Notable Canadian environmental poets , and are the keynote speakers for the public forum, which will take place Friday, Oct. 21, from 6 to 8pm, at the Gladstone Hotel, North Ballroom, 1415 Queen St. W., Toronto. The event is free and open to the public, but space is limited.

Right: Brian Bartlett

Each of the authors will read from their work and discuss the socio-political responsibility of writers in modern, ecologically precarious times during the public forum. Bartlett is the author of five collections of poetry, including The Watchmaker’s Table,Ěýas well as Wanting the Day: Selected Poems, which won the 2004 Atlantic Poetry Prize. Ruffo, whose work is influenced by his Ojibwe heritage,Ěýis the author of At Geronimo’s Grave and Grey Owl: The Mystery of Archie Belaney. He has also penned plays, works of nonfiction ˛ą˛Ô»ĺĚýwas the writer and director for the film, A Windigo Tale,Ěýwhich won best picture at the American Indian Film Festival last year in San Francisco.

Wong's work looks at the relations among contemporary poetics, social justice, ecology and decolonization. She is the author of poetry collections Forage and Monkeypuzzle ˛ą˛Ô»ĺĚýco-author of Sybil Unrest.

The academic conference will be held the next day on Saturday, Oct. 22 at the Gladstone Hotel, from 9am to 7:30pm. Paid registration for the conference is required before Oct. 14. Although admission for 91ŃÇÉ« students is free, they still must register in advance.

Left: Rita Wong

The conference will feature scholarly discussions and include diverse panels of academics, graduate students and writers presenting their own work on topics, such as ecopoetics, environmental literatures, indigenous politics, writing and more. Molly Wallace of Queen’s University will offer the closing keynote address, “Averting Environmental Catastrophe in Time: Speculations on Temporality, Risk and Representation”.

Some of the questions the event will probe include: How do literary works – poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction – make a unique contribution to Canadians’ understanding of, and responses to, environmental issues? How does the history of Canadian literature suggest a history of environmental activism, and vice versa? Why does poetry matter for nature? And, how does fiction incite and influence actions in the more-than-human world?

Environmental literatures engage the world differently than do environmental policies and ecopoetry embodies and inspires different modes of action, says FES Professor Catriona Sandilands, Canada Research Chair in Sustainability & Culture ˛ą˛Ô»ĺĚýthe event’s co-organizer with Ella Soper, FES postdoctoral Fellow.

Right: Armand Garnet Ruffo

The question then becomes, says Sandilands, what does this reflection and action add to environmental politics in Canada? How, for example, do indigenous peoples’ struggles over the materiality and meaning of land suggest different kinds of environmental stories to underpin an ecological public culture? How can a regional or national ecopolitics benefit from closer attention to diasporic literatures? How are ecological literatures and politics jointly embedded in globalizing relations of race, gender, class, colonialism, sexuality and ability?

Writing workshops will take place Sunday, Oct. 23 at the Gladstone Hotel, from 9:30 to 11:30am. It will be a day of hands-on writing activities led by Bartlett, Ruffo and Wong, as well as FES doctoral candidate Amanda Di Battista. At the workshops, participants will be encouraged to create their own pieces of poetry or prose that might contribute to a politics of voice locally, nationally and/or globally. Participation is included in advance conference registration or contact Green Worlds for alternate arrangements.

The event is sponsored by 91ŃÇɫ’s Sustainable Writing Laboratory and the Faculty of Environmental Studies with the support of the Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council of Canada.

For more information, for a full schedule of events, or to register, e-mail grnwrlds@yorku.ca.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91ŃÇɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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On various Wednesdays between 11 and 11:30am, including tomorrow, Uppal will discuss what she has been reading lately as part of “Biblio-file”, a segment on the “The Link”, a live radio show broadcasting out of CBC’s Montreal studio with host Mark Montgomery, although Uppal will be ensconced in the Toronto studio.

It’s a perfect fit. Uppal says she “basically reads so many books anyway and loves to talk about them” that this just gives her another opportunity to do so, and at the same time “influence an audience,” introducing people to great Canadian literature and quirky items with which they may not be familiar.

For her first show, Uppal spoke about her favourite Canadian playwright, George F. Walker, and his six-play cycle Suburban Motel, set in the same rundown motel room. It was the first time “Biblio-file” has featured a playwright’s work. “It gave me an opportunity to reread his plays,” says Uppal. “He’s just a whiz with words. His narratives are filled with desperate people…they’re just really trying to get themselves out of a hole…it’s great though, because he’s able to see tragedy as absurd.”

