, a collection of over 50 poems, will launch Tuesday, October 19, at 7:30 pm, at The Boat, 158 Augusta Ave. in Toronto’s Kensington Market. It is also the 10th anniversary launch party for Mansfield Press. All royalties from the sale of Uppal's book will go to help support athletes through , which helped fund about 80 per cent of the athletes at the Games.

The book contains haikus and other poems about the Olympic athletes and their beloved sports – whether curling, skeleton, skiing or hockey – and includes some poems Uppal wrote when she took in the Arctic Games, in between the Olympics and the Paralympics. It’s being hailed as a mingling of physical and verbal acrobatics and a dazzling competition of risky play, inventive movements and daring heights.

Left: Priscila Uppal embracing the Olympic torch as the Canadian Athletes Now Fund poet-in-residence. Photo by Chistopher Doda

“So much about poetry is having surprising language and using it in unique ways,” says (BA Hons. ’97, PhD ’04).  Watching Olympic athletes compete and marvelling over the strange terms attached to each sport – what Uppal calls athletic language full of metaphors and symbols – gave her plenty of inspiration.

She says the poems are accessible and amusing, and were also fun to write. Winter Sport: Poems would be of interest to sports lovers, Olympics lovers, poetry lovers, ���Ի���English and physical education teachers, as well as young reluctant readers, she says. CBC Radio featured many of her poems over the course of the Games after fans called in requesting more, as did CAN Fund and the athletes themselves.

"While some people were skeptical about elite athletes responding to poetry," Uppal admits, "the Olympians ended up being one of my most welcoming audiences ever. Every day they asked for more copies of poems and looked forward to the performances. The summer Olympians have encouraged me to take up my post in 2012 in London to write the companion volume, Summer Sport: Poems."

Right: Priscila Uppal dons her own team shirt while watching speedskating at the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Games. Photo by Chistopher Doda

Gil Adamson, author of The Outlander and Ashland, says “From one of Canada’s most dynamic poets come sports poems that are playful, funny, and full of trick moves. Uppal’s wordplay is as muscular as the athletes she celebrates.”

In addition to Uppal’s new book, the evening will launch Imagining Toronto by Amy Lavender Harris, a 91��ɫ geography faculty member in the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies; Goodbye, Ukulele by Leigh Nash (BA Hons. ’04), a former student of Uppal’s; At the Gates of the Theme Park by Peter Norman; and Stray Dog Embassy by Natasha Nuhanovic.

Left: Priscila Uppal has a Canadian moment. Photo by Chistopher Doda

Uppal's books include which , (which was shortlisted for the $50,000 Griffin Poetry Prize), and , and of the novels and . She is the editor of ���Ի��� and the author of .

For more information or to order the book, visit the or websites.

To read a few of Uppal’s sports poems, visit the website.

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

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She also discussed her new poetry book, , which at 8pm at the Monarch Tavern, 12 Clinton St. (at Henderson Avenue) in Toronto.

The entire and runs approximately seven minutes.

Posted by Elizabeth Monier-Williams, research communications officer.

The post Audio: Professor speaks about Olympic poet-in-residence experience and new book appeared first on Research & Innovation.

Wearing red at the Olympics may give an athlete an easy advantage, according to a 91��ɫ study that shows perceptions of motion are subconsciously affected by colour.

“All things being equal between two figure skaters – including their actual speed on the ice – the judges will perceive a skater in red is moving with greater speed than a skater in blue, and may reward the skater in red with higher marks,” says Mazyar Fallah, a professor in the School of Kinesiology & Health Science in 91��ɫ’s Faculty of Health.

Above: The 2010 Canadian Olympic team in their red uniforms. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

The study, conducted by Fallah and co-author Illia Tchernikov in 91��ɫ’s Centre for Vision Research, was published today by the the Public Library of Science open access peer-reviewed journal .

Their research on visual processing found that people’s eyes more quickly follow a red target on a computer screen more quickly than a green, yellow or especially a blue target.

VIDEO--The Daily Planet covered . The clip runs approximately 20 seconds and begins at the 7:50 mark.

“In sports, the outcome of a competition is supposed to depend on the abilities of the players, rather than the colours they are wearing,” says Fallah. “However, our research shows it may make sense to wear red in a sport such as figure skating, in which you want to be perceived as quick. In contrast, it may be best to wear another colour in a sport in which a referee is handing out penalties.”

The finding that there is a colour hierarchy that automatically guides the selection of what someone will focus on has implications for many sports such as figure skating and gymnastics in which speed may be perceived by a judge rather than measured in milliseconds, Fallah says. It may also be important for other fields such as advertising, in which capturing attention is paramount, and in designing human-computer interfaces that are effective, he said.

Left: Canadian figure skating champion and Olympic competitor Joannie Rochette. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

Five subjects took part in the study, with each completing about a thous���Ի���tests. Each participant automatically focused on targets on the screen and all produced the same colour hierarchy, choosing red targets first, followed by green, yellow and blue. This suggests, says Fallah, that the colour hierarchy is inherent, either because of evolution – red is the colour of blood, whereas blue is the colour of the sky – or as a result of experience − red stop signs and traffic signals indicate danger.

Fallah's research was covered by and .

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

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