Celebrating the depth and diversity of BC publishing
On Friday, October 27th at 6pm, join Massy Arts, Massy Books and Nightwood Editions for the launch of Cathy Stonehouse’s Dream House with guests. Cathy will be joined by special guest readers Renée Saklikar and Nina Mosall with host Nicola Harwood.
“Cathy Stonehouse’s Dream House, like any magical dwelling, is not what it at first appears to be. Walk inside. Explore its rooms. It is larger and more expansive than you might think. Also stranger, more peculiar, idiosyncratic. It is a metaverse of possibilities, the locus where what is lived intersects with what is imagined. As Stonehouse herself puts it, ‘The house is a cocoon, an open coffin. It is full of weather, and changes / every time you dare to look.’ Open the door. Close your eyes. The operative word is not house but dream. Look around. You are already there.” –Paul Vermeersch, author of Shared Universe: New and Selected Poems 1995–2020
This project has been made possible by the Government of Canada. Ce projet a été rendu possible grâce au gouvernement du Canada.
Venue & Accessibility
The event will be hosted at the Massy Arts Gallery, at 23 East Pender Street in Chinatown, Vancouver.
Registration is free and required for entrance.
The gallery is wheelchair accessible and a gender-neutral washroom is on-site.
Please refrain from wearing scents or heavy perfumes.
For more on accessibility including parking, seating, venue measurements and floor plan, and how to request ASL interpretation please visit: massyarts.com/accessibility
Covid Protocols: Masks keep our community safe and are mandatory (N95 masks are recommended as they offer the best protection). We ask if you are showing symptoms, that you stay home. Thank you kindly.
About the book:
Dream House (Nightwood Editions, 2023)
A long poem in six sections, Dream House takes its cue from Gaston Bachelard’s Poetics of Space in its investigation of female embodiment by calling up such feral, liminal spaces as the pregnant body, the aging mind, snail shells, broom closets, low-ceilinged pubs and abandoned pizza boxes. Part Tardis, part townhouse, part Howl’s moving castle, this wry, surreal and many-peopled narrative interrogates what metaphor might hold of history, both personal and social, in the wake of a mother’s passing. Its migrant speaker trawls through hedgerows and recipe books to unearth stained birdsong and undead civil wars, intent on tracing a matrilineal path across four generations while traversing the haunted margins between existence and belonging.
About the author:
CATHY STONEHOUSE (she/they) is a poet, writer, teacher and visual artist in Vancouver, BC. The author of a novel, The Causes, a collection of short fiction, Something About the Animal, and two previous collections of poetry—Grace Shiver and The Words I Know. Stonehouse co-edited the ground-breaking anthology Double Lives: Writing and Motherhood and is a former editor of EVENT magazine. They teach creative writing and interdisciplinary expressive arts at Kwantlen Polytechnic University.
About the guest readers & host:
Renée Saklikar is the author of five books, including the award-winning Children of Air India and Listening to the Bees. Her poetry, essays, and short fiction have appeared in many literary magazines and anthologies, including Exile Editions, Chatelaine, The Capilano Review, and Pulp Literature. The latest volume of her epic fantasy in verse, Bramah’s Quest, was released in August 2023 (Nightwood Editions). She was poet laureate for the City of Surrey 2015–2018 and volunteers for Event Magazine, Meet the Presses, Surrey International Writers Conference, and Poetry in Canada. Renée teaches creative writing and editing at Kwantlen Polytechnic University and hosts Lunch Poems at SFU.
Nina Mosall (bio coming soon)
Nicola Harwood (she/they) is a queer writer and interdisciplinary artist. Her plays, performances and installation projects have been produced in Canada, Europe and the US. Nicola often works in collaboration with other artists and she has facilitated many art, writing and theatre projects with youth and community members. Recent installation projects include Summoning, No Words, an interactive sound installation built out of the female voice and High Muck-a-Muck: Playing Chinese (2014) an artist / programmer collaboration which won the 2015 UK New Media Writing Prize. Her memoir about queer family, Flight Instructions for the Commitment Impaired, was published by Caitlin Press in 2016. She is grateful to live and love on the ancestral and unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations also known as Vancouver, Canada. Nicola teaches Creative Writing and Interdisciplinary Expressive Arts at Kwantlen Polytechnic University. www.nicolaharwood.com