Meet The Artists and Performers

Bruce Kauffman lives in Kingston, and is a poet, editor, and workshop facilitator. His written work has appeared in several anthologies and journals, two chapbooks, and four collections of poetry, with an evening’s absence still waiting for moon his latest in 2019. He continues to host the ‘and the journey continues’ monthly open mic reading series he founded in 2009, and also produces and hosts his weekly spoken word radio show, finding a voice at CFRC 101.9fm and cfrc.ca, which debuted in 2010. He was the thread in a 2019 film called Who is Bruce Kauffman? that featured several Kingston-area poets, artists/performers, and filmmakers. He was awarded the 2020 Kingston Mayor’s Arts Champion Award for his advocacy, volunteerism, and support of the Kingston art/poetry scene. (Photo credit: Ali Dixon)

Ron was always drawn to the spoken word, even as a child in rural Ontario. He met his muse for the first time while attending Queen’s University. For a brief period he wrote poetry to the exclusion of all else but then suddenly stopped. He put down his pen and didn’t pick it up again for 25 years. His muse returned about two years ago with a vengeance and has shown little mercy since.

Meghan is a feminist geographer and poet whose work examines racial and settler-colonial violence in Nogojiwanong, a place colonized and renamed Peterborough by white-settlers occupying Anishinaabeg territory.

​

​

​

As writers, all we can hope for is to truthfully represent a tiny shard of life on this planet. Although I have never self-identified as a poet, I have found haiku poetry to meet this need in a very distilled way, especially during a time of swirling disruption. Though the poem is tiny, the canvas is infinite. As a writer, I am and always will be a work in progress. I will never be satisfied; I will never arrive. 

Doris Fiszer is the author of Locked in Different Alphabets shortlisted for the 2021 Archibald Lampman Award (Silver Bow Publishing) and two chapbooks: The Binders, Tree Press and Sasanka (Wild Flower), Bywords Publication. Poetry awards include: the 2017 John Newlove Award and Tree Press’s 2016 Chapbook contest (for The Binders). The Binders was also shortlisted for the bpNichol Chapbook Award. Her poems have appeared in a variety of journals and anthologies across Canada and the United States. She lives in Ottawa.

Sue Bracken’s work has appeared in GUEST [a journal of guest editors], Hart House Review, Dusie, Touch the Donkey, WEIMAG, The New Quarterly, Another Dysfunctional Cancer Poem Anthology (Mansfield Press), The Totally Unknown Writer’s Festival 2015: Stories (Life Rattle Press) and other publications. Her first collection of poems When Centipedes Dream was published by Tightrope Books in 2018.
Sue lives and writes in Toronto in a home overthrown by artists and animals.

Susan J. Atkinson’s poems have won a number of awards, most recently first prize in the 2019 National Capital Writers Contest and chosen as a Notable Mention in the 2020 Nick Blatchford Occasional Verse. She has new work in Grain Magazine and The Queen’s Quarterly. Her first full-length collection, The Marta Poems was published by Silver Bow Publishing in 2020 and her chapbook The Birthday Party, The Mariachi Player and The Tourist came out in Spring 2021 with Catkin Press. Visit www.susanjatkinson.com for more information.

John Baldwin, the writer of this book of poetry, was born in 1942, in Bury St Edmonds, Suffolk, England. In 1959 at sixteen and a half years old he joined the Royal Air Force, as an apprentice, at The No 1 School of Technical Training, at RAF Halton, Buckinghamshire, in the aircraft trade of Navigational Instrument Fitter. He emigrated, to Canada in 1975 to work in Montreal and eventually moved to Ottawa.  John retired in 2008, as the Avionics Line Maintenance Crew Chief/Supervisor, having worked for almost fifty years in an aircraft associated industry. It is of note, that it was during his 25 years at the Transport Canada Aircraft Services Directorate, much of his poetry and ditties materialized about working folk. His other major sources, of inspiration, were and still are, his family, very good friends, music and nature. He writes a weekly article for the North Grenville Times, - “Baldwin’s Birds”, which contain chatty things about the current week’s garden birds, accompanied by a photograph of them and sometimes a poem! He is still happily married and has lived in North Grenville, Ontario for the last 17 years.

