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, november 15, 1:30PM: PLANET EARTH POETRY IN JAMES BAY
Join us for our featured reader John Donlan as part of the afternoon reading series at New Horizons in James Bay.
Hosted by Sheila Martindale.
november & december 2019
Sonnet L’Abbe’s Sonnet’s Shakespeare
friDAY, november 1, 2019
sonnet l’abbé & Kayla Czaga
Sonnet L'Abbé is a poet, songwriter and public speaker, and winner of the Bronwen Wallace Award and the bp Nichol Chapbook Award. Their first two poetry collections are A Strange Relief and Killarnoe, and in their most recent book, Sonnet’s Shakespeare, they overwrite all 154 of Shakespeare’s sonnets. Quill and Quire called Sonnet’s Shakespeare “one of the most audacious volumes of poetry to appear in this country.” L'Abbé was the editor of Best Canadian Poetry 2014 and was the 2015 Edna Staebler Writer in Residence at Wilfrid Laurier University. Dr. L'Abbé currently teaches creative writing and English at Vancouver Island University.
Kayla Czaga’s DUNK TANK
Kayla Czaga is the author of For Your Safety Please Hold On, which was nominated for the Governor General's Award For Poetry, the Debut-litzer, and The Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize, and won The Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. Recent poems by her can be found in PRISM international, Rattle, Arc, The Walrus, Forklift, OHIO, and elsewhere. Her second book of poems, DUNK TANK, is published by House of Anansi. She now lives in Victoria.
Vincent Pagé’s This is the Emergency Present
FRIDAY, november 8, 2019
vincent pagé & peter midgley
Vincent Pagé has had work published in Prism, Geist, The Malahat Review, Metatron, Event, The Puritan, and Vallum, among other journals. He was nominated for a National Magazine Award in 2015. He lives in Toronto.
Poems about modern romance by a modern romantic moving through a human landscape that exists both in the past and present, the speaker/speakers in This is the Emergency Present attempt to unearth an understanding about love, romanticism, and connection. Using chemistry and physics, the early works of Pablo Neruda, and the abstract broken language around him, Vincent Pagé attempts to define something tangible about presence and absence. By asking "at what point in a transition/ does one thing become the other thing?" he challenges us to consider what it means to be here, and at what point are we finally there?
"With taut lines, chiseled music, desire, redactions, and lyric intensity, Vincent Pagé brings the heat and light necessary for song to lift and move us." —Peter Gizzi
Peter Midgley’s Let Us Not Think of Them as Barbarians
Peter Midgley is the author of several books of poetry, children’s literature, and plays. He lives in Edmonton. His latest collection of poetry, Unquiet Bones, was shortlisted for the Robert Kroetsch City of Edmonton Book Prize. His play, Barbarians, was first runner-up in the 2017 Toronto Fringe Festival’s New Play competition.
let us not think of them as barbarians is a bold narrative of love, migration, and war. Sensual and intimate, these evocative poems fold into each other to renew and undermine multiple poetic traditions. These poems gradually assemble an ombindi—an ancestral cairn—from a history of violent disruption. Even as the poems look to the past, they push the reader towards a future that is as relevant to contemporary Canada as it is to the Namibian earth that bled them
Joanna Streetly’s This Dark
FRIDAY, november 15, 2019
joanna streetly & john donlan
Joanna Streetly is the inaugural Tofino Poet Laureate and has lived in Clayoquot Sound for 30 years on various islands, remote cabins, boats and floathouses. She is the published author of four books, including Wild Fierce Life: Dangerous Moments on the Outer Coast (memoir) and This Dark (poetry).
“With its gorgeous prose and adept storytelling, Wild Fierce Life captures life on the outer coast in a way that few recent titles have managed—and celebrates how this life can test the limits of who we are and how we understand the world around us. A must-read for all the adventurers among us, armchair and otherwise.”
