There is this now obligatory photo of authors opening a box of their books, the first glimpse of the real object. You can send off pages to a publisher, you can get typesetting proofs, you can see the cover image, but it’s not real until it’s in your hand. E-books have their place in our world nowadays, but nothing beats a well-designed, genuine book, printed on real paper. Here’s mine.
I’ll be reading from it at the Fat Oyster reading series, in Fanny Bay Hall on Vancouver Island, a week from today, May 12. If you’re within reach, it would be great to have you in the audience! This marks the return to face-to-face readings for the series, post-pandemic.
There will be 3 of us reading: another Caitlin Press author, Arleen Paré, whose latest collection, Time Out of Time, riffs on the work of another poet, the Lebanese-American poet Etel Adnan. Comox Valley poet Kelly Madden will be there too, reading from her first collection, If I’d Known.
And the winning cover image turns out to be.. Still Life with Bowl of Citrons, by Giovanna Garzoni. Very pleased with the look of this one.
Much as I would have liked to feature the work of a living woman artist, Garzoni is an impressive figure in art history, and the Italian connection is satisfying, given the presence of poems written during my studies in Italy.
I had wanted something food related, but also to bring in the natural world. The insect figure may or may not be a wasp; but for purposes of this collection, that’s what we’re calling it, to chime with the wasp poem within!
Upcoming readings and appearances are on my News page, which I’ll update as details change or get added. But here’s what’s coming up in the next couple of months:
Tuesday May 24, 2022 from 6-8pm – leading an (in-person) Food Poetry workshop, Monterey Rec Centre, Victoria BC. Details and registration info in the Oak Bay Active Living Guide (p. 20)
June 15-18, 2022 – at ALECC conference in Saskatoon; reading as part of a Forest Poetry Walk with fellow poets Yvonne Blomer, Tanis MacDonald and Ariel Gordon. Our walks are at 2:30pm Thursday 16th and 11:30am Saturday 18th. Details will be in the final conference program.
I’m delighted to have a poem included in the current issue of the Irish environmental literature journal Channel.
The editors accept poems from around the world and have managed the question of how to celebrate each issue with a launch by inviting participants to record readings and some photographic context. Then they put it all together and livestream it!
I read two poems from my upcoming book Larder, and sent some photos which the editors invited us to provide, to give context to the contributors’ lives and environments.
This issue is celebrated on Thursday November 11 at 8pm GMT – which for me is noon in Victoria. See you there?
We’re delighted to announce that the launch of Channel Issue 5 will take place via YouTube Premieres on Thursday 11 November at 8.00pm.
The online launch will feature readings by Irish and international contributors drawn from a pool of over 1800 submissions, along with photography capturing the settings that have inspired their work. We love the poems and stories gathered in this issue—ambitious, disruptive pieces that seem at home in the flux we’re living in today—and we can’t wait to share them with you all.
Also featured will be an introduction to the work of our Issue 5 cover artist, Kevin Mooney, a Cork-based painter whose practice explores the migration of Irish people and the gaps wrought in Ireland’s visual culture by this history of displacement. Kevin’s current exhibition, ‘The Erlish Tide,’ opened in the Excel Gallery, Tipperary, on 30 October, and features large-scale paintings informed by his research into the history, mythology and folklore of Samhain and Halloween. ‘Peasant,’ the painting featured on our Issue 5 cover, is taken from a body of work exploring links between the folk cultures of Irish émigrés and the cultures of the Caribbean.
Those who can afford to further support our work may consider subscribing to Channel to receive each new issue upon its release, or becoming a patron to also receive access to our digital archive of back issues as well as acknowledgement in print and online.
The launch video will be viewable from our website at the time of its release, or open the video in YouTube to chat with other readers and contributors during the event. We look forward to seeing you there!
Some years ago, when I lived in central London, an Afghan restaurant on Baker Street called Caravan Serai was one of my favourite places. In one of those life coincidences, I’ve found myself on another caravan here in Canada.
For much of this year, the Planet Earth Poetry series in Victoria BC has been filming local poets reading their poetry in their chosen location. Poets Caravan is a project that maps the various locations using Google Earth; the texts of many of the poems are shown alongside the readings. The poems are also available on Youtube (without the texts).
Here’s mine from Youtube (click here for the Google Earth version – patience: it takes time to load). I chose to read at Haliburton Community Organic Farm where I’ve been volunteering since 2008. I selected poems suited to the environment I was reading from, which prompted the videographer to ask me if I was an entomologist! (Nope, I’ve just been spending time looking closely at what bugs me and my garden, heh heh.)
Most of the poems are from my new manuscript, Larder, which will be published by Caitlin Press in 2022. One (Vegetable Kingdom) is from my 2006 collection Cartography.
I am looking forward to Sunday’s installment in the Dead Poets Reading Series in Vancouver, when I will have the delightful task of reading Maxine Kumin’s work. Here she was, back in 2008, reading three of her poems, including one of my favourites, Apparition.
glimpse of the real object. You can send off pages to a publisher, you can get typesetting proofs, you can see the cover image, but it’s not real until it’s in your hand. E-books have their place in our world nowadays, but nothing beats a well-designed, genuine book, printed on real paper. Here’s mine.
