Planet Earth Poetry May Calendar

May 4 - David Taylor and Dvora Levin read

Dvora Levin has published Sharav, her first full-length book of poems, and the chapbook This Time In the Land, as well as poems in five chapbooks edited by Patrick Lane (Leaf Press). A regular reader at Planet Earth Poetry in Victoria, BC, she has read poems on CBC Radio and participated in the Poet Tree Project. She leads poetry writing workshops in the workplace and for people of the street. She edited the anthology "Voices from the Edge", poems from the streets of  Victoria.

David Taylor will read from  Ark/ The Ascent, a long poem written in David's metaphoric language

May 11 - Arleen Paré launches Leaving Now

Arleen Paré’s first book, Paper Trail, won the Victoria Butler Book Prize and was shortlisted for the Dorothy Livesay BC Book Prize in Poetry. Paré completed an MFA in poetry at the University of Victoria and her poetry and prose have appeared in a number of Canadian literary journals. Before beginning a career in writing, she worked as a social worker for two decades in mental health housing in Vancouver. She now lives in Victoria with her partner, and has two sons and two grandsons. 

 

...an unsettling, tender lyric, beautifully written in a mixture of poems, prose fragments and fairytales, a story like no other.  Read it if you are a mother.  Read it if you are not.  It’s a splendid, unique contribution to our country’s literature.   – Lorna Crozier

May 18 - All Open Mic.

This is the night to come and sign up to read - maybe twice!

We will celebrate our open mic and celebrate Planet Earth Poetry with drinks afterward at a local pub.

May 25 - Wendy Donawa and Catherine Owen

 After spending most of her adult life in the Caribbean, as teacher, artist, and museum curator, Wendy Donawa settled in Victoria, where she is a regular participant at Planet Earth Poetry. Her poems have appeared in Caribbean and Canadian journals, in five chapbooks edited by Patrick Lane, and in the anthologies Walk Myself Home (Caitlin Press, 2010), Open Hearts 5 (Ontario Poetry Society, 2011), and The Wild Weathers: A Gathering of Love Poems (Leaf Press, 2012). Her first chapbook, Sliding Towards Equinox, appeared in 2009 (Rubicon Press). Her most recent publication, Those Astonishments of Sorrow, of Joy, is her second chapbook, recently published by Leaf Press.

 She has co-authored, with Leah Fowler, Reading Canada, a survey of Canlit for young adults, which is forthcoming early in 2013 with Oxford University Press. Please see also www.wendydonawa.ca

Catherine Owen is a Vancouver writer. She’s published seven previous collections of poetry. Her poetry collection Frenzy won the Alberta Literary Award for 2009 while The Wrecks of Eden was shortlisted for the BC Book Prize in 2002. Her first compilation of essays and memoirs, Catalysts, is forthcoming from Wolsak & Wynn in 2012. She also plays bass in the metal band Medea and works as a freelance editor and tutor. Check out her website for more information http://www.catherineowen.org/.

 

 With her characteristic fearlessness Catherine Owen examines what drives her to write and the influences that shape her writing. From her childhood memories in suburban Vancouver to her willingness to risk all for a glimpse of her muse, the essays in Catalysts allow readers unparalleled insight into Owen’s creative life. A brilliantly honest collection, these essays should be read by every aspiring author.

Planet Earth Poetry Acknowledges the support of 

April is Poetry Month

April 6
Good Friday - No Planet Earth Poetry

April 13: Cornelia Hoogland and Sheila Martindale


Since coming to Victoria in 2009, Sheila Martindale has become a fixture on the literary scene. She is the Poetry Editor for Island Writer magazine, the editor of the James Bay New Horizons newsletter, and she proofreads for the Diocesan Post newspaper.  She was one of the Times Colonist’s Solstice Poets in 2010, and her drama Inauspicious Events was produced at Christ Church Cathedral in December 2011.  Her ninth book of poetry, Here, There and Somewhere Beyond, was published in November 2010.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHV-r8a8hbs

Cornelia Hoogland takes the story of Little Red Riding Hood and turns it inside out in this sensuous Canadian retelling.

Cornelia Hoogland has published five poetry collections, most recently, Woods Wolf Girl (Wolsak and Wynn, 2011). Her poetry has been published internationally and has been short-listed for the CBC Literary Awards on multiple occasions. Hoogland is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Western Ontario , and is the founder and the co-artistic director of Poetry London, an organization that brings prominent writers into lively discussion with local writers and readers. Hoogland divides her time between London, Ontario, and Hornby Island, BC. 

April 20: Naomi Beth Wakan




Naomi Beth Wakan was born in London, England, and has travelled extensively, including living in Japan for two years. Naomi has authored education books, children books, and poetry collections, as well as non-fiction titles, including the ALA selection, Haiku - one breath poetry. She continues to write prolifically and also conducts workshops on writing later in life. She is a member of Haiku Canada, Tanka Canada and The League of Canadian Poets. She lives on Gabriola Island with her husband, the sculptor, Elias Wakan. More information about Naomi Beth Wakan

April 27: Stephanie Bolster and E. Alex Pierce 



Stephanie Bolster reads from A Page from The Wonders of Life on Earth,  a book with a coherent vision of nature—constructed or framed, both in the present and in the recent past—through zoos, aviaries, formal gardens, menageries, and books like the Time-Life one named in the title. Informed by the author’s grand tour of these zoos and gardens, these poems provide a strong lens for considering the many paradoxes of inter-species relations; they open up the possibility of honest, unsentimental elegy. The book is also a model of what might be called investigative poetry, taking the poet’s combination of perceptual acuity, craft, music and sensibility into these richly troubled places (prisons of, monuments to, museums for the lost natural world) where “arcades sell postcards of old photographs of the arcades,” and where questions of what it means to be human, to be animal, to be other and to be art are tangibly in the air. This is Bolster’s best work.
“Bolster’s work demonstrates a surety of vision supported by an insider’s eye for the telling aberrant detail everywhere matched by her impeccable ear . . . ” – Judith Fitzgerald, The Globe and Mail
“What a startling voice she has . . . ” – Patrick Lane, The Vancouver Sun

Stephanie Bolster is a Governor General’s Literary Award-winning poet. She has published three other collections prior to A Page from the Wonders of Life on Earth and has been awarded the Archibald Lampman and Gerald Lampert Awards.





E. Alex Pierce lives in East Sable River, Nova Scotia where she is developing a centre for writers and artists. E. Alex Pierce’s voice can be heard echoing down the long corridors of memory and myth.  It’s not that these poems live in the past; instead, they manage to bring it back to life with uncanny sensual details and an urgency that makes you realize some fires never really go out. Vox Humana is all lilt and discipline in its courtliness, its surrender to the theatre of the moment at its most alive.