Monica Kidd, Glen Downie and Myles Blank come together in celebration of National Poetry Month

Date:    Wednesday, April 25, 2012
Time:    7 pm
Where:  Community Room
Audience:  Adults

In honour of National Poetry Month, Nova Scotia's Gaspereau Press and Wolsak & Wynn of Toronto with support of the Whistler Public Library and the Writers' Union of Canada are proud to present three great poets whose experience in the medical field has helped shape the way in which they view the world and write poetry.

Newfoundland poet and physician Monica Kidd will launch her new collection Handfuls of Bone while Toronto poet and former social worker Glen Downie and Vancouver poet-psychiatrist Myles Blank read from their most recent works.

Free to attend. No registration required.

This event is co-sponsored by Gasperau Press, Wolsak & Wynn, Armchair Books, Whistler Public Library, with financial support of the Canada Council through the Writers' Union of Canada.

About the poets and their work:

Monica Kidd - Handfuls of Bone

Monica Kidd's Handfuls of Bone takes the reader to the end of the road and back, to outports both literal and figurative, to consider how it is that things somehow hold together. The poems, primarily short, narrative in form and lyric in spirit, are driven by distilled observation and concern themselves with the elemental. These truths find their expression in images of fish drying on Newfoundland clotheslines, of the velvety breath of a newborn baby, of a family's grief following a sudden death, of Amelia Earhart's ambition and apprehension, and of motherhood through thick and thin. In confronting uncomfortable moments of loss, want, illness, uncertainty and conflict, Kidd holds a level gaze, avoiding sentimentality and nostalgia. Kidd's is a poetic which embodies the twin skills of her physician's training-cool-headed and unblinking observation-based diagnosis combined with compassion, empathy and humanity.

Monica Kidd grew up on the rural Alberta prairies. She completed a B.Sc. at the University of Calgary, an M.Sc. at Queen's University, attended medical school at Memorial University and is now a practicing physician and writer in St. John's, Newfoundland. She is the author of two novels (Beatrice and The Momentum of Red), a book of non-fiction (Any Other Woman: An Uncommon Biography) and a collection of poetry entitled (Actualities). Her short experimental films have shown in Atlantic Canada and in Amsterdam. She has worked as a seabird biologist and as a reporter for CBC Radio, where her news items and documentaries have won numerous awards. She lives in St. John's, Newfoundland, with her husband and children.

Glen Downie - Wishbone Dance, Local News

Downie's poetry carries us to the precipice where the heart of human illness and suffering is in full view. His medical poems are harsh and intimate, ironic and tender, the words of a man who has not only worked for years with disabled and dying patients, but opened himself and allowed them under his skin. These are courageous poems, full of tough hope. - Jack Coulehan, MD, SUNY at Stony Brook, NY

Glen Downie has published half a dozen books of poetry and in 2008 was awarded the Toronto Book Award for his collection, Loyalty Management. His work has appeared in the secondary school textbook Inside Poetry, as well as in many anthologies and journals. Formerly a social worker in cancer care, he served a term as writer-in-residence at Dalhousie University's Medical Humanities Program. Glen continues to write, and read poetry around the country.

Myles Blank - fugue

Born in Winnipeg, Myles Blank is a poet and psychiatrist in Vancouver, BC where he lives with his wife and son. He has published one volume of poetry fugue (Broca's Publishing House) and his poems have appeared in Prairie Fire, Grain, The Medical Post and Psychoanalytical Psychotherapy Review. He works with mothers recovering from addictions on Vancouver's downtown East side and is the Director of the Children's Hospital Infant Psychiatry Clinic. Myles continues to write poetry finding inspiration in his daily work.

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