E. Martin Nolan and Aaron Tucker will be reading from their new poetry collections with Anahita Jamali Rad (for love and autonomy, Talon Books, 2016), and Montrealer Jake Byrne. Join us on Saturday, November 11th at 7:00 pm at La Petite D+Q (176 Bernard O.)!

In 1968, avant-garde artist Marcel Duchamp and composer John Cage exhibited Reunion, a chess performance that took place in Toronto. Whenever Duchamp or Cage moved a piece, it generated a musical note until the game was transformed into a symphony.

Inspired by this performance, "Irresponsible Mediums"—poet and academic Aaron Tucker’s second full-length collection of poems—translates Duchamp’s chess games into poems using the ChessBard (an app co-created by Tucker and Jody Miller) and in the process, recreates Duchamp’s joyous approach to making art, while also generating startling computer-made poems that blend the analog and digital in strange and surprising combinations.

The poems in "Still Point" contrast the calm and tumult of Hurricane Katrina, the deconstruction of Detroit, the financial crisis of 2008, and the BP Gulf oil spill, weaving lyrical sequences and individual pieces into a coherent whole focused on humanity’s relationship to itself and to nature. "Still Point" tells a story of beauty and horror, and how normalcy stubbornly persists amid history’s arc.