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| Spoken Culture's second annual Black History Slam at Museum London (photo credit: Andy Budden - 3AMFILM) |
After Antler River Poetry (ARP) kicked off our twenty-second season in mid-September with an illuminating bilingual event featuring Chantal Neveu, Erín Moure, and Colleen Coco Collins (and as we prepare to host Lily Wang and Shani Mootoo on October 22nd, 7:00pm at Landon Library), I’ve found myself reflecting on the perennial wealth of literary activity around London, Ontario and Deshkan Ziibi. While the area is most frequently celebrated for its iconic cultural history, the new millennium has brought wave after wave of exciting talent and programming to our community, partly through TAP: Centre for Creativity, WordsFest, Poetry London (ARP’s original incarnation), various configurations of Mykonos Restaurant’s open mic (currently the Apposite Poetry Series), and countless other initiatives. In this brief article, I’ll point to a handful of local venues and writers that have recently been occupying my attention.
Independent bookstores are having a special moment in our city right now, and at the centre is one of my longstanding favourites: Brown & Dickson. I first met masterminds Vanessa Brown and Jason Dickson when they worked at another local landmark, Attic Books, and since 2014, they have brought an encyclopaedic knowledge of antique books and regional history to their own cherished literary hub. All of Brown & Dickson’s iterations (including their bookmobile, which has been servicing pop-up events for the past couple of years) have been marked by a laidback atmosphere and a delightfully offbeat sense of humour. This summer, I attended a couple of outstanding readings at their East London location, including one with author/songwriter Misha Bower (who happens to be an employee of the legendary City Lights bookstore on Richmond Street), and I scored a signed copy of Gwendolyn MacEwen’s The Fire-Eaters as well as a fridge magnet featuring the poster art of Vincent Price’s 1964 film Tomb of Ligeia. Being a fan of both poetry and B-movies, I can always find something interesting in Brown & Dickson’s constant flow of rare books, paperback fiction, and esoterica.
Brown & Dickson are well known for their support of local artists and literary initiatives; in 2024, they housed the first version of an exciting new shop, Little Wren Books, which has since moved to its own brick-and-mortar location in the Old East Village. The retail space is shared with florist Tania Floral Design, creating an aesthetically magical experience for visitors. Poet/songwriter Jenny Berkel—Little Wren’s owner and caretaker—is a champion of small presses and authors working in Canada, and her attentiveness both to her well-curated stock and to every person who walks through her door makes this shop much more than a business. Indeed, Little Wren Books has already become a beloved community gathering space, hosting or co-hosting well over a dozen readings and literary activities since they opened, including two wonderful double launches in mid-summer: one for Joseph Kidney’s Devotional Forensics and Amanda Merpaw’s Most of All the Wanting (with special guest poet Jordan Williamson) and one for Shannon Arntfield’s Python Love and Annick MacAskill’s Votive. With a roster of book launches already planned for the remainder of 2025, Little Wren Books is not slowing down. I’m particularly excited for Guy Elston, Karen Smythe, and Shane Neilson’s reading on September 27th, as well as the launch of Melissa Powless Day’s much-anticipated debut full-length collection, A Bow Forged from Ash, on October 4th.
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| Annick MacAskill reading at Little Wren Books for the launch of Votive in London, ON |
London has yet another new literary bookstore in the Old East Village—Midnight Mass Books—which recently moved from Toronto to the Forest City. Since their hours are currently limited to a few days per week, I haven’t had a chance to visit yet, but I’ve heard wonderful things about their mid-August event that showcased the creative work of local booksellers. Hopefully, there will be a launch for their publication of Shampoo Boy, the full-length debut of poet Stevie Manning, whose Knife Fork Book chapbook Joan Would Say was a finalist for the 2024 bpNichol Chapbook Award—and who delivered an excellent reading with poet/publisher Kirby just last year at the Variety Café in East London.
Of the many recent literary endeavours in our community, none has been more exciting than Spoken Culture, a grassroots arts organization focused on poetry and performance founded by poet and Western Law graduate Michelle Owusu-Ansah. Spoken Culture originated in early 2024, when Michelle first envisioned a one-time spoken word event celebrating Black History Month. As she developed this idea and gathered community partners (including ARP), it grew into the first Black History Slam at Museum London, an evening of music and poetry that had well over 100 attendees as well as televised news coverage. It became an annual event in February 2025, with a second successful slam headlined by singer/songwriter Tiffany Chantelle and Canadian Spoken Word Champion Eddie Lartey. As an organizer, Michelle truly knows how to build atmosphere: with an array of electronic candles, stylish graphics projected on the walls, and an intimate circular seating arrangement, audience members always find themselves fully immersed in the performances. While Michelle is currently working outside the city as an Articling Student at Stikeman Elliott LLP, her ties to our local community remain strong. The third Black History Slam is already planned for Thursday February 26, 2026 at Museum London, with Britta Badour as a keynote speaker and other readers to be announced in the new year.
There’s more to say about the many terrific writers around town, including breakout poets such as Pujita Verma, whose brilliant “Tham Luang Cave Rescue” and other published poems portend great things to come in her 2026 debut collection with Brick Books, and Kit Roffey, whose sensitive, intricately crafted 2023 collection Civilian of Dirt (845 Press) has me anticipating a second chapbook that is currently in the works. However, with the academic term underway, it seems fitting to wrap up by mentioning the brown paper package currently sitting on my desk containing the final three chapbooks from Baseline Press’s 2025 season. I’m patiently waiting to open it with my poetry students, who will undoubtedly be blown away by the exquisite bookcraft of publisher Karen Schindler. In the meantime, I plan on re-reading Karen’s excellent Gaspereau Press chapbook The Sad Truth (2023); the cooler weather of September seems like the perfect occasion to revisit this collection’s intelligent lyric melancholy.
David Barrick is the author of the poetry collection Nightlight (Palimpsest Press, 2022) as well as two chapbooks. His poems have appeared in Best Canadian Poetry 2024, Grain, The Fiddlehead, Prairie Fire, THIS Magazine, The Malahat Review, ARC Poetry, and other literary publications. He is the managing director of the Antler River Poetry reading series and teaches creative writing at Western University (London, Ontario).