—Tara Henley, The Vancouver Sun
John Donlan’s Out All Day
John Donlan’s collections of poetry are Domestic Economy, Baysville, Green Man, Spirit Engine, Call Me the Breeze, and Out All Day. He is an editor with Brick Books, and was the 2012–2013 Barbara Moon Editorial Fellow at Massey College, University of Toronto, the 2014–2015 Writer in Residence at Saskatoon Public Library, and the 2016–17 Haig-Brown Writer in Residence in Campbell River.
John Donlan in his sixth collection confronts our inevitable sense of loss and mourning as we live through the sixth extinction of the natural world. Yet always his work reveals the comfort and courage provided by close and loving observation of the processes of life.
“John Donlan has always attended deeply to the natural world. In Out All Day, he probes its heart, the mysterious symbiosis of death and life. The deep and quiet courage of these poems is cause for gratitude and celebration.” —Jan Zwicky
Monica Kidd’s Chance Encounters with Wild Animals
FRIDAY, november 22, 2019
monica kidd & wendy morton
Monica Kidd writes poetry, fiction and non-fiction, with seven books, and poems, essays and articles numbering in the dozens. Her latest poetry collection, Chance Encounters with Wild Animals, was published by Gaspereau Press in 2019. monicakidd.ca
Vintage Wendy Morton
Wendy Morton, recently appointed the poet laureate of Juan de Fuca, has received a number of awards, the latest of which is the Order of British Columbia. She has also been awarded the Meritorious Service Medal from the Governor General of Canada, for her projects Random Acts of Poetry and The Elder Project, which have brought honour to Canada. She will celebrate her birthday by reading poems for the planet, for the earth.
To read pdfs of some of the more than 21 Elder Projects so far, go to theelderproject.com
Susan Glickman’s latest poetry collection, What We Carry
FRIDAY, november 29, 2019
susan glickman & sharon berg
Susan Glickman lives, writes, paints, gardens, and walks the dog in Toronto, where she used to be an English professor, then a creative writing instructor at both Ryerson and the University of Toronto, and now works as a freelance editor. She is the author of seven volumes of poetry, all from Véhicule Press back in her hometown of Montreal, most recently What We Carry (2019). Her literary history, The Picturesque & the Sublime: A Poetics of the Canadian Landscape (McGill-Queen's University Press, 1998) won both the Gabrielle Roy Prize for the best work of English Canadian literary criticism and the Raymond Klibansky Prize for the best work in the Humanities.
Sharon Berg
Sharon Berg writes poetry, story, nonfiction, and book reviews. Her poetry was released through Borealis Press (To a Young Horse, 1979) and Coach House Press (The Body Labyrinth, 1984). She founded and edits the international literary E-Zine Big Pond Rumours E-Zine. She also edits and produces chapbooks for Canadian authors through her Micro Press, Big Pond Rumours Press. Her poetry and stories have appeared in periodicals or anthologies across Canada since the 1970s, and her work has appeared in the USA, Mexico, the UK, the Netherlands, and Australia. In 2017, her chapter, The Name Unspoken: Wandering Spirit Survival School appeared in the textbook, Alternative Schooling: Canadian Stories of Democracy within Bureaucracy. She is currently working on arrangements for her 3rd book of poetry. She’s also working on a novel and recently began to explore haiku as a fresh form for her poetry.
Lorna Crozier’s most recent book of poetry
FRIDAY, december 6, 2019
lorna crozier
An Officer of the Order of Canada, Lorna Crozier has been acknowledged for her contributions to Canadian literature, her teaching and her mentoring with five honourary doctorates, most recently from McGill and Simon Fraser Universities. Her books have received numerous national awards, including the Governor-General’s Award for Poetry. The Globe and Mail declared The Book of Marvels: A Compendium of Everyday Things one of its Top 100 Books of the Year, and Amazon chose her memoir as one of the 100 books you should read in your lifetime. A Professor Emerita at the University of Victoria, she has performed for Queen Elizabeth II and has read her poetry, which has been translated into several languages, on every continent except Antarctica. Her book, What the Soul Doesn't Want, was nominated for the 2017 Governor General's Award for Poetry. In 2018, Lorna Crozier received the George Woodcock Lifetime Achievement Award. She lives on Vancouver Island.