Elizabeth Bachinsky: Blackout's Closing Ceremonies

Friday, February 26, 2010

Blackout's Closing Ceremonies

During the Olympics Vancouver writer Alex Leslie and I have conducted a public art project called BLACKOUT AT THE CANDAHAR, asking members of the public to black out sections of Olympics coverage to create erasure poems. We have collected over 300 hilarious, confrontational, elliptical and/or nonsensical refractive miniatures of the media overwhelm that is and was the Vancouver 2010 Olympics.

Thanks to The Candahar’s curators, writer Michael Turner and Reid Shier of Presentation House Gallery and artist Theo Sims, for the use of The Candahar as our project space and for their support of the BLACKOUT project. Thanks to everyone who made a poem; our contributors were all ages and were from Vancouver and away.

Alex and I will be presenting a little talk/video presentation about the project on Sunday at 3:30. Here are the details,

Last Call at the Candahar Bar

February 28, 3:30pm

Playwrights Centre Theatre, 3rd floor

1398 Cartwright Street

Granville Island

Featuring Ensemble Sisyphe's Clock, Elizabeth Bachinsky & Alex Leslie, Clint Burnham, Jeff Derksen, Peter Dickinson, Ken Lum, Anu Sahota, Trevor Boddy & Matthew Soules/ Stan Douglas DJ

BLACKOUT AT THE CANDAHAR acknowledges the support of SubTerrain magazine, the City of Vancouver, Presentation House Gallery, and the 2010 Cultural Olympiad . The best of the blackouts will appear inSubTerrain magazine.

What They say

“Bachinsky's work, with its myriad of influences ranging from Eliot...to Lisa Robertson, is able to rise above the boring drone of the avant-garde-versus-traditional debates. Her work can straddle both sides: formal and experimental, personal and mathematical, with a keen ear for the erotically ridiculous.”

~ Zoe Whittall, Globe and Mail

“Bachinsky has won deserved admiration for her work, full of guts and verve, spunk and nerve.…straight-shooting, straight-talking…Bachinsky’s third poetry collection [has] that same rough beauty, sinuous toughness, of make-do carpentry that works.”

~ George Elliott Clarke, Halifax Chronicle/Herald

“God of Missed Connections is a formidable work from this young poet: a considered and important contribution to the quintessential dialogue on Canada’s fractured collective history.”

~ Deanne Beattie, Vancouver Review

“…enviably good.”

~ Mark Callanan, Quill & Quire

“…one of those rare poets capable of negotiating poetic forms with rigour and testing their limits, while never losing sight of the strange, dark music of what it means to be human.”

~ Jeanette Lynes, The Globe and Mail

“a poet…with an ear to the ground of 21st century culture. [Her work] grips you with yearning from the first verse to the last…"

~ Belinda Bruce, Vancouver Review

“[Bachinsky] doesn’t let any sign pass without spinning out possible signifiers. And she sees the signs everywhere."

~ Jacqueline Turner, The Georgia Straight

“A wonderful, wonderful poet.”

~ Keith Maillard, author of Gloria & Two Strand River

“One of the significant, exciting new poets to follow…one whose fine sense of form is equaled by a dedication to using the full spectrum of tone, style, and content.”

~ Todd Swift, Eyewear

“A major influence…”

~ John K. Samson, The Weakerthans

“A…poet concerned with tradition, but possessing an experimental impulse that gives her work a countercultural thrust.”

~ Stuart Cole, Quill and Quire

“An accomplished poet who thinks and feels in the forms she employs.”-

~ Malcolm Woodland, University of Toronto Quarterly.

“She says what she wants to say confidently and skillfully. I respect this kind of honesty…”

~ Alex Boyd, The Good Reports

“Bachinsky’s willingness to range fearlessly through history sets her writing apart...[she] should be lauded for raising big questions. We should also applaud her sheer moxie.”

~ Jeanette Lynes, The Fieldstone Review, University of Saskatchewan

Elizabeth Bachinsky

Friday, February 26, 2010

Blackout's Closing Ceremonies

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