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.

FRIDAY, april 1, 2016

rhonda batchelor & rosemary griebel

Rosemary Griebel’s poetry has appeared in The Best Canadian Poetry in English, on CBC Radio, anthologies, and on public buses. Her collection of poetry, Yes. was short-listed for three awards in 2012.She works as a librarian in Calgary. 

“Witness” is a fine word to describe Rosemary Griebel’s attitude to life, to writing. Not just witness in the sense of one who sees what anyone in the same place would see, but witness in the religious sense as well—one who understands and speaks of the miracles that linger in the day-to-day. An intensely reflective poet, Rosemary’s work calls on the stink of the pig sty, the luminous words of Basho, the hoarse prayers of Walt Whitman. Yes is Rosemary Griebel’s long-awaited book, an intimate journey through love and loss, an affirmation of the importance of curiosity, passion and vision.

The author of three previous full-length poetry collections, as well as several chapbooks, and a young-adult novel, Rhonda Batchelor will read from her current manuscript. These poems reveal the concerns and preoccupations of the intervening years since her last book. Best-known (of late) as the assistant editor of The Malahat Review, her poetry has been described as “subtle and understated but, like steam rising from a kettle, burns with an intense heat. [She] charts private, ephemeral, sometimes uncomfortable realizations with a fearless heart and language clear as glass.”
—Books in Canada

Born in Brantford, Ontario, Rhonda has lived on Vancouver Island since 1971. From 1990 to 2000 she operated Reference West (co-founded with her late husband, poet and historian Chares Lillard), publishing more than 100 chapbooks of poetry and short fiction by Canadian writers who took part in the accompanying Hawthorne Reading Series that she also ran for ten years.

Her poetry titles include Bearings (Brick Books, 1985), Interpreting Silence (Beach Holme, 1994), and Weather Report (Beach Holme/Dundurn, 2000). A chapbook from Leaf Press, And roll from me like water, appeared in 2006, and a teen novel, She Loves You (Dundurn), in 2008.

FRIDAY, april 8, 2016

jeff steudel &
dymphny dronyk

Jeff Steudel’s poetry has appeared in several publications including, PRISM international, CV2, The Fiddlehead, subTerrain, and Canadian Literature. He has received the Ralph Gustafson Poetry Prize, and his work was chosen as a finalist for the CBC Literary Awards. Foreign Park is his first book of poetry. He lives in Vancouver.

Dymphny Dronyk is a mediator by vocation, and communications consultant by default. She works a mediator for Alberta Justice and is also a writing and life coach. She is passionate about the magic of story, and has woven words for money and for love for more than 30 years. Her first volume of poetry, 
Contrary Infatuations, was short-listed for the Pat Lowther Award and the Stephan G. Stephansson Award for Poetry in 2008. She is the co-publisher and co-editor at House of Blue Skies whose bestselling anthologies include 2014’s The Calgary Project – A City Map in Verse and Visual. She is also editor of the online Blue Skies Poetry forum.

She is currently working on a manuscript of poems about immigration in Dutch, her mother tongue, and in English, her second language, entitled Exiled Transatlantic. 

FRIDAY, april 15, 2016

jeanette lynes &
carla funk

Jeanette Lynes’ seventh book of poetry, Bedlam Cowslip: The John Clare Poems published by Wolsak and Wynn's Buckrider Books imprint (2015) has been shortlisted for two Saskatchewan Book Awards. Jeanette's first novel, The Factory Voice, was long listed for the Scotia Bank Giller Prize and a Re Lit Award.  Jeanette directs the MFA in Writing at the University of Saskatchewan. She lives in Saskatoon.

Carla Funk, in her fifth book of poetry, illuminates the small and marvelous marginalia of earth, like the glistening trail of a snail on route, and looks prophetically to the not-so-distant future where cities burn and the body falls to ruin. A meditation on endings, intermingling wonder and praise with question and elegy, Gloryland offers poems for an apocalyptic age.

Born and raised in Vanderhoof, BC, one of the earliest Mennonite settlements in the province, Carla Funk now lives and teaches writing in Victoria, where she served as the city’s inaugural poet laureate from 2006–2008. Her previous books of poetry include The Sewing Room (Turnstone Press, 2006) and Apologetic (Turnstone Press, 2010).

FRIDAY, APRIL 22, 2016

GARY GEDDES & 
SUSAN TELFER

Gary Geddes, winner of the Commonwealth Poetry Prize (Americas Region), Lt-Governor’s Award for Literary Excellence, and the Gabriela Mistral Prize, has published 45 books. He lives on Thetis Island. 

About The Resumption of Play:
The title poem, winner of the Malahat Review Long Poem Prize, is “compelling” and “deeply necessary . . . the drive of narrative told with the sonic patterning of poetry.” It’s the urgent story of an Indian residential school survivor, complex, scarred, articulate, flashing with rage and mordant humour and tackles the collision between Aboriginal and Western systems of thought. It’s followed by elegies for the poet’s mother, Pound, Brodsky, Diaghilev, Stravinsky, Virginia Woolf, Bronwen Wallace, and much more.

Susan Telfer is the author of two collections of poetry. Her previous book of poems, House Beneath, was published by Hagios Press in 2009. Her poetry has been published in magazines coast-to-coast and anthologized in Desperately Seeking Susans and Poems from Planet Earth. She appeared at the Festival of Written Arts in 2013 and won the Vancouver Writer’s Festival Poetry Contest that year. She was born and raised on the West Coast and now lives in Gibsons, BC, where she teaches at Elphinstone Secondary.