workshop alert! STORM CATCHING: WRITING IN AND ABOUT HARD TIMES

A PEP WRITING WORKSHOP WITH LAURA APOL | SATURDAY, APRIL 7, 2018  |  10am – 3pm  

The Planet Earth Poetry reading series is a launching pad for the energies of writers and poets established and not. It is a place where words are most important. A venue in which all manner of poets and writers are welcome; a place for excellence, innovation, collaboration, diverse projects and experiments. The evening begins at 7:30 with an open mic, followed by a featured reader(s). Planet Earth Poetry is located at Hillside Coffee and Tea, 1633 Hillside Ave (across from Bolen Books). Between 7 and 7:15, put your name in the hat to read at open mic.  Planet Earth Poetry acknowledges that we have the honour to host this reading series on the traditional territory of the Lekwungen peoples.

FRIDAY, march 2, 2018

youth poetry night

This night is for budding young poets from the Victoria area, including those published in the Claremont Review. We are delighted to feature Victoria’s new Youth Poet Laureate Agartu Ali.

FRIDAY, march 9, 2018

elizabeth bachinsky & kayla Czaga

Elizabeth Bachinsky is one of Canada’s most sought-after poets. Her first two books are Curio and Home of Sudden Service, the latter of which was nominated for a Governor General’s Award for poetry and was named one of the best books of that year in The Globe and Mail. She is also the author of three other books of poetry: God of Missed Connections, I Don’t Feel So Good and The Hottest Summer in Recorded History. Poems from these collections have been nominated for numerous awards including the Pat Lowther Award, The Kobzar Award and the George Ryga Award, and have appeared in anthologies, literary journals, on stage, and on film in Canada, and all over the world.
A frequent lecturer and instructor of creative writing, she is now permanent faculty in the department of Language, Literature and Performing Arts at Douglas College. She has been a literary editor for a decade, first at PRISM international and then at EVENT magazine, and she was trained in letterpress printing by Jan and Crispin Elsted at Barbarian Press. Her next project is a chapbook of poems for Greenboathouse Press.

Kayla Czaga is the author of For Your Safety Please Hold On, which was nominated for the Governor General's Award For Poetry, the Debut-litzer, and The Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize, and won The Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. Recent poems by her can be found in PRISM international, Rattle, Arc, The Walrus, Forklift, OHIO, and elsewhere. Her second book of poems, DUNK TANK, will be published next spring by House of Anansi. She lives in Vancouver and works in a nerd bar.

FRIDAY, march 16, 2018

words on ice at wordsthaw writers festival

Venue: UVic, HSB Building A240
Tickets: online at The Malahat Review website and at the door

Join us as we partner again with The Malahat Review to present Words on Ice at the University of Victoria. Featured authors are John Barton, Morgan Cross, Karen Enns, Joan MacLeod, Sheila Munro, Bill Gaston, Dan MacIsaac and Frances Backhouse.

This is a ticketed event. You can buy a pass for all of WordsThaw, March 16 to 18, here.

FRIDAY, march 23, 2018

joe denham & bernice lever

Joe Denham is the author of the novel The Year of Broken Glass (Nightwood Editions, 2011), as well as four collections of poetry, including Regeneration Machine (Nightwood Editions, 2015), which won the Canadian Authors Association Award for Poetry and was a finalist for the 2016 Governor General’s Literary Award for Poetry. His work has also appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies, including Open Field: 30 Contemporary Canadian Poets and Spindrift. He lives with his family in Victoria, BC.

Bernice Lever,  a Life member of LCP  since 2000, writes and edits on Bowen Island, but is part many west coast and national literary events and groups.
 
Her book, Small ACTS, (Black Moss Press, 2016),  displays her wide range of tones and messages.     

“Bernice Lever has an innovative, avant-garde and unconventional ability to explore complex social media and environmental issues  and to weave poems to express them emotionally with astonishing simplicity.”
    Ashok Bhargava, Vancouver, President, Writers International Network.

Bernice Lever writes beautifully….as a warning and as a harbinger of hope. Perhaps poets do not change the world, but they do sometimes change the inner life, and in so doing give hope where hope does the most good.  
       John B. Lee, Poet Laureate, Brantford, Ontario.