Event: Ottawa WritersFest

I’m headed from Montreal to Ottawa today to read at the WritersFest tomorrow. It’s the end of their fall line-up and what better way to finish than with a passel of poets. The information you’ll need is at the top of this article. See you there!

The Ottawa International Writers Festival presents ‘Poetry Cabaret’ with George Murray, Peter Norman, Sandra Ridley and M.T. Kelly. Oct. 25 at 8:30 p.m. at the Mayfair Theatre. Tickets: $15; $10 students and seniors; Free for Festival members and Carleton students.

Contest: National Post Write-Your-Own-Aphorism contest winners

The National Post has posted the winners and honorable mentions from the Glimpse contest they ran in which they asked readers to submit their own original aphorism. I chose three winners, who will each receive a signed copy of the book, and three honorable mentions, who get nothing except their names in the paper. I judged them blind (meaning I couldn’t see the names of those who wrote what), and yet other poet-types crept in there, most notably Gary Barwin, who won a book, and Christian Bök, who had two honorable mentions.

Last month, in honour of George Murray’s new book, Glimpse, we asked readers to submit their best aphorisms.

We received a fair amount of replies, and forwarded the lot of them to Murray, who agreed to choose the winners. He also pointed out that many of the submissions were either famous quotes or lifted from comedians. So, er, yeah. Maybe we didn’t make the rules clear: we were looking for original aphorisms.

Anyways, here are our winners, who will each receive a signed copy of Glimpse.

Event: Montreal Launch

I’ll be in Montreal on October 22 to launch Glimpse at Drawn and Quarterly. I’ll be reading with local poet Jason Camlot while there. Please come down and introduce yourself!

Who: George Murray and Jason Camlot
What: Reading from their latest poetry collections
Where: Drawn and Quarterly, 211 Rue Bernard Ouest (map)
When: Oct 22, 7pm