A Reading by Gerry Shikatani

Gerry ShikataniGerry Shikatani has published several volumes of poetry, a book of fiction as well as writings on gastronomy and travel. He is in the process of completing a book of essays on cuisine. He has been publishing and exhibiting visual poetry for decades. Recognized internationally as a text-sound performance artist, he has engaged audiences in Canada, The United States and Europe.

AQUEDUCT: poems and texts from Europe, 1979-87 is a 412 page volume, authored by Shikatani, and co-published by three presses: The Mercury Press, Underwich Editions, and Wolsak and Wynn. The tripartite publishing collaboration was unprecedented in the history of Canadian literature.

Shikatani co-edited Paper Doors, an anthology of Japanese-Canadian poetry, published by Coach House Press in 1981, with David Aylward. It was once of the first publications to direct serious attention to Asian-Canadian literature.

He has been Writer-in-Residence at the University of Western Ontario, London and taught at Sheridan College and the creative writing departments of York University, Toronto and Montreal's Concordia University. He is a leading senior writer among visible minorities in Canada and has assisted minority writers through workshops and mentoring.

“Shikatani is a poet’s poet: writing a delicate, intricate verse, cerebral and sensual at the same time; well-known and respected among poets but little known in larger writing circles or by the general reading public; disinterested in and apparently incapable of self-promotion; a genuine lover of art for art’s sake; in sum, as his publishers correctly state, 'a master poet.'” (Libby Scheier)

The A B Series acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts which last year invested $20.1 million in writing and publishing throughout Canada.