May
24
MURRAY
REISS launches “The Survival Rate of Butterflies in the Wild”
Murray
Reiss is a B.C.
poet whose work is included in anthologies such as Rocksalt:
An Anthology of Contemporary B.C. Poetry (Mother
Tongue Publishing) and in periodicals including: Grain,
Alaska Quarterly Review, Contemporary Verse 2
and Tickle Ace.
In 2005 Mother Tongue Press published his chap book, Distance
from the Locus.
Reiss was born in Sarnia, Ontario and lives on Salt Spring Island. With
clarity and compassion, Murray Reiss writes of a childhood haunted by
the Holocaust in which his father's entire family perished -- and by
his father's subsequent silence. A "second-hand survivor,"
his father's "distance from the chimneys didn't spare him; / his
distance from those smokestacks was his disease."
May
31
JAMES
ARTHUR, NATALIA DIAZ and TOMAS Q. MORIN
James
Arthur's poems have
appeared in The New
Yorker, The
New Republic,
Poetry,
and The American
Poetry Review. He
has received the Amy Lowell Travelling Poetry Scholarship, a Wallace
Stegner Fellowship, an Amy Clampitt Residency, and a Discovery/The
Nation Prize. His
first book, Charms
against Lightning,
is a poetic bildungsroman organized around the theme of awakening
from a "ghost world" in order to journey toward a
definition of selfhood. Romantic in spirit and contemporary in
outlook, Arthur's poems are rhythmical, elastic, and expressive.
During 2012-2013, Arthur will be a Hodder Fellow at the Lewis Center
for the Arts in Princeton. Charms
against Lightning
will be published by Copper Canyon Press in October 2012.
http://www.jamesarthurpoetry.com/
Natalia Diaz was born and raised in the Fort Mojave Indian Village in Needles, California. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in The Iowa Review, Prairie Schooner, Crab Orchard Review, Best of the West, The Speed Chronicles, and Sing: Poetry from the Indigenous Americas. After playing professional basketball in Europe and Asia for several years, she completed a poetry and fiction MFA at Old Dominion University. She lives in Mohave Valley, Arizona, and directs a language revitalization program with the last Elder speakers of the Mojave language. Her first book, When My Brother Was an Aztec, is a fast-paced tour of Mojave life and family narrative: A sister fights for or against a brother on meth, and everyone from Antigone, Houdini, Huitzilopochtli, and Jesus is invoked and invited to hash it out. When My Brother Was an Aztec was published by Copper Canyon Press in May 2012. http://www.narrativemagazine.com/authors/natalie-diaz
Tomas Q. Morin's poems have appeared in New England Review, Narrative, Boulevard, Slate, Threepenny Review, and Best New Poets. He has received scholarships from the Fine Arts Work Center, Bread Loaf Writer's Conference and the New York State Summer Writers Institute. He teaches literature and writing at Texas State University. His debut collection of poems, A Larger Country, was chosen from more than one thousand manuscripts for the APR/Honickman First Book Prize. It charts the land we call memory, a place the dead and the outcast call home; the map that emerges shows us that while the terrain of memory may be rugged, filled with both joy and sorrow, it is also “the world we always said we wanted.” A Larger Country will be published by Copper Canyon Press in September 2012. http://www.tomasqmorin.com/
Natalia Diaz was born and raised in the Fort Mojave Indian Village in Needles, California. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in The Iowa Review, Prairie Schooner, Crab Orchard Review, Best of the West, The Speed Chronicles, and Sing: Poetry from the Indigenous Americas. After playing professional basketball in Europe and Asia for several years, she completed a poetry and fiction MFA at Old Dominion University. She lives in Mohave Valley, Arizona, and directs a language revitalization program with the last Elder speakers of the Mojave language. Her first book, When My Brother Was an Aztec, is a fast-paced tour of Mojave life and family narrative: A sister fights for or against a brother on meth, and everyone from Antigone, Houdini, Huitzilopochtli, and Jesus is invoked and invited to hash it out. When My Brother Was an Aztec was published by Copper Canyon Press in May 2012. http://www.narrativemagazine.com/authors/natalie-diaz
Tomas Q. Morin's poems have appeared in New England Review, Narrative, Boulevard, Slate, Threepenny Review, and Best New Poets. He has received scholarships from the Fine Arts Work Center, Bread Loaf Writer's Conference and the New York State Summer Writers Institute. He teaches literature and writing at Texas State University. His debut collection of poems, A Larger Country, was chosen from more than one thousand manuscripts for the APR/Honickman First Book Prize. It charts the land we call memory, a place the dead and the outcast call home; the map that emerges shows us that while the terrain of memory may be rugged, filled with both joy and sorrow, it is also “the world we always said we wanted.” A Larger Country will be published by Copper Canyon Press in September 2012. http://www.tomasqmorin.com/
June
7
Celebrate
CONGRESS 2013 and the MALAHAT's Spring Issue Launch
Planet
Earth Poetry reading series' open mic will be dedicated to Congress
attendees. Readings by Ariel Gordon, Malahat
issue #182 short story writer Cody Klippenstein, and Malahat
board members Iain Higgins and Eric Miller. Writers attending
Congress
2013
, showcase your work at Planet Earth Poetry's June 7th open mic.
