Rusty’s Reading List 2016

This is the chapbook that rob made for the VERSeOttawa Hall of Honour induction ceremony this past year.

Here I will tell the Hall of Honour story… I came up with the idea of the Hall of Honour in late 2012. Initially it was coming out of a thought that Spoken Word poets… especially those heavily involved in slam… seem to have a short shelf-life. People forget quickly. So I thought… what can we do about that? How can we remind people about the giants whose shoulders we stand on?

The Hall of Honour is what I came up with but despite it coming from a place of concern for Spoken Word artists, the first name that came to mind when I thought ‘who would we induct’ was rob mclennan.

So why did it take four rounds of inductions before he got in?

Simple. He was in the VERSe meeting when I proposed the Hall. He was the first person to jump on the idea and he was the first person who told me he would like to be involved. Well, we were hardly going to induct one of our selection committee the first go round, were we? (in fact, rob introduced us to  William Hawkins, who was a great first inductee.)

This year the Hall inducted the first person I thought of when I came up with the concept… rob mclennan.

 

Books Read in 2016

King Kong – rob mclennan
Manufacturing Consent – Edward S. Herman & Noam Chomsky
ARC Poetry Magazine #79
Mother Said {Poems} – Hal Sirowitz
7 Dollar Bill – Chris Gilpin & Sean McGarragle
Extreme Government Makeover – Ken Miller
Memoirs of an Occasional Superheroine – Valerie D’Orazio
The Claremont Review #46
Strangler Fig – Magpie Ulysses
All The Gold Hurts My Mouth – Katherine Leyton
Live Animal – Johnny MacRae
The Serial Killers Club – Jeff Povey
In A Springtime Instant – Milton Acorn
The British Museum is Falling Down – David Lodge
True Grit – Charles Portis
The Diamond Age – Neal Stephenson
Word Warriors: 35 Women Leaders in the Spoken Word Revolution – Alix Olson (ed.)
Blue Marrow – Louise Bernice Halfe
Open Letter: Woman Against Violence Against Women – Sheri-D Wilson
Yummy Mummy – Erin Dingle
Peter F. Yacht Club #22
If These Streets Are Haunted… – Magpie Ulysses
The Honey Month – Amal El-Mohtar
Sunsets for Daydreamers – Megan Ann Ward
September – Brandon Wint & Ikenna Onyegbula

---

Posted in Uncategorized