Tomorrow, she will discuss Jessica Grant's debut novel Come, Thou Tortoise – Uppal was on the jury that awarded Grant’s book the 2010 Amazon First Novel Award. Talking about it on air gives her the chance to explain why the book was chosen and what’s so great about it.

Left: Priscila Uppal

On Dec. 22, Uppal will look at the poetry collection 38 Bar Blues by blues, hip hop, folk and rock musician . “I would think most people wouldn’t know he writes poetry,” says Uppal. Most people think of him as a spoken word artist and he is also not considered a mainstream poet. Not only that, few poetry titles actually make it into a bookstore where people can come across them on their own.

And this is what really excites Uppal – she will be able to bring not only mainstream titles, but more obscure novels, plays and collections of short stories and poetry to her audience’s attention. Works they should pay attention to, works that will intrigue, fascinate and inspire.

“The Link”, a two-hour daily radio show aimed at connecting people to Canada and Canada to the world, includes daily current affairs and culture stories, from 11am to 1pm,Ěývia the Internet, short wave and satellite radio. It is rebroadcast from 2 to 4am as part of CBC Radio One's overnight programming.

To listen to “The Link” or the “Biblio-file” segment, visit the “” website.

You can on George F. Walker’s Suburban Motel.

By Sandra McLean, YFile writer

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91ŃÇɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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Uppal is the fourth guest editor in the anthology’s short history and joins poets Lorna Crozier –  editor of the 2010 anthology launched last week – A.F. Moritz from 2009 and Stephanie Bolster from 2008. The anthologies are published by with series editor Molly Peacock, the author of six volumes of poetry, including . It is Canada’s answer to series of anthologies that have been around more than two decades.

Uppal will be looking for poems that stand out, show a facility with language, surprise, precision and clarity of vision. “I like to be given something that offers illumination or a unique experience through the poem,” she says. Something original and different, such as a reinvention of the tradition they’re writing in. “I want poems that are necessary, poems that people can say, this is an author I’m really interested in reading more of, not just another voice like the others,” says Uppal. They need to be vital with complexity of thought, challenging in ways that force her to “think or experience something in a new way…not just a pat delivery of emotion.”

It’s a humbling exploit. “I’ll have to sit and make a lot of difficult choices,” she says. There are some 60 print and online journals and magazines in Canada, some publishing weekly, others biannually. In addition to the 50 best poems, she needs to chose another 50 for the long list, which won't be published, but will be mentioned.

Canada, says Uppal, “still probably has more variety of poetic styles, forms and traditions than other countries – fixed form, experimental and lyric to narrative and spoken word – from such vastly different philosophical, political, esthetic and personal perspectives. We haven’t had this dominating ethos of what it means to be Canadian, so people have been freer to write in a range of traditions.” Much of this comes from Canada’s rich multi-cultural heritage. Poems from a Middle Eastern tradition or a European one next to regionally located poetry, that’s the kind of diversity Uppal (BA Hons. ’97, PhD ’04) hopes will reflect.

Left: Priscila Uppal

The anthology “gives people a bird's eye view” of what Canadian poets have been working on, says Uppal. The series has proven quite popular in the US, where a separate launch is held each year. Tightrope Books is also hoping to introduce the 2011 anthology in the United Kingdom. That could tie in perfectly with Uppal’s gig as the Canadian Athletes Now Fund poet-in-residence for the upcoming 2011 Summer Olympics and Paralympic Games in London.

Uppal has eight collections of poetry, including and , which was shortlisted for the 2007 Griffin Poetry Prize. She is also the author of two novels, and . Recently, she edited the first-of-its-kind anthology .

By Sandra McLean, YFile writer.  Republished courtesy of YFile – 91ŃÇɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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Along with Helm, who was nominated for the prize in 2004 for his novel In the Place of Last Things, the nominees for the $25,000 prize are Trevor Cole for Practical Jean (McClelland & Stewart), Emma Donoghue for Room (HarperCollins Publishers), Kathleen Winter for Annabel (House of Anansi Press) and Michael Winter for The Death of Donna Whalen (Hamish Hamilton Canada).

