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Charlottetown Poetry Book Launch an Unusual Audio-Visual Treat
PEI Actors Bring Words from Ancient Greece to Life

Athena Becomes a Swallow and Other Voices from The Odyssey, Brent MacLaine’s fourth book of poetry, will be launched as part of Pen and Inkling, a festival organized by the PEI Writers’ Guild to celebrate its twentieth anniversary. In addition to readings by MacLaine, the launch features a slide show of Greek landscapes and archaeological sites, as well as a performance of monologues by a group of the most seasoned actors on Prince Edward Island. A book signing will follow, and books will be available for purchase. Admission is free, and everyone is welcome.

CHARLOTTETOWN
Sunday, September 20, from 2:00 pm to 3:30 pm
Confederation Centre of the Arts — StudioTheatre
145 Richmond Street

The book contains twenty-seven monologues spoken by characters who appear in Homer’s great epic The Odyssey. However, these are not the voices of the major players, the heroic movers and shakers; rather, we hear from the minor characters, the bit players, and hangers-on, who receive scant attention in the original. In MacLaine’s work, the farmhands, laundry maids, beggars, sailors, and scribes have their own say about the dramatic events that swirl around them, providing a new perspective and showing how the shine of the gods also falls on the common folk. John Reibetanz says about the book that “we are transformed — enchanted by rhythms that catch the throat-sounds of unsung heroes.”

BRENT MACLAINE is a Professor and Chair of the Department of English at UPEI, where he teaches modern literature. He won the Atlantic Poetry Prize earlier this year for Shades of Green (Acorn 2008).

Athena Becomes a Swallow and Other Voices from The Odyssey is published by Goose Lane Editions, designed by Julie Scriver, and includes illustrations by the author.

Beaverbrook’s Shattered Legacy Upheld in Appeal

The Beaverbrook Art Gallery has won the appeal in a long-standing dispute over 85 works of art in its collection that were being claimed by Lord Beaverbrook’s descendents.
In light of this decision, Beaverbook: A Shattered Legacy has become the single most important resource for understanding the characters involved in the now world famous “Art in Dispute.” This national bestseller and multiple-award winning book by investigative journalist Jacques Poitras tells the story of Lord Beaverbrook, his rise to power, his personal legacy and the decline of the Beaverbrook family, including the compelling and antagonistic story of the multi-million dollar tug-of-war between the Beaverbrook Art Gallery and the Beaverbrook United Kingdom Foundation.

The ruling, which was released overnight, brings to an end a five-year legal battle between the gallery and the U.K.-based Beaverbrook Foundation, which is controlled by descendants of the Canadian-born British politician and businessman, who died in 1964.

The appeal panel, comprised of retired judges Edward Bayda, Coulter Osborne and Thomas Braidwood, said that former Supreme Court of Canada justice Peter Cory, who ruled on the case in 2007, was reasonable and did not make any mistakes in his original judgment. This appeal amounts to a final decision as there are no other avenues left for the Beaverbrook Foundation. The decision comes days before the Beaverbrook Art Gallery celebrates the 50th anniversary of its opening.

In Beaverbrook: A Shattered Legacy, Poitras deftly connects the pieces of this “historic jigsaw puzzle” into a fascinating tale with an equally fascinating cast of characters: Lord Beaverbrook, savvy businessman, philanthropist, philanderer, and self-described “master propagandist”; his mercurial second wife, Maria Christoforides, formerly Lady Dunn, who once sent a car to retrieve a painting she wanted from the gallery; Beaverbrook’s son Sir Max, who described his father as “the loneliest man I know” and presided over the decline of the family’s newspaper empire; and Beaverbrook’s grandsons, the current Lord Beaverbrook and his cousin Timothy, the latter of whom once described the governors of the Beaverbrook Art Gallery as “a bunch of hacks.”

JACQUES POITRAS is CBC Radio’s provincial affairs reporter in New Brunswick. His book Beaverbrook: A Shattered Legacy won the 2008 Booksellers’ Choice Award, the 2008 Best Atlantic Published Book prize, and was on the shortlists for both the National Business Book Award and the 2008 BC National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction. Poitras has received a National Newspaper Award, and he won the top national feature reporting award from the Radio and Television News Directors Association of Canada two years in a row. His work has also been honoured by Amnesty International.

Accolades for Beaverbrook: A Shattered Legacy
“In the hands of New Brunswick journalist Jacques Poitras the whole sad tale becomes a riveting story of a community’s evolution from deference to defiance as it attempts to hold onto a magnificent gift of art masterpieces.” — Canadian Press
“Beaverbrook: A Shattered Legacy has all the virtues of a great mystery novel . . . well researched and fast-paced.” — The Beaver
“The strength of Poitras’s book is that it moves deftly in and through the many layers of this complex story.” — Tom Smart, The Globe and Mail