march 2024

All in-person PEP events will be taking place at Russell Books, 747 Fort Street in Victoria

Doors open at 7:00pm, event starts at 7:30 and sign up for the open mic in person between 7:00–7:20.
Unless otherwise noted, in person events will be livestreamed HERE (Meeting ID: 494 660 4447 /Passcode: 2129)
**please note, livestream begins at approx. 8:00–8:15pm with featured readings**

Planet Earth Poetry acknowledges with respect and gratitude that we read and write on the traditional territories of the WSÁNEĆ (Saanich), Lekwungen (Songhees), Wyomilth (Esquimalt) peoples of the Coast Salish Nation.


Poet Ronna Bloom

Friday, march 1
ronna bloom

(sponsored by THE writers’ union of canada)

Ronna Bloom is the author of seven poetry collections. Her poems have been recorded by the CNIB, used in health care, and translated into Bangla, Chinese and Spanish. Her most recent book is A Possible Trust: The Poetry of Ronna Bloom, selected with an introduction by Phil Hall (Wilfred Laurier University Press, 2023.) 

In A Possible Trust: The Poetry of Ronna Bloom, Bloom writes of the fragility and determination of people in daily life and extraordinary health crises. She is attentive to suffering, to spontaneous connections and gestures of love. There is tenderness here where living matters, as does dying, a valuing of the encounter, the sorrow, and the bowl-me-over delight. Editor and poet Phil Hall's Introduction "To Lead by Crying" argues for a poetics of empathy. Defiant, comical, revealing, impolite yet respectful, A Possible Trust is a retrospective and celebration.

Poetic Appetizer
from Ronna Bloom’s poem “Rest"

In my bed, I’m restless.

I want a fellow moon to look at the moon with. 

What is the old lady across doing up so late? 
Hello, other moon. 

[from A Possible Trust: The Poetry of Ronna Bloom]




Poet Christina Shah

march 01
christina shaH

Christina Shah lives in Vancouver and works in heavy industry, where she drinks from the firehose of knowledge. Her poetry has appeared numerous Canadian literary journals, including The Fiddlehead, Vallum, Arc, Grain, PRISM international, EVENT, The Malahat Review, The Antigonish Review and elsewhere.

Her poem, ‘they canned a good man today’, was shortlisted for The Fiddlehead’s 2021 Ralph Gustafson Poetry Prize. Her poem, ‘interior bar, 1986’, was selected for Best Canadian Poetry 2023. She is one-fifth of the Harbour Centre 5 poetry collective, whose chapbook, Brine, was released in 2022. Her first videopoem, ‘rig veda’ (in collaboration with videographer Mark Mushet), was translated into Spanish and screened at the 2023 Cinemística festival in Granada, Spain, and the 2023 Versi Di Luce festival in Modica, Sicily. rig veda, her first solo chapbook (Anstruther Press), was released in 2023. She has some strong opinions on soft pretzels.


 
 

friday, march 08
international women’s day 2024

Planet Earth Poetry thanks the Victoria Arts Council for their kind and generous sponsorship of this event.

Hosted by Victoria’s Poet Laureate Marie Metaphor Specht, a multidisciplinary artist and poet living on the unceded territories of the Lək̓ʷəŋən- and SENĆOTEN-speaking peoples. A long-time member of the Canadian spoken word scene, she is currently serving a two-year term as the 6th Poet Laureate of Victoria. Marie’s poetry has been published in Oratorealis, Untethered Magazine, Chestnut Review, The Hellebore, and Room Magazine, among others. Her debut poetry collection, Soft Shelters is out now with Write Bloody North Publishing (2023).

Featured readers:

Délani Valin is neurodivergent and Métis with Nehiyaw, Saulteaux, French-Canadian and Czech ancestry. Her poetry has been awarded The Malahat Review’s Long Poem Prize and subTerrain’s Lush Triumphant Award. Her work has appeared in PRISM International, Adbusters, Room, and in the anthologies Those Who Make Us and Bawaajigan. She is on the editorial board of Room and The Malahat Review, and lives on traditional and unceded Snuneymuxw territory (Nanaimo, BC). Shapeshifters is her debut collection.

Wendy Donawa calls Victoria home, and is grateful to live on the unceded Lək̓ʷəŋən (Lekwungen) territory of the Songhees and Esquimalt Nations. Her prior life included 36 years in Barbados, as a UWI student, a Barbados Community College instructor, and a Barbados Museum curator. Her first book, Thin Air of the Knowable (BrickBooks, 2017), was a finalist for the Raymond Souster award and the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. Our Bodies Unanswered Questions (Frontenac House) followed in 2021.

All Women’s Open Mic - featuring Spoken Word poet Luna Piscetta, who is grateful to live and create on Lkwungen and WSANEC territories. Her creative work is rooted in her body's wisdom gained through resistance as a transfeminine, queer, disabled human. Raw, electric and visceral, her art has been shared on the Canadian Individual Poetry Slam stage and featured in several local and national events.



march 15
PEP in the afternoon!

