It’s time to vote for your favourite poems in the Planet Earth Poetry Pandemic Poems Contest!
We’ve had such an enthusiastic response over the past 7 weeks that we’ve had to figure out how to present the more than 100 poems we’ve received.
Click here to be taken to a separate site where you will find pdfs of the poems, divided into weeks, ready for you to read in Google docs or to download and read on your device. You’ll also find instructions on where to email your list of favourite poems. Enjoy!
readings are cancelled until further notice
In the meantime, we are holding a Digital Open Mic. CLICK HERE.
AND a Pandemic Poetry Contest. CLICK HERE.
Planet Earth Poetry is pleased to announce that, through a generous gift from Lorna Crozier, we have two sets of numbered limited edition prints of Patrick Lane’s original work from the early 1980s that we will be offering for sale as of March 15, 2020.
Prints are $250 each, payable to Planet Earth Poetry. Shipping costs will be the responsibility of the purchaser. The prints are unframed (protected by a plastic sleeve) and are 15 x 22 inches. Order and pay by e-transfer in an email to Planet Earth Poetry. Please indicate which print or prints you wish to purchase in the email body and use the subject line Lane Prints.
All proceeds from this sale will go toward the on-going work of Planet Earth Poetry.
Thanks to DC Reid for the images of the prints that are posted.
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.
Planet Earth Poetry gratefully acknowledges all of its supporters.
FRIDAY, march 20, 1:30PM: PLANET EARTH POETRY IN JAMES BAY
Join us for our featured reader, Maureen Hynes, as part of the afternoon reading series at New Horizons in James Bay.
Hosted by Sheila Martindale.
Judith Castle’s Women Loving Women
friDAY, march 6, 2020
judith castle & diana Hayes
Judith Castle lived in Montreal for many years where she taught Humanities at Collège LaSalle and Social Psychology at Concordia University, Continuing Education.
Judith's poetry has been published in The Fiddlehead, The Antigonish Review. Event, Island Writer Magazine, and in various anthologies
Her art photographs have been exhibited at Galerie Luz and Galerie Nota Bene, Montreal.
She has published four volumes of poetry: Flare Path (2012), What Remains (2014), Now I Lay Me Down (2015) and Surface Tension (2016). Women Loving Women(2019) is her fifth book.
Diana Hayes’ Labyrinth of Green
Diana Hayes is a poet and photographer living on Salt Spring Island. She has published six books, her most recent being This is the Moon’s Work: New and Selected Poems, and her poetry has been included in the anthologies RockSalt, an Anthology of Contemporary BC Poetry (Mother Tongue Publishing, 2008), 111 West Coast Literary Portraits (MTP 2012), Force Field, 77 Women Poets of British Columbia (edited by Susan Musgrave, MTP, 2013), Love of the Salish Sea Islands (MTP 2019) and Sweet Water: Poems for the Watersheds (Caitlin Press, 2020).
Labyrinth of Green is a stunning new collection of poems and photographs that will remind you of the special places in the world that speak directly to your soul and nourish you with their mystery and their silence. It represents the expansion of Hayes’s poetic vision into the realm of photographic dreamscapes and narratives. Organized into five thematic sections—nature, youth, ancestry, loss, and reawakening—this book not only offers wisdom, peace, and reflection to readers of any age, but it also reminds us of how pleasurable and freeing it can be to escape and lose ourselves in a labyrinth of powerful words and images.
FRIDAY, march 13, 2020
three sages: Tess Gallagher, lorna crozier & Marlene cookshaw
Tess Gallagher (photo: Morella Muñoz-Tebar)
Tess Gallagher is the author of eleven books of poetry, including Midnight Lantern: New and Selected Poems, Dear Ghosts, and Moon Crossing Bridge. Gallagher spends time in county Sligo, Ireland, and also in her hometown of Port Angeles, Washington.
Tess Gallagher’s Is, Is Not reverberates with the inward clarity of a bell struck on a mountaintop and hovers daringly at the threshold of what language can deliver.
Lorna Crozier’s The House the Spirit Builds
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. In 2018, Lorna Crozier received the George Woodcock Lifetime Achievement Award. She lives on Vancouver Island.
Marlene Cookshaw’s Mowing
Born and raised in Lethbridge, Alberta, Marlene Cookshaw studied writing at the University of Victoria and later worked for several years as the editor of The Malahat Review. Her poems have won several awards, among them the Ralph Gustafson Poetry Prize and Robinson Jeffers Tor House Prize. She has published five previous collections with Brick Books, including Shameless (2002) and Lunar Drift (2005) and in 2008 was presented with the Victor Martyn Lynch-Staunton Award for outstanding achievement in mid-career. She lives on a small farm on Pender Island, one of BC’s southern Gulf Islands. Mowing is Marlene’s sixth poetry collection.
Maureen Hynes’ Sotto Voce
friday, march 20, 2020
maureen hynes & alan briesmaster
Maureen Hynes’s first book of poetry, Rough Skin, published by Wolsak and Wynn (Toronto, Ont), won the League of Canadian Poets’ Gerald Lampert Award for best first book of poetry by a Canadian. Her second collection, Harm’s Way, was published by Brick Books (London, Ont), followed by Marrow, Willow in 2011 from Pedlar Press, and, also from Pedlar Press, her fourth book of poetry, The Poison Colour, in fall, 2015. In 2016, The Poison Colour was a finalist for two national poetry awards given out by the League of Canadian Poets: the Pat Lowther Award and the Raymond Souster Award.
Alan Briesmaster’s River Neither
Allan Briesmaster is a poet, publisher and freelance editor. His poems have appeared in many journals and anthologies, and he has given readings and talks and led workshops in venues across Canada. His most recent books are Against the Flight of Spring (2013) and River Neither (2015).
John Swanson’s an almost hand, beckoning
FRIDAY, march 27, 2020
john swanson & terence young
John Swanson graduated from UBC with a degree in English. His poems have appeared in the Titmouse Review, The Maynard and The Ekphrastic Review. He is the author of an almost hand, beckoning, poetry and street photography from Vancouver and Paris, published this September by Blurb Books, San Francisco. He attended the Writing with Style program at the Banff Centre, poetry workshops at UBC and SFU and photography workshops at Langara College and Vancouver Photo Workshops. He lives, writes and wanders the streets in East Vancouver.
Terence Young
Terence Young lives in Victoria, BC. His poems and stories have appeared in literary journals across Canada, as well as in England and the US. His third collection of poetry, Smithereens, is forthcoming from Harbour Publishing in 2021.