Michael Turner (musician)

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Michael Turner
Born1962 (age 61–62)
North Vancouver, British Columbia
OccupationMusician, and writer of poetry, prose and opera librettos
NationalityCanadian

Michael Turner (born 1962 in North Vancouver, British Columbia) is a Canadian musician, and writer of poetry, prose and opera librettos. His writing is noted for including detailed and purposeful examination of ordinary things.

Career[edit]

Turner was an original member of the Vancouver band Hard Rock Miners, formed in 1987, singing and playing guitar and banjo.[1] The band toured across Canada and released four albums of rockabilly music.[2] His 1993 book Hard Core Logo is about his experiences while fronting the band.[3]

Turner wrote Company Town in 1991, and followed it with Hard Core Logo in 1993 and Kingsway in 1995. Turner employed multi-format and intertextual approaches in his works American Whiskey Bar (1997), and The Pornographer's Poem (1999).[4]

In 1996, Bruce McDonald directed a film based on Hard Core Logo;[5] he also directed a live telecast dramatizing Turner's novel American Whiskey Bar in 1998, which Citytv produced and aired.[6] That year he founded the literary/visual art imprint Advance Editions, with Arsenal Pulp Press.[2] In 1998, he appeared as the dance MC and announcer in the short film Elimination Dance, directed by McDonald with Don McKellar and Michael Ondaatje.[7]

Turner's work was adapted to radio, stage, television and feature film, and he has been translated into French, German, Russian, and Korean. He won the Genie Award in 1996 for Music/Original Song, the 2000 Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize and was also a finalist for the 1992 Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize.[8]

Turner collaborated with artist Stan Douglas on two experimental-video screenplays, titled Journey into Fear (Istanbul Biennial, 2001) and Suspiria (Documenta XI, 2002) and on a screenplay with filmmaker Bruce LaBruce, titled Untitled Von Gloeden Project, based on the life and work of photographer Wilhelm Von Gloeden. He was commissioned to write a libretto for the Modern Baroque Opera Company, based on Wilhelm Busch's Max & Moritz.

Turner lives in Vancouver, writes art essays and edits Advance Editions.

Bibliography[edit]

Poetry and fiction[edit]

  • Company Town (Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp, 1991)
  • Hard Core Logo (Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp, 1993)
  • Kingsway (Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp, 1995)
  • American Whiskey Bar (Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp, 1997)
  • The Pornographer's Poem (Toronto: Doubleday Canada, 1999)
  • 8x10 (Toronto: Doubleday Canada, 2009)
  • 9x11 and other poems like Bird, Nine, x and Eleven (Vancouver: New Star Books, 2018)

Anthologies (featured in)[edit]

  • Lost Classics (Toronto: Knopf Canada, 2000)
  • Story of a Nation (Toronto: Doubleday Canada, 2001)
  • The Notebooks (Toronto: Anchor Canada, 2002)
  • A Verse Map of Vancouver (Vancouver: Anvil Press, 2009)

References[edit]

  1. ^ Quill & Quire. Canadian Magazine Publishers Association. 1994. p. cover, 16.
  2. ^ a b "Michael Turner Interview". January Magazine, Linda Richards, February, 2000
  3. ^ Peter Dickinson (2007). Screening Gender, Framing Genre: Canadian Literature Into Film. University of Toronto Press. pp. 188–. ISBN 978-0-8020-4475-4.
  4. ^ "Guardian review: The Pornographer's Poem by Michael Turner". The Guardian. 2 December 2000.
  5. ^ "Hard Core Turner" Archived 18 January 2017 at the Wayback Machine. The Sound of St. Catharines, October 6, 2016, By Gregory Betts
  6. ^ Tony Atherton, "Live teleplay prompts plenty of directorial jitters". Ottawa Citizen, September 17, 1998.
  7. ^ Craig MacInnis, "Forever an outlaw". Ottawa Citizen, December 6, 1998.
  8. ^ BC Book Prizes Winners and Nominees

External links[edit]