Moses E. Croc, born Henrick Brand, is a Canadian-born South African slam poet. He is the author of Driftwood, a collection of poems printed as part of the UNISA Flame Series published by Cambridge University Press. He has worked as a graphic designer, candle shop manager, nude model, indie artist, waiter, and drummer, all occupations that have informed his creative pursuits. He has performed his poetry across the world, including at the Latitude Festival in the UK, the Grahamstown National Arts Festival in South Africa, and the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word in Canada.
Luke is the publisher at Gordon Hill Press, based in Guelph. He is also the Managing Director of Vocamus Writers Community, a non-profit community organization that supports book culture in Guelph.
He has written a collection of poetry, short prose, and photography called Island Pieces. Other works include three chapbooks of poetry called Can Con, Trumped, and These My Streets; two poetry broadsheets called Grounded and Indexical; and an ongoing series of poetry broadsheets called Conversations with Viral Media. He also writes a semi-regular column on chapbooks for The Town Crier. His writing has appeared in The Bull Calf, CV2, EVENT Magazine, Filling Station, Free Fall, The Goose, HA&L, The Maynard, paperplates, Queen Mob’s Tea House, The Rusty Toque, The Town Crier, The Windsor Review.
Luke’s Poetry of Thought has been published by Interludes of The Elora Poetry Centre and can be purchased through our website.
Brian Henderson is the retired Director of Wilfrid Laurier University Press. Brian is the author of thirteen collections of poetry. Nerve Language (2007) was a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award. Brian read at The Elora Poetry Centre from his twelfth publication, Unidentified Poetic Object, published by Brick in 2019. Unfinishing was published by McGill-Queens University Press in 2022.
MLA CHERNOFF (they/them/@citation_bb) was born at Women’s College Hospital in December of 1991––oops. They are a six-hundred-year-old Jewish, non-binary pome machine, a Postmodern Neo-Marxist, and (somehow) a PhD Candidate at the Neoliberal University of York University, where they once held a SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship––no kidding.Their first chapbook, delet this, was released by Bad Books in 2018. Their second collection, TERSE THIRSTY, was released by Gap Riot Press in 2019. Their debut full-length collection of poetry, [SQUELCH PROCEDURES], is available from Gordon Hill Press or from The Elora Poetry Centre.
Living in Kitchener, Rae Crossman writes poetry both for the page and for oral performance. His poems have been published in literary magazines, broadcast on CBC Radio, dramatized on stage, performed and recorded as vocal music, and displayed on transit systems across Canada. Collaborative projects include storytelling, choral compositions, and theatrical pieces set in natural environments.For more than twenty-five years, in canoes and along forest trails, Rae has lived the roles of several mythological characters in R. Murray Schafer’s Theatre of Confluence. He has served as a short story editor for The New Quarterly and has received a Waterloo Region Arts Award for his artistic endeavours across disciplines.
Dr. Yun teaches Community Music at Wilfrid Laurier University, specializing in, amongst other things, the Shakuhachi.
