That is the question.

Yes, February may have only 28 days, and it may be the most frigid, inhospitable month of the year (especially for those of us above 40 degrees latitude). But in those 28 days, there will be a multitude of Coach House Books happenings and events, and what better way to beat back those winter blues than by warming up to a great Coach House book or going out to a warm book launch or reading? (Don't even bother thinking of other ideas. They're all inferior, trust us.)

There's so much happening in February, the month might be over by the time you finishing reading this latest Mailbot. We have the Montreal launch and gallery exhibition for The Prix de Rome in Architecture: A Retrospective, Darren O'Donnell's Diplomatic Immunities: The End, a visit by Nicole Brossard to Toronto, Jon Paul Fiorentino at the Festival Voix D'Ameriques and much more. And at the end of the month, Coach House caps things off with a trip to Atlanta for the 2007 Association of Writers and Writing Programs Annual Conference and Bookfair (where it should be warmer than Coach House HQ). Hope your February is as packed with great things as ours promises to be.

Tomorrow: The Prix de Rome in Architecture Launches in Montreal!

Only hours remain until the book launch and exhibition opening for The Prix de Rome in Architecture at MONOPOLI, Galerie d'Architecture. On February 1 at 6:00 p.m., MONOPOLI's doors will open to architecture and book lovers, who can view pieces from Prix de Rome laureates, buy a copy of the new book, The Prix de Rome in Architecture, and partake of the fine refreshments. It's going to be quite an exhibit and quite the celebration, so we hope you'll be able to make it.

Subtext continues its monthly series of experimental writing with readings by Lindsay Hill & Chris Putnam at Richard Hugo House on Wednesday, February 7, 2007. Donations for admission will be taken at the door on the evening of the performance. The reading starts at 7:30pm.  For comprehensive details and a map, click here.
 
Lindsay Hill was born in San Francisco in 1952.  Graduate of Bard College.  Began writing under influence of Robert Duncan, Tarn, Rexroth and Rilke.  First book Avelaval (Oyez, Berkeley 1974).  Work has appeared in numerous journals including Sulfur, Caliban and New American Writing.  Four other books including most recent Contango (Singing Horse).  Past co-editor of poetry/poetics journal Facture. Current focus on sentence-based collage writing.  Living in Portland, OR with wife, Nita, and children Ian and Helena.  Member of the Spare Room poetry collective.
 
C.E. Putnam maintains P.I.S.O.R. (The Putnam Institute for Space Opera Research). Some of his chapbooks include Manic Box (2001), Did you ever hear of a thing like that? (2001), Things Keep Happening (2003), and Crawlspace, a forthcoming collaboration with Daniel Comiskey. For this February reading, C.E. Putnam will read cosmic-sex/earthly-love poems. See here.

Laurus Press is pleased to announce the publication of Arrows by Michael Goodfellow (25 pages, Publication date: January 10, 2007).

At twenty-five pages, Arrows contains ten lyric love poems. Each poem is preceded by an epigraph drawn from an article on echocardiogram images.

Michael Goodfellow's writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Kiss Machine, Softblow, Northern Poetry Review, and The Dalhousie Review, where he worked from 2005 to 2006. He graduated from University of King's College in May 2006 and is currently a postgraduate student at the Humber School for Writers. Arrows is his first collection.

Via Vancouver's WestEnder comes the following:

Patrick Swan credits his nerve, his writing skills, and a teacher who kicked him out of her class as the catalysts for change in his life. At 25, he has evolved from a teenaged slacker to a globe-trotting performance poet.

When a high-school teacher told Swan to get out of her drama class and into creative writing, he shrugged. “I thought, ‘I don’t care, I just want a credit,’” he recalls. “I did it and I loved it, and here I am.” Swan is Vancouver’s representative at the Individual World Poetry Slam, taking place at three Commercial Drive venues — Café Deux Soleils, Zesty’s Restaurant and Rime Café — from Jan. 31 to Feb. 4.

It’s the mother of all performance-poetry competitions, featuring 70 competitors from across Canada and the U.S. The champion wins a cash prize and a book and CD publishing deal. “In the sense of the whole spoken-word world, this is a really big deal,” says RC Weslowski, a performance poet who heads Vancouver Poetry House, a co-producer of the competition with the U.S.-based Poetry Slam, Inc., which has organized the annual IWPS since its inception in 2003.