Lover Through Departure, the newest collection of poetry by 91��ɫ English and education Professor Rishma Dunlop, offers up an enticing glimpse of lovers as they weave a world of secrets with their affairs of the heart.

The book, published by Mansfield Press, is a powerful overview of Dunlop's career-to-date and will launch Monday, Nov. 14 at 7:30m at The Boat, Kensington Market in Toronto.

Dunlop has staked her poetic landscape in the sensual territory of love in the urban environment. Lover Through Departure features new and selected work about encounters in cities around the world, in hotels, motels and on the road, where identity and authenticity come face to face with desire and the refusal to betray the heart's most intimate instincts.

Travel is central to this book. As Dunlop writes: “Love is to imagine, to be complicit with distance. I speak to you across cities. My mouth is on your pillow.”

This new collection by the diasporic poet is sophisticated and tender, a poetry of love and mortality, captured by a compelling witness to the beauty and violence of the 21st century. At every turn, the reader discovers an undeniable radiance, a sense of grace tinged with an erotic edge, a riveting, distinctive voice.

Lover Through Departure includes “Paris”, an innovative lyric story in the form of a traveller’s journal that was a finalist for the CBC Literary Awards and the Vanderbilt-Exile Fiction Prize.

A finalist for the CBC Literary Awards in 1998 and again in 2009 and winner of the Emily Dickinson Prize for Poetry in 2003, is also a playwright, translator and essayist. Her poetry collections include Metropolis (Mansfield Press, 2005), Reading Like A Girl (Black Moss Press, 2004) and The Body of My Garden (Mansfield Press, 2002). White Album (Inanna Publications, 2008) combines Dunlop’s poems with paintings by Suzanne Northcott. Her radio play, The Raj Kumari's Lullaby, was commissioned by CBC Radio in 2005.

Left: Rishma Dunlop

Dunlop was also the 2009-2010 Canada-US Fulbright Research Chair in Creative Writing at the Virginia Piper Center for Creative Writing at Arizona State University. In 2011, she was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada for her achievement in the arts and humanities.

Launches of Lover Through Departure are also scheduled in Vancouver on Nov. 17 for the Robson Reading Series, Montreal on Nov. 20, Ottawa at the Raw Sugar Café on Nov. 21 and in Kingston at the Grad Club on Nov. 22.

For more information, visit Dunlop's .

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

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There are three launches scheduled for Keeney's new books, First Woman (Inanna Publications) and You Bring Me Wings (ANTARES Publishing House of Spanish Culture). The first is Tuesday, Nov. 8 at The Art Bar at 8pm, second floor of the Paupers Pub, 539 Bloor St. W. in Toronto.

The second will be at 91��ɫ on Wednesday, Nov. 16, from 3 to 4:30pm, as part of the Canadian Studies Speaker Series, in the Senior Common Room, 010 Vanier College, Keele campus, where she’ll also read and discuss her creative work and research. The third launch by Inanna Publications���ڴǰ���First Woman will take place Thursday, Nov. 24, from 6 to 8pm, at the College Street United Church, 452 College St. in Toronto. 

Keeney draws her greatest inspiration from the intersection of cultures, whether between members of one family, intimate friends or peoples around the world. She is a constant traveller. This academic year alone, she was involved in conferences and arts festivals from Russia to Slovenia to Iran. As Keeney puts it, "I'm a wanderer...more of a cultural explorer than a tourist." And it is those wanderings that seep deep into the layers of her work, emerging as poems that often express a different way of seeing the world.

Left: Patricia Keeney

For You Bring Me Wings, Keeney travelled to Mexico City for a summer of imaginative conversation with Mexican poet Ethel Krauze that spilled onto the pages of their new book. This bilingual (English and Spanish) collection is infused with what  identifies as "poems and conversations around love, the creative process, the conditions of womanhood and the marginalization of two distinct cultures co-existing along the American border.” The conversations explore approaches to writing poetry and living life fully. As writer Eva Tihanyi puts it in her introduction: “Finally a book that presents talking and poetry as a partnership, that dares to embrace its own ���ܲ���𳦳پ������ٲ�.”

Keeney was one of the first Canadian writers to be given a grant under the North American Free Trade Agreement to open up areas of cultural exchange with Mexico.

Keeney's poems have been hailed as lyric and political, ranging from sexual love to individual relations, to confrontations with power and profound meditations on life and culture. In her First Woman collection of poems, she examines, at a "deeply personal level, the richly ambivalent experience of living in South Africa, for instance, and it explores the dynamics of family. So, the interior life is both personal and political, local and global. For me, there is no discrepancy in this," says the author of nine books of poetry and a novel. "The way we see things and the weight we give them determines their importance in our sense of who we are." 

Keeney continued her investigation of cultural borders in Iran recently where it is mandatory for women, including foreign visitors, to wear a hijab. "The ambivalence I felt about this was echoed in some extraordinary conversations with women in academia and the arts around various kinds of repression in a society that is deeply divided. I am writing about it already," she says.

Left: Patricia Keeney sharing a traditional meal in Iran with her husband, 91��ɫ theatre Professor Don Rubin, and a friend (left)

Her poetry has been translated into French, Spanish, Bulgarian, Chinese and Hindi. As a book and theatre reviewer, and an arts journalist for over 20 years, Keeney has written extensively in various Canadian and international publications, including The Canadian Forum, Maclean's magazine, Canadian Literature, Canadian Woman Studies, Arc Poetry Magazine, New Theatre Quarterly, based in London, England, South African Theatre Journal and Critical Stages, a web journal.

