Poet DC Reid

Friday, february 2
dc reid

(FUNDED THROUGH THE LEAGUE OF CANADIAN POETRY)

DC Reid has published seventeen books, including nine collections of poetry, a novel, two works of literary nonfiction, and five books on fly fishing. A Man and His River: a 25-year love affair with a wild island waterway, recently won the Gold Medal for Books from the Professional Outdoor Writers Association. Poems Selected and New has just been released with Ekstasis Editions and draws from work in his previous eight books.

Poetic Appetizer
from DC Reid’s poem “Nunc Dimittis"

I return to the garden and my feet touch not the ground.

Green tomatoes rise into my hands, the girl’s windmill,

hydra blue against blue of windsock,

full cheeked on neck of land.

Can a pearl be afraid?

Her windmill turns to me,

and asks whether it may now take its leave.

Poet Chris Bullock

February 02
chris bullock

Chris Bullock reads his poems to his hiking buddies around campfires in the Utah wilderness. His poetry  collection, How the Light Gets In, was published in November 2023, and explores moments of revelation in ordinary experiences: from deserts to dancing to grandchildren.

Chris lives in Victoria, where he coordinates the Poetry and Song circle at the Church of Truth, and dialogues on favourite poems with the cross-province group, Poetry and the Boyz.

Poet Ali Blythe
Reviews:

• "a focused yet complex constellation of poems....Stedfast is a slow burn that leaves a mark." — The British Columbia Review

• "The pages of this book would be every needed thing to vibrate anew."— CA Conrad

• "So carefully tuned, it goes beyond human knowledge and into the forest of wild knowledges." — Kazim Ali 

• "the lyric “I” of Stedfast loves and desires within the quivering here and now — and the poignancy of this love gives me all the feels" — Sue Sinclair 

friday, february 09
ali blythe

Ali Blythe is author of critically acclaimed poetry collections that explore trans-poetics.

He is winner of the Vallum Award for Poetry, twice finalist for the Dorothy Livesay BC Book Award and recipient of an honour of distinction from the Writers Trust of Canada for emerging LGBTQ writers.

Blythe’s poems and essays are published in national and international literary journals and anthologies, including The Broadview Introduction to Literature, Best Canadian Essays and Best Canadian Poetry.

Blythe has held roles as a guest editor for special editions of literary magazines including The League of Canadian Poets, Arc Magazine and Malahat Review, and as editor-in-chief for the Claremont Review, an international literary magazine for youth.

Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art—

Breaking open John Keats’s “Last Sonnet,” Ali Blythe writes marginality into the canon, at once claiming, reviving, and un-fixing the Romantic vision.

Taking place over one night, the poet in bed next to a sleeping lover, Blythe’s revelatory poems struggle with questions of illusion and reality, immersion and escapism, that which endures and that which is transient.

Held taut in formal quivers of short lines, each poem is shot through with eros — to address, to dress and undress, the subject of the love poem and perhaps love itself.

Poetic Appetizer

“BRIGHT STAR”

Here you are. Unsteadily
shining next to me.

After a long and lustrous
journey from afar.

Okay, little torch. It’s time
I got to work once more.

Hitching my constellation
of allusions to you.

Poet Shawnda Wilson

february 09
shawnda wilson

Shawnda Wilson is a visual artist, poet, and fiction writer. She received the Mary Garland Coleman Award for lyric poetry and the Bill Juby Award, was longlisted for the Bridge Prize, and received second prize in Quagmire Magazine. Her work has been published in magazines and chapbooks since 2001.

february 16
PEP in the afternoon!

Join us at New Horizons in James Bay at 2pm, January 16th, with Sneha Madhavan-Reese.

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.

Poet Sneha Madhavan-Reese

friday, february 16
SNEHA MADHAVAN-REESE

Sneha Madhavan-Reese is the author of two poetry collections, Observing the Moon and Elementary Particles. Her writing has appeared in publications around the world, including The Best Canadian Poetry in English 2016. She serves on the editorial board of Canthius magazine and lives with her family in Ottawa.

Through keen, quiet observation, Sneha Madhavan-Reese’s evocative new collection contemplates the building blocks of a life, examining the world through the lens of a daughter grieving the loss of her beloved father. This book explores ancestral language, the wonder and uncertainty of scientific discovery, and the complex relationships between a child and her immigrant parents and between a mother and her children. With themes of identity, belonging, language, and loss, Elementary Particles illuminates the interconnectedness of our personal and universal journeys.

Poetic Appetizer

We used to think love
was easy to find. We were quarks
in the first femtoseconds
of the universe.

from “Cosmology”

Poet Joanna Lilley

FEBRUARY 16
JOANNA LILLEY

Joanna Lilley is the author of Endlings, a collection of poems about extinct animals which won the Fred Kerner Book Award in 2021. She’s also the author of the poetry collections If There Were Roads and The Fleece Era, which was nominated for the Fred Cogswell Award, the novel Worry Stones, which was longlisted for the Caledonia Novel Award, and the short story collection, The Birthday Books.

She loves sharing the joy of words and has given readings and workshops as far afield as Alaska and Iceland. Born in the south of England, Joanna lived in Wales and Scotland before moving to Canada. She now lives in Whitehorse, Yukon, where she co-founded Yukon Words and is grateful to reside on the Traditional Territories of the Kwanlin Dün First Nation and the Ta'an Kwäch'än Council. In 2021, she received Commissioner of Yukon’s Borealis Prize for literary contribution.

Poet Cecily Nicholson

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 23
CECILY NICHOLSON

Cecily Nicholson is the author of four books and a past recipient of the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize and the Governor General’s Literary Award for Poetry. She is an Assistant Professor in Poetry at the School of Creative Writing, UBC and will be the 2024/2025 Holloway Lecturer in Poetry and Poetics at UC Berkeley. Cecily volunteers with community impacted by food security and her most recent book HARROWINGS considers Black rurality and art history.

Instead of a poetic appetizer, we're offering you a meal!

Read an except from Cecily's HARROWINGS in February's Unpacking the Poem HERE!

FEBRUARY 23
FATIMA-AYAN MALIKI HIRSI

Fatima-Ayan Malika Hirsi is a Black mother who writes beside forests and waters on land of the T’Sou-ke Nation. Her work is forthcoming in Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora, and her first full-length collection, Dreams for Earth, is forthcoming from Deep Vellum Publishing. She is a fellow of the Pink Door Writing Retreat, the Anaphora Arts Writing Residency, and In Surreal Life. 

Her work takes root at the intersection of social change and collaboration, and her writing strives to instigate action in service to world-building. Saul Williams said, “Only through new words might new worlds be called into order,” and she is here to conjure. Travel with her at fatimaayanmalikahirsi.com or on Instagram via @fatimaayanmalika. 

WRITING PRACTICE WITH guest poet:
Sneha MadhavAn-Reese

SATURDAY, february 24th @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.