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.