"We're excited to be moving into ideas-based programming to complement our artistic slate and extend the work we already do which is cross-GTA, cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary," Diaspora Dialogues Prez Helen Walsh enthuses. Why?
The highly respected organization supporting the creation and celebration of new literary works reflecting Toronto's complexity and diversity across the board (with publishing, presentation, mentoring and production programmes featuring the likes of Anthony De Sa, Emma Donoghue, M. G. Vassanji, Shyam Sevadurai and Dawn Promislow, e.g.), recently received the George Cedric Metcalf Foundation's generous support for a new series of arts + ideas events entitled Deeper Dialogues.
Beginning in the new year, Deeper Dialogues will engage Torontonians in a conversation about innovative ways to build a more vibrant, creative, sustainable and just metropolis. At the heart of the series? A unique public-consultation project, Future City, consisting of a group of randomly selected Torontonians in partnership with artists, curators, cultural commentarians and social-justice advocates, plans to spend 2011 discussing and envisioning their ideal Toronto, "a deeper dialogue" which will culminate in a collaboratively created art and performance installation (in partnership with such as the Literary Review of Canada, Luminato, Harbourfront Centre, Evergreen Brick Works, et so forthia).
BTW, the George Cedric Metcalf Foundation elected to mark its milestone 50th by making a small number of special one-time grants available to worthy collectives and causes in The Big Smoke. (I can think of no organization more deserving than Diaspora Dialogues, a class act in all senses of that notion.)
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Need a break this evening from the ubiquitous rush 'n' crush of this most pissawful time of year around 7:30? Look no further than the free out-of-this-world launch and reading @ Toronto's Magpie Tavern (831 Dundas Street West) featuring Jon Paul Fiorentino, Bill Kennedy and Darren Wershler . . . One of my most reliable sources tells me Graywolf Press will publish a 2012 bilingual edition of incarcerated Nobel Peace Prize recipient Liu Xiaobo's June Fourth Elegies, a work enshrining that fateful day in 1989 when pro-democracy activists met their breakers on Tiananmen Square . . . Lawrenceville, NJ's brightest star, poet and critic John "Burning Bush" Timpane, simply sparkles with a poem sure to hit home for many (in The Philadelphia Inquirer's book pages no less) . . . Belated congrats to Emma Donoghue (one of Diaspora Dialogue's mentors this past year) for her long-listings, short-listings, accolades and winnings (including the prestigious Rogers Writers' Trust Award) for Room (not to mention her generous donation of the 25K-prize to Toronto's Barbra Schlifer Commemorative Clinic); and, on that high note, I strongly recommend you visit Zephyr Press online to order copies of DD's various anthologies and artistic offerings before its limited-edition print runs run their sales courses.
p.s. Last week, someone asked me to name the ONE book of poetry I'd like to take into the next life with me; at the time, I said I couldn't answer on the spot and would like to think about it. Welp, I thought about it (after remembering that, when asked if he really believed in life after death, McLuhan immediately quip-lashed the questioneer: "Do you really believe there's any life before death?"); so? Since I plan not to die in this century if I get my way, I s'pose I'd choose The Divine Comedy; but, then, I got to thinking, wouldn't *my* life-after-death include 72 libraries or something? Just praying . . . :).