Toronto's Poet Laureate Talk Rescheduled

An Evening With Toronto's Poet Laurate, Pier Giorgio Di Cicco, has been rescheduled for Wednesday February 20 at Sister's Restuarant. The talk, sponsored by the Coronation Community Association of West Hill, will focus on the Creative Community.

--There's no escaping the virtual project of the planet; keeping in mind that information technology enriches, extends our domain, generates wealth and makes life easier if not profound, we also recognize that it robs us of the indigenous, the flavored, the local. And that is the challenge of the contemporary city; the question of how to be international and at the same time unique.

Di Cicco’s philosophy has found popularity in forums ranging from The Prime Minister's Advisory Committee on Cities and Communities, The Creative Cities Project of the Ontario and Toronto governments, to Waterfront Toronto to international conferences on urban sustainability. In 2005 he was appointed official "Curator" for the City of Toronto’s Humanitas project, a global showcase where Toronto will host its heritage, vision and strategy for global citizenship.

--The creative city is taken to mean different things. It means to prosper and to assert one’s heritage in a climate of adventure. It means innovation to those who would marry commerce and imagination. It means a welcoming city with places in which to relax, with people free to invent and encounter, through the arts, in public spaces and through architecture. But architecting a city is first about constructing the space between people, the metaphysical space¦ the way they feel about each other and for each other.

Di Cicco's work has earned him numerous awards, including five Canada Council Awards, six Ontario Arts Council Awards and the City of Toronto Arts Award. He was recently appointed the Emilio Goggio Visiting Professor in Italian-Canadian Studies at the University of Toronto.

As a unique exercise in creative Community building the Coronation Community Association of West Hill has invited representatives from every School, Police, Faith and other Community groups in West Hill, including our City, Provincial and Federal representatives. It is a rare opportunity to meet others working to enhance the quality life in our community.

--For until we have architected the civic space between each other, we will inevitably put up bad buildings, confused infrastructure and obscure the project of city spirit.

Hear Giorgio Di Cicco at Sister's Restaurant in 7 pm Wednesday February 20, 2008

For tickets visit the Events section of the Coronation CA website at http://www.coronationca.com/

Di Cicco was born in Arezzo, Italy, and was raised in Baltimore, Montreal, and Toronto. He currently resides in the countryside north of Toronto. He is the author of over thirteen books of poems from 1975 to 1986 including The Tough Romance, Dancing in the House Of Cards, Flying Deeper into the Century, and Virgin Science: Hunting Holistic Paradigms. He withdrew from the world of letters to join a monastery in 1986 and re-emerged in 2001 to publish Living in Paradise-- New and Selected Poems with Mansfield Press. He has been the Emilio Goggio Visiting Professor in Italian-Canadian Studies at the University of Toronto, and in 2004 he was named as the Poet Laureate for the City of Toronto.