Winter schedule unfolding

CLOSED 27 & 28
OUVERT 29 & 30
CLOSED AGAIN AFTER THAT
until.......JANUARY 5TH 2018 !

XOXO

What was your best poetry discovery this year?

Performer / Poet David Eso named Monastiraki as his best poetry discovery of 2017 for Vallum Magazine. Sweet ! Thx David !

"What was your best poetry discovery this year?
I had a day to myself in Montreal and stumbled upon Monastiraki, on St. Laurent, a gallery and shop for found poetry, zines, visual texts, etc. It’s at once a prototypical literary curio shopfront and totally unique. Billy Mavreas gave me a grand tour of the store’s holdings, found just the right book for me, and slipped me some art on the way out. And he stocks Vallum too! Testament to fine tastes."

https://vallum.wordpress.com/…/vallum-2017-year-in-review-…/

KFB FALL MTL LAUNCH: BRADFORD SMITH LEV TURNER KIRBY

Knife | Fork | Book returns to our fabulous space, three beautiful new chapbooks in tow, with poets Dale Smith SONS, Elianna Lev SEX MADE ME, David Bradford CALL OUT, and featuring Lauren Turner WE’RE NOT GOING TO DO BETTER NEXT TIME (Out Spring 2018), with Kirby SHE’S HAVING A DORIS DAY as our host.

Conundrum Press Triple Launch and Art Show

Conundrum Triple Launch and Art Show

Conundrum Press rolls in launching THREE NEW TITLES:

BDQ: Essays and Interviews on Quebec Comics

Edited by Andy Brown

You Are Alice in Wonderland’s Mum! - 

Sherwin Tjia

& All the way from Halifax, special guests

Kris Bertin & Alexander Forbes
launching
The Case of the Missing Men

ART on the walls by

Sherwin Tjia
Alexander Forbes
Henriette Valium
Julie Doucet

cover painting by the sorely missed
Geneviève Castrée Elverum, née Geneviève Gosselin

Vacation Time

We'll be on vacation from August 5th to the 17th !
Have a good coupla weeks and we'll see you back here before school starts up again !

KNIFE FORK BOOK CHAPBOOK LAUNCH

KNIFE FORK BOOK CHAPBOOK LAUNCH

JONATHAN GARFINKEL BOCIANY (STORKS)

KIRBY SHE'S HAVING A DORIS DAY (SECOND PRINTING)

DAVID BRADFORD NELL ZINK IS DAMN FREE, A STAR IS BORING, CALL OUT (OCT 17)

SUNDAY 25 JUNE 3PM 

JONATHAN GARFINKEL’s multi-genre writing has been translated into twelve languages, and his plays have been produced throughout Canada, Germany, Rus- sia, and Ukraine. He is the author of the book of poems Glass Psalms (Turnstone Press) and has writ- ten numerous plays including The Trials of John Demjanjuk: A Holocaust Cabaret and the Governor- General shortlisted House of Many Tongues. His memoir Ambivalence: Crossing the Israel/Palestine Divide was published in five countries to critical ac- claim (Penguin Canada and Norton and Norton US). Jonathan is also an award-winning non-fiction writer; his journalism has appeared in places like The Globe and Mail, The Walrus, Eighteen Bridges, Tablet, and PEN International. In 2015 he was com- missioned to adapt Rawi Hage’s Cockroach for the stage, which premiered at Alberta Theatre Projects in Calgary in 2016. Currently it is in development with Soulpepper. Named by the Toronto Star as ‘one to watch,’ he teaches playwriting at the Na- tional Theatre School of Canada in Montreal. jonathan-garfinkel.com

JEFF KIRBY’s earlier chapbooks include Simple Enough, Cock & Soul, Bob’s boy, and The world is fucked and sometimes beautiful. His work appears in numerous anthologies beginning with the letter Q, and most recently online at Matrix Magazine and bandcamp/jeffkirby. Kirby is the owner/publisher of knife | fork | book.

