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, february 5, 2016

harold rhenisch & missie peters

Missie Peters is a Victoria-based spoken word artist. She is the former artistic director of the Victoria Spoken Word Festival, and has been both a slam champion and a slam master. With Dave Morris she performs internationally as the improvised spoken word duo SpeakEasy, and has written two full length spoken word plays.

Her writing explores how we use language in modern contexts and the beauty of our mundane lives.

Harold Rhenisch has published twelve full length books of poetry, edited the posthumous poetry of Robin Skelton, and has won the Malahat Review Long Poem Prize (twice) and a CBC Poetry Prize. In 1978, he studied with P.K. Page, who introduced him to sufic verse. In 2008 and 2010 he travelled on the Northern Camino, where he met Khezr, the sufic green man. The sufic ghazals of Two Minds followed, a work of 30 years. Harold lives in Vernon.

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 2016

arleen paré & carolyn smart

Arleen Paré is a Victoria poet and novelist, a graduate of SFU’s TWS program and an MFA graduate in poetry from the University of Victoria. Her first book, Paper Trail, was nominated for the Dorothy Livesay BC Book Award for Poetry and won the Victoria Butler Book Prize in 2008. Her second book, Leaving Now, a novel, was released in 2012. Lake of Two Mountains, her third book, won the Governor General’s Award for Poetry in 2014. It was also nominated for the Victoria Butler Book Prize and won the CBC Bookie Award. Paré’s latest poetry collection, He Leaves His Face in the Funeral Car was released in September 2015.

Remember Bonnie & Clyde?

A complex, dramatic rendering of a familiar story made new.

Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow are the stuff of legend—why tell their story again? Chances are you don’t know the nuances— their love story and that of their accomplices Buck Barrow and his wife Blanche; their aspirations, conflicts and prayerful natures; and ultimately the sources of their tragedy. At its core, Careen is a long poem spoken by the characters, though the voices are companioned by newspaper articles often ironically at odds with the inside story. Smart lets the principal actors relate their own tale—a book of voices speaking out of the desperate Dirty Thirties.

Carolyn Smart is the author of 6 poetry collections including the most recent Careen. She is the founder of the RBC Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers, poetry editor for the MacLennan Series of McGill-Queen’s University Press, and since Professor of Creative Writing at Queen’s University. Hooked: seven poems has become a performance piece, featured at the Edinburgh and Seattle Fringe Festivals in 2013 and at Theatre Passe Muraille in 2015. She lives north of Kingston, Ontario.

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 2016

jenna butler & murray reiss

Author of three critically acclaimed books of poetry and a book of ecocritical essays, Jenna Butler has worked at the intersection of art and environment from Ireland to America’s Deep South to the Norwegian Arctic and back to Alberta’s Red Deer College, where she is professor of creative writing and ecocriticism. She works as a market gardener and beekeeper with her husband at their off-gridorganic farm, and she looks forward to her forthcoming book of essays, Revery: A Year of Bees.

I live on Salt Spring Island, British Columbia. My poetry and prose have been published in literary magazines and anthologies in Canada and the United States, and short-listed for a number of prizes and awards. My first book, The Survival Rate of Butterflies in the Wild (Hagios Press), was awarded the League of Canadian Poets Gerald Lampert Memorial Award for the best first book of poetry published in Canada in 2013. I have one foot in the world of print publication and one foot in the world of spoken word, as a Climate Action Performance Poet and founding member of the Only Planet Cabaret.

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 2016

chapbook launch: Fracture

Fracture: a chapbook from Patrick Lane’s Honeymoon Bay series.
Patrick Lane, editor

from the Introduction: “Their words here are shining in the darkened sky,’ to quote Barbara Black. Rhonda Ganz says, ‘I am a knot unravelling,’ and perhaps that is what a poem tries to be: a complex undone, a maze amazed. Each autumn the poets retreat to the lodge in Honeymoon Bay and work their wonders. There is no end to their learning.”

POETS in Fracture
Susan Alexander
Tina Biello
Barbara Black
Susan Braley
Terry Ann Carter
Wendy Donawa
Adrienne Drobnies
Rhonda Ganz
Sandra Lynn Lynxleg
Jean McIntosh
Wendy Morton
Mary Ann Mulhern
Arleen Paré
Barbara Pelman
David Pimm
Pamela Porter
Gisela Ruebsaat
Susan Stenson
Linda Thompson