Some of Keeney’s previous work includes her first collection of poetry Swimming Alone (Oberon Press, 1988); a post-feminist novel, The Incredible Shrinking Wife (Black Moss Press, 1995); and Selected Poems of Patricia Keeney (Oberon Press, 2002). She is currently working on new fiction.

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

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The new directors are Professor Colin Coates, director of the Robarts Centre for Canadian Studies (RCCS); Professor Laurence Harris, director of the Centre for Vision Research (CVR); Professor Christina Kraenzle, director of the Canadian Centre for German & European Studies (CCGES); Professor David Mutimer, director of the Centre for International & Security Studies (YCISS); and Professor Lisa Philipps, director of the Centre for Public Policy & Law (YCPPL).����

“On behalf of the 91��ɫ research community, I would like to congratulate Professors Coates, Harris, Kraenzle, Mutimer and Philipps on their appointments,” said Robert Haché, 91��ɫ's vice-president research & innovation. “Their leadership expertise will be essential to further strengthening the unique and exciting opportunities for interdisciplinary research, collaborations and partnerships at 91��ɫ’s research centres and institutes.”

Colin Coates (left), Canada Research Chair in Cultural Landscapes, is also professor in the Canadian Studies program at Glendon College and president of the Canadian Studies Network-Réseau d’études canadiennes. His research examines political culture in New France and the history of Canadian utopias. He also conducts research in the area of environmental history, and is an executive member of the Network in Canadian History & Environment – Nouvelle initiative canadienne en histoire de l’environnement, funded by the Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). Coates has co-edited and authored several books including, Introduction aux études canadiennes: histoires, identités et cultures (with Professor Geoffrey Ewen, Glendon) and Visions: the Canadian History Modules Project (with Professor Marcel Martel, Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies, along with four colleagues from other universities), Majesty in Canada: Essays on the Role of Royalty among others. Coates won the Lionel Groulx-Yves Saint-Germain Foundation’s prize for Heroines and History – Representations of Madeleine de Verchères and Laura Secord (co-authored with Cecilia Morgan of OISE).

Laurence Harris (right) is a professor in the Department of Psychology, Faculty of Health, a member of the graduate programs in Kinesiology & Health Science and in Biology, and has served as chair of the Psychology Department. He is the director the Multisensory Integration Laboratory at 91��ɫ, which investigates how information from visual, auditory, vestibular, proprioceptive and tactile senses is combined by the brain to create our perception of body and space. Applications of his research include the design of virtual environments and improving perception in situations where sensory information is impoverished, such as in the unusual environments of underwater or in space, in ageing or in clinical conditions such as partial blindness or Parkinson’s disease. Recently, Harris ran an experiment on the International Space Station looking at astronauts’ perception of orientation. He is the author of more than 100 scientific articles and has edited nine books on topics pertaining to vision including Vision in 3D Environments, Cortical Mechanisms of Vision, Seeing Spatial Form, and Levels of Perception.  He is editor-in-chief of the journal Seeing and Perceiving: a journal of multisensory science.

Christina Kraenzle (left) is a professor in the Department of Languages, Literatures & Linguistics (DLLL) in the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies. She has served as a CCGES affiliate since 2004 and been a member of the centre’s executive committee since 2005 through her role as the coordinator of the German Studies Program within DLLL. Kraenzle’s research explores modern German literature, film and culture, with a focus on transnational cultural production, migration, travel and globalization. Her recent publications include Mapping Channels Between Ganges and Rhein: German-Indian Cross-Cultural Relations (with Jörg Esleben and Sukanya Kulkarni, 2008) as well as articles in The German Quarterly, German Life and Letters, Transit: A Journal of Travel, Migration and Multiculturalism in the German-Speaking World, and the volume Searching for Sebald: Photography after W. G. Sebald.

David Mutimer (right), a professor in the Department of Political Science, is also the founding editor of Critical Studies on Security and the editor of The Canadian Annual Review of Politics and Public Affairs.  He has been a member of YCISS since 1987 and has previously served as its deputy director. Mutimer was also a visiting professor at the University of Geneva in Switzerland and Newcastle University in the United Kingdom (UK), as well as a principal research fellow in the Department of Peace Studies at the University of Bradford in the UK. Mutimer’s research considers issues of contemporary international security through lenses provided by critical social theory and explores the reproduction of security in and through popular culture. His research has focused on various aspects of weapons production and control, and more recently on the politics of the global war on terror, and of the regional wars around the world which are being fought by Canada and its allies. Mutimer is presently leading a SSHRC-funded international research project on arms export controls. His recent published work includes journal articles in Studies in Social Justice, The Cambridge Review of International Affairs and Contemporary Security Policy among others.

Lisa Philipps (left) has been a faculty member at Osgoode Hall Law School since 1996. Prior to that, she held appointments in the faculties of law at the University of Victoria and the University of British Columbia, and has held visiting professorships at Melbourne Law School, University College London and the University of Toronto among other institutions. She served as associate dean research, graduate studies & institutional relations at Osgoode from 2009 to 2011. Philipps' research focuses on tax law, budgets and feminist legal studies. She has published widely on topics, including fiscal transparency, income splitting, gender budgeting, the distributional impact of tax cuts, the tax treatment of unpaid work, charitable tax incentives and more. Most recently she published two co-edited books on Tax Expenditures: State of the Art and Challenging Gender Inequality in Tax Policy Making: Comparative Perspectives.����

In all, 91��ɫ lists 29 research centres and institutes.

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