Jury members and authors Lisa Moore, Andrew Pyper and Eden Robinson read 143 titles submitted by 46 publishers. Each finalist will receive $2,500.

In Cities of Refuge, a single act of violence resonates through several lives, connecting close by fears to distant political terrors. At the story’s centre is the complex, intensely charged relationship between a 28-year-old woman and the father who abandoned her when she was young. The novel weaves a web of incrimination and inquiry, where mysteries live within mysteries and the power to save or condemn rests in the forces of history, and in the realm of our deepest longings.

Right: Michael Helm. Photo by Alexandra Rockingham.

Winners will be announced at an awards ceremony at Toronto’s Isabel Bader Theatre, hosted by CBC Radio One broadcast journalist Shelagh Rogers, on Nov. 2. The Writers’ Trust Non-Fiction Prize and the Writers’ Trust/McClelland & Stewart Journey Prize for short fiction, along with four other prizes will also be awarded during the evening.

For more information, visit the website.

Republished courtesy of YFile – 91ŃÇɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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The opening reception for the exhibition, which both Ehrenworth and Uppal will attend, will take place Thursday, Sept. 9, from 6 to 9pm at , 800 Dundas St. W., Toronto.

Right: A photograph from Daniel Ehrenworth's newest exhibit

Uppal has collaborated with Ehrenworth twice before, composing full lyrical poems, interpretations of his photographs, for his exhibitions Holocaust Dream in 2003, which was made into a book, and The Sea of Ending Pt. 1 in 2005. But this time was different. The idea for Curse.Sleep. (That’s the Thing With Trouble) was to “create poetic subtext” or “short, poetic expressions” of the photographs, says Uppal.

They both drew inspiration from the 1958 hit song Sleep Walk by Santo & Johnny. The exhibition also features three audio deconstructions by Ehrenworth of a little-known recording of Sleep Walk by Canadian-born singer Betsy Brye, which features the original lyrics that Santo & Johnny wrote for the song but never recorded.

“This time I see my contribution more as a poetic conversation. We are both very interested in dream landscapes and the space and emotions we inhabit when we dream,” says Uppal. The photos embrace a range of human experience while exploring dream-states, trauma, sexuality and texture.

Left: Part of the Curse.Sleep. (That’s the Thing With Trouble) exhibit featuring the photographs of Daniel Ehrenworth and the poetry of Priscila Uppal

When Uppal first saw Ehrenworth’s photos for his new show, she immediately felt that a brief poetic missive – a line, maybe expressed by the subject of the photo, or something someone in a dream might utter – would be the perfect fit, rather than a full poem. “They’re almost like inner confessions,” she says.

Ehrenworth’s and Uppal’s artistic visions clicked. “When it works it’s so exciting,” says Uppal. For this project, she was able to enter Ehrenworth’s dream space and he was able to enter hers. “Gallery goers can enter their collective dream.” The gallery space is meant to imitate a sleepwalking state.

Uppal describes Ehrenworth's photos as dark, surreal, stark and haunting. People in the photos take on a sort of mythical, hazy appearance. They blend, at times, into the natural landscape around them. Sort of like a dream.

Her poetry will be written on the wall in charcoal next to or below each photograph. Things like: “Anything from the past bites us like insects”, “Where did you misplace your heart?”, “Shake off memories like snowflakes”, “When you’ve forgotten your phone number, the gods will call” or “I’m headed for a fictional horizon.”

Right: A Daniel Ehrenworth photo on exhibit as part of his latest mixed media installation in collaboration with Priscila Uppal

Ehrenworth is a commercial photographer and a photo-based artist, who has exhibited his work at galleries across the country, including Gallery 44 (Toronto), The MacLaren Art Centre (Barrie), The New Gallery (Calgary) and the Khyber Gallery (Halifax).

Uppal is a Toronto poet and fiction writer and the author of the poetry collections , (which was shortlisted for the $50,000 Griffin Poetry Prize), and , and of the novels and . She is the editor of ˛ą˛Ô»ĺĚý and the author of . She is on the Board of Directors at the Toronto Arts Council and was poet-in-residence for Canadian Athletes Now during the 2010 Vancouver Olympic and Paralympic games. Time Out London recently dubbed her “Canada’s coolest poet.”

Curse.Sleep. (That’s the Thing With Trouble) will run from Thursday, Sept. 9, to Sunday, Oct. 3.

