January at Planet Earth Poetry

January 13 Patrick Friesen and Eve Joseph read together!

Patrick Friesen: Patrick Friesen, a resident of Winnipeg for 30 years and Vancouver for a dozen years, now lives in Brentwood Bay, Vancouver Island. He has published numerous books of poetry and has written several stage and radio plays. Friesen has also collaborated with choreographers, dancers, musicians and composers. He tours on a regular basis, giving readings and workshops all over the country. His book, A Broken Bowl, was a finalist for the 1997 Governor-General’s Award.

Eve Joseph

While working at the Victoria Hospice, Eve Joseph of Brentwood Bay published a series of variations on the Persian literary form of the ghazal, The Startled Heart (Oolichan, 2004). This debut collection marries the spiritual and physical worlds as Joseph explores grief and loss and the process of dying. It was shortlisted for the Dorothy Livesay Prize.

Her second collection The Secret Signature of Things (Brick 2010) evokes and explores the process of attaining epiphanies. It was also nominated for the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. In a long poem called 'Tracking' she struggles with the question of how to remember many missing aboriginal women on the West Coast.

Born in 1953, Eve Joseph grew up in North Vancouver. As a young woman she worked on freighters and travelled widely, then received an M.A. in Counseling Psychology.

Thanks to The Canada Council For the Arts for helping to fund this reading.

January 20 Dorothy Field, Harold Rhenisch and Nick Thran

Dorothy Field launches With Kelly and After

In Memory of Kelly Parsons
May 8, 1958 – December 24, 2008. Dorothy Field is the author of three books of poetry, the most recent, The Blackbird Must Be (Sono Nis Press, 2010), a children’s book, a book of garden letters, and Paper and Threshold, an extended essay on handmade paper’s spiritual role in Asian culture. She is also a visual artist working with handmade paper, hers and others’, for prints, collage, and artist’s books. She lives in Victoria B.C., where she tends a Garry meadow, an orchard, and a truck farm, all in her small backyard.

Harold Rhenisch reads from The Spoken Word

 http://hagiospress.com/?s=&pid=53

Harold Rhenisch studied poetry with Robin Skelton and P.K. Page in the 1970s. Since then, he has published 26 books, including ten previous volumes of poetry, as well as fiction, memoir, bioregional essays, translations, environmental photography books, and reviews, and has edited both of Skelton's posthumous books of verse. This is his eleventh full-length collection of poetry. He is the winner of the Malahat Review Long Poem Prize (twice), the ARC poem of the year prize, the CBC Literary Prize for Poetry, and the Theatre BC National Playwriting Award. He is an active editor of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, has taught poetry and short fiction at Vancouver Island University, and his multiple genre workshops at the Victoria School of Writing are legendary. His Out of the Interior and Tom Thomson's Shack are classics of the memoir genre, and his The Wolves at Evelyn won the 1978 George Ryga Prize for Social Responsibility in British Columbia Literature. He lives in Vernon, B.C.
  

Nick Thran

Nick Thran is the author of two collections of poetry, Earworm (Nightwood Editions, 2011) and Every Inadequate Name (Insomniac Press, 2006), which was a finalist for The Gerald Lampert Award. His poems have appeared in numerous magazines publications across Canada, including The Best Canadian Poetry 2010, The National Post, and The Walrus. He currently lives in Fredericton, New Brunswick.

http://www.nightwoodeditions.com/title/Earworm

Planet Earth Poetry acknowledges the support of The Writer's Union of Canada

 

January 27 Book launch of the Ocean Wilderness Chapbook through Leaf Press

Readings by poets who have attended poetry retreats with Patrick Lane at Ocean Wilderness Retreat in Sooke.

Don't forget - the deadline for Planet Earth Poetry's Anthology is January 31!