Leanne Averbach is a text and performance poet who lives and writes in Vancouver and New York. Her first volume of poetry, fever, was released in Spring 2005 by Toronto's Mansfield Press, and she has released a companion CD, also entitled fever. Averbach has performed her poems with jazz musicians in Italy, Canada and New York City, and her work has been published in literary magazines such as The Fiddlehead, Descant, Antigonish Review, Washington Square, Dalhousie Review, Poetry New Zealand and The New Quarterly.

bill bissett has garnered international attention since the 1960s as a preeminent figure in the counter-culture movement. The publisher/editor of blewointment press from 1964 into the early 1980s, over sixty of his books have been published over the years, predominantly by Vancouver's Talonbooks. A highly charged performer, he incorporates sound poetry, chanting and singing and remains one of the pioneers of the form. He currently writes and paints out of studios in Vancouver and Toronto, and a book of tributes to bissett has just been released with Nightwood/blewointment press, the anthology radiant danse uv being: a poetic portrait of bill bissett, edited by Jeff Pew and Stephen Roxborough.

Max Middle lives & works in Ottawa, Canada where he has been involved in many projects which have as their fulcrum a practice of poetry or m a k i n g . u p, among them the Max Middle Sound Project. He read in the 2006 Ottawa International Writers Festival as a member of the recently formed literary performance troupe, Deasil & Widdershins. You can find his contributions to the Ottawa Poetry Podcast at http://ottawapoetry.libysn.com. His work appears in Shift & Switch: New Canadian Poetry (Mercury Press, 2005). On 24 September 2005, he assisted jwcurry in the execution of Messagio Galore take II <photos.johnwmacdonald.com>. On 28 February 2006, he launched flow march n powder blossom s (above/ground press), in a TREE (a reading series) in Ottawa. He continues to publish & exhibit visual poetry. Reach him at www.maxmiddle.com.

the small press action network - ottawa (cleaning out yr literary clogs since 1996); thanks to the Ottawa Art Gallery for providing space and much love.

Information:
rob mclennan
az421@freenet.carleton.ca
(613) 239-0337