Poets, fictionists, and creative nonfiction practitioners are equally
welcome. Sign up for the open mic begins at 7 p.m. Each reader is
limited to one piece of three minutes or less. Bring your edgiest bon
mots because Congress's theme this year is all things "@ The
Edge."
The
evening's featured readers are Manitoba's Ariel
Gordon,
Malahat #182
contributor Cody
Klippenstein,
and Malahat
board members Iain
Higgins and
Eric Miller.
Ariel
Gordon is a
Winnipeg writer. Her first book of poetry, Hump
(Palimpsest Press, 2010), won the Aqua Books Lansdowne Prize for
Poetry, and her second, How
to Pack Without Overpacking,
is slated for publication in 2014. Most recently, she won Kalamalka
Press' inaugural John Lent Poetry-Prose Award. The resulting
letterpress chapbook, How
to Make a Collage,
will be launched at this reading. When not being bookish, Ariel likes
tromping through the woods and taking macro photographs of mushrooms.
Cody
Klippenstein's
fiction has appeared in the Spring 2013 issue (#182) of The
Malahat Review.
She's also been published in Joyland,
The Fiddlehead, and
Zoetrope: All-Story
as the winner of its 2012 short fiction contest selected by Karen
Russell. She currently lives in Victoria, BC, where she is at work
on a novel, and will be an MFA candidate at Cornell University this
fall.
Iain
Higgins is a
writer, translator, critic, and teacher. His books include Then
Again (poems), The
Invention of Poetry
(a translation of Polish poet Adam Czerniawski’s selected poems),
The Book of John
Mandeville (a
translation of a fictional medieval travel book about the East), and
Writing East: The
“Travels”’ of Sir John Mandeville
(an academic study). His poems have appeared in Best
Canadian Poetry in English 2008
and Rocksalt: An
Anthology of Contemporary BC Poetry,
and his creative nonfiction has appeared in Maisonneuve.
He is currently finishing a new book of poems and working on a novel.
He teaches in the English department and in the Medieval Studies
Program at Uvic.
Eric
Miller has
published three books of poetry, Song
of the Vulgar Starling, In the Scaffolding,
which was nominated for the 2006 ReLit ward, and A
Day in Moss. His
book of lyric essays, The
Reservoir, was
short-listed for the 2007 Hubert Evans Award. He has published two
book-length translations: Bettina Klix's Rapture of the Depths and We
Are Like Fire, which collects writings by Wilhelm Waiblinger and
Hermann Hesse on Friedrich Hoelderlin. Eric’s work has appeared in
The Antigonish
Review,
Books in Canada,
Brick, Canadian
Literature,
Columbia,
Descant,
The Fiddlehead,
Ploughshares,
Queen's Quarterly,
and Vallum.
He sits on the poetry board of The
Malahat Review and
teaches English at the University of Victoria.
