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Poet, essayist and editor to read at Port Alberni's Electric Mermaid

The next live reading event will take place at Char's Landing on Aug. 28, 2024
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Poet, essayist and editor John Barton will be the featured reader at the next Electric Mermaid live reading event on Aug. 28, 2024.

Port Alberni's monthly live reading event, Electric Mermaid, will poet, essayist and editor John Barton during the next event at Char's Landing on Wednesday, Aug. 28.

Barton's 12 books of poetry include Hymn, For the Boy with the Eyes of the Virgin: Selected Poems, Polari and Lost Family: A Memoir, which was nominated for the 2021 Derek Walcott Prize.

Sonnets from Lost Family have been set to music and performed as Coda for the Victims at VerseFest in Ottawa, with the support of Qu’Art, in March 2023, and as Chosen Family by the Chronos Vocal Ensemble in Edmonton to settings composed by Stuart Beatch in January 2024.

John’s other books include Seminal: The Anthology of Canada’s Gay-Male Poets, The Malahat Review at Fifty, We Are Not Avatars: Essays, Memoirs, Manifestos, and The Essential Douglas LePan, which won a 2020 eLit Award. His 10th poetry chapbook, Stopwatch, was published by Emergency Flash Mob Press in the spring of 2024.

Born in Edmonton and raised in Calgary, Barton lives in Victoria, where he was the city’s poet laureate from 2019 to 2022. Barton's books can be purchased online at www.john-barton.ca.

With host and emcee Derek Hanebury’s literary guidance, the featured reader and a host of authors through the open mic, Electric Mermaid promises to keep poetry and prose fans engaged. Doors open at 5:30 p.m. and the open mic runs from 6-8 p.m.  Admission is $10.  See www.charslanding.com/events to pre-register for the readers’ list and to select the optional Zoom link. 

 



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