In my almost 20 years of studying, teaching, and researching empowerment, I have dedicated myself to helping women and marginalized communities locate their power, purpose, and potential. When I became a mother, my focus intensified because my entire world fell apart. My book, Eating Her Young: Poems for the Disruption of Motherhood, tells this story. This work has become my calling and now my personal and professional collide in my empowerment work with women and mothers, helping them in their empowerment journey by providing the space and the enabling guidance to tell their truths and to live their most realized and contented lives.
As a Sociologist, my teaching and research expertise centres around critical feminist sociology where I have undertaken in-depth, ground-breaking work on the sexual politics of nude public spaces (beaches), to complex constructions of self and other in the power dynamics of online dating, to gendered fat phobia in online spaces and the implication of health at every size to disable systems of power, and of course, a critical interrogation of the oppression of motherhood in contemporary society.
This varied work in gender and sexuality has given me a deeper understanding of the complex contexts of the lives and identities of women and mothers. Through this lens, I have successfully helped women from diverse backgrounds and circumstances reclaim their lives through evidence-based practices that result in the experience of greater self-love and self-compassion, more confidence, effectiveness and assertiveness, and more gentleness and ease with themselves and the world

JUNO-nominated children’s artist Gary Rasberry has been a fixture on the Kingston music and arts scene for over three decades. A noted artist-educator, Gary has held artist-in-residencies internationally, in California, Barcelona, and Amsterdam, and regularly criss-crosses the country as a VIA Rail Artist On Board, from Halifax to Vancouver, stopping along the way to perform at schools, festivals, camps and house concerts. As an Imagination Consultant, Gary Rasberry offers Song, Story & Sound workshops in schools everywhere and does his very best to leave a trail of happy children and smiling parents in his wake. A published poet and internationally recognized singer-songwriter, Rasberry’s latest album, Polishing Stone, was released by Wolfe Island Records in April 2021.

Anne Walsh is an art therapist, writer, public speaker and mother of two. She chose to pursue graduate studies in art therapy out of a desire to connect more deeply with people who struggle to communicate what they are experiencing. Covid has caused Anne to pivot her business by providing online support through her art therapy sessions, creative journalling group, ghost writing services and speaking support. Some of the proceeds from her work with women in their 40s and 50s is being invested in programs to help new moms receive the support they deserve.

Chris Turnbull is the author of two books of poetry: Continua (Chaudiere Books 2015; Invisible Press 2019) and [ untitled ] in o w n (CUE Books 2014), and several chapbooks. Her work is often hybrid and experimental in form. Her poetry, visual work, videopoems, and installations can be found online, in print, and within landscapes.

​

​

​

​

Paul is a Métis academic, actor, singer, composer, filmmaker, and poet. In November 2015 he completed his PhD in Geography at Queen’s University. His dissertation uses film (Planting Stories, Feeding Communities: Knowledge, Indigenous Peoples, and Film) as a research methodology to bring findings back to Indigenous communities and to engage the public on the subject of Native Studies. Paul has co-produced, hosted, and narrated 26 episodes of Finding Our Talk: A Journey Through Aboriginal Languages that aired on Aboriginal Peoples Television Network (APTN).  In addition to five episodes he wrote and directed for Finding Our Talk, he has produced, written, and directed two docudramas on Restorative Justice for Nishnawbe Aski Legal Services to help Treaty 3 frontline workers introduce Restorative Justice practices in northern fly-in communities. Two CDs of his original compositions were nominated at the Canadian Aboriginal Music Awards for Best Male Vocalist and Best Folk Album. He was a founder and the Artistic Director for the first three years the Métis Arts Festival in Toronto.
In 1995 he was awarded the Star of Courage by Governor General Romeo Leblanc.

​

​

Nel has a passion for poetry! During challenging times in her life poetry provided an outlet and the opportunity for creative play and personal growth. Having developed poetry events in Brockville; In To Texts, a monthly poetry reading at From Here To Infinity Gallery in 2014, The Circuit, a music-poetry conversational that travelled from Kingston to Brockville; and a Poetry Lives in Brockville Festival, Nel hopes to bring poetry to an audience willing to explore the creative process with her in the lead up to the Experience Art Fest. Her vision is for a world where the creative process is valued because of how it can enhance our well-being and have each of us start our journey to self-discovery.

​

​