This site uses technical, analytics and third-party cookies.
By continuing to browse, you accept the use of cookies.

Preferences cookies

POETICA-3

On the occasion of the International Women’s Day, the Istituto Italiano di Cultura is pleased to invite the writers Gianna Patriarca, Terri Favro, M. Nourbese Philip, Margaret Christakos, and Irene Marques, to the third in a series of presentations which will feature local artists, writers, poets and who will share their latest works. 

Poetica is a series of literary encounters, curated by Italian Canadian writer Gianna Patriarca, that presents the work of writers of different cultural backgrounds. The selected writers present and read excerpts of their works and discuss them with the public. Poetica explores the way in which these writers have filtered their culture of origin through the experience of the diaspora to become part of the great Canadian cultural mosaic.

Gianna Patriarca is the author of 8 books of poetry and 1 children’s book. Her award winning Italian Women and Other Tragedies, has had its 4th printing and has been translated into Italian. Gianna’s work is extensively anthologized, featured in numerous documentaries and adapted for the stage and CBC radio. Her work appears on the course list of American, Canadian and Italian Universities. A translation of her poetry is due to appear this year by Prof. Carlo Pagetti in Milan. Her first collection of short fiction All My Fallen Angelas was launched on May 5th by Inanna Publications.

Terri Favro. Growing up in the Niagara region during the cold war, Terri Favro was told, “if they drop the bomb, we’ll be the first to go.” Her experiences inspired her novel Sputnik’s Children, published by ECW Books and named by CBC Canada Reads as an anticipated book for Spring 2017. A CBC Literary Prize finalist and co-creator of the Bella comic book series, Terri’s work has appeared in numerous literary magazines and anthologies including the Humber Literary Review, Geist, Prism, Room and Clockwork Canada: Steampunk Fiction. Another new novel, Once Upon The Time In West Toronto, is upcoming this fall from Inanna and a new graphic novel, Bella and the Facer Street Gang is coming soon from Grey Border Books.

M. Nourbese Philip is an unembedded poet, essayist, novelist, playwright and former lawyer who lives in the space-time of the City of Toronto. She is a Fellow of the Guggenheim, and Rockefeller (Bellagio) Foundations and the MacDowell Colony. She is the recipient of many awards including the Casa de las Americas prize (Cuba). Among her best known published works are: She Tries Her Tongue; Her Silence Softly Breaks, Looking for Livingstone: An Odyssey of Silence, and Harriet’s Daughter, a young adult novel. Philip’s most recent work is Zong!, a genre-breaking poem, which engages with ideas of the law, history and memory as they relate to the transatlantic slave trade.

Margaret Christakos. Originally from Sudbury, Toronto-based writer Margaret Christakos has published nine collections of poetry, including Multitudes (2013), Welling (2010; A Globe100 book), Sooner (2005; a Pat Lowther Memorial Award nominee), and Excessive Love Prostheses (2002; winner of a ReLit Award), as well as a novel, Charisma (2000; a Trillium Book Award nominee). A public event coordinator and sessional instructor in creative writing, Christakos is currently Canada Council Writer in Residence at Western University and the London Public Library. Her most recent book is a personal intergenre memoir about issues of being a woman, mother and writer at midlife, entitled Her Paraphernalia: On Motherlines, Sex/Blood/Loss & Selfies.

Irene Marques is a bilingual writer (English and Portuguese) and academic currently teaching in the African Studies Program and the Department of English at the University of Toronto. She holds a PhD in Comparative Literature, a Masters in French Literature, a Masters in Comparative Literature and a BA (Hon.) in French Language and Literature all from the University of Toronto, as well as a Bachelor of Social Work from Ryerson University. Marques academic training and research focus on colonial and postcolonial studies and the literatures of Africa and is comparative, transdisciplinary and transcultural in scope. Her topics of investigation include: nationhood, identity, hybridism, essentialism and plurality ethics in African post-colonial contexts; Links betweencolonial nostalgias, personal “lack”, utopias and artistic representation; Intersections between African and Buddhist philosophies, the philosophy of Emmanuel Lévinas and Luce Irigaray, and Jungian psychology; and Race, class, gender, trauma, and power dynamics as represented in literature.

Marques’ creative writing intersects with her academic interests and explores issues of personal and collective identity, mystical and mythical understandings of self, world and universe, gender, race, empire, class, cultural syncretism, the Portuguese colonial wars in Africa and the Portuguese fascist regime. Her narratives are marked by a universal ethos that crosses geographical and cultural boundaries, bringing to the page existential themes that affect us all, while being characterized by a profound philosophical inquiry that sees the individual as an entity constantly yearning to be “whole” in a markedly socio-political world that divides, dissects, fragments, annihilates, humiliates, and dismisses multidimensional (non-rational) intelligences and their enlightened ways.

She is the author of three poetry collections: The Circular Incantation: An Exercise in Loss and Findings (2013, Guernica Editions), The Perfect Unravelling of the Spirit (2012, Mawenzi House) and Wearing Glasses of Water (2007, Mawenzi House), as well as the Portuguese language short story collection Habitando na Metáfora do Tempo: Crónicas Desejadas (2009, Edium Editores) and the novel My House is a Mansion (2015, Leaping Lyon Books/York University). Her Portuguese language novel Uma casa no mundo (Verso da História) will be published in Portugal in the upcoming spring and her English language novel Daria, Tales of a Woman and Other Idealists (Inanna Publications, York University) is scheduled for publication in 2019.