What's On at the Library

Last night, the Keep Toronto Reading Festival kicked off with an exciting music and poetry event—“The Music of Hope”—featuring poetry readings by poet and filmmaker Ann Shin, music by Toronto Symphony Orchestra Principal Cello Joseph Johnson, hosted by CBC’s Robert Harris.

As Robert Harris so aptly stated: “ … art sustains us in a world of evil or indifference. It offers a hint of redemption, the possibility of something better. Certainly this is its place in The Cellist of Sarajevo. The spark of beauty that one artist struck against the flint of a hard war in the Balkans ignited a thin wisp of smoke that kept rising, growing, and blooming, until it was eventually visible to an entire planet. It remains so decades later.”

Held in the Appel Salon to an enthusiastic audience of 300 people, “The Music of Hope” featured poetry and music selections that exemplified the spirit of the Keep Toronto Reading Festival’s One Book community read—The Cellist of Sarajevo, by Steven Galloway—and the very idea of creating art in times of darkness. Performing on his magnificent Juan Guillami cello, crafted in 1747 in Barcelona, Joseph Johnson performed Albinoni's Adagio, as featured in The Cellist of Sarajevo, and Bach’s Six Suites for Unaccompanied Cello (excepting Galanteries): Prelude, Allemande, Courante, Sarabande, and Gigue.

Interspersed with the Bach Suites were poetry readings by Ann Shin, beginning with “Sunflower III,” by Slovenian poet Tomaž Šalamun.

Sunflower III
Tomaž Šalamun

Don’t be afraid of images of the world,
Child. Close your eyes. Don’t be afraid
Of roads, the dead in trees. Don’t be afraid
Of cries and valleys, look the water doesn’t

Wither, the skin turns to coal. Don’t be
Afraid of meadows, the ones who died of plague,
Don’t be afraid of the ones wrapped in color,
Irritated men. Mothers rot and come back,

Angels sleep, blackness waits for you,
A white light. Don’t be afraid of castles
Made of sand around the house, of the ones
Who protect against fire, of the ridges

Of signs. You are eating blood off tin,
Salt off the mane of a horse, you belong to
Silence and animals, to pilgrims of the door.
Don’t be afraid of towers, of fires

In the ranks, don’t be afraid of miracles.
Cheers, you swim in lavishness. Wings
Of starved tribes, shouts of dreams,
The guardian angel watches over your night.

© Tomaž Šalamun

Ann also read an excerpt from “For I Have Taught the Japanese,” a poem by American poet Lucia Perillo, who wrote of her experience teaching English to Japanese students.

For I Have Taught the Japanese
Lucia Perillo

Whilst sitting with my fanny on the desk,
Which is not done in their country
Someone who knew later said,
And hectored them in words they did not understand
Though I spoke loudly and clipped each one off
Like Don Quixote pruning dead blooms from a rosebush.

And now that they have long since traveled back
Into the pebble gardens of their lives, I wonder
If they remember any more of me than the pretzel shapes
My lips squirmed through, the ones that betrayed
My disapproving their enthusiasm for the mall
Where they bought accessories silk-screened with obscure

American cartoon Characters like Ziggy—and see
How I raise him now against them like a studded club?
For didn’t I envy their aptitude at old masonic arts
Like ballroom dance and bowling, my own wild gutter balls
Bounding them to the brink of a genuine sadness
They also fastened to my spinsterhood: “No, really.”

I had to tell them, “it’s okay.” I was such
An idiot I even tried to apologize more than once
For Nagasaki, their reply held back until one night
When they made floating lamps from paper bags and candles.
And watching the orange smudges ride into the deep
Blue-black of the lake, at last I understood

That I understood not one thing about grace, whose anatomy
Is mostly silent…. […]

© Lucia Perillo

These wonderful selections were accompanied by readings of two poems by Seamus Heaney, Irish poet, playwright, translator, lecturer, and the recipient of the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature: “Mint” and "Casualty."

Ann also read “Serenade,” by the Chilean poet and Nobel Prize winner for Literature in 1971, Pablo Neruda.

Ann concluded her readings with “Phantom Limbs,” by Canadian poet Anne Michaels, as well as readings of her own poems “Sitting by my porch marigolds you smiled,” and “20 Second Clip.” Hear selections of Ann’s work in the video below, and don’t forget to join us for many more Keep Toronto Reading events and programs across the branches, now through April 30!

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Robert Harris has been demystifying classical music as a critic, reviewer, broadcaster and producer for over twenty-five years. You can hear him with Michael Enright on The Sunday Edition.

Ann Shin is an award-winning poet and filmmaker. Her latest book of poetry, The Family China, won'the Anne Green Award for innovation in story and narrative form. Her film projects have screened and won awards at festivals including: the San Francisco Film Festival, Montreal World Film Festival, International Documentary Festival of Amsterdam (IDFA), SXSW, New York Festivals.

Principal cellist of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra since the 2009/2010 season, Joseph Johnson previously held the same position with the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra. Joseph has been heard throughout the world as a soloist, chamber musician and educator.