Inaugural Meredith and Peter Quartermain Poet in Residence |
18th Writer in Residence at Green College: Margaret Christakos
Margaret Christakos is attached to this earth. Born and raised in Sudbury, Canada of settler ancestry, she is a widely published poet, fiction writer, image-maker and innovative poetry mentor engaged since the late 1980s in an experimental lyric feminist poetics of relationality, direct and indirect address, social media and embodiment, voice and touch, constraint and improvisation, order and disorder, memory, and public listening.
An award-winning author, Christakos has published eleven collections of poetry including the recent Dear Birch, (Palimpsest, 2021) and charger (Talonbooks, 2020), a multimodal memoir Her Paraphernalia: On Motherlines, Sex/Blood/Loss & Selfies (Book*hug, 2016) and the novel Charisma (Pedlar, 2000). Previous poetry collections include Multitudes (2013), Welling (2010), What Stirs (2008), Sooner (2005) and Excessive Love Prostheses (2002). Chapbooks include Adult Video (Nomados, 2006) and Social Medea Vs. Virtual Medusa (Gap Riot, 2017). Space Between Her Lips: The Poetry of Margaret Christakos was published by the Laurier Poetry Series in 2017.
A Chalmers Arts Fellow, her work has been acclaimed with nominations for the Trillium Book Award and the Pat Lowther Memorial Award, and received the ReLit, ARC Magazine’s Critic’s Desk, and the Bliss Carman Award. Christakos holds a B.F.A. in Visual Arts and an M.A. in Education. She has worked as an editor, production coordinator, event designer and instructor in creative writing for more than 20 years at numerous Canadian universities. She serves as associate faculty with the M.F.A. creative writing program at University of Guelph-Humber, and was the creator and facilitator of the unique Influency: A Toronto Poetry Salon (2006–2012). She has offered mentorship to many emerging writers in many contexts, and has served as Writer in Residence at the University of Windsor, Western University, London Public Library, University of Alberta and as a Distinguished Visitor at University College, University of Toronto. In winter/spring 2021-2022, she is Poet in Residence at Green College, UBC. She has three adult children and lives in Toronto. Find her at margaretchristakos.com.
ALL TALKS AT 5 PM (PACIFIC) VIA ZOOM
MULTIPLYING INTIMACIES ACROSS A ROOM
Charlie Petch and Janice Jo Lee
Thursday, January 27
ASTONISHING STRUCTURES OF LONG TIME
R. Kolewe and Dianne Chisholm
Wednesday, February 16
INCANTATORY RE-COMPOSITION
Sonnet L'Abbé and Nicole Raziya Fong
Thursday, March 24