For more information and gallery hours, visit the Web site.

By Sandra McLean, YFile writer. Republished courtesy of YFile– 91ŃÇɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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Left: Jacques Cotnam

In 1964, as a young academic, Prof. Cotnam came to 91ŃÇÉ« and was the first French Canadian to be appointed to its academy. Over the course of his distinguished 40-year career, Prof. Cotnam took a leadership role in developing the French studies curriculum. He led the move to include French Canadian and French literature and culture as an integral part of the program. In 2002, he retired from 91ŃÇÉ«.

Prof. Cotnam's service to the University included roles as the chair of the Department of French Studies at Glendon College and chair of the Graduate Program in French Studies.

He was very fond of Founders College of which he was a “merry fellow”, as he used to say. His colleagues in the French Studies Program in the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies describe him as having a wonderful sense of humour and a keen intellect.

Prof. was also a passionate and dedicated scholar and literary critic, and the author of some 20 books. He specialized in 20th-century French literature and focused much of his meticulous attention on the works of the novelist André Gide. In this area, he published Essai de bibliographie chronologique des écrits d’André Gide (1971), Inventaire bibliographique de la correspondance d’André Gide (1972) and André Gide, Correspondance 1923-1950 (2001). In 1984, in collaboration with Roland Bourneuf, he published the Correspondance Gide-Giono (1929-1940). He had recently also finished an edition of Gide’s correspondence with Edith Wharton.

Prof. Cotnam will be remembered for his remarkable contribution to Quebec literary studies. Noteworthy are three books, Le Roman quĂ©bĂ©cois Ă  l’heure de la RĂ©volution tranquille (1971), Poètes du QuĂ©bec (1969) ˛ą˛Ô»ĺĚýLe Théâtre quĂ©bĂ©cois : instrument de contestation sociale et politique (1976), and a critical edition of La Gazette littĂ©raire de MontrĂ©al (1778-1779), prepared in collaboration with Bernard Andrès and Pierre HĂ©bert, which is to be published by the Presses de l’UniversitĂ© Laval (PUL) in 2010. The members of the editorial committee of the PUL collection L’Archive littĂ©raire du QuĂ©bec have created a prize in his honour to salute the best doctoral or master's theses defended in Canada. Winning publications will be published in the collection. Prof. Cotnam also dedicated long hours of research in the archives of religious congregations as part of his study of theatre practices in Quebec.

Among his other scholarly achievements are his studies on the works of his friend and colleague, 91ŃÇɫ French studies Professor Emeritus HĂ©di Bouraoui: HĂ©di Bouraoui: iconoclaste et chantre du transculturel (1996) and Bibliographie de l’œuvre de HĂ©di Bouraoui et de sa rĂ©ception critique de 1966 Ă  2005 (2007).

To honour Prof. Cotnam's memory, the executive committee of the Graduate Program in French Studies has established the Jacques Cotnam Prize which will be awarded to the best thesis. Cotnam also leaves behind a considerable amount of research which will be conserved at the Université du Québec à Sherbrooke in the Jacques Cotnam Fond.

Prof. Cotnam leaves his wife Claire and daughter Geneviève. The funeral will take place in Quebec City on Saturday, June 12, at 11am at the Église St-Dominique, 175 Grande Allée O.

The family requests that memorial donations be made to the cancer hospice ,Ěýwhere Prof. Cotnam spent his last days.

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The award is given annually by the Association for Canadian and Quebec Literatures (ACQL) in honour of the best work of Canadian literary criticism published in English. Wider Boundaries of Daring (Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2009) was chosen by a jury from among the 13 books submitted this year, for its outstanding contribution to scholarship on Canadian literature. This is the second time it was awarded to Godard, the first being in 1988. mentioned the award at the funeral service for Godard on Friday, May 21 (see YFile, May 19).

“The essay collection is a productive, revealing critique of the masculinism of Canadian Modernism. One of the great strengths of the book is its detailed archaeology of the lives of Modernist women writers in relation to their works; the biographical scholarship contributes substantially to an understanding of the writers in question,” writes the ACQL. “The essays, on a remarkably wide range of authors and texts, collectively draw attention to the ways in which women writers work against, resent, and countermand Canadian Modernism.”

