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, september 20, 1:30PM: PLANET EARTH POETRY IN JAMES BAY
Join us for featured reader Katherin Edwards as part of the afternoon reading series at New Horizons in James Bay.
Hosted by Sheila Martindale.
september 2019
We launch our 24th season!
FRIDAY, september 6, 2019
opening night fundraiser!
All open mic!
Books for sale!
For a good cause!
Season 24 begins on September 6th with our annual charity fundraiser. In response to the call for reconciliation, this year we are shifting to a new charity – The First Nations Education Foundation, a non-profit working with First Nations governments to support Indigenous language revitalization programs. They are planning to raise a totem pole carved from an 800-year old cedar that was felled by wind near Port Alberni. The pole is to be raised at UVic in honour of their work with language revitalization programs. We will be donating the proceeds of the evening to the “Raise the Pole” initiative.
We will have poetry books for sale - $5 a book. It is an all open mic evening, but the catch is you need to read a poem written by someone other than you. A classic, a favourite, a voice new to our audience – just not your own. Bring your chosen poem. Bring some extra cash or a cheque book and join us at Hillside Coffee and Tea
7:15 start
Brian Henderson’s Unidentified Poetic Object
FRIDAY, september 13, 2019
brian henderson & john reibetanz
Brian Henderson is the author of 12 collections including the GG finalist, Nerve Language, and Sharawadji, a finalist for the Canadian Authors Association Poetry Award. His deck of visual poetry, The Alphamiricon, is online at UbuWeb.
He was Director at WLU Press for 17 years until his recent retirement.
In Unidentified Poetic Object words open surprising ephemeral hybridities; things elide, interpenetrate, and in those material interactions there emerges a resonant attention and a politic of tenderness.
“Prismatic, at times apocalyptic, always sharp, Unidentified Poetic Object ranges through physics, visual art, philosophy, history, and more, probing locales where worlds slip into other worlds. … and evokes deconstructed landscapes that expose the ruptures caused by settler colonialism. Laced with wit and a voracious mind, these poems are ‘unsettling’ in the best possible sense.”
—Jeanette Lynes
John Reibetanz’s By Hand
John Reibetanz’s poems have appeared in such magazines as Poetry (Chicago), The Paris Review, The Walrus, and Canadian Literature. A finalist for the National Magazine Awards, the National Poetry Competition, and the ReLit Award, John has given readings in major cities all across Canada and lives in Toronto. The Essential John Reibetanz was published by The Porcupine’s Quill in 2017.
John Reibetanz’s twelfth collection, By Hand, begins with an epigraph from Lewis Mumford: “Until modern times, apart from the esoteric knowledge of the priests, philosophers, and astronomers, the greater part of human thought and imagination flowed through the hands.” Reibetanz’s new poems investigate human creativity as a visceral interaction with the world: our imagining hands finding the music implicit in the stuff of earth, a “duet// of earthbound songsters,” of mind and material, each shaping the other.
Katherine Edwards’ A Thin Band
FRIDAY, september 20, 2019
katherin edwards & heidi greco
Katherin Edwards lives in Kamloops and holds an MFA in writing from UBC. Her poetry has been published in The Malahat Review, The New Quarterly, and Arc Poetry Magazine. A two-time winner of the Eden Mills Poetry Contest, her poetry collection, A Thin Band, was published by Radiant Press in 2018.
A Thin Band examines the fine line between what we remember and forget; how the memories we retain become cloudy and altered by the passage of time. This book of poems is also a compilation of the wonder and surprise we discover, when we manage to endure in the midst of grief and loss.
Heidi Greco (photo: George Omorean)
Heidi Greco is a longtime resident of Surrey, a town that, thanks to traffic, keeps getting farther from downtown Vancouver. Her most recent book is Practical Anxiety, a collection of poems from Toronto's Inanna Publications. More info can be found at her website: heidigreco.ca
Fiona Tinwei Lam
FRIDAY, september 27, 2019
fiona tinwei lam & frank wilson
Fiona Tinwei Lam is launching her third book of poetry, Odes & Laments. Her prose and poetry appear in over 33 anthologies, including The Best of the Best Canadian Poetry in English. Her video poems have been screened at festivals locally and internationally. She teaches at SFU Continuing Studies. fionalam.net
“Fiona Tinwei Lam’s Odes & Laments is a collection of poems that speak with lyrical eloquence of the beauty of a world under threat. A wry wit weaves itself through this collection, leavening the poems of lament with poems of praise, sometimes surprising the reader with exuberant forays across the page in the form of concrete poems. But even in the playful moments there is seriousness, and even in the laments there is the deep consolation of a focussed and intelligent attention. ‘As the world smoulders,’ writes Lam, ‘let each poem be/a fallen tree’s tongue.’ As the world transforms, these odes and laments in their concentrated attentiveness are love songs to the fragile, ordinary, vanishing objects and beings of this fraught time.”
—Rachel Rose
“The poems in Fiona Tinwei Lam’s latest collection, Odes & Laments, are both sharp and rich, brimming with insight and optimism. While the collection spans the spectrum from the lyric to the concrete, these poems always seem to cohere, always find a place, always intertwine and interconnect. Odes & Laments is an excellent book! And one that I am excited to return to again and again.”
—Jordan Abel
Frank Wilson’s Crows in the Apple Tree
Currently working on his third book of creative non-fiction, Frank Wilson finds as always that the poems keep on getting in the way.
His collection of poems, Chasing Crows, was published in Victoria in 2013 and reprinted in 2015. A further poetry collection, Apple Man, followed in 2016. Crows in the Apple Tree was published in June 2019.