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 (formerly The Moka House), 1633 Hillside Ave (across from Bolen Books). Sign-up for the open mic begins at 7pm.

BC Federation of Writers AGM is happening from April 25–27 in Victoria.

Featured workshops: Yvonne Blomer, April 30 – May 28, 5 sessions; Catherine Owen, May 17

FEATURED READERS APRIL 2014

 Upcoming readings

Friday, April 4, 2014

Poetry Trivia Contest!
In honour of Poetry Month and because we have lots of swag to give away from the writer’s conference in Seattle. How well do you know poets and their poems?

Pamela Porter

Pamela Porter’s work has won more than a dozen provincial, national and international awards. Her third poetry collection, Cathedral, was shortlisted for the 2011 Pat Lowther Award, and her poems have won the Vallum Magazine Poem of the Year Award, the Prism International Grand Prize in Poetry, and have been shortlisted four times for the CBC literary awards. She is also the Governor General’s Award-winning author of The Crazy Man. M. Travis Lane has written, “Porter’s poems are pervaded with a sense of grace, of mercy, beauty and benediction.” Pamela lives near Sidney with her family and a menagerie of rescued horses, dogs, and cats, including a formerly wild mustang.

Friday, April 11, 2014

KEVIN SPENST,
JAN CONN & RUSSELL THORNTON

In addition to the UK, the United States, Austria and India, Kevin Spenst’s poetry has appeared in over a dozen Canadian literary publications such as Freefall, Prairie Fire, CV2, Dandelion, filling Station, qwerty, and Poetry is Dead. His work has been shortlisted for the Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry and his manuscript Ignite has come in as a finalist for the Alfred G. Bailey Prize. In 2011, he won the Lush Triumphant Award for Poetry. In 2014 he is going to do a 100-venue reading tour across Canada with five chapbooks,  including Surrey Sonnets (JackPine press, 2014). Follow the chapbook tour at kevinspenst.com.

Jan Conn’s most recent book of poetry is Edge Effects (Brick Books, 2012). Other books include Botero’s Beautiful Horses (Brick Books, 2009) and Jaguar Rain: the Margaret Mee Poems (Brick Books, 2006). Her work is included in many literary journals and anthologies, including Best Canadian Poetry in English Anthology, 2009 and 2011. She won the inaugural Malahat Review PK Page Founders’ Award Poetry Prize in 2006 and a CBC Literary Award for poetry in 2003. She is a member of the collaborative writing group Yoko’s Dogs  She lives in Great Barrington, MA, and likes mosquitoes. Please visit janconn.com

Russell Thornton’s books are The Fifth Window, A Tunisian Notebook, House Built of Rain (shortlisted for the Dorothy Livesay BC Book Prize and the ReLit Poetry Award), The Human Shore, and Birds, Metals, Stones & Rain (shortlisted for the 2013 Governor General’s Award for poetry, the 2014 Dorothy Livesay BC Book Prize, and the 2014 League of Canadian Poets Raymond Souster Award). Thornton’s poems have appeared in a number of anthologies, among them Poems from Planet Earth and The Best Canadian Poetry in English 2012. His newest book, The Hundred Lives, is due out in the fall of 2014. He lives in North Vancouver, BC.

Friday, April 18, 2014

EASTER WEEKEND
NO PLANET EARTH POETRY

Stay home, write a poem, go out, eat lotsa lotta chocolate!

Friday, April 25, 2014

SUSAN STENSON & KAREN SOLIE

Susan Stenson’s work has appeared in many Canadian literary magazines, most recently, Fiddlehead, Geist, and The Malahat Review, on CBC radio and on buses through the Poetry in Transit program, and in many anthologies. A contest magnet, Stenson’s poems have won national prizes such as the League of Canadian Poets National Poetry Prize, the Al Purdy contest, Arc, Sub-terrain and This magazines’ annual contests. Her first book, Could Love a Man, (Sono Nis 2001) was followed by My Mother Agrees With the Dead (Wolsak and Wynn, 2007). Her current work, Nobody Move, (Sono Nis 2010) celebrates Susan’s great loves: family, friends, the human heart. Susan lives and works in Victoria. She’s been co-editing The Claremont Review, Canada’s thriving literary magazine of teen poetry, art and fiction since 1992 and she teaches English and creative writing. Patrick Lane says of her work: Susan Stenson writes poems spare with love, the kind Bronwen Wallace knew, the same fierce echoes—

Karen Solie was born in Moose Jaw and grew up in southwest Saskatchewan. Her first collection of poems, Short Haul Engine, won the BC Book Prize for Poetry and was shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Award and the Griffin Poetry Prize. Her second, Modern and Normal, was shortlisted for the Trillium Poetry Prize. Her most recent, Pigeon, won the Pat Lowther Award, the Trillium Poetry Prize, and the Griffin Prize. A volume of selected and new poems, The Living Option, will be published in the UK by Bloodaxe Books this year. She lives in Toronto.