"Calliope" mother of Orpheus and Linus, consort of Apollo—is known as the chief muse for the ecstatic harmony of her voice. It is she who presides over eloquence and epic poetry.
Calliope Reading Series
Calliope is a decadent internation traveling reading series created by Ali Pinkney (Toronto) and Marie Ségolène (Montreal) in the summer of 2022. Set in carnivalesque evenings of excess and wine, Calliope presents transgressive poems, new poems, hidden poems, poems by painters, poems by workers, poems by dreamers, poems by troublemakers.
Previous iterations have taken place in restaurants, bars and galleries such as: Bon Service (Montreal) and Honeys (Brooklyn), Loulou (Montreal) and No Gallery (New York City), and featured performances and readings by Alegria Gobeil, Alex Patrick Dyck, Caroline Schub, David Lindsay, Christian Michael Filadro, Cassidy McFadzean, Frankie Barnet, Emilie Lafleur, Faith Paré, Sallie Fullerton, Frances Verdugo Lasch and more…
The Calliope anthology is set to be published by 2024. Although the website is still under construction, you can contact us via instagram at @calliopereading or via email calliopereading@gmail.com
Previous iterations have taken place in restaurants, bars and galleries such as: Bon Service (Montreal) and Honeys (Brooklyn), Loulou (Montreal) and No Gallery (New York City), and featured performances and readings by Alegria Gobeil, Alex Patrick Dyck, Caroline Schub, David Lindsay, Christian Michael Filadro, Cassidy McFadzean, Frankie Barnet, Emilie Lafleur, Faith Paré, Sallie Fullerton, Frances Verdugo Lasch and more…
The Calliope anthology is set to be published by 2024. Although the website is still under construction, you can contact us via instagram at @calliopereading or via email calliopereading@gmail.com
ALI PINKNEY is a literary writer based in Tkaron:to/Toronto where she is a graduate student with the Department of English in the Field of Creative Writing at the University of Toronto. Her research is supported by a SSHRC Canada Graduate Scholarship and an Avie Bennett Award.
Ali holds a BA in English and Creative Writing and an MA in English Literature from Concordia University in Tiohtià:ke/Montréal. Her work has been published in print by Metatron Press, House House Press, Bad Books Press, Matrix Magazine, as well as online through Bad Nudes Magazine. Ali has taken part in the Homeschool Hudson workshop as well as the Banff Center for the Arts creative writing workshop.
Ali is currently curating Metatron Press's Glyphöria platform, to be released in the spring of 2023. She also co-runs the traveling poetry series Calliope, co-runs the Creative Writing Working Group at U of T, is the co-managing editor for the U of T's literary journal Echolocation, and directs a workshop on anorexia and hunger poetics out of Hart House with Decent Exposures. Ali holds various positions as an assistant professor in the creative writing and English literature departments at UTM, UTSC, and the downtown campus at the University of Toronto.
MARIE SÉGOLÈNE is an interdisciplinary artist, writer and curator based in Montreal (Canada). She holds two bachelor degrees from Concordia University in Creative Writing and Intermedia Cyberarts. She completed her Masters in Performance from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2019. Marie has exhibited work and performed in the US, Canada, and Europe in spaces such as the CUE Arts Foundation (New York) , EXPO Chicago (Chicago), Extase (Chicago), Hauser & Wirth (New York), Pangée (Montreal), 8eleven (Toronto), the Knockdown Center (New York) and more. She has authored five artist publications and one poetry chapbook published by Grosse Fugue in 2021.
In 2022, Marie founded Espace Maurice, an apartment-gallery located in Montreal, showcasing works by local and international artists. She has curated hybrid projects at BABAYAGA in Hudson (NY), and will be presenting work at Weatherproof’s vitrine gallery The Hole in August 2023 as well as at Greyland, in Youngstown (OH) in October 2023. Espace Maurice took part in Montreal’s contemporary art fair: Plural, in spring 2023 and has published three artist catalogs since its inception.