News & Events
Meet The Presses
Monday June 10th
7PM-10PM
The Supermarket
268 Augusta
Kensington Market
Small Press Variety Show!
Each press gets five minutes to strut their stuff in song, dance or whatever form they like. On behalf of Pedlar Press, I will bring the Spontaneous Poetry Booth to the stage. (Oy.) One volunteer. One poem.
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Poetry Cabaret at the Jewish Literary Festival
Saturday, June 1, 2013 | 10 PM | Miles Nadal JCC, 750 Spadina Ave. | FREE
Join local authors Benjamin Hackman, Ronna Bloom, and Jacob Scheier for an intimate night of poetry and wine as they read excerpts from their works exploring grief, love, and loss from a contemporary, and sometimes humorous, perspective.
Benjamin Hackman is a poet and lyricist who has published in periodicals including Canadian Literature, The Maple Tree Literary Supplement, and The Literary Review of Canada. He is the co-founder of The Molotov Rag, Toronto’s
Anarchist Quarterly.
Ronna Bloom has published five books of poetry, most recently, Cloudy with A Fire in the Basement. She is currently Poet in Community at the University of Toronto and Poet in Residence at Mount Sinai Hospital.
Jacob Scheier is a Toronto-born poet, essayist and journalist. He was the winner of the 2008 Governor General’s Award
for poetry and co-winner of a 2009 New York Independent Media Alliance. His second full length collection of poems, Letter from Brooklyn was published this spring.
FULL DETAILS ON THIS AND OTHER TORONTO JEWISH LITERARY FESTIVAL EVENTS: Koffler Arts | 416.638.1881 ×4198 |
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Cloudy with a Fire in the Basement was reviewed in Canadian Poetries
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The Reflecting Poem: What Can Poetry “Do” in Health Care
A presentation at Grand Rounds, Mount Sinai Hospital
The Reflecting Poem: What Can Poetry “Do” in Health Care?
What can a poem “do” in health care? Can it offer something to students, practitioners, staff, and managers in their jobs, in their relationships with each other and with their patients? Like a treatment that works, the right poem can go to the site of the need and meet it. It has direct access to a person’s experience and cuts past more linear modes of communication and thinking. A poem has the capacity to engage awareness, illuminate an experience, and express both minute and epic moments in a person’s life. The Reflecting Poem presentation will be part talk and part poem, part conversation and part reflective practice, describing the power and the relevance of poetry in health care.
Date: Friday, April 26, 2013
Time: 10:40am – 12noon
Location: 18th Floor Auditorium
Mount Sinai Hospital
600 University Avenue
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“VIDEO OF THE WEEK: EVOCATIVE VIDEO FOR RONNA BLOOM’S “GRIEF WITHOUT FANTASY”“
Ronna Bloom, Mount Sinai’s Poet in Residence in the news
A recent article in The Toronto Star
describes the Poet in Residence programme at Mount Sinai Hospital.
Dr. Allan Peterkin, Head of the Health, Arts & Humanities program, and I had a conversation on CBC Radio’s “Here and Now” about the healing effect of poetry and literature. I even wrote a poem on the air!
Cloudy With A Fire in the Basement
To celebrate the launch of my fifth collection and take some of the poems into a new landscape, filmmaker Midi Onodera has made three short films based on excerpts. The book, recently released from Pedlar Press is available through Amazon or at your local booksellers.
I had the delight of completing The Proust Questionnaire for Open Book Toronto.
A conversation with Patrick Connors about Cloudy With A Fire in the Basement appears in newz4u
Ronna Bloom with John Giorno
Ronna Bloom interviewed John Giorno about his life, his work, and his commitment to challenging stereotypes and pushing boundaries on November 6, 2011, on stage at the Words Aloud Festival, Durham, Ontario
To watch the interview WordsAloud
Words Aloud 2011
In 2011, Ronna Bloom read at the Words Aloud Festival in Durham Ontario.
You can see the performance here: WordsAloud
Influency Salon featured PERMISO in its third issue
Influency Salon is an online Canadian poetics magazine dedicated to in depth readings of contemporary poetry.
Titled ‘From/Of/To,’ Issue 3 features a focus on the poetics of transition enacted in the work of Ronna Bloom, Kate Eichhorn and Trish Salah.
—from the Coach House Press website
Read, see, listen here Influencysalon
Poetry Is Public
On August 26, 2010 a new Poet Laureate initiative, “Poetry is Public is Poetry”, creatively showcases and celebrates the work of Canadian poets. On a series of six panels located in front of the Toronto Reference Library (789 Yonge Street), passages from 34 prominent writers artistically intertwine with the panel’s visual backgrounds, which were created by internationally known graphic designer and illustrator Frank Viva.
This ambitious public art and written word project features verses by; Lillian Allen, Margaret Atwood, Ronna Bloom, Roo Borson, Dionne Brand, Jason Camlot, Leonard Cohen, Lorna Crozier, Daniel David Moses, Don Domanksi, Stan Dragland, George Elliott Clarke, Catherine Graham, Phil Hall, Angela Hibbs, Eve Joseph, Ehab Lotayef, David W. McFadden, Don McKay, Steve McOrmond, Anne Michaels, Jacob McArthur Mooney, Motion, Michelle Muir, Michael Ondaatje, Joanne Page, Alison Pick, Maureen Scott Harris, Anne Simpson, Sue Sinclair, John Steffler, Souvankham Thammavongsa, Paul Vermeersch and Jan Zwicky.
Dionne Brand proposed, and is developing this idea in the belief that poets have contributed enormously to the city’s sense of itself but that their contribution is not always apparent in the public sphere. Recognizing that poetry is essentially a private act – conceived, written and often read alone – makes expanding poetry into the public realm an exciting challenge. The physicality of the text provides a reflective dialogue that can serve as a catalyst for providing a sense of well being, identity and even happiness.
— from, voxpopulism
PERMISO was short-listed for the Pat Lowther Memorial Award!
2010 Pat Lowther Jury Statement
This year’s jury had to consider seventy-five titles by women from over forty presses. Our experience reading gave us confidence as well as faith in Canadian literature, Canadian poetry, and writing by women. It was an overwhelming project which evidenced for us the richness and maturity of contemporary poetry by women, and the strength of support for their writing within the literary community. And it was a truly agonizing experience to select the long and short lists, because we have been offered such an array of riches from which to choose. Many excellent books, by established poets and those whose first books were among
the seventy-five, have been left off our short list. To those whose compelling books are not on this list, know that we read them with care and conscience, and that we could easily have extended this list to include many more remarkable titles. In terms of the quality of this short list, we truly feel that each book on it would make a worthy selection as winner; each represents an extraordinary accomplishment. Congratulations to all the short list authors on the excellence of their work.
12 or 20 questions: with Ronna Bloom
To read the responses to the questions posed by Rob McLennan, visit:
robmclennan.blogspot.com
There are interviews with a bevy of Canadian authors. Ronna Bloom appears on July 30th and will be archived there, in perpetuity.