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 7:15 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 6:45 and 7:00, put your name in the hat to read at open mic. 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.
FRIDAY, january 24, 1:30PM: PLANET EARTH POETRY IN JAMES BAY
Join us for our featured reader Mary Lee Bragg as part of the afternoon reading series at New Horizons in James Bay.
Hosted by Sheila Martindale.
january 2020
Stephen T Berg’s latest collection
friDAY, january 10, 2020
stephen T berg & daniel scott
Stephen T Berg was raised on the prairies and tutored by the West Coast. His prose and poetry have seen life in staged performances, have been chosen to ride Edmonton Transit buses, and have appeared in such publications as Prairie Fire, Orion, Earthshine, Geez, oratorealis, and Vancouver’s Westender. His first chapbook, There Are No Small Moments, was published by The Rasp and The Wine (2014). For more of his work visit: growmercy.org
In Beacons, Blues and Holy Goats, Stephen T Berg brings us nose to nose with bicycles, farmers, country lanes, bad roads, and the pacific coast through narrative poems both lyrical and full of longing. He brings us to the hard, rusty places humans find themselves in, then shines a moment of rhythm and light on them. Poetry here is language rendered to “swagger,” “surprise,” and “break us open.” —Yvonne Blomer
Here are deeply felt, spiritually attuned, and well-crafted poems that offer richly textured evocations of place—from prairie to coast and the myriad landscapes in between. This accomplished collection by a true “disciple of gratitude” brims with wonder and humour, sorrow and celebration—but most of all, grace. —Fiona Tinwei Lam
Daniel G Scott
Daniel G Scott is the 5th Artistic Director of the Planet Earth Poetry Reading Series. He has written in a variety of forms, but poetry is his long-standing love. He won a one-act playwriting competition in New Brunswick in 1984 and has had a number of plays produced. His poetry includes gnarled love (2016) terrains (2014) and Random Excess (2018) with Ekstasis Editions, and black onion (2012) and two chapbooks: street signs (2016) and Interrupted (2015), with Goldfinch Press and pyramid and other dreams (1983, Purple Wednesday Society). He has individual poems in anthologies and chapbooks as well as numerous academic publications including journal articles, book chapters and, with Shannon McFerran, The Girls Diary Project (University of Victoria, 2013). He is an Associate Professor Emeritus, University of Victoria, School of Child and Youth Care, father and grandfather.
Aftertime
A collection of poems that play with time, retirement, glimpses across generations and ponders aging, death and their (im)possibilities. How is time felt in moments of life transitions? We live in time yet experience it at different tempos. Some days fly. Some hours crawl. And what of time itself—how do we live in time as we age, as we leave the world of work and duty, as death becomes more substantial? Aftertime also explores the nature of time itself to wonder if there is time after time, if one can be outside of time. A provocative look at time from the vantage of later in life.
James Arthur’s The Suicide’s Son
FRIDAY, january 17, 2020
james arthur & susan mccaslin
Canadian-American poet James Arthur is the author of The Suicide’s Son and Charms Against Lightning. His poems have also appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, The New York Review of Books, The American Poetry Review, and The London Review of Books, among other magazines. He teaches at Johns Hopkins University.
The Suicide’s Son is about complicated histories that parents inherit, add to, and pass on to their children. This is a book of masks and personae, depopulated landscapes haunted by history’s violence, and speakers whose truth-telling is marked by a sense of complicity in the falsehoods around them. With his formidable powers of observation and inimitable ear for the cadences of speech, Arthur shows himself to be, in only his second book, one of the best English-language poets writing today.
Susan McCaslin and J.S. Porter’s Superabundantly Alive
Susan McCaslin is a BC poet who has published fifteen volumes of poetry, including her most recent, Into the Open: Poems New and Selected (Inanna, 2017). She has recently published a volume of poetry and creative non-fiction, Superabundantly Alive: Thomas Merton’s Dance with the Feminine (Wood Lake, 2018). Susan can often be found wandering in the Blaauw Eco Forest in Glen Valley east of Fort Langley with her dog Rosie.
Superabundantly Alive: Thomas Merton's Dance with the Feminine is a unique, unified, multi-genre work that includes dialogue, imaginary letters, poems, and reflective essays by two established Canadian poets, Susan McCaslin and J.S. Porter. This book invites participation for those who already know Merton's work and for those who are meeting this whole and broken, prophetic, whimsical, paradoxical prophet and visionary for the first time.
Robert Lax once described Merton’s poetry and the man himself as “superabundantly alive.” McCaslin and Porter prove the truth of this description in their enchanting account of the writer-mystic who now comes into his second century of stature and significance, in the words of Boris Pasternak, “[a]live and burning to the end.
thursDAY, january 23, 2020
Best canadian poetry 2019
Join Rob Taylor (editor) and Poet Laureate of Victoria John Barton at Bolen Books to launch Biblioasis’ Best Canadian Poetry 2019.
Featured are Ali Blythe, Marilyn Bowering, Sara Cassidy, Kayla Czaga, Dallas Hunt and Sonnet L’Abbé.
Jacqueline Turner’s Flourish
FRIDAY, january 24, 2020
jacqueline turner & mary lee bragg
Jacqueline Turner is the author of The Ends of the Earth (ECW Press 2013). She is a Lecturer at Emily Carr University of Art + Design and has held writing residencies in Brisbane, Tasmania, Granada, and Berlin. Her work is published widely in Canada and internationally. She lives in Vancouver, British Columbia.
“Smart, clear-eyed… Turner’s gift is for beautiful concision.” —Georgia Straight on The Ends of the Earth
Jacqueline Turner’s Flourish moves between philosophy, literary criticism, biography, and poetry. Both personal and experimental, her writing becomes transformative as it explores memories of growing up in a small town, parenting a set of adventurous sons, traveling, and reading. At times her poems act like micro essays, at other times they are miniature memoirs or precise manifestos, and throughout the collection’s exploration of contemporary cities and culture, a tense beauty emerges.
Mary Lee Bragg’s The Landscape That Isn’t There
Mary Lee Bragg grew up in Calgary and now lives in Ottawa. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in literary magazines and ezines in Canada, the United States and Cuba, and in two chapbooks, How Women Work and Winter Music. The Landscape That Isn’t There is her first full-length poetry collection.
The Landscape That Isn’t There takes the reader on a journey through memory and the human heart. In Mary Lee Bragg’s debut collection, the landscape is a web of human relationships, of love and loss. A gripping series records the poet’s experience of awaiting and recovering from open-heart surgery, when the family history comes shatteringly close to home. With characteristic humour, she finds grace and courage to see the joy in an imperfect world.
Rising Tides anthology
FRIDAY, january 31, 2020
catriona sandilands & readers from this anthology
Rising Tides: Reflections for Climate Changing Times (Caitlin Press, 2019) is a collection of short fiction, creative non-fiction, memoir and poetry addressing the past, present and future of climate change. Bringing stories about climate change—both catastrophic and subtle—closer to home, this new anthology inspires reflection, understanding, conversation and action. With more than forty purposefully written pieces, Rising Tides emphasizes the need for intimate stories and thoughtful attention, and also for a view of climate justice that is grounded in ongoing histories of colonialism and other forms of environmental and social devastation. These stories parallel the critical issues facing the planet, and imagine equitable responses for all Canadians, moving beyond denial and apocalypse and toward shared meaning and action. Join the climate conversation with anthology editor Catriona Sandilands for readings and discussion about local climate justice and the larger role of storytelling in responding to the climate emergency.