Tree Reading, then the Rogue Stimulus tour!

Tomorrow night, February 23, I read for the first time at Ottawa's legendary Tree Reading Series, along with Stephen Brockwell. I'm going to be reading from a new poetry chapbook, I've Come to Talk about Manners, which'll be ready for the reading from Cameron Anstee's nifty Apt. 9 Press, as well as new short stories. I'll have Dogs to flog. So to speak.

The details:

Tuesday, February 23, 2010
8 - 10 pm
Ottawa Arts Court
2 Daly Avenue
Ottawa, ON

Tree hosts two writers at the Ottawa Arts Court. Local poet/writer and Archibald Lampman Award-winner Stephen Brockwell will perform some of his work, followed by Stuart Ross reading from his first collection of stories in over a decade, Buying Cigarettes for the Dog. The evening will begin at 8pm, and preceding the reading from 6:45-7:45 Terry Ann Carter will host her first of a series of four workshops for emerging writers.

Note on Stephen Brockwell: Stephen Brockwell currently lives in Ottawa but has spent a large part of his life in Montreal and other equally exhilarating places. His Fruitfly Geographic won the 2005 Archibald Lampman Award for best book of poetry by an Ottawa resident. He runs his own IT consulting business from home, and he is the author of several books including The Wire in Fences, The Cometology (ECW Press, 2001), and The Real Made Up (ECW Press, 2007).

Shortly after this reading, Stephen Brockwell and I embark on our mini-tour in support of our nearly instant anthology, Rogue Stimulus: The Stephen Harper Holiday Anthology for a Prorogued Parliament, beginning Thursday in Montreal, heading to Parliament Hill and elsewhere in Ottawa on Saturday, then to Kingston, where we'll be joined by Arrogant Worm Trevor Strong, and winding up, the night before Parliament reconvenes, in Toronto. Along the way, contributors to the anthology will be reading their Proroguing poetry. The book, which contains 72 poems, is published by Mansfield Press, and the awesome cover is by Gary Clement.

This tour also serves as a multi-city launch for Jim Smith's Back Off, Assassin! New & Selected Poems and Robert Earl Stewart's Something Burned Along the Southern Border, which were my Mansfield poetry acquisitions for 2009. We'll also have some other Mansfield titles on hand, including Tom Walmsley's incisive and smart novel Dog Eat Rat.



Over and out.