Skip to content

poetry readings

Boreal poets

Sunday carried on being warm and sunny…


Even the birds get pretty houses on Signal Hill Road

and some more mailboxes.

The party bus was waiting and we all piled aboard

and had a photo op at Portugal Cove

before embarking on our Boreal Poetry tour led by Marlene Creates, who read poems in the places where they were composed

like this rock face

pointing out the wildflowers that inspired one poem.

Feels like another spring dawning for me. Fiddleheads and flowers…

A stream runs through it

we endured the blackflies – out in their fury – for the sake of poetry

and forest

and nautical knots in the rope handrails

And then we had a reading. In the garage, which was not entirely blackfly-free, but quite comfortable and atmospheric. Penn Kemp

Sharon Singer,

Susan McMaster,

Joe Blades, and then

Barbara Nickel

And then it was back on the bus, back to the hotel (where food service stops early) so we wrapped up with some pizza we ordered in at the bar.

Newfoundland Sunday

The sun finally shone on St John’s today. We were unprepared for the sudden brightness and warmth! Here, at last, “the million dollar harbour view” (taken from the Dildo room – named as they all are after places in Newfoundland in the Battery Hotel… but who would request this room I wonder?)

We had Cod Au Gratin yesterday for lunch, featuring salt cod and surprisingly good despite appearances:

Last night’s banquet, Anne Szumigalski Lecture, book launch and prize-giving ceremony took place at the Fluvarium, where you can go eyeball to eyeball with brown trout.

Many poets milled…

The banquet’s highlights were the salad which had a good dressing and amazingly sweet cherry tomatoes

and the cheesecake, but the routine banquet choices of salmon or chicken were about what you might expect; the chicken was uninspired. How does one choose between industrially-reared chicken and farmed salmon anyway? Tough call.

Then Maurice Mierau

introduced the night’s star turn, Don McKay delivering a talk on geo-poetics.

Followed by prizes, book launch readings…

Afterwards there was music; the harpist, I was told, plays with the symphony. The squeezebox players were excellent.

It all sounded great but I had to scoot off early in order to catch my ride back. The rest was a blur….

There are some great mailboxes on Signal Hill Road.

Breakfast at Coffee Matters on Military Road (I’m afraid the fruit was awful – sour, unwholesome, nearly fermented and I suspect it was a pre-cut restaurant pack rather than a salad made in house. The yogurt wasn’t good either. The coffee was ok…)

Lunch from Sweet Relic, an absolutely four star foodie joint,

in the oldest building in the oldest city in North America;

just fabulous: spinach torte with goat cheese, and a sweet potato frittata with brie. In compostable packaging, no less.

Another day, another bed….

And tonight I’m going on a Boreal Poetry Garden walk.

Some talk about reading, and an evening walk in the valley

Some interesting discussion yesterday about the different ways of reading: for academic purpose vs for writing. Erin and John talked about their ways of preparing during the writing of a poetry project, reading widely and employing techniques of serendipity, or delving and re-delving into more challenging works in order to find directions of thought from them.

Between our excellent meals we have been trying to walk off a pirogy here, a cookie there. One popular destination is Prairie Cherries, where the proprietors sell organic cherry products from their orchard. The variety they grow is a cross between the sturdy prairie classic, the Mongolian Cherry, which is short and hardy but a bit on the tart side; and the pie cherry for sweetness, a variety developed by the University of Saskatchewan.

On our after-dinner tick-catching stroll, we saw another prairie fruit in bloom everywhere: Saskatoon blossoms everywhere.

We met a Red Wing Blackbird.

And a wee Warbler.

A beaver dam…

…and a beaver.

A white horse….

…a black horse.

A deer on a hillside.

And lots of what Gary described as prairie wool. It’s like walking on a down quilt. Would’ve lain down to look at the stars but for the ticks.

Crabs ‘n tomatoes ‘n poets ‘n sand

I was shocked the other day to see this guy running underwater, up the Gorge, heading (ultimately) for the ocean I guess. Looks like he mighta lost one claw to the soup pot, but the rest of him was all there.

A separate door for tomatoes on BC Ferries. They think of everything.

Wendy in fine fettle, introducing a new anthology – Crossing Lines – and a reading by Allan Briesmaster and his daughter Clara Blackwood at the Black Stilt on Friday.

An afternoon to let your ears flap in the breeze: a windy day on Island View Beach.

Fast Food David, recent poetry readings, and some offal news about chicken feed

This one has been doing the email rounds; a cautionary vision for us all:

Wednesday saw Karen Solie at Open Space Gallery, where she stunned us with the strength of new work. An interview with Tim Lilburn afterwards revealed that she has been reading, among others, Denis Johnson and John Ashbery.

On Friday we heard new work from Joelene Heathcote at Planet Earth Poetry.

And.. just when you might have thought sanity about animal feed was at last prevailing, this creepy story that shows so clearly we have not not not learned our lessons yet: the EU would like to feed pigs to chickens. This is upsetting moslems, animal rights groups and, I should think, most sane consumers whose memory of the causes of BSE has not yet faded.

If that upsets you, maybe you should settle your nerves with a calming snack of home-made yogurt, with a spoonful of the best honey you can find.

Say cheese

GK Chesterton did, at length, and spawned a memorable quote:

Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.

And then there’s Clifton Fadiman, who observed:

A cheese may disappoint. It may be dull, it may be naive, it may be oversophisticated. Yet it remains cheese, milk’s leap toward immortality.

And if you have feta and parmesan cheeses on hand you might enjoy, as I did recently, some Potato, Artichoke and Feta Cheese Latkes.

Went to a couple of readings lately, which were indeed mysteriously cheeseless. On Friday, Acorn-Plantos winner Christine Smart read with the always excellent Don McKay

at the Red Brick Cafe in Sidney, where we had some very pleasant accordion music to enjoy in the before after and interval periods.

And then on Saturday to the Rona Murray Prize-giving, where we heard from the 8 shortlisted poets. DC Reid was introduced by organiser Peter Such

and Barbara Pelman read,

and so did Patricia Young, whose lizard poem shared the prize with an excellent villanelle by Marlene Grand-Maitre.