Author: daniellbratton

A Big Splash with Karen Houle and Tilly Kooyman on July 8, 2023, 4:00 p.m. (live performance at Elora Poetry Centre)

It has been a very long time three years since we held a live event here, and as enjoyable as the remote performances and panel discussion were–and then there was the wonderful sound poetry event at Renison University College featuring bill bissett, Honey Novick, Wesley Rickert, and MLA Chernoff!–they were not quite the same, removed from the natural setting of the Elora Poetry Centre & Gallery.  We are therefore very excited about 8 July, when Karen Houle (who delivered a memorable virtual reading from The Grand River Watershed: A Folk Ecology during the pandemic) will be inspiring us, and afterwards, to accompany her words, Tilly Kooyman will play a variation on Vaughan Williams The Lark Ascending.  We will of course be offering the usual food and drinks afterwards.

Dr. Karen Houle is a recently retired Philosophy Professor at the University of Guelph.  At this point in her life, she’s hellbent on using her immense caffeinated chaotic energy, her acquired social capital and her well-honed pragmatic attitude of “not giving a shit what people [think] anymore” to create and inspire joyful art and artful local socioecological post-humanist projects that are, as the poet Anna Bowen wrote, “tiny but everything”. Houle has 5 or maybe 6 of these projects bubbling on the proverbial stove at this very moment and would love to share the stove with others. No cooking experience necessary. 

All of Houle’s projects fall under the umbrella of “The Art of Soil Collective” ART + SOIL + COLLECTIVE (where “collective” does not mean just humans in a bunch, doing human-stuff for humans). In the best of all possible worlds – which is a refrain we say in academic Philosophy all the time, but really, what we should say is: In the best possible state of the one & only world and life we have –– these efforts will combine & make good use of their solid and varied political and ethical principles, their many acquired and diverse practical skills and, most of all, the unruly passions that rule Houle including:  food security, grandmothering wisdoms, plant philosophy, ecology, bush knowledge, environmental protection, organic farming, wordsmithing, crafting stuff from stuff, soil remediation, biodiversity, chopping wood, seed saving, pollinator support, composting, mental health gymnastics, bio-cultural diversity and lake swimming. 

Tilly Kooyman is an active solo, chamber and orchestral musician, with interests in contemporary music, interdisciplinary works and acoustic ecology. An advocate for Canadian music, Tilly has premiered many new works by Canadian composers at the World Bass Clarinet Convention in the Netherlands, the International Bohlen-Pierce Symposium in Boston, ClarinetFest in Vancouver, NUMUS Concerts and the Open Ears Festival in Kitchener-Waterloo. The most significant influence in Tilly’s life has been the over three decades of collaboration with celebrated Canadian composer R. Murray Schafer on his Patria Cycle, a series of monumental works often staged in unique settings.

Tilly’s education includes a Master of Music degree from the University of Western Ontario, an Associateship from the Royal Conservatory of Music, and advanced studies at the Banff Centre School of Fine Arts. A former student of James Campbell and Robert Riseling, Tilly has also studied ‘Deep Listening’ with Pauline Oliveros and free improvisation with Casey Sokol

croc E moses performs Rhythm as My Mother Tongue

Funded by The League of Canadian Poets and The Canada Council for the Arts

Co-sponsored by the Elora Poetry Centre & Gallery and Renison University College, University of Waterloo

Photo credit: Open Book Festival croc E moses – Open Book Festival

croc E will be reading and reciting a selection of material inspired by the interplay of the natural elements in Southern Africa and Grey County where he is presently based.

For those of you who have not yet viewed croc E’s latest video, please go to YouTube—

                                       Shrink Bigger feat. croc E moses – Bing video

And here’s the link to his poetry performance on April 6LegacyMartialArtsandFitness Kitchener is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

                                        Time: Apr 6, 2021 04:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82385317060?pwd=MWtURUhGMmFDLy9yOTh3Y0N4NEhCQT09

Meeting ID: 823 8531 7060                      Passcode—47477