april 2023
All in-person PEP events will be taking place at Russell Books, 747 Fort Street in Victoria
no event on April 7
Doors open at 7:00pm, event starts at 7:30 and sign up for the open mic is between 7:00–7:20. Masks are encouraged but no longer required. 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 that we read and write on the traditional territories of the WSÁNEĆ (Saanich), Lekwungen (Songhees), Wyomilth (Esquimalt) peoples of the Coast Salish Nation.
(take a peek at PEP in May)
Tuesday, April 11 – ZOOM ONLY! (CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP)
5 pm PT (6 MT/7 CT/8 ET/9 AT)
Planet Joy: A National Poetry Month Reading Featuring the Electronic Garret
Please join us for a National Poetry Month event featuring Electronic Garret poets based in Alberta, Manitoba, Ontario and PEI on the subject of NaPoWriMo and Joy, the 2023 NPM theme.
Angeline Schellenberg, Lisa Richter, Bren Simmers, Leanne Shirtliffe, and Tanis MacDonald will read from new work and from their most recent collections.
The Electronic Garret is a group of Canadian women and non-binary poets who have created an online community to support each other in writing thirty poems in thirty days for NaPoWriMo; we have done this every April since 2014.
This event is sponsored by the League of Canadian Poets and the Writers Union of Canada, and hosted by Winnipeg writer Ariel Gordon.
Angeline Schellenberg is the author of the Manitoba Book Award-winning Tell Them It Was Mozart (Brick Books, 2016) and the KOBZAR-nominated Fields of Light and Stone (University of Alberta Press, 2020). A spiritual director-in-training, Angeline hosts Speaking Crow—Winnipeg’s longest-running poetry open mic. Her third collection, Paradigm Riffs, is forthcoming with At Bay Press in 2024.
Lisa Richter is a poet, writer and teacher from Toronto. She is the author of two full-length collections, Closer to Where We Began (Tightrope Books, 2017) and Nautilus and Bone (Frontenac House, 2020), winner of the National Jewish Book Award for the Poetry in the US, the Canadian Jewish Literary Award for Poetry, the Robert Kroetsch Award, and longlisted for the Raymond Souster Award. Her work has appeared in The Fiddlehead, The Malahat Review, The New Quarterly, EXILE, and other places. She is Editor-at-Large for 128 Lit Magazine, and teaches in the Sage Hill Summer Writing workshop. *Sponsored by The Writers Union of Canada and the Canada Council for the Arts
Bren Simmers is the winner of the 2022 CBC Poetry Prize and the author of four books, most recently If, When (Gaspereau Press, 2021).
Born and raised in rural Manitoba, Leanne Shirtliffe (she/her) is an educator now based in Calgary. Her work has appeared in CV2, Stanchion, One Art, Stoneboat, The FOLD Festival of Diversity program, and elsewhere. She is currently at work on her first full-length collection interweaving farming, feminism, and family. See more at LeanneShirtliffe.com, or read her overheard haiku on Instagram: @leanne_shirtliffe.
Tanis MacDonald is the author of Straggle: Adventures in Walking While Female (2022), Mobile: poems (2019), and five other books. Winner of the Open Season Awards for Nonfiction and the Bliss Carman Prize for Poetry, she lives in Waterloo on traditional Haudenosaunee territory, and is originally from Treaty One territory on the prairies. Recent poetry has appeared in The Hellebore, Grain, Vallum, and Lammergeier and Tanis is working on a poetry manuscript titled Tall, Grass, Girl, about survivor joy. Tanis is Professor in the Department of English and Film Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University, and creative director and host of Watershed Writers. She founded The Electronic Garret in 2014.
Poet Joseph A. Dandurand
april 14
joseph A. Dandurand
Joseph A. Dandurand is a member of Kwantlen First Nation located on the Fraser River about 20 minutes east of Vancouver. He resides there with his three children Danessa, Marlysse, and Jace. Joseph is the Director of the Kwantlen Cultural Center. He received a Diploma in Performing Arts from Algonquin College and studied Theatre and Direction at the University of Ottawa. He recently published two books of poetry: I Want by Leaf Press (2015) and Hear and Foretell by BookLand Press (2015). His newest book of poems, The Rumour, will be published by BookLand Press in (2018) SH:LAM (the doctor) will be published by Mawenzi Press (2019).
The Punishment: Within this book of poems are images of my solitary existence. With pictures of residential school, the many psyche wards, the streets, and the river, I paint for you the need to first understand it all and second to escape it all.
Within these poems I am a little boy who began to fight at the age of 4 and have been fighting ever since. Here too I speak of my time in Catholic school where I was abused and tormented not by God but maybe by God.
Within this book of poems I share my everyday struggles. I share all my lovers. I share the streets. I share what I see everyday. The eagles, the small birds, my culture, my teachings, my people the Kwantlen.
Within this is survival. God verses the Devil. Telling my kids that their mother has died of pills. The East side. Self-pity. The deception of Love. The deception of Hate. Sasquatches. Spirits.
Within me I will give to you the forgotten poet. I will give you disease. I will give you cedar. I will give you music. I will give you books. I will give you shadows. I will give you forgiveness. I will give you punishment.
Poetic Appetizer
from “Mother”
mother took her first steps into the chapel at Kuper Island Residential School
she was only 5
the sisters in their black dresses told her to hurry up
one sister kicked my mother
told her to stop crying
mother went to bed
she cried all night
Poet Pamela Medland
april 14 Poetic Opener
pamela medland
Pam Medland currently divides her time between Treaty 7 territory and Nanaimo, traditional home of the Snuneymuxw people. Medland’s poetry explores the impact of family and place on creative work. She is particularly interested in how change is reflected in what at first appears to be stable: landscape, human structures and institutions, and personal interactions.
