Thursday, June 8, 2023
Doors open at 6:30 PM
Readings begin at 7:00 PM
Forest City Gallery is pleased to host local poets Tom Cull and Karen Schindler for the London launch of their forthcoming Gaspereau Press publications: Tom Cull’s Kill Your Starlings and Karen Schindler’s The Sad Truth. Tom and Karen will read selections from their works. They will also be joined by Melissa Schnarr. Melissa’s chapbook Secondhand Moccasins, was recently released by Anstruther Press.
Exploring ecology, art, activism and historiography, Tom Cull writes of his relationships with family and place, pursuing the imperfect program of recollecting and reconstructing the idea of ‘home’ while resisting nostalgia’s dubious erasures. Frank, unabashed, the poems lean into these entanglements with humour and sincerity, chronicling the writer’s vulnerability as a hinge-point in time—between being a son to a father and a father to a son; between a history that can’t be changed and a future that might be.
Karen Schindler’s The Sad Truth is the latest in Gaspereau Press’ The Devil’s Whim Occasional Chapbook Series: No. 51
Copies of Kill Your Starlings ($20) and The Sad Truth ($5) will be available for purchase (cash purchases preferred).
Bios: Tom Cull has published a collection of poetry, Bad Animals (2018), and two chapbooks, What the Badger Said (2013) and Keep Your Distance (2021, co-written with Kerry Manders). His work has appeared in This Magazine, The Dalhousie Review, The Rusty Toque, Long Con Magazine, The Windsor Review, The New Quarterly, and The Goose. Cull was poet laureate for the city of London, ON, from 2016–18. He is the director of Antler River Rally (ARR), a grass roots environmental group he co-founded in 2012 with his partner Miriam Love. He works at the Upper Thames Conservation Authority and teaches creative writing at Western University. Born and raised in Huron County, ON, he currently resides in London on the traditional lands of the Anishinaabek, Haudenosaunee, Lunaapéewak and Chonnonton Nations.
Karen Schindler is the publisher of Baseline Press, based out of London, Ontario. Her poems and book reviews have appeared in journals including Canthius, Vallum, The Malahat Review, and The Fiddlehead. She has worked as a chemical engineer and a high-school mathematics teacher, and she served for over ten years as a director of the Poetry London Reading Series.
Melissa Schnarr is an Anishinaabe and Haudenosaunee writer from Bkejwanong Territory (Walpole Island First Nation), with family ties in Six Nations of the Grand River. She is a PhD candidate at Western University whose research focuses on Land education practices within local First Nation communities. Her work has appeared in the Temz Review, TNQ, Luna Station Quarterly and the Yellow Medicine Review. She also serves as the chair for the Indigenous Writer’s Circle at Western.
Forest City Gallery is located at 1025 Elias Street in Old East Village, London, Ontario. We’re located along the 02 and 20 bus routes through the London Transit Commission (LTC). Currently, there is ongoing construction along Dundas Street between Ontario Street and Egerton, and also along Quebec Street between Oxford Street and Elias Street. The Quebec Street overpass is currently closed to motor vehicle traffic, but is available for cycle and pedestrian access. Sidewalks along Quebec are open.
Visit the LTC website for up-to-date information about Route 02 and 20 bus detours: https://www.londontransit.ca/detours-stop-closures/
If you are driving, there is designated parking beside the gallery. There is also street parking available along Elias Street and Princess Street (one block south of Elias). Please do not park in Anderson Craft Ale’s/Junction’s parking lot unless you also plan to visit these establishments.