Planet Earth Poetry ~ August 24

In the anthology Stones, nine Vancouver Island writers present works of prose and poetry. Each a pebble flicked into the pool of life’s emotions, these works send ripples through readers’ minds. Here is what two of BC’s leading writers have to say about the prose and poetry respectively:

The prose pieces in Stones take us on adventures from the West Coast of British Columbia to Islamabad and Korea. Comic or poignant, always inspiring, they show how people learn and grow through encounters involving fire, foreign territory, families and fortune cookies. Blurring the line between fiction and memoir, there is an unmistakable and enduring truth to each story.

- Carol Matthews, author of Questions for Ariadne: The Labyrinth and the End of Times (Outlaw Editions) and Incidental Music (Oolichan Books).

The poems in Stones are “grace-notes fallen from fiddle airs” and “distant falling things.” Their ripples linger. These writers celebrate the places, people, and events they have known, in the world and in their imaginations, through language so charged that “the skin painted thin on bones” prickles at the experiences recalled.

- Yvonne Blomer, author of The Book of Places (Black Moss Press) and a broken mirror, fallen leaf (Gerald Lampert Award finalist).

Contributors are: John Beaton, Di Clarence, David Fraser, Harvey Jenkins, Judy Millar,
                            Mary Ann Moore, Cindy Shantz, Pat Smekal and Fran Thiessen.