Wine O’Clock: Wine & Poetry Pairings at Metrovino Fine Wines
Friday, May 4 | 6:00—8:00pm @ Metrovino—722 11 Ave SW Calgary
Presented by the Writers’ Guild of Alberta and the Alexandra Writers Centre Society
Please RSVP by Facebook HERE or email samantha.warwick@writersguild.ab.ca
Our legendary wine and literary pairings are back! Raise your glass to National Poetry Month and hear from five stellar poets whose work will each be paired with a wine that shares matching attributes—zany, effervescent, unexpected, bold. Join us for a creative and energizing evening of runaway tannins, hints of dark plum and transformation; notes of mystery and explosive bouquets of surprise. Featured poets include Wakefeild Brewster, Cobra Collins, Kyle Flemmer, Stuart Ian McKay and BC-based Laisha Rosnau (who is launching her fourth collection of poetry, Our Familiar Hunger).
Wakefield Brewster is one of Canada’s most dynamic performing Black poets. He was raised in Toronto and now lives in Calgary while performing frequently across North America. From traditional music theory starting at age six, to his acceptance in the York University Music Program it was only a matter of time before his artistic muse pushed him beyond the confines of academia. Writing poetry for the past 16 years, performing live for the last eight, producing two CD’s and winning numerous accolades and International Slams! Wakefield Brewster has left more than 800 stages blistered and bruised eagerly awaiting his return.
Cobra Collins is a Calgary-based Metis poet of significant height. She was the captain and coach of Calgary’s 2016 Slam team, representing our city on a national level at the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word and is a member of Calgary’s Inkspot Spoken Word Collective, home of Calgary’s official poetry Slam. Cobra has participated in several Nationwide Spoken Word festivals, as well as collaborated with artists of different backgrounds for dance (Fluid Movements Arts Festival) and performance festivals (IKG 1! Live Performance Festival). Cobra was also honoured to be shortlisted as a nominee for Calgary’s 2016 poet laureate.”
Kyle Flemmer founded The Blasted Tree Publishing Company in 2014 as an outlet for his writing and to build a community of and support network for emerging Canadian artists. Kyle is passionate about social satire, philosophy, and science, and enjoys writing poetry, short stories, and critical essays. His poem White Dwarfs was a finalist for the 2016 Irving Layton Poetry Award, and he has released three recent poetry chapbooks: ASTRAL PROJECTION (2017) from above/ground press, Lunar Flag Assembly Kit (2017) from no press, and Pray / Lewd (2016) from The Blasted Tree. He has work published with NewPoetry, Soliloquies Anthology, Gadfly Online, The Bullcalf Review, word and colour, Penteract Press, Spacecraft Press, and others. Hobbies include DJing under the alias Hydrogen Jukebox, tattooing, and the unmitigated pillage of second-hand book stores.
Stuart Ian McKay is a Calgary poet. His second book of poetry, A Cognate of Prayer, a series of long poems celebrating the lives of persons living with disabilities, was published in 2013. Stuart’s work has been published in journals and anthologies throughout Canada, most recently Vallum, filling station and Prairie Journal. He was one of the first artists in Canada awarded a Canada Council for the Arts Cultivate: Professional Development Grant. He is busy at work on several new poetry manuscripts, and serves on the editorial board of filling station.
Laisha Rosnau is the author of four collections of poetry and the best-selling novel, The Sudden Weight of Snow (McClelland & Stewart, 2002). Her most recent book of poetry, Our Familiar Hunger, has just been released this April by Nightwood Editions. Rosnau’s work has been published across Canada, in the US, UK, and Australia. Its has been nominated for several awards, including the Amazon/Books in Canada First Novel Award, three times for the CBC Poetry Prize, the Pat Lowther Award, the Raymond Souster Award, the Pacific Poetry Prize, and has won the Blue Heron Poetry Prize and the Acorn-Plantos Poetry Award. She teaches in UBC Okanagan’s Creative Studies Department. Rosnau lives in Coldstream, BC, where she and her family are resident caretakers of Bishop Wild Bird Sanctuary.