Left: Barbara Godard

Wider Boundaries of Daring looks at the exemplary contribution to Canadian modernism of women poets, critics, cultural activists and experimental prose writers. The contributors argue that these writers are the real founders of Canadian modernism for their innovative esthetic and literary experiments and for their extensive cultural activism. They founded literary magazines and writers’ groups, wrote newspaper columns, and created a new forum for intellectual debate on public radio. At the same time, they led busy lives as wives and mothers, social workers and teachers, editors and critics, and competed successfully with their male contemporaries in the public arena in an era when women were not generally encouraged to hold professional positions or pursue public careers.

A professor in the Department of English in the former Faculty of Arts and in the graduate programs of social & political thought, women’s studies and French, Godard began teaching at 91ŃÇÉ« in 1971. She published widely on Canadian and Quebec cultures and on feminist and literary theory and translated the works of several Quebec writers, including Nicole Brossard, Yolande Villemarie and Louky Bersiani. In 2002, she received teaching awards from 91ŃÇɫ’s Faculty of Graduate Studies and the Northeastern Association of Graduate Schools. Godard served as 91ŃÇɫ’s first Avie Bennett Historica Chair in Canadian Literature, was a founding co-editor of the feminist journal Tessera and the author and editor of several books.

For more information on the Gabrielle Roy Prize, visit the Web site.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91ŃÇɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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Here, 91ŃÇÉ« humanities Professor , English Professor and PhD student Elena Basile offer an appreciation of Prof. Godard and her tireless work:

It is with great sadness that the Department of English at 91ŃÇÉ« announces the death of Professor Emerita Barbara Godard, a professor of English, French, social & political thought and women’s studies. A pillar of the 91ŃÇÉ« community and one of Canada’s pre-eminent literary scholars, Prof. Godard broadly influenced the fields of Canadian and Quebec studies, translation studies, feminist poetics, semiotics and cultural studies.

Right: Prof. Barbara Godard

She was a generous supervisor and mentor who trained and influenced a contemporary generation of cultural workers, including academics, writers and artists. The scope of her mentorship was fully recognized in 2002 when she became the recipient of teaching awards from 91ŃÇɫ’s Faculty of Graduate Studies and the Northeastern Association of Graduate Schools. Prof. Godard retired from full-time teaching in 2008, but continued a full intellectual and pedagogical life until her sudden passing.

Prof. Godard was a prolific and influential intellectual. An extraordinarily sharp and encyclopedic thinker, Prof. Godard’s interests encompassed semiotics, translation, gender, textuality and the body, as well as archives, memorials, and the history and changing politics of cultural production. With a keen eye for detail and a unique capacity for breadth of vision, she catalyzed interdisciplinary connections among culture, language, gender, politics, poetics and meaning.

After completing her doctorate at the University of Bordeaux, Prof. Godard began teaching at 91ŃÇÉ« in 1971 as a visiting assistant professor and was hired into a tenure-track position in 1976. She published eight books, 80 book chapters and 115 articles and catalogue entries. She translated the major writers of Quebec feminism, including Nicole Brossard, Yolande Villemarie and Louky Bersianik. She also served as editor or on the editorial board of no less than 22 journals. She was a founding co-editor of the feminist literary periodical , a contributing editor of and , and the book review editor for Topia: A Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies. She also made long-standing contributions to , s and ECW among others.

Prof. Godard was committed to and passionate about her graduate students across the Departments of English, French Studies, Film and Visual Arts,Ěýthe School of Women’s Studies and the Program in Social & Political Thought, supervising over 35 PhD candidates. She built bridges between people and modes of inquiry because of her genuine enthusiasm for ideas. She worked between and across languages which so often divide. Prof. Godard inspired her colleagues and students through her critical creativity and her unwavering commitment to interrogating and producing the conditions for full civic engagement in the University and in the public sphere. We will miss her greatly.

Funeral arrangements

A funeral service will take place at 11am on Friday, May 21, at St. James-the-Less, 635 Parliament St., Toronto. A reception for friends and family will follow at Prof. Godard’s house at 217 Major St.,Toronto.

Prof. Godard’s family has requested no flowers; in light of her earlier struggles, donations to the Canadian Cancer Society would be greatly appreciated.

As there may be other causes to which you might wish to make a memorial donation, the agency can inform Prof. Godard’s sister Elizabeth Cox at ecox27@sympatico.ca and her son Alexis at lex_o_matic@yahoo.com.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91ŃÇɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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