He is an intercultural, contemplative musician, teacher, and scholar. A native of the Sierra Nevada Foothills of Northern California, he is a descendant of San Francisco and Jamaican Chinese with a background rooted in various musical traditions discovered and pursued alongside his formal training and professional work as a classical conductor. These include Japanese Zen Buddhist shakuhachi, Native American flute, Asian overtone singing, didgeridoo, West African kora and drumming. His scholarly interests focus on the intersections of music, spirituality and social justice through practices such as intercultural improvisation, restorative-contemplative musical forms, and performative eco-acoustics. At the juncture of emergence from the global pandemic, he seeks to reawaken awareness of relationships between humans, the natural world, and technology by combining scientific and musical modalities. Currently, assistant professor at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario, Dr. Yun is in demand as a clinician and workshop leader. During the pandemic, he hosted the “Authentic Voice” podcast and Martin Luther University’s “Contemplative Music Pause.” An advocate of teaching innovation, he is currently producing “The Listeners” podcast to support students and researchers seeking access and primary data into the interdisciplinary theories and practices of listening and as a precursor to a new course titled “Listening: Theories and Practice.” He teaches community music, contemplative arts, and social justice courses at both the undergraduate and graduate levels for the Faculty of Music and Martin Luther University College. Former director of both the University of Waterloo Choir and WLU’s Concert Choir, he is the founder of Conrad Grebel University College’s East-West Dark Horse Ensemble and Wilfrid Laurier’s Confluence Ensemble. As shakuhachi soloist and scholar, Dr. Yun performs and records with the Earth Ether Ensemble under the leadership of James Harley. He appears on Room 217 World Music series for Music Cares and various music apps, including Plant Choir’s biosonificstion app which creates generative music directly from houseplants. His latest composition projects feature seldom noticed or unhearable (with the unaided human ear) natural sounds (macroacoustics), and bio-electrical fields to generate new musical forms and structures. Dr. Yun serves as music advisor for Canada’s Plant Choir ® and president of the Community Music School of the Waterloo Region.
Dr. Karen Houle is a retired Philosophy Professor at the University of Guelph. At this point in her life, she’s hellbent on using her immense caffeinated chaotic energy, her acquired social capital and her well-honed pragmatic attitude of “not giving a shit what people [think] anymore” to create and inspire joyful art and artful local socioecological post-humanist projects that are, as the poet Anna Bowen wrote, “tiny but everything”. Houle has 5 or maybe 6 of these projects bubbling on the proverbial stove at this very moment and would love to share the stove with others. No cooking experience necessary.
All of Houle’s projects fall under the umbrella of “The Art of Soil Collective” ART + SOIL + COLLECTIVE (where “collective” does not mean just humans in a bunch, doing human-stuff for humans). In the best of all possible worlds – which is a refrain we say in academic Philosophy all the time, but really, what we should say is: In the best possible state of the one & only world and life we have –– these efforts will combine & make good use of their solid and varied political and ethical principles, their many acquired and diverse practical skills and, most of all, the unruly passions that rule Houle including: food security, grandmothering wisdoms, plant philosophy, ecology, bush knowledge, environmental protection, organic farming, wordsmithing, crafting stuff from stuff, soil remediation, biodiversity, chopping wood, seed saving, pollinator support, composting, mental health gymnastics, bio-cultural diversity and lake swimming.
“Kess” is an Iranian born, Toronto based queer poet, translator and writer.
They were shortlisted for the 2021 Austin Clarke poetry prize, 2022’s Arc Poem of the Year award, The MalahatReview’s 2023 Open Season awards for poetry and they are the winner of the 2021 Vallum Poetry Prize. They are the author of four poetry chapbooks and three translated poetry chapbooks. They have released two full-length collections of poetry with Gordon Hill Press. Their full-length collaborative poetry manuscript G and their full-length collection of experimental dream-poems Daffod*ls were published by Pamenar Press in 2023.
Tillia Kooyman is an active solo, chamber and orchestral musician, with interests in contemporary music, interdisciplinary works and acoustic ecology. An advocate for Canadian music, Tilly has premiered many new works by Canadian composers at the World Bass Clarinet Convention in the Netherlands, the international Bohlen-Pierce Symposium in Boston, ClarinetFest in Vancouver, NUMUS Concerts and the Open Ears Festival in Kitchener-Waterloo. The most significant influence in Tilly’s life has been the over three decades in collaboration with celebrated Canadian composer R. Murray Schafer on his Patria Cycle, a series of monumental works often staged in unique settings
Tillia’s education includes a Master of Music degree from the University of Western Ontario, an Associateship from the Royal Conservatory of Music, and advanced studies at the Banff Centre School of Fine Arts. A former student of James Campbell and Robert Riseling, Tilly has also studied ‘Deep Listening’ with Pauline Oliveros and free improvisation with Casey Sokol.
The Elora Poetry Centre & Gallery 