The Dusty Owl Reading Series Presents William Hawkins, 19 March

[SteveThe Owl]

The Dusty Owl Reading Series Presents William Hawkins

Sunday 19 March, 5pm

Swizzles Bar & Grill,

246b Queen Street, Ottawa

No Cover

When i started writing songs, it was to put music to Bill Hawkins’ lyrics . . . i quickly fell under the spell of this charismatic man who became a kind of mentor . . . Everyone should read these poems.

- Bruce Cockburn, from the preface to Dancing Alone

William Hawkins has been a major figure in Ottawa poetry since the '60s and '70s, when he was manager of the legendary Café Le Hibou, the centre of a richly creative Ottawa lit and music scene, (and which inspired Dusty Owl's name, incidentally.) His fugitive pickup bands included Bruce Cockburn, David Wiffen, Colleen Peterson, Amos Garrett, Darius Brubeck and Sneezy Waters. Hawkins calls himself “a semi-retired hard rocker and high roller.â€

Hawkins appeared in the landmark anthology New Wave Canada and in Oxford’s Modern Canadian Verse, where editor A.J.M. Smith positioned him between Margaret Atwood and Gwendolyn MacEwen. The poems in Hawkins’s most recent collection Dancing Alone are drawn from six small-press classics, all out of print, that he published between 1964 and 1974, plus some new poems. In recent years, Hawkins has made a CD of his best songs, also titled Dancing Alone, and was the subject of an onstage tribute at the Ottawa Folk Festival for his contributions to the music scene. His previous collections of poetry include Ottawa Poems and The Gift of Space.

". . . the most dangerous poet in Ottawa"

- rob mclennan

Stick around after the reading for the ever-entertaining and always eclectic open mike, where your poems, prose, songs, thoughts and performances are always welcome, and of course, to test your literary skills in the Object of Desire competition.

[SteveThe Owl]

By the way, a quick plug: copies of Dancing Alone are available at Compact Music, 190 Bank Street. (If you don't get a copy of the book, at least drop in and pick up a couple cool CDs or LPs.) :thumbup: