Friday Special Blend
Friday February 12th, 2021 with Susan Johnston
Words and magic featuring Arianna Verbree, Eli Tareq El Bechelany-Lynch and Nicola Vulpe

Iteration Four of the Riverbed Reading Series takes place on Wednesday February 17, with Helen Robertson as guest curator. In the first half-hour, we’ll speak with two artists being featured there. First, we connect with writer, poet, and musician Arianna Verbree. Her poetry has recently been featured in the zine, Kill Your Lawn Vol.1 published by Late Bloomer Press. As a musician, Arianna is most prominent as the bassist and music director for Cabaret Live!, a live music variety show. She also plays in various regional orchestras as a session musician. Find her @coffeesp00ns. Then, Eli Tareq El Bechelany-Lynch joins us to talk about writing and the art of creation. Eli is a queer Arab poet living in Tio’tia:ke, unceded Kanien’kehá:ka territory. Their work has appeared in The Best Canadian Poetry 2018 anthology, GUTS, carte blanche, the Shade Journal, The New Quarterly, Arc Poetry Magazine, and elsewhere. They were longlisted for the CBC Poetry Prize in 2019. ​Their book, knot body, was published by Metatron Press (September 2020) and their upcoming book, The Good Arabs, will be published by Metonymy Press in 2021 .You can find them on Instagram and Twitter: @theonlyelitareq. More about the Riverbed Reading Series at: https://www.riverbedreads.ca Then, Nicola Vulpe joins us for a conversation about the ‘unfortunate habit of poetry. Nicola is the author of When the Mongols Return and Blue Tile, a novella, The Extraordinary Event of Pia H., an anthology of Canadian poetry about the Spanish Civil War, and essays on subjects as diverse as the Epic of Gilgamesh, and the afterlife of Norman Bethune. Guernica Editions will publish his next work, Through the Waspmouth I drew you, this spring (https://www.guernicaeditions.com/title/9781771835916); sneak preview via The Manhattan Review (https://themanhattanreview.com/issues/vol19no2). Find Nicola @NicolaVulpe