Ryan Fitzpatrick: A cloth reading

Saturday, October 6th 2018

8EAST (8 E Pender)

1pm-3pm

Join us on an autumn afternoon for a cloth reading. A cloth reading is a type of reading performance in which one is tasked to read a book out loud from cover to cover. For our purposes, the poet will read their nascent manuscript to a group of eager and invested ears, which will then be followed with discussion/critique/feedback/etc. It is an opportunity for the poet to workshop their material, enjoy some good company and excellent snacks.

ryan fitzpatrick is the poet in question with Danielle LaFrance introducing and providing a possible framing for the manuscript.

ryan fitzpatrick is a poet and critic living in Toronto. He recently finished his PhD in English at SFU and is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Toronto Scarborough. He’s the author of two books and numerous chapbooks, including Fortified Castles (Talon, 2014) and Fake Math (Snare, 2007). With Jonathan Ball, he edited the poetry anthology Why Poetry Sucks. With Deanna Fong, Janey Dodd, Fred Wah, Susan Rudy and others, he works on the Fred Wah Digital Archive.

21st Century Modernism

Were we ever friends? Frank O’Hara only named
names because they were his pals, but friendship
isn’t an aesthetic, huh? It’s all about what you can
build and who you can champion. Like a pyramid.

Things that work globally: the IMF, drone strikes,
shipping logistics, human trafficking, stock
markets, forced migrations, the avant-garde. But
the internet’s pretty great, hey? I’m on it now.

A gated community isn’t a metaphor, but a manicured
programme of a security wall – an airlocked
mainframe with an unanswerable phone inside,
like Le Corbusier without any concern for function.

If Paris is the capital of the 19th Century and New
York is the capital of the 20th, why won’t some
people just shut the fuck up? I stole that from
Danielle LaFrance. Poetry is only theft from friends.