When John Updike passed away earlier this year I decided to re-read his volume of memoirs, Self-Consciousness, which I hadn’t looked at since it was published in 1989. It is a marvelous book, and confirms everything good about Updike that I’d almost forgotten as he slogged prolifically through the last couple of decades doing books […]

In case you’re wondering, T.I.P. stands for Tonight It’s Poetry. When I arrived half an hour early on the evening of March 15th to an empty bar in downtown Saskatoon, I decided that T.I.P. must be a code word for Tonight It’s clear the Pub. But I was, happily, very wrong.

On the evening of April 9th the four shortlisted poets for the 2009 Aqua Books Lansdowne Prize for Poetry read at Aqua Books. The shortlisted authors: Rosanna Deerchild, Laurent Poliquin, Kerry Ryan, and me.

All of these readings were with Armin Wiebe. Our first event was in Altona on Feb. 12. There were about 20 people there, and a local newspaper covered the reading. It was the rollicking Rabelaisian humour of Armin’s work that attracted people, although of course the earthy jokes were in low German.

On the morning of March 3rd I read to Reinhold Kramer’s Canadian Literature class. Reinhold is the author of a really fine recent biography of Mordecai Richler, and we were in graduate school together near the dawn of time, although we can’t agree on whether we were both in Robert Kroetsch’s Can Lit seminar (we […]

A really nice venue, the Short Line series is now run by Carmen Papalia and a collective from MemeWars magazine, most of them former Capilano College students.  On Feb. 24 when I read there, the collective had recently launched a new issue of their mag.

On Feb. 27 Susan Gillis and I  read at the Planet Earth series that’s run by Wendy Morton in Victoria, at the Black Stilt Coffee House. There was an enthusiastic audience, and the irrepressible Wendy gave away a number of unusual door prizes.

I read at Audrey’s Books in Edmonton on Friday, Feb. 6, with Shirley Serviss. Alice Major, the inaugural Edmonton poet laureate, hosted the event. Shirley’s work as an artist in hospital wards has helped give her quite a following in Edmonton. There were probably 30 people at the reading. When I’ve got time I’ll post […]

I read from Fear Not in Calgary on Thursday Feb. 5 at Pages on Kensington.  Reading with me were Mike Roberson, Paul William Zits and David Martin. Mike is editor at Dandelion currently. ryan fitzpatrick curates and hosts the reading series.

David Bergen and Maurice read together in the Manitoba Writers’ Guild series on January 19, 2009, at the Yellow Dog Tavern in Winnipeg. On January 29 they continued the public discussion they had about their work, this time on the phone, and focusing on the structure and form of Fear Not. Click here to listen.