September 24, 2011
Christopher Dewdney

Dewdney’s reading was part of San Francisco poet, editor, and environmental activist Michael Rothenberg’s world-wide 100 Thousand Poets for Change. Over 400 events took place on that day.

Among the poems Chris read was The Elora Gorge Suite, from Radiant Inventory, which was nominated for a Governor General’s Award

Christopher Dewdney was born in London, Ontario, in 1951. His father was the renowned archeologist, author and historian Selwyn Dewdney. ” Because of my father’s concerns, I grew up with a prodigious amount of national history, natural history, and there was as much art around the house as there was science”.

Peter Skoggard

Peter read from poems used for the libretto of his two-hour Dramatic Oratorio called Bayt Lahm. The words for the libretto come from the poetry of women: Palestinian, Lebanese, Iraqi, as well as an Israeli mother. The voices of the Canadian diplomat and poet R.A.D. Ford and British poet W.H. Auden are also heard. All these reveal different aspects of suffering in varying proximity to and witnessing of the effects of the use of power.

Peter Skoggard is a composer, poet, and playwright living in Elora, Ontario. He was born in 1953 on Long Island, New York, to a family of painters, writers, and inventors. He moved to Canada with his family in 1969.