On Thursday, August 18 at 6pm, join Massy Arts, Massy Books, and Vancouver-based poet and novelist Meredith Quartermain for the launch of her new book “Lullabies in the Real World” (2020), a finalist for the 2021 Robert Kroetsch Award for Poetry.
At this in-person event dedicated to poetry, Quartermain will be joined by poet Carol Harvey Steski to read passages from the authors latest books: “Lullabies in the Real World” and “rump + flank”. After the readings, author will engage in an intimate conversation about how language, rhythm, and literature can investigate the place of a colonial nation in history, and the place of a poet vis-à-vis the voices of other poets.
The event will be hosted at the Massy Arts Gallery, at 23 East Pender Street in Chinatown, Vancouver.
This event is free + open to all of our community, and registration is mandatory.
Covid Protocols: For all in-person events, attendees must provide proof of vaccination, and use of mask at all times when at the gallery. We ask that if you are showing any symptoms, that you stay home. Thank you kindly.
Click here to register for the event
Click here to purchase Lullabies in the Real World by Meredith Quartermain
Click here to purchase rump + flank by Carol Harvey Steski
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Book
Meredith Quartermain’s Lullabies in the Real World is a sequence of poems about a train journey from West Coast to East Coast that invokes a patchwork of regions, voices and histories. Her language zings with train rhythms as she unfolds a complex conversation with poets such as bpNichol and Robin Blaser.
This collection reflects and refracts Canada from diverse angles, and challenges colonizing literatures such as the Odyssey and various canonical British and US voices.
As it moves from west to east, the book journeys back in time to interrogate historical events such as the Battle of the Plains of Abraham and the exclusion of Acadians. It ends by imagining a time before or outside colonization.
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Author
Meredith Quartermain is a poet and novelist living in Vancouver, British Columbia. Her first book of poetry, Vancouver Walking, won a BC Book Award for poetry; Recipes from the Red Planet was a finalist for a BC Book Award for fiction; and Nightmarker was a finalist for a Vancouver Book Award.
A novel called Rupert’s Land was released by NeWest Press in Fall 2013. She has since published a collection of stories entitled I, Bartleby, in 2015, and a novel, U Girl, in 2016. She is also cofounder of Nomados Literary Publishers, who have brought out more than 45 chapbooks of innovative Canadian and US writing since 2002.
From 2014 to 2016, she was Poetry Mentor in the SFU Writer’s Studio Program, and she has enjoyed leading workshops at the Kootenay School of Writing, The Toronto New School of Writing and Naropa University.
In Spring 2020, her latest collection of poems, Lullabies in the Real World, was released as a part of the Crow Said Poetry Series.
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Guest
Carol Harvey Steski grew up under the wide Winnipeg sky. Her poems have been published in the poetry anthology Another Dysfunctional Cancer Poem Anthology, and literary magazines including Room, Prairie Fire, FreeFall, untethered, Contemporary Verse 2, and CAROUSEL.
Her work was featured in Winnipeg Transit’s “Poetry in Motion” program and tootled around town on buses. Twice she was a finalist in FreeFall’s annual poetry contest.
As a young-adult survivor of melanoma she has been a guest on CBC Radio-Manitoba speaking about the therapeutic benefits of writing through disease. She lives in Toronto with her husband and daughter, working in corporate communications. rump + flank is her debut poetry collection.