April 5 2013
SANDY SHREVE and CAROLE LANGILLE
Sandy Shreve has published four poetry collections, most recently Suddenly, So Much (Exile Editions, 2005). Recent work has appeared in her chapbook, Cedar Cottage Suite (Leaf Press, 2010), the Literary Review of Canada,Exile,The Windsor Review, and Villanelles(ed. Finch and Mali, Everyman’s 2012). A new chapbook, Level Crossing, is forthcoming from The Alfred Gustav Press in fall 2012. She co-edited, with Kate Braid, the anthology In Fine Form – The Canadian Book of Form Poetry(Polestar, 2005), edited Working For A Living, a collection of poems and stories by women about their work (Room of One’s Own, 1988) and founded BC’s Poetry in Transit program. Her work is widely anthologized and has won the Earle Birney Prize for Poetry and been short listed for the Milton Acorn People’s Poetry Award and the National Magazine Awards for poetry. Born in Quebec and raised in Sackville, New Brunswick, she now lives in Vancouver, British Columbia. For more information, visit:www.shreve.shawwebspace.ca
Carole Glasser Langille’s most recent book is a collection of short stories, When I Always Wanted Something. Her forth book of poems, Church of the Exquisite Panic: The Ophelia Poems, and will be published in the fall of 2012. She has been nominated for The Governor General’s Award for poetry and the Atlantic Poetry Prize and longlisted for the ReLit Award for short fiction. Six poems from her third book, Late in a Slow Time, were set to music by the composer Chan Ka Nin, and recorded by Duo Concertante on their CD Wildbird, which was nominated for an EMCA. In 2011 she was Writer-In-Residence at the South Shore Regional Library in Bridgewater, Nova Scotia.Langille has given readings in Athens, New Delhi, Prague,London and New York, and in many provinces in Canada. Originally from New York City, she now lives in Nova Scotia and teaches Creative Writing at Dalhousie University.
With support from The Canada Council for the Arts.
April 12
April 19
April 26
BETSY STRUTHERS and DERK WYNAND
Born in Germany, Derk Wynand came to Canada as a child in 1952. He has written eleven collections of poetry, including his latest, Past Imperfect, Present Tense, Bayeux Arts, 2010, and a collection of fiction, One Cook, Once Dreaming, Sono Nis Press, 1980, a generous selection of which featured in Ground Works: Avant-Garde for Thee, ed. Christian Bök, 2002. He has published several translations of works by the Austrian writers, H.C. Artmann and Erich Wolfgang Skwara, and the German Poet, Dorothea Grünzweig. From 1969 to 2004, he taught Creative Writing at the University of Victoria, B.C., serving two three-year terms as Chair of the Department of Writing, and six years (1992-1998) as editor of The Malahat Review. He lives in Victoria with his wife, Eva.
April 28 (*Sunday – 6-8.30pm <come at 5.30 for a good seat>)
Guernica Editions, 2013
Launch of POEMS FROM PLANET EARTH with readings by:
Grace Cockburn, Julie Paul, Murray Reiss, Maleea Acker, David Fraser, Kim Goldberg,
Paul Nelson, Arleen Pare, Lorna Crozier, Ulrike Narwani, Barbara Colbrook Peace,
Susan Telfer, Judith Heron, Owain Nicholson, Giesela Ruebsaat, Terry Jones, Patrick Lane, Jessica Michaelofsky, Susan Braley, Andrea Raine, Dvora Levin, Wendy Morton, Tris Pargeter, Derk Wynand, Betsy Warland
April 19
ROB TAYLOR, SUSAN GILLIS and MARITA DASCHEL
Rob Taylor lives in Vancouver with his wife, Marta. He is the author of the poetry collection The Other Side of Ourselves(Cormorant Books, 2011), and his poems have been published in over forty journals, magazines and anthologies. He is the co-founder and editor of One Ghana, One Voice, Ghana's first online poetry magazine, and he is one of the coordinators of Vancouver's Dead Poets Reading Series. He blogs at http://rollofnickels.blogspot.com/.
Susan Gillis has lived on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of Canada, and now lives most of the year in Montreal, where she teaches English. She will be reading from The Rapids (Brick 2012). Earlier work includes Volta(Signature Editions, 2002), which won the A. M. Klein Prize for Poetry, and Swimming Among the Ruins(Signature Editions, 2000), and a chapbook, Twenty Views of the Lachine Rapids(Gaspereau Press, 2012). Whisk, with Yoko's Dogs, is forthcoming in 2013 from Pedlar Press. Please visit http://yokosdogs.com/
Marita Dachsel is the author of All Things Said & Done (Caitlin Press, 2007) and the chapbook Eliza Roxcy Snow (rednettle press, 2009). Her poetry has been shortlisted for the Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry, the ReLit Prize, and has appeared in many literary journals and anthologies, including Best Canadian Poetry in English 2011. After many years in Vancouver and Edmonton, she and her family have recently relocated to Victoria.
With support of The Canada Council for the Arts.
