, JoEllen Bogart, Diana Kuprel, Marek Kubisa, Karen Dukes, Roz Bound, Marta Cooper, Oana Avasilichioaei and Ronna Bloom.

Other participants include Juno-nominated children's singer Eddie Douglas and 3 book publishers, Tim Inkster (Porcupine's Quill), Beth Follett (Pedlar Press) and Dan Wells (Biblioasis).

POW! acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the League of Canadian Poets.

More information on the internet: http://www.inkbottlepress.com/POW/pow_open.htm

Back ...etc.

It's been a long week, trying to catch up on the backlog caused by my Toronto trip for Sales Conference. Nose to the grindstone sorts of things: author touring and promotion grants and reports, finalizing two books for the printer, launches, promotion, correspondence, readying contracts, and a host of small but important administrative tasks which make for less-than-stellar reading.

Pleased to see Stephen Henighan's speech about translation posted early last week getting so much good attention. It's a fine speech, and the various links to it seems to have spread word about Biblioasis' International Translation Series -- and Kapuscinski's I Wrote Stone -- much better than I would have hoped. It's been our hope to spread word into the States with this, as we know there will be more interest in our series there than there will be in Canada -- though why this is the case I'm still not at all sure -- and this seems to be happening. There's even been some online buzz in the last week or so concerning Ondjaki's Good Morning Comrades, the second official title in the series, due out in February. Oh, the wonders of the web...

I Wrote Stone is close to becoming our best-selling poetry title, due in part to the several hundred U.S. wholesaler orders we've received over the last month. The good thing about these is that most -- if not all -- will not be returned. It's also picked up online, and as of yesterday was sitting close to a 1000 overall on amazon.ca, and was listed as 3rd overall -- after Dante and Neruda -- under continental European poetry. Not a bad start.