La Presse interviews ELAN’s Guy Rodgers: “Effervescence chez les artistes anglos”

Alexandre Vigneault has an excellent column in today’s La Presse about the vitality of Montreal’s anglo arts scene in recent years. He refers to the new book Minority Report: An Alternate History of Quebec’s English-Language Arts Scene (Available through Guernica Editions), and interviews ELAN executive director Guy Rodgers.

I’ve translated the article below. You can read the complete original article on LaPresse.ca.

-Posted by Geoff

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Anglo-Montreal writers are not only numerous, many are popular internationally, including Trevor Ferguson, also known by his pseudonym John Farrow. PHOTO: ANDRÉ PICHETTE, ARCHIVES LA PRESSE

Translated from Effervescence chez les artistes anglos by Alexandre Vigneault for La Presse, 24 November 2011. (Translation by ELAN)

Renowned music scene, award-winning writers, bubbling theatre milieu, anglo-Montreal culture is experiencing a resurgence. This dynamism coincides with the first growth in the number of anglophones in Quebec in the past 30 years, according to the book Minority Report.

During the first half-decade of the 2000s, the number of anglophones rose by 2.7% in Quebec, according to 2006 Census data. The observation represents not only a reversal of the exodus begun in 1976 — it is also one of the factors contributing to the renewal of the Anglo-Montreal artistic scene, according to the essays collected in Minority Report.

“This increase isn’t limited to the artistic community, but among artists there has been enormous growth,” notes Guy Rodgers, director of the English-Language Arts Network (ELAN), an organisation founded in 2005 to bring together Quebec’s anglophone artists. The percentage of artists in the anglo-Montreal community (0.99%) is higher than the Canadian (0.65%) and Quebec (0.56%) averages, as noted in a Canadian Heritage report.

In recent years, the effervescence of anglo-Montreal creation has been emphasized by the international success of Arcade Fire. Minority Reports stresses that this phenomenon is not limited to the music milieu: the theatre scene experienced an unimaginable vitality 25 years ago, writes Marianne Ackerman, and this holds for the litterary community as well.

Kathleen Winter nominated for Orange Prize

Kathleen Winter, a longtime resident of St. John’s who now lives in Montreal, is nominated for the 2011 Orange Prize, a British award for female authors of fiction, for her book Annabel.

Excerpt from The Gazette, April 12, 2011

Two women in Canada have been shortlisted for the 2011 Orange Prize, a British award for female authors of fiction – including a former writer for the children’s TV show Sesame Street.

The six final candidates for the 16th annual Orange Prize were announced Tuesday.

Kathleen Winter, a longtime resident of St. John’s who now lives in Montreal, is nominated for Annabel.

(…) Emma Donoghue, an Irish writer now living in Canada, has been nominated for Room, a tale of a boy whose mother tells him on his fifth birthday, for the first time, that there’s a world outside the room in which they’ve been living.

Continue reading on http://www.montrealgazette.com/…/

ELAN RAEV Launch Party!

The event, which will showcase the works of 154 artists, is titled Recognizing Artists: Enfin Visible! (RAEV). The launch is free, open to the public and includes refreshments and munchies.

Read More at: MontrealGazette.com

World’s Largest Poetry Competition Offers $50,000 Prize for One Short Poem

To reflect its global perspective, the Montreal Prize has assembled an editorial board of accomplished poets from Australia, Canada, England, Guyana, India, Jamaica, Malawi, Nigeria, Northern Ireland and the US. These poets will select 50 poems for the competition’s shortlist, which will be published in a unique global poetry anthology, representing the very latest work from around the world. From these finalists, Sir Andrew Motion, the 2011 prize judge and former UK poet laureate, will select the winner of the $50,000 prize.

For complete info and PDF, click here.

The shaky state of Canadian book publishing

Canadian publishers publish about 90 per cent of Canadian-authored books, as they should, just as U.S. publishers publish more than 98 per cent of U.S.-authored books, as they should. The one significant difference is the size of the market. Ours is about the same as California’s, which makes this a labour-intensive, marginal business – one that has our risk-averse bankers run to the safer havens of foreign real estate, junk bonds and seemingly deep-pocketed developers. That, in turn, makes it hard for local publishers to get lines of credit so they can compete with foreign publishers when they try to retain those few very successful authors by paying them what they deserve.

Read More at: TheGlobeAndMail.com

English-language theatre is thriving in our schools

There’s a genuine student theatre freebie happening at Centaur Theatre on Tuesday night. That’s when the National Theatre School’s Revealing Talent Tour, which is playing five cities across Canada, will be making its Montreal pit stop. This 25-minute collage of audition pieces is performed by the current graduating class, under the direction of Jonathan Goad, Brendan Healy and/or Sherrie Bie. No charge, and no reservations necessary.

Anyone who took in the National Theatre School’s amazing Greek tragedy kAdmOs – Damned Be the Hands That Did This Thing, directed by Yael Farber, will be eagerly anticipating their next English production: Arctic Ocean, by student playwright Jill Connell, directed by Denise Clarke.

Read more at MontrealGazette.com

Genies: Incendies Reigns Supreme

Villeneuve, whose Polytechnique swept the Genies last year, said the competition was especially difficult this time.

“This year was very meaningful because there was a lot of very good films this year. I’m a huge fan of Barney’s Version,” he said.

Most of the awards were presented before the televised broadcast, and it was apparent from the beginning that Barney’s Version and Incendies would dominate the evening. Incendies won most of the technical prizes — including two awards for sound — while Barney’s Version took the more high-profile Genies, including the best-supporting actor award for Dustin Hoffman, who played the hero’s effusive father, and a best-supporting actress Genie for Minnie Driver for her turn as the shallow and difficult “second Mrs. Panofsky.”

Read more at: MontrealGazette.com

Senate releases report on anglophones in Quebec

Quebe Community Groups Network president Linda Leith appeared on CBC this morning to discuss a report about Quebec’s Anglophone community, released yesterday by the Senate Standing Committee on Official Languages.

Listen to the CBC Interview here (5 min).

More about the Senate Committee’s 16 recommendations below.
Or, download the full 129-page report, click here (PDF)

Nominees for BC Book Prizes announced

Nominated for the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize are: Rifet Bahtijaragic’sChernovs’ Toil and Peace; Gurjinder Basran’s Everything Was Good-Bye; Jack Hodgins’ The Master of Happy Endings; Recipes from the Red Planet, by Meredith Quartermain; and Jack Whyte’s The Forest Laird.

For complete list go to: TheGlobeAndMail.com

Melissa Auf der Maur, La Tulipe[by CRYSTAL CHAN ]

Montreal, after all, is in her blood. For Auf der Maur, who now calls upstate New York home, the city will always be a roadmap of her career in the making. Ruelle Nick-Auf der Maur is a reminder of the larger-than-life Montreal figure she knew simply as her father. Close by is Concordia, where she graduated with a degree in photography. Over on The Main: Bifteck, where she worked five days a week to pay for said degree. Just a tad south is Foufounes Électriques; there, she saw the Smashing Pumpkins play for $1. It changed her life. A few years later, her band Tinker would be opening for them. Through Smashing Pumpkins’ Billy Corgan, she met Courtney Love. Soon she was playing to huge crowds as a member of Hole. Six years after the Foufounes concert, she joined Smashing Pumpkins herself.

Read more at: Roverarts.com