April 26
BETSY STRUTHERS and DERK WYNAND
Winner of the 2004 Pat Lowther Memorial Award for the best book of poetry by a Canadian woman for Still(Black Moss Press), Betsy Struthers has published nine books of poetry and three novels; her first book of short stories, Relay: Short Fictions, was published by Black Moss Press in 2010. Since 1986, she has worked as a freelance editor of academic texts, mainly for UTP Higher Education and Broadview Press, among others.http://betsystruthers.wordpress.com/about/
Born in Germany, Derk Wynand came to Canada as a child in 1952. He has written eleven collections of poetry, including his latest, Past Imperfect, Present Tense, Bayeux Arts, 2010, and a collection of fiction, One Cook, Once Dreaming, Sono Nis Press, 1980, a generous selection of which featured in Ground Works: Avant-Garde for Thee, ed. Christian Bök, 2002. He has published several translations of works by the Austrian writers, H.C. Artmann and Erich Wolfgang Skwara, and the German Poet, Dorothea Grünzweig. From 1969 to 2004, he taught Creative Writing at the University of Victoria, B.C., serving two three-year terms as Chair of the Department of Writing, and six years (1992-1998) as editor of The Malahat Review. He lives in Victoria with his wife, Eva.
With support of the Canada Council for the Arts.
April 28 (*Sunday – 6-8.30pm <come at 5.30 for a good seat>)
PLANET EARTH POETRY CELEBRATION!
Victoria Launch of Forcefield: 77 BC Women Poets with readings by Linda Rogers, Gilian Gerome, Sandy Shreve, Yvonne Blomer, Rhonda Ganz, Susan McCaslin, Rhonda Batchelor, Christine Lowther, and more...
May 3
ALLAN BRIESMASTER, ROBERT COLMAN and SUSAN L. HELWIG
Allan Briesmaster is a freelance editor, publisher, and literary consultant who has been actively involved in the Canadian literary scene for over 20 years. He is the author of 12 previous books and chapbooks, the most recent of which are Confluences(Seraphim Editions, 2009) and After Evening Wine(Alfred Gustav Press, 2011). His poems have appeared in many journals and anthologies and he has read them in venues across the country. He will reading from his new book, Against the Flight of Spring.
Robert Colman is a writer and editor based in Newmarket, Ontario, whose work has been published in literary magazines across Canada. His first full-length collection of poems, The Delicate Line(Exile Editions, 2008), was nominated for the ReLit Award. He will be reading from Little Empires, which was launched this past November, from Quattro Books.
Susan L. Helwig grew up on a dairy farm in southwestern Ontario just outside of Neustadt.
From 1994 to 2002 she interviewed Canadian and international authors for the radio programme, “In Other Words” on CKLN 88.1. Her poems have appeared in many literary journals and anthologies in Canada and abroad, and she has two previous poetry collections: Catch the Sweet(Seraphim Editions, 2001) and Pink Purse Girl(Wolsak and Wynn, 2006). Susan will be reading from her new book, And the Cat Says…
May 10
JACOB SCHEIER and JEREMY LOVEDAY
Jacob Scheier is a poet and journalist from Toronto. His debut collection, More to Keep Us Warmwon the 2008 Governor General's award for English language poetry. Schier's poems have been published in literary journals and magazine across North America, including Descant,Geistand Rattle,and have been heard on CBC Radio. The second collection from a Governor General’s Literary Award for Poetry winner, inLetter from Brooklyn, Jacob Scheier examines love, loss, history, identity, protest, and popular culture. At the heart of his new poems is the notion that we understand who we are by where we have been. Here, a confessional voice digs deep into a radical Jewish heritage rooted in New York City. Everything is at once political and poetic, inseparable from intimate experience and personal heartbreak. Scheier moves from the inner worlds of grief and love to form a poetic dialectic between the familial and the historical.
Jeremy Loveday is Victoria’s 2010 Individual Slam Champion and a three time member of the Victoria Poetry Slam team. His performances are playful, fierce and fully present and his poetry weaves universal themes into insightful story lines. He aims to connect with the audience like a deep breath. Having performed at festivals and shows across Canada and beyond Jeremy has built his reputation on his raw, rhythmic performances. Watch him on You Tube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bM8j7sEv_w
May 17
Launch of “Untying the Apron Anthology”
Guernica Editions, 2013
Mothers of the 1950s were wasp-waisted, dutiful, serene, and tied to the kitchen with apron strings. Or so we thought. This collection of searing and startling poetry and prose unties the stereotype and reveals women who were strong, wild, talented, wise, mad, creative, desperate, angry, courageous, bitter, tenacious, reckless and beautiful, sometimes all at once. The contributors include multi-award-winning poets, novelists, and essayists, as well as compelling new literary voices. Edited by Lorri Neilsen Glenn.
Readers includeCynthia Woodman Kerkham, Patricia Young, Eve Joseph, Sheila Norgate and Rhona McAdam.
