SFU AUTHOR/CRITIC CLINT BURNHAM BRINGS HIS HISTORY OF THE KOOTENAY SCHOOL OF WRITING TO NELSON’S OXYGEN ART CENTRE, OCT. 27, 7:30 PM

Simon Fraser University English professor Clint Burnham, author of a 2011 history of the Vancouver centre of the Kootenay School of Writing, will read from his new book as well as from his own poetry and fiction at Nelson’s Oxygen Art Centre, 320 Vernon St. (alley entrance), on Saturday, Oct. 27 at 7:30 p.m.

The event, part of Oxygen Art Centre’s Presentation Series, is free and open to the public.

Burnham’s look at the Kootenay School of Writing, called The Only Poetry That Matters and published by Vancouver’s Pulp Press last year, traces the institution from its origins in the aftermath of the B.C. government’s closure of Nelson’s David Thompson University Centre in 1984.

After DTUC closed, a Nelson branch of KSW organized readings and workshops in the Queen City from 1984 until 2011. The Vancouver centre of the institution offered classes, workshops and colloquiums until 1987, after which it became identified with a group of writers who favor a non-narrative, associative style of writing.

The Only Poetry That Matters focuses on a number of writers involved with the second phase of Vancouver KSW.

Burnham’s own novel Smoke Show (Pulp Press, 2004) was shortlisted for the 2005 BC Book Prize for Fiction, and his latest book of poetry, The Benjamin Sonnets, was published in 2009 by BookThug. He has also published essays, reviews, and articles in scholarly and popular journals, and a study of the Ontario sound poet Steve McCaffery.