planet earth poetry is online on friday nights. Click Here to Register.
We are excited to bring our poetry community together online. Each week, the Planet Earth Poetry newsletter will include a link to the Zoom reading scheduled for Friday nights at 7:15, with open mic and the featured reader starting at 7:30. If you aren’t already signed up to get our weekly news, click here to ask to be added to the email list. Scroll down or check out our Facebook page for what’s coming up.
to sign up for open mic, visit this link between tuesday and Friday noon.
Planet Earth Poetry gratefully acknowledges all of its supporters.
POETS CARAVAN
We are excited to launch our latest project to share poetry!
The Planet Earth Poetry Poets Caravan highlights the rich cultural landscape of the CRD, with readings from poets in all of its nine regions. Each poet is represented by a pin on Google Earth of a spot meaningful to them in the CRD – somewhere they like to do their writing or find particularly inspiring.
CLICK HERE to go to google earth & watch our poets.
(Be patient, the program needs a bit of time to load in your browser.) We have eight CRD poets up; one more to come. After that, we’ll be adding more poets who live in Victoria, thanks to a grant from the City of Victoria.)
The Poets Caravan is accessible to audiences both in the CRD and worldwide. This interactive experience will be available over time and provides a way for poets and poetry to reach a wide audience in this time when in-person reading events aren’t possible. Digital projects come with accessibility challenges for those who may not have access to a computer or have disabilities which stop them from using the selected platform. We have made the videos and text available for download separately on request. Please email Planet Earth Poetry if you’d like this option.
Thank you to the CRD Arts and Culture Support Fund, the BC Arts Council and the City of Victoria for their support and funding of the Poets Caravan. Thanks to videographer Lorraine Scollan for capturing each poet's unique voice with care and enthusiasm!
online readings in february 2021
open mic as usual — click here between tuesday and Friday noon to sign up
The Essential Derk Wynand by Derk Wynand and John Barton
friDAY, february 5, 2021
derk wynand
Thematic consistency and technical inventiveness shine in this selection of Derk Wynand’s emotionally intelligent poetry.
Derk Wynand began to publish a cohesive body of work in the 1970s. Though his poems touch on aspects of daily life both public and private, Wynand is essentially a love poet dedicated to exploring all aspects of his theme: from initial attraction and sustained eroticism, the anxieties and constancies of gradually negotiated connection, the satisfying longueurs of fidelity, to the pleasures of the seemingly timeless domestic moment. A poet of sentiment rather than of sentimentality, he tests the mettle of his vocation in his nimble, unruffled handling of point of view and the poetic line. Whether Wynand sets his poetry in the snows of European folklore, the sunny climes of Portugal and Mexico or the rains of British Columbia, he adroitly maps the inscape of the human heart.
The Essential Poets Series presents the works of Canada’s most celebrated poets in a package that is beautiful, accessible and affordable. The Essential Derk Wynand is the twenty-first volume in the increasingly popular series.
Derk Wynand
The Dyzgraphxst by Canisia Lubrin
Irfan Ali
Dorothy Field’s How Light Edges
friDAY, february 12, 2021
canisia lubrin
Canisia Lubrin is a writer, critic, editor and teacher. Her new book, The Dyzgraphxst (M&S, 2020), appeared notably in The New York Times, Quill & Quire, Jewish Currents, Humber Literary Review, CBC and elsewhere. Lubrin’s international publications include translations of her work into four languages. Her writing has been recognized by, among others, the Toronto Book Award, Journey Prize, Gerald Lampert, Pat Lowther, and the Writers Trust. Voodoo Hypothesis (Buckrider Books, 2017) was published to wide acclaim, and named a CBC Best Book. Find her work in Poetry, Brick, Poetry London, Poets.org and elsewhere. Lubrin’s fiction debut, Code Noir, is forthcoming from Knopf Canada.
The Dyzgraphxst presents seven inquiries into selfhood through the perennial figure Jejune. Polyvocal in register, the book moves to mine meanings of kinship through the wide and intimate reach of language across geographies and generations. Against the contemporary backdrop of intensified capitalist fascism, toxic nationalism, and climate disaster, the figure Jejune asks, how have I come to make home out of unrecognizability. Marked by and through diasporic life, Jejune declares, I was not myself. I am not myself. My self resembles something having nothing to do with me.
Canisia Lubrin : photo by Anna Keenan
friDAY, february 19, 2021
irfan ali
Irfan Ali is a writer and educator. His short poetry collection, "Who I Think About When I Think About You" was shortlisted for the 2015 Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers. Accretion (Brick Books, 2020) is his first full-length work. Irfan was born, raised, and still lives in Toronto.
Against the backdrop of an ancient Persian love story, to the soundtrack of modern hip-hop, and amid the struggle of an immigrant family to instill an old faith under new conditions, Accretion hurtles towards an unsustainable, “greater madness.” It is a book written from the places where the self is no longer the self; places where, in order not to shut down forever, the debris must be cleared, and the soul must inch towards love and hope, “on memory’s dusty beams.”
Accretion by Irfan Ali
friDAY, february 26, 2021
DOROTHY FIELD AND KURT TRZCINSKI
Dorothy Field has published three poetry books, a book about how paper in Asia bridges to the gods, a book of garden letters, and a children's book about a family in India who blockprints cloths for the worship of the Mother Goddess. She tends her unruly garden in Fernwood, Victoria.
Kurt Trzcinski
Kurt Trzcinski is an ecologist that has studied many ecosystems around the world, and is currently studying woodpeckers and the birds that depend on the cavities they create. He thrives at the edge of poetry and science, and hopes that together they can create new visons of how we relate to the world.
Sacred Greens is a short collection of eco-poetics and love poems where the poet leads the reader to places of reverence, wonder and discovery. Each poem is a quiet invitation into a place where, “Life, strong and turgid (is) in each leaf.” The poet explores ecosystems and in them finds life’s pulse and tremor between the elements of grief, love and desire. He finds the places where “two great ceiba trees/ pillars for the sky/ hold and bear a heavy weight.”
Planet Earth Poetry is pleased to announce that, through a generous gift from Lorna Crozier, we have two sets of numbered limited edition prints of Patrick Lane’s original work from the early 1980s that we will be offering for sale as of March 15, 2020.
Prints are $250 each, payable to Planet Earth Poetry. Shipping costs will be the responsibility of the purchaser. The prints are unframed (protected by a plastic sleeve) and are 15 x 22 inches. Order and pay by e-transfer in an email to Planet Earth Poetry. Please indicate which print or prints you wish to purchase in the email body and use the subject line Lane Prints.
All proceeds from this sale will go toward the on-going work of Planet Earth Poetry.
Thanks to DC Reid for the images of the prints that are posted.
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 currently a digital reading series. Planet Earth Poetry acknowledges with respect that we read and write on the traditional territories of the WSÁNEĆ (Saanich), Lkwungen (Songhees), Wyomilth (Esquimalt) peoples of the Coast Salish Nation.
Planet Earth Poetry gratefully acknowledges all of its supporters.
