BACK TO IN-PERSON READINGS!
All in-person PEP events will be taking place at Russell Books, 747 Fort Street in downtown Victoria. Doors open at 7:00pm, event starts at 7:30 and sign up for the open mic is between 7:00–7:20. Masks are encouraged but no longer required; proof of vaccination will still be required until April 8. In person events will be livestreamed HERE (Meeting ID: 494 660 4447 /Passcode: 2129) **please note, livestream begins at approx. 8:00–8:15pm with featured readings**
Planet Earth Poetry gratefully acknowledges all of its supporters.
May 2022
in person
NOTE: Featured reading livestream begins at 7:30, not the usual 8:15
Isabella Wang
Friday, May 6, 2022
Poetic Opener: Sandy O’Reilly
Isabella Wang
Isabella Wang is the author of the chapbook, On Forgetting a Language. Her full-length debut, Pebble Swing, is currently shortlisted for the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. She has been shortlisted for Arc’s Poem of the Year Contest, The Malahat Review’s Far Horizons Contest and Long Poem Contest, and was the youngest writer to be shortlisted twice for The New Quarterly’s Edna Staebler Essay Contest. She is completing a double-major in English and World Literature at SFU. She is also a youth mentor with Vancouver Poetry House, and an Editor at Room magazine.
Pebble Swing earns its title from the image of stones skipping their way across a body of water, or, in the author’s case, syllables and traces of her mother tongue bouncing back at her from the water’s reflective surface. This collection is about language and family histories. It is the author’s attempt to piece together the resonant aftermath of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, which stole the life of her paternal grandmother. As an immigrant whose grasp of Mandarin is fading, Wang explores absences in her caesuras and fragmentation—that which is unspoken, but endures.
Poetic Appetizer
I remember it takes more than one person to remember.
That’s why the word has
member in it—
a vestigial of thought, or a collective
May 6 Poetic Opener
Sandy O’Reilly
Sandy O’Reilly has been involved in the PEP community for the past few years as a member of the BEES and recites her poetry as often as possible on Friday evenings. She has been published in the Pandemic anthology The Sky is Falling The Sky is Falling.
in person
Michelle Poirier Brown’s You Might Be Sorry You Read This
IN PERSON
Terry Ann Carter
IN PERSON
Rhona McAdam’s Larder
friDAY, May 13, 2022
Poetic Opener: Eli Mushumanski
Michelle Poirier Brown
Michelle Poirier Brown is an internationally published poet and performer living on unceded syilx territory in Vernon, BC. She is nêhiýaw-iskwêw and a citizen of the Métis Nation. Her work has appeared in Arc, CV2, The Greensboro Review, Grain, Emrys Journal, Vallum, and several anthologies. www.skyblanket.ca
You Might Be Sorry You Read This reveals how breaking silences and reconciling identity can refine anger into something both useful and beautiful. A poetic memoir that looks unflinchingly at childhood trauma, it also tells the story of coming to terms with a hidden Indigenous identity when the poet discovered her Métis heritage at age 38. This debut collection prioritizes the poet’s story through a journey of pain, belonging, hope, and resilience.
Poetic Appetizers
Helpful to know this: / the trauma / lives in my body / still. / I am susceptible / to shock. / I tremble, / sometimes quite intensely, (from “The Thing About Snow”)
This far from the mainland, / the sky is seamless grey, / the sun orange as a harvest moon. / We breathe air off the ocean, / raise prayers. (from “Smoke”)
Features, her features, are silent. / The portrait says only one thing: / go ahead. look. / Look as long as you like. (From “Self-Portrait of the Poet”)
May 13 Poetic Opener
Eli Mushumanski, Victoria Youth Poet Laureate
Eli Mushumanski is Victoria's tenth Youth Poet Laureate and recently completed a double major in Writing and English with Honours at the University of Victoria. They grew up in Northern British Columbia on the traditional territory of the Saik'uz First Nation but moved down south to escape the snow. During their degree, they acted as fiction editor for UVic's literary journal, This Side of West, as well as senior editor for Her Campus at UVic. Eli has poetry published in The Warren and participated in the City of Victoria's 2021 “Resilient Muse” reading series.
FriDAY, May 20, 2022
Poetic Opener: Michael Boissevain
Terry Ann Carter
Poet and paper artist, Terry Ann Carter is the author of eight collections of long form poetry, two haiku guidebooks, and five haiku chapbooks; she has edited four haiku anthologies. As past president of Haiku Canada, she has given haiku and book arts workshops around the world.
First I Fold the Mountain is a love letter to books: handmade books, books from childhood, the dos a dos book containing poems from a husband and wife, the hanging books in honour of German dada writer and artist, Kurt Schwitters, unwritten books inspired by The Library of Babel by Jorge Luis Borges, and a scroll book composed in the voice of tanka poet Ono no Komachi from the Japanese Heian Court.
Poetic Appetizer
All day I have been in my body.
At night — my skull. The architecture
of my mind is a building of letters.
Flying, lying low, on its side
a V represents a bird.
“The Alphabet of Tarot (from the Diary of Niki de Sainte Phalle)”
May 20 Poetic Opener
Michael Boissevain
Michael Boissevain discovered poetry in his teens (as everyone does), and pursued it by attending the creative program at UVic for a few years in the 70s. After being unfaithful to poetry for many years, while he worked as a truck driver, tugboat deckhand, carpenter, equipment operator, railway conductor, and for the last 30 years as a psychologist, he rediscovered poetry about 10 years ago, and has been absorbed in it since then. He has had the privilege of working with Lorna Crozier and Laura Apol, but no journal publications, books, awards, etc. Just a bunch of poems lying around on his desk.
Friday, May 27, 2022
Poetic Opener: Catherine St. Denis
Rhona McAdam
Rhona McAdam is a poet, holistic nutritionist and food writer living in Victoria. Her books include Cartography and Ex-Ville, both poetry, and Digging the City, an urban agriculture manifesto. Her new collection, Larder, from Caitlin Press, includes poems on bees, bugs and lots of food.
In her 7th poetry collection, Larder, Rhona McAdam navigates the dark places of human movement through the earth and the exquisite intricacies lingering in backyard gardens and farmlands populated by insects and pollinators, all the while returning to the body, to the tune of staccato beats and the newly discovered symmetries within the human heart. Follow Rhona on Facebook.
Poetic Appetizer
Earth called me to its table
and I became its fork, its knife, its
roundest spoon.
(from Tasting Dirt)
May 27 Poetic Opener
Catherine St. Denis
Catherine St. Denis is an emerging writer whose work has been most recently featured in Rattle and The League of Canadian Poets chapbook You are a Flower Growing off the Side of a Cliff. Her writing has been shortlisted for The Fiddlehead’s poetry contest, Event’s creative nonfiction contest, and PRISM’s creative nonfiction contest. She enjoys striking up wild rumpuses in her job as a teacher-librarian.
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. Planet Earth Poetry takes place at Russell Books, 747 Fort St. in downtown Victoria. Doors open at 7:00; sign up for the open mic between 7:00-7:15. The evening begins at 7:30 with an open mic, followed by a featured reader(s). 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.