Shab-e She'r Poetry Night XL
Shab-e She’r (Poetry Night) XL
The most diverse poetry reading and open mic in Toronto
At Shab-e She’r (Poetry Night) we don’t just wait for diversity to happen: we actively invite it.
Featured poets: Cassandra Myers & Robert Priest
Host: Bänoo Zan
Time: Tuesday, May 31, 2016
Place: Beit Zatoun, 612 Markham St., Toronto, ON M6G 2L8
Doors open: 6:15 p.m.
Sign-up for the open mic: 6:30 p.m.
Start: 7 p.m.
Admission: $5
Cassandra Myers has spontaneously emerged from the suburbs of the GTA as a youth spoken word artist. Her poetry is an intricate construction of her lived experience, drawing on her hard-learned lessons with heritage, sexuality, womanhood and family to create vivid imagery, getting you right in the feels. Her dedication to ever-evolving punchlines earned her the title of this year's BAM! Youth Slam Team Captain. She will lead the team to Brave New Voices 2016 in Atlanta as a seasoned competitor after dropping bars in this years College University International Poetry Slam in Vrigina with Ryerson's Slam Team and performing on the finals stage at WOWPS 2016. When she isn't rehearsing on subway platforms, Cassandra is taking on Toronto as a student at Ryerson University, where she is studying Child and Youth Care and continues her summer camp counsellor career. She loves loudly, eats constantly, and wants to be your best friend.
Robert Priest is the author of 21 books of poetry and prose and numerous CDs. His poetry platforms on the web have attracted over a hundred thousand hits and he is a mainstay of the festival circuit in Canada and all over the world. His words have been decried in the legislature (see the video at youtube/greatbigfaced), turned into a hit song, posted in the transit system, broadcast on MuchMusic, charted on John Sakomoto’s anti-hit list, quoted by politicians, sung on Sesame Street and widely published in text books and anthologies.
His latest books are Previously Feared Darkness, ECW Press. (“Dense, humourous , knowing, pleading, consoling and entirely invigorating poems of the first class.” - Michael Dennis) and a book of praise poems written for children: Rosa Rose published in June 2013 by Wolsak & Wynn (“Rosa Rose and Other Poems is a beautiful poetry collection that needs to be on every child's bookshelf and is sure to make young readers lovers of history and poetry.” - Inderjit Deogun CM magazine)
His 2008 book, Reading the Bible Backwards, rose to number two on the Globe and Mail’s poetry bestsellers list, its sales exceeded only by those of Leonard Cohen. “Priest renders the quotidian and intellectualizes it for us in a genius-sampling tool--himself… A sensational book.” Nathaniel D. Moore, Broken Pencil Magazine.
“Poetry full of flashes of insight. Imaginative in a strange way, he takes inordinate chances with logic, countering absurdity with absurdity, and expanding our sense of human emotional possibilities.”
-The Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature
His micro poems have found their way into The Farmer’s Almanac and Colombo’s Canadian Quotations. “There will always be plenty of space on the pages of my ‘quote books’ for the brilliant aphorisms of Robert Priest.” -John Robert Colombo
Robert first came to national attention as early as 1986 when his spoken word video/single Congo Toronto received nation-wide airplay on MuchMusic for over three months establishing for Priest a unique place in the poetry/music canon. In 1989, his collection of poems, The Mad Hand, was the recipient of the Milton Acorn People’s Poetry award. Rotweiller Pacifist, l988, continued the tradition with a collection of twenty spoken word pieces, many of them accompanied by tracks and beats. Robert’s 3rd spoken word CD, Tongue’n’Groove, was released on EMI's prestigious Artisan label in l998.
Festivals Where Robert Priest has performed
The International Festival of a Authors in Toronto, the Cambridge Festival, The Vancouver Writer's Festival, The Winnipeg Writer's Festival, The Kingston Writer's Festival, The Acorn Festival, The Melbourne Writer's Festival (Aus) The Ottawa Literary Festival, Eden Mills Festival, the Leacock Festival, Poetry Gabriola, Words Aloud, Calgary International Spoken Word Festival, The Canadian Festival of the Spoken Word in Toronto and Festival Voix d'Amerique in Montreal. He has also delivered the word at the Overload Festival in Melbourne Australia, the Kacat Kabaret in Budapest, the Free the Word Festival in Stockholm Sweden, the Mariposa Folk Festival, the Hillside Festival, The Eaglewood Folk Festival,, the Berkley Slam, the Couchiching Think Tank and Toronto's North by North East.
Shab-e She’r acknowledges the generous donation of books by Guernica Editions, Quattro Books & Ontario Poetry Society to our features. We also acknowledge the RBC Arts Access Fund through Toronto Arts Foundation and Neighbourhood Arts Network.
Please feel free to spread the word. “Join” the event on Facebook and “invite” your friends; use twitter and other social media. Let us make it as diverse as we are.