Photo by kygp. Tonight the seven finalists for the prestigious Griffin Poetry Prize will be reading at the MacMillan Theatre at 7:30 p.m. Tickets for the reading are completely sold out, so instead you'll have to settle for a copy of the anthology to get close to the nominees. The Canadian shortlist includes David McFadden and Nicole Brossard, and can be found here. The winners, who each receive $50,000, will be announced on Wednesday......

Hanging out in the city with Torontoist's Summer Reads. LitTO continues this week with a few summer reading picks. These are literally reading choices for the season, as we haven’t read them yet, but plan to take them to the cottage. Films and Poems by John Barlow, LyricalMyrical. John Barlow’s poems have a habit of looking at this crazy world, not agreeing with it, and finding their own peace and happiness. He has a......

Buzz about the Seventh Annual Griffin Poetry Prize began when its 2007 judges were announced last November. Anticipation grew when the shortlist was unveiled two months ago, and on June 5th, the nominated poets performed for an enthusiastic sold-out crowd at The Macmillan Theatre. And finally! The winners were presented during a vibrant awards gala last Wednesday evening at the Stone Distillery. As you’ve probably heard by now, Charles Wright’s Scar Tissue and Don McKay’s......

Photo of Griffin Nominees by Poetography.ca. Please forgive! The listings are a day later than scheduled. Blame it on the rain or blame it on The Griffin Poetry Prize. Last night, six of seven poets nominated for The 2007 Griffins—and one actor—read to a sold-out house at the Macmillan Theatre. Imagine: 800+ people clapping ecstatically for poetry, and a standing ovation for lifetime achievement winner Tomas Tranströmer (people wept). Nominee Ken Babstock, who has......

Welcome to Torontoist's new weekly Lit. Listings of all things bookish, wordy, and between the covers. We want to highlight the "lit" in Toronto's literary scene: as you, dear reader, may have noticed, a lot of writing about writing is dull, and could be improved with a bit of light. We are living in a time when major newspapers are folding their books sections, and even alternative weeklies forget their literary pages once in......

Get on over to the east end tonight for Exile Editions' Spring Reading. New books will bloom this eve, and others will be ripe for picking throughout spring and summer. Exile Editorial Board Member Chris Doda gives us the layout for tonight’s garden of authors: Priscila Uppal's Ontological Necessities, her fifth book of poetry with Exile, has been shortlisted for the 2007 Griffin Poetry Prize. It deals predominantly with the absurdity of the 21st century......

If you’d like weekly emails full of Toronto literary listings, sign up at Patchy Squirrel, a new offering from Stuart Ross and Dani Couture. Stuart launches a new collection of poetry, I Cut My Finger (Anvil Press) with Kate Sutherland's All In Together Girls (fiction from Thistledown Press) Sunday, April 22, 8 p.m. at Clintons Tavern (back room), 693 Bloor West. For a monthly overview of the Toronto scene and beyond, Word: Canada’s Magazine for......

Past Griffin Award recipient Christian Bök once stated, "The Griffin is the poetry award that can drastically change a poet’s life." Christian isn't exaggerating: the $100,000 prize, shared by two winners, is one of the largest poetry awards in the world. In a 2000 speech, Scott Griffin, founder of The Griffin Trust for Excellence in Poetry, explained, "the poetry prize had to be of sufficient size to make a statement that declared that poets......

A happy National Poetry Month to you! Established eight years ago by The League of Canadian Poets, National Poetry Month brings together schools, publishers, booksellers, literary organizations, libraries, and poets across the country to celebrate poetry. In April, you might trip over poems in some of the oddest places. Today, the festivities kicked off over breakfast at Toronto Reference Library’s Beaton Auditorium. With a morning of short readings hosted by The Globe and Mail’s Books......