The 2008 Junction Arts Festival was a great success! Visit here for news and updates about site changes, thejunctioncity.com for continued programming throughout the year, and otherwise enjoy reading about the artists and performers that made this year's festival such a blast.

Poetry Peepshow

9 writers and poets
1 at a time
2 minutes is all you get and maybe a rhyme
25 cents lets you peep as they create
2 hours at a time in a 10 by 10 crate
7 city blocks somewhere this room you must find
4 voyeurs at once get to peep into the mind

The Poetry Peepshow was an exciting new addition to the Junction Arts Festival in 2008. The poets below took up shifts in a custom created structure that gave festival guests the opportunity to play voyeur to the creative process. The response to this event was very positive and has inspired ideas for future years.

Readers & Writers
Aisha John

Biography

Aisha Sasha John is a writer and dancer living in Toronto. Her work has appeared in such places as Exile Quarterly, Contemporary Verse 2, Carousel and TOK 3: Writing the New Toronto. In fall 2008 she will begin her second year in the University of Guelph's MFA in the Creative Writing program. Aisha is working on both a poetry manuscript and a short story collection as well as being part of Obsidian Theatre Company?s 2008/2009 Playwrights Unit.

ai5ha.blogspot.com
Anne-Marie Woods aka Amani

Biography

Anne-Marie Woods, aka Amani, is a spoken word artist, producer, educator and creative consultant based in Toronto, Ontario. Known as the "Contemporary Blues Poet" ; she has been performing spoken word since 1996 and had the honour of being the headline international poet in Trinidad, West Indies at the 19th annual Rapso Festival on May 8th of this year. She has also performed at the Harry Jerome Awards, When Sisters Speak, When Words are Spoken, the Jazz by Genre Festival, she headlined at the world famous Nuyorican Cafe in New York City, and last year she headlined in Birmingham and London, England. Most recently she was a featured performer at Afrofest and Irie Festival in Toronto. Amani can sing meaningful lyrics accompanied by music one moment, or spit out some hard core acapella lyrics that will leave you thinking and wanting to hear more the next. Writing and performing on many topics such as: Love, Life, Politics, Youth Issues, she has a way of making all topics comfortable and pleasing to the ear. Her 1st Spoken Word CD "Amani the Words, the Rhythm, the Music" was released in September of 2007 to rave reviews.

imanicreativeconsulting.com
myspace.com/amanithepoet
Lo Bil

Biography

A performance artist, playwright and poet Lo Bil received an Ontario Arts Council Spoken Word grant tour "A Professional Occupation" - where she sits in public writing poetry and creates performances that relate to the community where the poems were written. A performer of clown for stage since 2000, Lo's first Fringe hit "The Minty Peel Show" was a four star satire on Canadianess. More recently, "My Paris of Nothing" invites audiences into an interactive instillation. Lo has an Hon B.A. in semiotics & philosophy, is a Second City conservatory grad and has studied international performance methods for eight years.

lbil.org
Kimberly Orton

Biography

Kimberley Orton owns a sizeable collection of remarkable words that she has collected through her travels over the years. Modern words, ancient words, sacred words, profane words, funny words, breathtakingly plain words, words of love and rage and healing; each one of her words is very meaningful to her. Playwright, Screenwriter, Poet and, most recently, Birth Doula and Reiki Practitioner, Kimberley keeps her word collection in a medium sized old house in an odd corner of the Junction.

Simla Civelek

Biography

Simla Civelek is an Istanbul-born, Toronto-based performer, actor, poet, and dancer. She has been writing, creating, and performing her own work for over ten years. In August 2007, she contributed as an artist in AleeyJaunt with her instillation/performer piece "Poetry Caravanserai" and won the Best Overal Children's Choice Award present by Darren O'Donnell's Theatre Company, Mammalian Diving Reflex. That same year her installation "Wish Swing" was chosen as an open call project for Scotiabank's Nuit Blanche. Ciovelek also has teaching experience in Middle Easters dance and works in three languages: English, French, and Turkish.

Simon Leigh

Biography

Simon Leigh is a Toronto writer from Australia, now retiored from teaching English at Seneca College. Short Strokes is his third poetry book. His poems have appeared in the Fiddlehead, The Antigonish Review, Parchment, The Review of Contemporary Poetry, Rhyme and Reason: Modern Formal Poetry, Descant etc. His comic novel Wild Women (UKA Press, 2007), was praised by Paul Quarrington and PODGIRL (USA): "Leigh is a master of voice and this novel should be required reading in creative writing classes."

Sistah Lois Jacob

Biography

Sistah Lois Jacob (a.k.a. Afrikan Princess) is a poet, singer, songwriter, actress (stage and screen), and community activist. She is the founder of the children-centred, Sistah Lois' Creative a multi-disciplinary, environmentally-friendly children's arts program within which Sistah Lois guides children in the art of creating, developing and animating their own stories/creations, culminating in a celebration of their achievements, and the Artistic-Director of a vocally accessible, non-audition choir, The Art of Praise Chorale.

Gili Haimovich

Biography

Gili Haimovich is an internationally published poet. Her chapbook Living on a Blank Page was released on 2007 (Ice Flow Press). She has also published three volumes of Hebrew poetry. Her work featured in major literary anthologies and journals such as the LRC - The Literary Review of Canada, Tok 1 - Writing the New Toronto, an anthology published by the Diaspora Dialogues series, ARC - American - Israeli literary journal and Im My Bed Magazine. In the end of September she'll take part in Word On the Street Festival and in October she'll participate in an interactive and interdisciplinary poetry event: (Be)longing. She has created the poetry event Intersections that brought together poets from different multicultural and multidisciplinary backgrounds. She's engaged in visual arts and also works as Expressive Arts therapist and expressive writing facilitator.

poetryon.com
Patty Archer

Biography

Patty Archer is a storyteller, poet, performer, editor and publisher. Her most recent project has been to transform her poetry book, The Whiskey-Haired Man, into a one-woman play. She has performed it at the Edmonton and London Fringe Festivals. Patty was born in a small BC mill-town, and has lived in Toronto Since 1989. She has been a Co-editor for Descant Magazine and is a former Literary Coordinator for the Junction Arts Festival.