Irene Gregorio enjoys a diverse and active musical life as a pianist, educator, and music director. As a pianist and chamber musician, she has collaborated with members of the LA Phil and San Francisco Symphonies. She has served as pianist for the Los Angeles Children’s Chorus, LA Opera Education and Outreach, and the University of Southern California Chamber Singers, among others. Her performances as a collaborative pianist have taken her throughout North America, Europe, Cuba, and the Philippines, and she has also appeared on PBS, CBC Radio 2, and on film soundtracks in the LA area.
Dr. Gregorio has over 15 years of experience in the university setting, serving as staff/faculty in collaborative piano at the campuses of the California State University, East Bay and Los Angeles. She earned her DMA at the University of Southern California and recently returned home to Canada, where she serves as the Director of Music Ministry at Dublin St. United Church, and Sessional Instructor of Piano at the University of Guelph.
Irene Gregorio was named as the TMC Collaborative Pianist in August 2021 and was the pianist of the National Youth Choir of Canada in 2022.
Michael Basinski, who for many years served as the distinguished curator of The Poetry Collection at the University of Buffalo, is a Western New York-based text, visual, and sound poet whose work has been heavily influenced by Fluxus, the innovative interdisciplinary international art movement of the 1960s and 1970s. Michael performs his work as a solo poet and in ensemble with BuffFluxus and the Don Metz Experience.
Peter Skoggard is a composer, artist, dancer, actor, and poet living in Elora, Ontario. He has written chamber works, chamber operas, one musical, works for voice and piano, and choir, works performed in Elora, at the Guelph Spring Festival and River Run Centre, in Toronto at the Glenn Gould Studio, Cleveland, and New York.
His song cycles have set words and poetry, of John Donne, William Blake, Guillaume Apollinaire Maragaret Atwood, Thomas King, kateri akiwense-damm, R.A.D. Ford, Billy Collins, Jerry Prager, and Asa Boxer. He has set the Latin Mass for soloists, choir, and organ. One opera is based on a 14th Century Japanese Noh Drama. The other is based on the life of Teresa Stratas. He has written Roma: a piano quintet in seven movements.
Performers of his works include Bridget Hogan, Marion Samuel-Stevens, Kathy Domeny, Robert Missen, Tilly Kooyman, Cecile Denis, Christopher Burton, Irene Gregorio, Alexander Sevastian, Tony Quarington, Mino Ode Kwewak N’gamowak, David Earle, the Guelph Youth Singers, Via Salzburg, and the Penderecki String Quartet.
Morvern McNie writes short fiction and poetry. As a performance poet she has appeared at Hillside Festival, Eden Mill’s Fringe, Wordfest Elora, The Guelph Arts Festival and The Festival of Coffeehouse Poets. She co-authored a chapter for a University of Toronto publication, Classroom Action.
Human Rights, Critical Activism, and Community-Based Learning. Her first chapbook was published by Vocamus in 2020.
On 15 June 2025, Peter Bottéas and the Elora Poetry Centre organized an event featuring contemporary poetry of the Greek diaspora. Peter focused on his translation from Greek into English of recent poems by the Boston-based poet Vassiliki Rapti, collected in Bathed in Moonlight (2023). He also read poems by Despina Kaitatzi-Choulioumi and George Kalogeris, as well as a few of his own, spellbinding the audience. Prior to his reading, Georgia Perdikoulias beautifully sang a musical setting of Peter’s poem “Refuge,” as well as other verse set to music by the composer Kostas Rekleitis, with texts by Vassiliki Rapti. These were followed by 19th-century Greek art songs and some moving traditional Greek songs. Georgia was masterfully accompanied on piano by a familiar and distinguished friend of the Elora Poetry Centre, Irene Gregorio.
Peter Bottéas
A native of Toronto, Peter holds a Master’s degree in Translation from the Université de Montreal. After a twenty-year detour as a psychotherapist in Boston, he has returned to one of his first loves: literary translation. He is co-host, with Vassiliki, of the podcast series Borders Unbound: Hellenic Poetry of the Diaspora and Beyond, as well as being an occasional voice-over artist, poet, and aficionado of French and Greek poetry set to music.
Georgia Perdikoulias
Canadian-Greek soprano and librettist Georgia Perdikoulias is an artist with a passion for storytelling through the creation and performance of new works. A graduate of the Graduate Vocal Arts Program at the Bard College Conservatory of Music, Georgia has found equal joy and passion in performing and debuting operatic and art song repertoire. Her performances at Bard included the premiering of art songs, one of which was Peter’s “Refuge” (composed by Kostas Rekleitis), and a new opera, My Wife is a Ghost. Georgia combines her love of writing and the written word with her passion for performing, employing a text-centric approach to new and canonical works alike. Georgia is also a published poet, having co-authored the poetry collection Mythopoesis (2022). In addition to her classical music training, Georgia is a traditional Greek folk singer and dancer with a love for performing and sharing her culture.
Irene Gregorio
Collaborative Pianist and Musical Assistant
Irene Gregorio enjoys a diverse and active musical life as a pianist, educator, and music director. As a pianist and chamber musician, she has collaborated with members of the LA Phil and San Francisco Symphonies. She has served as pianist for the Los Angeles Children’s Chorus, LA Opera Education and Outreach, and the University of Southern California Chamber Singers, among others. Her performances as a collaborative pianist have taken her throughout North America, Europe, Cuba, and the Philippines, and she has also appeared on PBS, CBC Radio 2, and on film soundtracks in the LA area.
Dr. Gregorio has over 15 years of experience in the university setting, serving as staff/faculty in collaborative piano at the campuses of the California State University, East Bay and Los Angeles. She earned her DMA at the University of Southern California and recently returned home to Canada, where she serves as the Director of Music Ministry at Dublin St. United Church, and Sessional Instructor of Piano at the University of Guelph. Irene was named as the TMC Collaborative Pianist in August 2021 and was the pianist of the National Youth Choir of Canada in 2022.
The programme was presented in two parts with a short intermission, after which there was a Q & A session prior to breaking for the usual finger food and drinks.
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.
The Elora Poetry Centre & Gallery 