Medland published a chapbook Bright Blade in 2020, and a full-length poetry collection Echo of Ash in 2021. A contributing editor to Arc poetry magazine and a graduate of SFU and the University of Toronto, Medland is retiring as the Director of the Airdrie Public Library in June 2023. You can find Medland’s award-winning work online and in print in numerous literary journals and anthologies.
april 21 - 2pm at new horizons
PEP in the afternoon with karen enns
Karen Enns is the author of four collections of poetry: Dislocations, published in 2023, Cloud Physics, winner of the Raymond Souster Award, Ordinary Hours, and That Other Beauty. Her poems have appeared in many literary journals including The Malahat Review, The New Quarterly, Prairie Fire, and Grain Magazine. She lives in Central Saanich.
Poet Karen Enns takes the reader on a lyrical journey, wrapped in the vicissitudes of seasons and weather—while observing human and other-than-human lives. Enns invites us to peer and listen, always concerned with the locations and dislocations perspective implies and creates.
Poetic Appetizer
Some days nothing becomes something
and then nothing again.
You read the lips of air.
from “Almost”
Poets Mary Ann Moore, MJ Burrows and Marlene Dean
april 21
mary ann moore, mj Burrows and Marlene dean
Mary Ann Moore (she/her) is a poet, writer and writing mentor living on the unceded territory of the Snuneymuxw First Nation in Nanaimo. Her poetry has been published in several literary journals as well as in chapbook anthologies edited by Patrick Lane and Lorna Crozier. Her full length book of poetry is Fishing for Mermaids.
In her chapbook of poems, Mending (house of appleton, 2023), Mary Ann Moore weaves together the remembered and imagined with deep reverence for the people, places and events of her life. Hear conversations with her mother from the after life, and feel the tenderness she captures in the men who work with their hands. Words carefully chosen will transport you into her multifaceted world.
Poetic Appetizer from “Memoir II” by Mary Ann Moore:
I was born home-loving, under the sign of Cancer,
grew up with my grandparents in their small, Ontario house.
Plum trees, a potato patch, hollyhocks against the woodshed.
A pump in the middle of the garden.
MJ Burrows lives in Saltair on Vancouver Island following a 40-year career as an educator in Calgary. Her poems have appeared in The Sky is Falling, The Sky is Falling edited by Sheila Martindale for Planet Earth Poetry; and Alone But Not Alone published by the Vancouver Island Regional Library.
Sea-Washed Stones (house of appleton, 2023) is MJ Burrows’s first book of poetry in which she captures the raw beauty of coastal life with great care and attention. Each season is observed and honoured in its myriad of textures, colours and sounds. An ode to this life.
Poetic appetizer: “morning prayer,” by MJ Burrows:
morning prayer
ebony wings folded
two crows kissing
Marlene Dean is a retired educator who lives in Nanaimo. Her poems have been published in literary journals such as Event Magazine; Pudding; Tesseracts 5 and Sea and Cedar. Marlene’s poetry has appeared in ten anthologies including Voicing Suicide edited by Daniel G. Scott and Worth More Standing edited by Christine Lowther.
Because Things Are (house of appleton, 2023), a chapbook of poems by Marlene Dean, is a collection of meditations on life and the mysteries of time and mortality. Observing, remembering, honouring all that has been, Marlene takes us on a deep and rich journey from prairie to sea shore, from yesterday to last week.
Poetic Appetizer from “Doe in Winter” by Marlene Dean:
Every flower turns its face to
the same light that warms me.
Every mortal creature shares my fate.
Poet Sareh Farmand
april 28
sareh farmand
Poet Sareh Farmand was born in Tehran at the start of the Islamic Revolution, and grew up in Vancouver, BC. Her first book of poems, Pistachios in my Pocket, follows a narrative arc that tells the story of her family’s escape from Iran and their experiences as first wave Iranian immigrants to Canada. She holds degrees in International Relations and Education from UBC and is a 2018 graduate of SFU’s The Writing Studio.
In this brave first collection of poems and prose a narrative arc details her family’s escape from Iran, detailing their time as immigrants in limbo, and finally, as Landed Immigrants in Canada. Using family anecdotes, memory, public documents, and images to outline her family’s story, Pistachios in my Pocket moves from the personal to the universal by exploring the influences of migration, political strife, and cultural identity on humanity. Here is a new voice to the conversation on global citizenship and multiculturalism, as themes of loss, home, and belonging are explored in a new way through a wide socio-political lens and personal accounts of a family’s unique, yet universal experiences. Ultimately, bringing forward the many ways immigrants are haunted after fleeing for safety and what it means to be Canadian.
Poet Caitlin Carter
april 28
poetic opener caitlin carter
Caitlin Carter is a poet and fiction writer living in Victoria BC. Her work is influenced by a deep respect for nature, environmental and disability justice, and her love of visual arts, classical music, and history. When she isn’t writing she can be found visiting beaches and striking up friendships with strangers’ dogs. She holds a degree in creative writing from the University of Victoria.
WRITING PRACTICE WITH KJ Munro
SATURDAY, april 29 @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.
Sign up for Zoom credentials HERE!
*Note this is a Zoom-only event.
Planet Earth Poetry gratefully acknowledges all of its supporters.