DAVID BRADFORD is an MFA candidate at the University of Guelph and leads the Slo-Po group reading series. His work has appeared in a variety of places, including Lemon Hound and Prairie Fire, and his latest chapbook, Call Out (Knife|Fork|Book), is forthcoming in 2017.

https://knifeforkbook.com/2017/06/16/kfb-torontomontreal-launch/

Rupert Bottenberg launches Fourscore Phantasmagores

Dare you confront a fearsome Uzult in its unholy stronghold? Will you brave the malevolent mists of the Miasmagon? Can you resist the Volupyrie’s tempest of temptation?

Within these pages lurk eighty hitherto unheard-of entities of the imagination, each one vividly described and illustrated. Fourscore Phantasmagores is a compendium of creatures great and small, vile and virtuous, mundane and magical. Creatures of the waters, earth, air, and ether, some sympathetic, others utterly sinister.

Drawing on a diversity of styles and techniques, from the realm of high fantasy and far beyond, artist and writer Rupert Bottenberg conjures up a panoply of preternatural apparitions. It is a rich read for the fantasy aficionado—and a bountiful resource for the role-playing gamer.

Book Launch Thursday June 1, 2017

 5pm - 7pm 

http://chizinepub.com/fourscore-phantasmagores/

Anthony Easton - i will never live up to my blue china

Anthony Easton
- i will never live up to my blue china

Vernissage Thursday 11 May 6 - 9pm
Exhibit 11 - 31 May 2017

I keep thinking about the problems of the decorative, the queer history of the same, and how much writing has taken place about the problem blue in the last 30 years--especially Maggie Nelson's book Bluet's--but also a wide variety of readings on Goethe's colour work, Derek Jarmon's film Blue, and William Gass' essay "On Being Blue". I have also been making cyanotypes for a while, and thinking about Victorian science. I am also thinking about other kinds of decorative beauty. The altar of worship, the altar of beauty, and the ongoing problem of abstraction are all part of this installation.  

The piece will have 46 cyanotypes (one for each of the years Wilde lived) of liillies (Lily for it's queer and decadent history, and ironically because it is the symbol of the virgin Mary, whose colours were blue).

-Anthony Easton

ART ESPRIT FOUND POETRY

Our sandwich board has seen many layers. Recently this occurred and we quite like it.  It'll probably stick around for a while.

PARIS / BEAT / CODEX Collages by Claude Pelieu & Mary Beach

Claude Pelieu & Mary Beach

photo by Gerard Malanga

PARIS/BEAT/CODEX

Du 19 au 30 Avril 2017

Monastiraki, 5478 Boul. Saint-Laurent, Montréal, Qc

http://monastiraki.blogspot.ca

Vernissage : samedi le 22 avril, de 14 à 18 heures, ouvert du mercredi au dimanche, de midi à 18 heures.

Commissaires : Byron Coley, Lili Dwight, Ted Lee.

Claude Pélieu (1934-2002)  et Mary Beach (1919-2006) ont formé un drôle de couple.  Claude, à ses débuts, était un écrivain proche des lettristes et un artiste indépendant avec un goût marqué pour la picouse. Mary était une veuve américaine expatriée aux manières sobres qui venait d'une grande famille de Nouvelle-Angleterre. Malgré ces différences leur relation, commencée à Paris au début des annés 60, allait durer toute une vie et produire des  montagnes souterraines d'importantes œuvres littéraires et visuelles.

Après avoir quitté Paris, le couple s'est d'abord installé à San Francisco où ils ont entrepris la traduction des œuvres de leurs amis beats William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg et Bob Kaufman. Le premier livre de Claude, Automatic Pilot était une coédition de City Lights et des Fuck You Press de Ed Sanders. Ils ont aussi démarré leur propre maison d'édition Beach Books où ils ont publié de nouveaux textes de Burroughs, Ginsberg et autres. 

Plus tard, ils ont vécu au Chelsea Hotel de New York où ils se sont liés d'amitié avec des renégats tels Harry Smith et Leonard Cohen. Claude pendant ce temps a continué à écrire et à créer des collages. Mary, qui s'était d'abord concentrée sur la peinture, 

s'est aussi mise à l'écriture pour donner naissance à son incroyable Electric Banana. Au fil des ans, elle s'est aussi tournée vers le collage.

