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friDAY, January 14, 2022

Poetic Opener: Sharon Lee

Geoff Inverarity

Geoff Inverarity lives with his partner on Galiano Island. He’s produced and written award-winning short films, taught literature and Creative Writing at UBC, and has also won awards for his screenplays, poetry, and non-fiction prose. He’s a frequent contributor to Geist and is the Director of the Galiano Island Literary Festival.

In this debut collection Inverarity writes of broken things, things that have come apart at the seams, things that ought not to but sometimes do dissolve with time: friendships, relationships, promises, aging parents, hearts, bodies, love, and even time itself. But it’s not all shattered dreams and sad-luck stories here, there is hope and optimism too — in the future, in the Now, and in the heat and power of the coming generations. 

Poetic Appetizer

The Codgers’ Lament 
(first three lines)

We have seen the typeface shrink,

the printed page recede, shivered,

and waited for blood work.

January 14 Poetic Opener

Sharon Sunhye Lee resides in Victoria, British Columbia, where she enjoys writing poetry and essays, teaching, making ceramics, rollerblading, and exploring nature on Vancouver Island. Her writing is inspired by vivid memories, emotion-rich moments, and experiences of beauty, wonder, and concern. She is the author of two poetry and photography books entitled Detours: Adventures Abroad and Reflections at Silver Lake. Sharon is currently working on a book of narrative essays and poems. 

friDAY, January 21, 2022

Poetic Opener: Christine Walde

John swanson

John Swanson has worked in gas stations, driven a taxi, taught vocational courses and been an analyst and management consultant. He is a member of the Close To Home Photography Salon based in New York City. He gratefully acknowledges living on the traditional, ancestral and unceded territory of the Squamish, Tsleil-Waututh and Musqueam Nations, where he lives, writes and wanders the streets in East Vancouver.

an almost hand, beckoning is a book of poetry and street photography from Vancouver and Paris. 

Its themes are varied: meditative poems filled with gratitude, poems of experience and memory of childhood, dark poems of war and family dysfunction, and love poems taken mostly from a still-growing 50+ year relationship. 

Poetic Appetizer
from “Woman and Tree”

Young woman presses body against tree

cheek resting on the face-like features of the bark

......

How lovely the two species

hugging in the morning sun.

January 21 Poetic Opener

Christine Walde is an artist, poet, and librarian whose work combines library and archival research with interests in experimental prose, poetry, visual poetry, performance, and the visual arts. Her work has been published in print and online journals in Canada, the US, the UK and Germany.

friDAY, January 28, 2022

Poetic Opener: Nancy Issenman

Gary Geddes

Gary Geddes has written and edited more than fifty books of poetry, fiction, drama, non-fiction, criticism and anthologies and been the recipient of at least a dozen literary awards, including the Commonwealth Poetry Prize (Americas Region), National Magazine Gold Award and the Gabriela Mistral Prize from the government of Chile.

The four poetic narratives in The Ventriloquist celebrate the successful marriage of story and song, taking their cue from the wise words of an ancient Chinese scribe: “Sing as if narrating; narrate as if singing.” They range from the first empire of China to the Spanish Conquest of the Americas to the battlefields and POW camps of Hong Kong during World War II to Canada’s House of Commons, where Paul Joseph Chartier died when the bomb he was carrying exploded.

Poetic Appetizer

He might have stopped my war against the past, 

but I saw to the depths of his and all men’s hearts, 

where artist lies down, at last, with bureaucrat.

January 28 Poetic Opener

Nancy Issenman has retirement to thank for re-energizing her love of reading and writing poetry. She has published a chapbook of her poems, The Name Of Yes, and her poems have appeared in various chapbooks and other publications including the anthology The Sky is Falling, The Sky is Falling and Island Writers Magazine.