Join us at New Horizons in James Bay at 2pm, March 15th, with internationally renowned poet, Kazim Ali!

Doors at 1:30pm, with sign-up for open mic.

New Horizons Centre is at 234 Menzies St. in James Bay (street parking only). Please note that unlike our evening readings, the afternoon readings will not be livestreamed or recorded.

Books on sale at this event from Munro’s Books Victoria


Poet Kazim Ali
Photo credit: Jesse Sutton-Hough

SPECIAL EVENT!
friday, march 15
kaZim ali

Internationally renowned poet Kazim Ali was born in the United Kingdom, raised in Canada, and has lived transnationally in the United States, India, France, and the Middle East. His books encompass multiple genres, including poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and translations. He is currently a professor of Literature at the University of California, San Diego. His new collection, Sukun, is a collection of the best poetry across his nearly 20 year career.   

Sukun: New and Selected Poems draws from a generous selection from Ali’s six full-length collections. This remarkable volume also includes 25 astonishing new poems and an afterword by the poet. Together, they allow us to trace Ali's passions and concerns and to take the measure of his art: the close attention to the spiritual and the visceral, and the deep language play that is at once musical and plain spoken.


Books on sale at this event from Russell Books Victoria


Poet Garth Martens

 

march 15
garth martens Will read with Kazim ali

Garth Martens is author of Prologue for the Age of Consequence (Anansi) and Remediation (JackPine). He is winner of the Bronwen Wallace Award and finalist for a Governor General’s Literary Award in Poetry. He is producer and poet for Palabra Flamenco, an ensemble that joins poetry with flamenco music and dance. He also produces and performs in Dark Sounds, a literary flamenco series on death, grief, and the climate crisis, featuring poet Jan Zwicky. He lives in Victoria, British Columbia.

Garth Martens’ Prologue for the Age of Consequence is about the tar sands and industrial projects of Alberta, and those who work in them. But to describe it as such restricts the book to its physical concerns, when in fact these are poems of great philosophical ambition, and startling ethical and psychological reach.

“His is poetry that embraces the harshest facts, then spirals through meditation and lyricism to a vision of our world from the towers of Troy to the towers of the oil derricks, set in their present-day 'microwavable / avatar country of the digital.' ….An exceptional book." —A.F. Moritz


Poet Michelle Brown

friday, march 22
michelle brown

Michelle Brown's second book of poetry, Swans, begins as a night out between three best friends at an eponymous watering hole before becoming a phantasmagorical coming-of-age fable by closing time. In between, memory shifts and poems shuffle like songs on a jukebox, detailing fraught female friendship, sexual awakening, alcohol abuse and abandon in the dying days of a decade of decadence. Swans is a whip-smart collection from one of Canada's catchiest lyric poets. 

Michelle Brown’s first full-length collection of poetry, Safe Words, was shortlisted for the 2018 ReLit awards. Her work has also been published in Maisonneuve, The Walrus, Malahat Review, Arc, CV2, Grain, Prism and The Puritan, and was shortlisted for Malahat Review's Open Season award, CV2's Young Buck prize and the CBC poetry prize. She currently lives in Vancouver, BC.


Poet Chelsea Rushton

march 22
chelsea rushton

Chelsea Rushton is a poet, painter, and nondualist meditator. Her poems draw on memory, ancestry, personal mythology, relationships with place and the beyond-human world, sacred texts, and transcendent experience to evoke quiet revelation. Her writing and illustrations have notably been published in TARKA Journal, Room Magazine, and The Femme Handbook. She works with the Gabriola Arts Council as their Program Manager, and with gratitude shares her time among the traditional territories of the Snuneymuxw First Nation, the WSÁNEĆ (Saanich), Lekwungen (Songhees), Wyomilth (Esquimalt) peoples of the Coast Salish Nation, and the Ohlone, Muwekma, and Lisjan peoples, whose presence on these lands reaches back to time immemorial.

 

WRITING PRACTICE WITH GUEST POET: RONNA BLOOM

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 25TH @11AM PACIFIC TIME

Join us for Writing Practice on Zoom. Writing Practice is free to attend — please feel free to invite a friend and share these Zoom credentials with them. We’ll have exercises, discussion, and silent time to write together.

Please join the Zoom Room directly HERE
Meeting ID: 494 660 4447 Passcode: 2129
*Note this is a Zoom-only event.

Ronna Bloom is the author of seven poetry collections. Her poems have been recorded by the CNIB, used in health care, and translated into Bangla, Chinese and Spanish. Her most recent book is A Possible Trust: The Poetry of Ronna Bloom, selected with an introduction by Phil Hall (Wilfred Laurier University Press, 2023.)