Les œuvres de cette exposition ont été créées autour de la fin des années 90 et le début du millénaire à leur studio/maison de Norwich, NY. Les collages de Claude proviennent d'une série consacrée à Hieronymous Bosch. Ils nous semblent une brillante prolongation 

de l'impulstion surréaliste et nous sommes très fiers de pouvoir les présenter ici. Remerciements à Pamela Beach-Plymell.

PARIS / BEAT / CODEX

Collages by Claude Pelieu & Mary Beach

Curated by Byron Coley

April 19-30, 2017 at Monastiraki, 5478 Boul Saint-Laurent, Montreal QC; http://monastiraki.blogspot.com

(reception Saturday April 22, 2-6 PM; viewing hours Weds-Sun 12-8)

Claude Pelieu (1934-2002) and Mary Beach (1919-2006) were an unlikely couple. Claude was a Lettrist-associated writer and artist with a polemical bent and a taste for the needle. Mary was an expatriate American widow with patrician New England roots and a sober demeanor. Yet, they began a partnership in early '60s Paris that would last the rest of their lives, and result in subterranean mountains of important work, both literary and visual. 

Leaving Paris, the pair first moved to San Francisco, where they lived while translating many important Beat works into French for a circle of friends including William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg and Bob Kaufman. Claude's first book, Automatic Pilot, was also published at this time as a joint project of City Lights & Ed Sander's Fuck You Press. They also ran their own imprint, Beach Books, which published new work by Burroughs, Ginsberg, Jeff Nuttal and others. Living at the Chelsea Hotel in NYC, they became friends with such reprobates as Leonard Cohen and Harry Smith. Claude continued writing and doing collages all through this period. Mary, whose work was entirely focused on painting prior to this, also began writing, which resulted in the amazing Electric Banana. As the years went by she also turned her attention to collage. 

The works in this show were done early in the late '90s and early '00s at their home/studio in Norwich, NY. Claude's are from a series based on on the work of Heronymous Bosch. We think you'll agree, they represent a brilliant extension of the Surrealist impulse. And we're very pleased to be allowed to present them. Much thanks to Pamela Beach-Plymell.

The Beach/Pelieu Art Collection: www.beachpelieuart.com

Curiosities: past print future

Curiosities: past print future

Vernissage: Thursday April 6, 7:00 – 9:00 pm

The show runs from Wednesday April 5 - Sunday April 9

Curiosities: Past Print Future is a site-responsive group show of Concordia Print Media screenprinting students. In responding to the space of Monastiraki, the exhibit showcases works that have been inspired by aspects or objects found within the gallery / curiosity shop. With screenprint as the main technique unifying the projects, the works include two-dimensional prints, artists’ books, three-dimensional and intervention-based works. These works are integrated into the existing space, dispersed among the found objects and art pieces that are currently installed in the space. As the curiosity shop / art space is a selected collection of artwork and objects, arranged in a state of organized “clutter” that reflect shop owners and artists, Billy Mavreas and Emilie O’Brien’s aesthetic and personal preferences, the group, in a sense, will be collaborating with Billy and Emilie by responding to their already rich material conversation. Through their production, the students are responding to themes of history, the future and altering perceptions of space, time and expectation. As students reference and integrate fragments of visual culture found from the non-traditional gallery space of Monastiraki, hierarchical assumptions about types of art and how they are interacted with will be subverted and overturned. What is viewed as art or artifact will be brought into question. 

Participants:
Olivia Boda
Véronique Dion
Maeve Doyle
Cariston Fawcett
Sarah Cloutier-Boulay
Stéphanie Laporte
Alexey Lazarev
Amanda Manson
Gabrielle Mulholland
Marzi Rahmani
Morag Rahn-Campbell
Theran Sativa
Yamina Sekhri
Pattie Weston

FEBRUARY BLUES

Merci Le Devoir !

We received a great morning gift today !
Isabelle Paré wrote a lovely piece on our shop, even calling me a poem on two legs ! Ha!
Link below !

photo par Annik MH de Carufel

READ THE ARTICLE :
Le Devoir

la vie est belle