SINGLE ONION #175
IMPORTANT: You will need to register for the event.
WHAT: The Single Onion presents five excellent poets: David Bateman, Laurie MacFayden, Natalie Meisner, Billeh Nickerson, and John Williamson.
WHEN: Thursday, May 20, 7:00 pm (MST)
About the readers:
David Bateman is a performance poet and painter who received his PhD in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Calgary in 2001. He has four collections of poetry form Frontenac House Press (Calgary) including the collaborative long poem ‘Wait Until Late Afternoon’ written with novelist and poet Hiromi Goto. His first novel, DR SAD, was published by University Of Calgary Press in November of 2020. He currently lives in Toronto, and has taught creative writing and literature at various post secondary institutions across the country: University of Calgary, Trent University (Peterborough, Ontario), Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design University (Vancouver), Thompson Rivers University (Kamloops).
Laurie MacFayden is an award-winning writer, visual artist and journalist who has lived in Edmonton since 1984. In addition to three books of poetry published by Frontenac House, her work has appeared in Alberta Views, The New Quarterly, FreeFall; and been performed in Edmonton’s Loud & Queer Cabaret, the Skirts Afire Arts festival, and Calgary’s Q the Arts cultural festival. Her short story Haircut won the Howard O’Hagan prize at the 2017 Writers Guild of Alberta literary awards.
Natalie Meisner, our city’s current Poet Laureate, is a multi-genre award-winning writer who grew up on the South Shore of Nova Scotia and has been based in Calgary since 2000. She began her career as a writer in the spoken word and indie theatre scene in Halifax, has had plays produced across the country, and now writes and teaches literature and creative writing at Mount Royal University (MRU) where she also serves as Director of Changemaking facilitating community and university arts-based projects in social justice and social innovation. Her latest book of poetry, Baddie One Shoe, is a sequence of performance poems that pay homage to women renegades of the past who fight the power with laughter.
Billeh Nickerson is a Vancouver-based author, editor and educator whose sixth book, Duct-Taped Roses, was recently published with Book*hug Press. He is Co-Chair of the Creative Writing department at Kwantlen Polytechnic University in Surrey, BC. In his spare time he likes to collect airline barf bags. He lives and loves in East Vancouver.
John Williamson is a poet and educator from the city colonially known as Calgary and previously as Mohkínstsis. Prior to Covid he was busily doing features in support of his 2019 chapbook Broken and Strong: Family Fragments. A spoken word and page poet John competed with the Calgary team for the national team poetry slam title in 2018, has featured at many events in Alberta, and has published poems in several journals including High Shelf Press and Prairie Journal. In other genres John’s PhD thesis The Case of the Disappearing / Appearing Slow Learner, written as a detective novel, won the University of Calgary’s Chancellor medal and has been republished in the Journal of Applied Hermeneutics. John did not have a particularly productive experience during the early to mid times of the plague but is trying to get back into the art that inspires and nurtures him.
The Single Onion takes place the third Thursday of the month, nine times a year. Our event schedule can always be found at:
For the most up-to-date Single Onion news, check us out on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/singleonion
We gratefully acknowledge the support of The Canada Council for the Arts, The League of Canadian Poets, and the Calgary Arts Development.
