This is a super exciting Power Q & A for us! Not only are we interviewing an extraordinary Canadian poet and spoken word artist, but we’re interviewing a tireless advocate of other Canadian artists: Valentino Assenza host and producer of HOWL on CIUT 89.5 FM. Every Tuesday night at 10 p.m. EST, Valentino welcomes emerging and established authors, poets, playwrights, and songwriters to the airwaves. We’ve heard many of our favourite artists on this show, and have learned about so many more who have become favourites, so we wanted to take this opportunity to spotlight the person behind this miraculous and indisputably vital celebration of art and artists.
Funding to the arts is (as always) precarious, but people like Valentino continue to provide a platform for artists. To support Valentino and Canadian artists, tune into HOWL at CIUT.com or access CIUT 89.5 FM through the TuneIn Radio app. You can also donate to the show here. Let’s keep the CanLit love alive!
Q: What is the origin story of HOWL? How did it come about and what are some of the biggest challenges and triumphs you’ve experienced hosting this show?
A: Howl was founded by Toronto poets Nik Beat and Stephen Humphrey in 1995. For them, it was a way to give exposure to local poets from across the city. In the early 2000s Stephen Humphrey left the show and for a very long stretch of time the show was co-hosted by Nancy Bullis and Nik Beat.
So unfortunately in September of 2014, Nik Beat passed away, and at the urging of people in the Toronto poetry community having hosted poetry events for years, I was encouraged to apply. I had mixed feelings about the commitment. I wondered how I was going to get guests on the show regularly, and wondered if it was too much of a commitment, but decided to dive in and started hosting Howl in January of 2015. While sharing the show with Nancy we alternated and switched hosting every Tuesday. We decided to expand the scope of the show and include novelists, and singer/songwriters as well as poets. We utilized social media to give the show a bit bigger reach, and ended up connecting with some fantastic publishers, and publicists leading to some remarkable interview opportunities. In 2017 I got to interview Margaret Atwood, but have talked to so many amazing personalities both before and after then. In 2020 the pandemic hit, and we had to online software so we could submit the show from home. At the end of 2020 Nancy Bullis stepped down from Howl, and I have been running the show on my own on a weekly basis. It's been challenging juggling the job with a 40-hour-a-week day job, but it's rewarding to give myself the commitment of reading books on a weekly basis, and talking to the authors. I love giving the artists space, it feels like I am making a difference, and in a day and age where people are actually talking about banning books, I am going to hang onto this show and continue amplifying those voices for as long as I can.
More about Valentino Assenza:
Valentino Assenza has been a published poet and spoken word artist for over two decades. He has published four chapbooks of poetry: Wandering Absence, Il Ritorno (Labour Of Love Productions), Quiet Confessions of a Loudmouth and Make Our Peace With Rattlesnakes (Lyricalmyrical Press). He has had numerous pieces of poetry published in anthologies such as Labour Of Love and Descant Magazine. He has read and performed his poetry throughout Canada and the U.S.A.
Valentino was a member of the Toronto Poetry Slam team in 2009 and 2010 and has performed his poetry at the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word and The National Poetry Slam. Valentino sat on the committees for the Art Bar Poetry Series and Toronto Poetry Project.
He currently lives in Grimsby with his wife Angela, and is the host and producer of Howl, a spoken word, literary radio show, Tuesday nights at 10pm on CIUT 89.5 FM.