This coming Friday, March 23rd, The Warren is releasing its third issue. Instead of readings, we’ve settled on a line-up of incredible local bands: Himalayan Bear, Leisure Suit and Freak Heat Waves will be singing us through the evening. You’ll be able to pick up a copy of the new magazine — of course, for free — with your ticket.

This is The Warren’s largest show yet. For many of the founding staff, including Amelia Nezil, Liam Sarsfield, Morag St. Clair and Megan Welsh, this will be their last event before handing the magazine over to a new generation. Many alumni will be in attendance and we hope to see a band of friendly professors and graduate students.

The event will be taking place at the Victoria Event Centre. Doors at 8 o’clock. There will be a full bar. Tickets go on sale at Munchie Bar and Ditch Records on Monday at lunch for $10. 150 people have already RSVP’ed on Facebook, so we encourage you to pick up a ticket as soon as possible.

You can RSVP to the Facebook event by clicking here.
You can retrieve a poster for the event by clicking here.

Kind Regards,

The Warren Team.

RSVP on Facebook.

The Vancouver Poetry Conference of 1963 is one of the most memorable moments in British Columbia’s literary history. Organized by Warren Tallman (curator of the Tish movement and professor at UBC) and Robert Creeley, the conference brought together such canonical names as Denise Levertov, Charles Olson, Allen Ginsberg, Robert Duncan, Margaret Avison and Philip Whalen.

This Fall (October 19th to 22nd), Vancouver’s poet laureate, Brad Cran, will resurrect the conference’s name and a huge roster of Canada’s poetry icons will descend on the city for The Vancouver 125 Poetry Conference. You’ll be able to see Christian Bök, Don McKay, Steven Price, Jeramy Dodds, Chris Hutchinson, Ken Babstock, Suzanne Buffam, Evelyn Lau and a hell of a lot of other phenomenal poets.

Because we love poetry, we want you to go. We contacted Cran and managed to secure a special deal for friends of The Warren. As a subscriber, you’ll be able to grab a delegate pass for $79 — even cheaper than the low income and student rate of $99. Sign up for our newsletter and you’ll be automatically forwarded the information you need to get your pass.

You can find more information about the conference over on their website at http://v125pc.com/.

Just about everyone we know who is fanatical about poetry is going to be there. We hope you are too.

Mosaic Collective was kind enough to do an interview with us. It reads great:

The earliest I remember hearing rumor of The Warren Undergraduate Review was in the winter of 2008. It was over drinks at a christmas party so the details are hazy, but the idea of an open concept intruiged me. Foolishly I didn’t pry any further.

Three years, two issues, five books, and copious boozy boozy dance parties down the road, it’s hard to pinpoint exactly when the Warren went supernova, but since then, they’ve certainly become Victoria’s literary tour de force.

I caught up with founder and editor-in-chief Liam Sarsfield, as he heads into his third and final year with the journal, to talk about his experience so far. Expect a lot from this little publication. And if anyone has a copy of issue one, please let me know. Continue Reading.

Hey everyone.

We’re ready to start hiring for this year’s Warren. The deadline for job applications is going to be Monday, October 3rd. We’re looking for three Executive Editors (responsible for quality control, curation, running events, making friends) and five genre Editors (Poetry, Nonfiction, Visual Arts, Criticism, Philosophy). There’s also quite a line-up of general volunteers.

You can find more information on all of our positions over on our volunteer page. While you’re at it, you should probably join our Facebook group too.

As always, we don’t want to see your resume, or want to read a formal cover letter; we’d prefer you send us an email introducing yourself and pitching us on what you could bring to the journal.

We’re looking forward to meeting you!

We’re back in business for another year of awesome cultural events and publishing escapades. Last year, in addition to cranking out a new issue of the journal, we managed to fill Open Space gallery. We threw a really fantastic show at the Victoria Events Centre. We published three books of poetry through our new found publishing fund. We also produced an album. This year, we want to do even more. And so it is with a tremendous amount of excitement that we’re announcing the positions available for this year. You don’t have to know us. In fact, we encourage people who don’t know “us” to get in contact. The full-blown staff count of the journal usually hovers around 15 or 16 undergraduate students.  The Warren wouldn’t be such a fantastic project if so many people weren’t involved.

We really want to emphasize the freedom of each position. This isn’t a regimented hierarchy with illegitimate salaries and bloated stomachs: we’re about getting shit done. We employ people who are self-motivated and opinionated. We employ people who want to turn Victoria’s cultural scene up-side down. That’s what makes a good journal. Want to edit the poetry section and help organize events? Want to help us publish more Undergraduates’ first books? We’re here to help you do that.

We are currently looking for three Executive Editors and four Genre editors (Poetry, Nonfiction, Visual Arts and Criticism). You can read all about it on our Volunteer page.

We’re looking forward to meeting you.

The Warren Executive Staff

We would like to thank the UVic English Department for special recognition at their first ever grad convocation reception. The afternoon celebration brought graduating students and professors together for food, drinks and a short award ceremony. Congratulations to The Warren’s own Jack Derricourt, winner of the English Honours Essay Scholarship, and Natalia Esling, winner of the Dr. Burton O. Kurth Scholarship in English Honours, and to our friends at The Albatross, who also received special recognition.

I woke on a thin mattress to the steady beep of a heart-monitor. A tickle on the back of my neck told me I wasn’t alone. Sharp, merciless eyes glinted next to the steady green beep of the monitor.

“I’d like another blog post Bryce,” Liam said from the shadows.

My voice caught in my throat as I raised a protest. I felt so weak. How long had I been here? Had he been sitting in his dark vigil for days, just waiting for his blog post, the sustenance that makes his cold heart beat with the dark ichors that is a poet’s life-force?

“Liam, I -”

A nurse walked into the room then.

“What are you doing here?” she started, “visiting hours are -”

Her sentence was interrupted by Liam’s bony fist punching her throat.

IN THE FUCKING THROAT.

A NURSE.

Speaking of Pocket Knife, they’ll once again be playing at a Warren event. I wrote about them before – check it out here. They were an absolute delight. When I offered to show them my ‘pocket knife’ they promptly showed me their ‘pocket knife’ which was less of a knife and more of a machete.

(Mine was neither knife nor machete. Anyways, now you know why we’re not having this event at Open Space again.)

Using a cello, guitar, and the always under-appreciated Mandolin, Torie Beram and Naomi Kavka make some of the most danceable string-styled music this side of the Rocky Mountains. The gals tore up the stage at the last event and the only misstep was that they didn’t get as much time as they were promised because the incompetent MC didn’t make sure the levels were right. Nonetheless, they were a crowd favourite and, with the promise that I would give them a fifty-foot berth, they agreed to play Thursday.

Beram and Kavka originate from Prince George. The town was named after the only British Prime Minister to be assassinated and the town mascot is Mr. P.G, first constructed in 1960, stood 40 feet tall and was made of spruce wood. After serving as the town’s phallus for a number of years (and the butt of many innuendos), he was remade in 1983 at a mere eight metres tall. He was also made out of fibreglass and sheet metal which was made to look like wood, because apparently Prince George is a town composed of lies.

If you’re wondering how I know so much about Prince George and why in God’s name I chose to tell you this, I’m incredibly ill.