June 12 | 6:30 pm | Istituto Italiano di Cultura | 496 Huron Street
Corrado Paina in conversation with Parliamentary Poet Laureate George Elliott Clarke and poet Madeline Bassnett will present the new poetry collection by Corrado Paina.
A toast to illness is direct poetic testimony from Corrado’s extended affliction with cancer. Although he survived, he delivers no comforting tale of recovery, but a frank and unflinching account, piece by piece, of a harrowing ordeal that would very likely be fatal. Poem after poem authentically registers the harshest impacts of pain and distress, powered by jolts of mordant irony, black humour, and a darkly compelling imagination. Here is work of rare honesty and courage, as well as of writerly art.
Madeline Bassnett will read excerpts from her last collection of poems Under the Gamma Camera (2019).
Corrado Paina lives and writes in Toronto. He is published in Canada by Mansfield Press: Hoarse Legend (2000), The Dowry of Education (2004), The Alphabet of the Traveler (2006), and Souls in Plain Clothes (2008). He was the editor of College Street — Little Italy Toronto’s Renaissance Strip, a finalist for the Toronto Heritage Award. In Italy he has published a collection of short stories entitled di corsa (Monteleone/Mapograph — Vibo Valentia), the novel tra Rothko e tre finestre (Ibiskos), the collections of poetry tempo rubato (Atelier 14 — Milano) darsena inquinata (Moderata durant — Latina), l’alfabeto del viaggiatore (Silvio Editrice) and Abecedario (with etchings by Sandro Martini, printed by Paolo Nava).
George Elliott Clarke, OC ONS (born February 12, 1960) is a Canadian poet, playwright and literary critic who served as the Poet Laureate of Toronto[1] from 2012 to 2015 and as the 2016-2017 Canadian Parliamentary Poet Laureate.[2] His work largely explores and chronicles the experience and history of the Black Canadian communities of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, creating a cultural geography that Clarke refers to as “Africadia”.
Madeline Bassnett is the author of Under the Gamma Camera (2019), and two chapbooks: Pilgrimage (2016), and Elegies (2011). Her work explores questions of illness and mortality within our increasingly fragile world. She lives in London Ontario, where she teaches English and Creative Writing at Western University.