Tuesday, June 24th, 2008
8pm - 12am
Gladstone Hotel - Melody Bar
1214 Queen Street West
FREE
On Tuesday, June 24th, Toronto’s most daring, most outrageous, and most talented performance poets will descend on the Gladstone Melody Bar for an inspiring, energetic and in-your-face night of poetry. Featuring performances by Sky Gilbert, Tara-Michelle Ziniuk, Kate Leadbeater and host d'bi young anitafrika.
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Sky Gilbert is a writer, director, and drag queen extraordinaire. He was co-founder and artistic director of Buddies in Bad Times Theatre (North America’s largest gay and lesbian theatre) for 18 years. Sky has published five novels, two books of poetry and a memoir since he left Buddies, and recently won the ReLit award for his novel An English Gentleman. Dr. Gilbert holds a University Research Chair in Creative Writing and Theatre Studies at The School of English and Theatre Studies at Guelph University and has recently published a novella, Wit in Love.
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Tara-Michelle Ziniuk
Tara-Michelle Ziniuk is a Montreal-born, Toronto-based writer, performer, activist, and long-time community radio coordinator who has been published across North America. She is the authour of Emergency Contact (McGilligan Books) and the forthcoming Somewhere To Run From (Tightrope Books). She has been honoured to share stages with Patrick Califia, Nalo Hopkinson, and Carol Queen among other exceptional queer and trans writers. Currently,Tara-Michelle is interested in the intersections between sex and chronic illness, barbecue and meat, and dollar store and bling.
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Kate Leadbeater
Originally from Sudbury but living in Toronto since university gave way to employment, Kate Leadbeater is the author of a number of short plays and much poetry, both in French and in her native English. Her first chapbook, Poems for Addiction, Sex and Sanity, was published this year by Burning Effigy Press. Kate’s work has also appeared in a handful of university reviews and Toronto-based collections, and her performances have included such local events as the Toronto Poetry Slam, Cryptic Chatter, Word on the Street and Xtra's Writing Outside the Margins Festival.
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d’bi.young anitafrika
d’bi.young anitafrika is an afrikan-jamaican-canadian visionary who believes in life, love, and revolushun. an award-winning dubpoet, writer, and theatre practitioner, d’bi.young has performed, published, and lectured internationally. She is the author of two dubpoetry collections put out by women’s press: art on black (2006) and rivers and other blackness between us (2007) and the playwright of the double dora award-winning show blood.claat (playwrights canada press, 2006). blood.claat is presently on tour in canada and is the opening production at magnetic north theatre festival in june 2008. d’bi.young recently launched her new arts initiative – anitAFRIKA! dub theatre – founded on seven principles of dubpoetry/dubtheatre and aimed at relocating storytelling within an afrikan-diasporic-herstorical-context of critical analyses; promoting the ideas of accountability and responsibility between storyteller and community. the storytelling company’s first conference is the storytellers’ talking circle groundings in september 2008; the theme is: the storytellers’ integrity. presently, d’bi.young is being professionally mentored by “dubb aatist" ahdri zhina while she completes her first theoretical publication on dubpoetry. she is the 2007 recipient of the toronto arts council emerging artist award. www.dbiyoung.net |
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