Want to know what it takes to edit an anthology or what is happening in the Canadian poetry publishing scene? Join the York Creative Writing Speaker Series as authors Barry Dempster, Andrew Faulkner, Daniel Scott Tsydal and Priscila Uppal read and discuss poetry.

Left: Priscila Uppal

The four will read from their work in the new collection, Best Canadian Poetry in English, of which Uppal was the guest editor, followed by a panel discussion moderated by York English and education Professor Rishma Dunlop and a Q&A. The event will take place Monday, Oct. 31, from noon to 2pm, in the Paul Delaney Gallery, 320 Bethune College. Everyone is welcome to attend. Refreshments will be served.

Right: Barry Dempster

Dempster, twice nominated for the Governor General’s Literary Award, is the author of 16 books. His collection, The Burning Alphabet, won the Canadian Authors’ Association Chalmers Award for Poetry in 2005. In 2010, he was a finalist for the Ontario Premier's Award for Excellence in the Arts. He is also acquisitions editor for Brick Books and teaches writing workshops from Banff, Alberta, to Santiago, Chile. His most recent books include Love Outlandish, Ivan’s Birches and Blue Wherever. His latest collection is Dying a Little (Wolsak & Wynn).

Faulkner curates The Emergency Response Unit, a chapbook press, with Leigh Nash. His chapbook, Useful Knots and How to Tie Them, was shortlisted for the 2009 bpNichol Chapbook Award and he is a partner in the editorial firm Re:word Communications.

Left: Daniel Scott Tsydal. Photo by Jayne Tysdal

Tysdal is the author of The Mourner’s Book of Albums (Tightrope Books, 2010). His first book of poetry, Predicting the Next Big Advertising Breakthrough Using a Potentially Dangerous Method (Coteau, 2006), received the ReLit Award for Poetry in 2007 and the Anne Szumigalski Poetry Award in 2006. He currently teaches creative writing and English literature at the University of Toronto Scarborough.

Uppal, the series editor for The Best Canadian Poetry, (see YFile, Oct. 19) is a Toronto poet, fiction writer and York professor. Among her publications are eight collections of poetry, most recently, Ontological Necessities (2006), shortlisted for the $50,000 Griffin Poetry Prize, Traumatology (2010), Successful Tragedies: Poems 1998-2010, and Winter Sport: Poems; the critically-acclaimed novels The Divine Economy of Salvation (2002) and To Whom It May Concern (2009); and the study We Are What We Mourn: The Contemporary English-Canadian Elegy (2009). Her work has been published internationally and translated into Croatian, Dutch, French, Greek, Italian, Korean and Latvian. She was the first-ever poet-in-residence for Canadian Athletes Now during the 2010 Vancouver Olympic and Paralympic games, as well as the Roger’s Cup Tennis Tournament in 2011. Time Out London recently dubbed her “Canada’s coolest poet.”

Right: Rishma Dunlop

Dunlop was a finalist for the CBC Literary Awards in 1998 and again in 2009, and winner of the Emily Dickinson Prize for Poetry in 2003. She is a poet, playwright, translator and essayist. She has several poetry collections, including Metropolis (Mansfield Press, 2005), Reading Like A Girl (Black Moss Press, 2004) and The Body of My Garden (Mansfield Press, 2002). White Album (Inanna Publications, 2008) combines Dunlop’s poems with paintings by Suzanne Northcott. Her radio play, The Raj Kumari's Lullaby, was commissioned by CBC Radio in 2005.

Republished courtesy of YFile– York University’s daily e-bulletin.