FEATURED READERS JANUARY  2014

 Upcoming readings

Friday, January 10, 2014

Planet Earth Poetry and The Malahat Review launch A Crystal Through Which Love Passes: Glosas for P. K. Page (BusshekBooks), with readings by:

JOHN BARTON,
YVONNE BLOMER &
SANDY SHREVE

John Barton’s ten books of poetry and six chapbooks include For the Boy with the Eyes of the Virgin: Selected Poems (Nightwood, 2012) and Balletomane: The Program Notes of Lincoln Kirstein (JackPine, 2012). An eleventh collection, Polari, is forthcoming from Goose Lane in 2014. He lives in Victoria, where he edits The Malahat Review.

Yvonne Blomer has published five collections of poetry and co-edited Poems from Planet Earth an anthology out of the Planet Earth Poetry reading series. Her poems appear in Force Field: 77 Women Poets of British Columbia (Mother Tongue Publishing) as well as in A Crystal Though Which Love Passes: Glosas for P.K. Page (Buschek Books). Her work has twice been shortlisted for the CBC Literary Awards and has appeared in The Best Canadian Poetry in English as well as in many anthologies and  literary journals in Canada. Her first book, a broken mirror, fallen leaf was shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. Caged is forthcoming with Palimpsest Press in 2014. Yvonne writes creative nonfiction and teaches poetry and memoir courses through Camosun College and privately.
Yvonne's website

Sandy Shreve’s fifth book of poems, Waiting for the Albatross, is forthcoming from Oolichan Press. Her previous collections include Suddenly, So Much (Exile Editions) and Belonging (Sono Nis Press). Recent work has appeared in her chapbooks, Cedar Cottage Suite (Leaf Press) and Level Crossing (The Alfred Gustav Press).  She co-edited, with Kate Braid, the anthology In Fine Form – The Canadian Book of Form Poetry (Polestar), edited Working For A Living, a collection of poems and stories by women about their work (Room of One’s Own) and founded BC’s Poetry in Transit program. Her work is widely anthologized and has won the Earle Birney Prize for Poetry and been short listed for several other prizes. For more information, visit her website.

Friday, January 17, 2014

JULIE BRUCK &
RHONDA GANZ

Julie Bruck is the author of three collections of poems from Brick Books: Monkey Ranch (2012), The End of Travel, and The Woman Downstairs. Her work also appears in magazines and journals like The New Yorker, Ms,  Ploughshares, The Walrus, The Malahat Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Maisonneuve, Literary Mama, and others, and her poems have been widely anthologized. 

In 2012, she won Canada’s Governor General’s Literary Award for Poetry, one of many awards for her writing.

Montreal-born and raised, Julie has taught at several colleges and universities in Canada. Since 2005, she has taught poetry for The Writing Salon in San Francisco, and tutored students at The University of San Francisco.
Julie's website

Crime fiction, the Food Channel and bad dreams supply an endless source of material for Rhonda Ganz, whose work has appeared in Rattle, The Malahat Review, Rocksalt: An Anthology of Contemporary BC Poetry (Mother Tongue Publishing), on city buses and in the anthologies Poems from Planet Earth (Leaf Press) and Poet to Poet (Guernica). She is featured in Force Field:  77 Women Poets of BC (Mother Tongue Publishing). She writes poems on the spot for people in hotel lobbies, park benches and cemeteries, and takes part in the annual August Postcard Poetry Fest.
Rhonda's website

Friday, January 24, 2014

JEN CURRIN &
RENE SAKLIKAR

Jen Currin was born and raised in Portland, Oregon, and did her schooling at Bard College, Arizona State and Simon Fraser University. Jen lives in Vancouver, BC, where she teaches writing and literature at Vancouver Community College and creative writing at Kwantlen University and for The Writer’s Studio at SFU. Jen has published three books of poetry: The Sleep of Four Cities (Anvil Press); Hagiography (Coach House); and The Inquisition Yours (Coach House), which was shortlisted for the 2011 Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize (BC Book Prizes), the Lambda Literary Award in Poetry, and the Relit Award and won the Audre Lorde Poetry Award.

Educated at the University of British Columbia (B.A., LL.B) and a graduate of SFU’s The Writer’s Studio, Renée Sarojini Saklikar writes thecanadaproject, a life-long poem chronicle. Work from the project appears in newspapers, anthologies, and literary journals including The Vancouver Review, Geist, and Arc Poetry Magazine. Renée’s first book of poetry, children of air india, un/authorized exhibits and interjections, is published by Nightwood Editions (2013) and is the first book length sequence of poems about the bombing of Air India Flight 182 to be published in Canada. Renée serves as a mentor for SFU’s Southbank Writers Program and is the co-founder of a new poetry reading series, Lunch Poems at SFU. Twitter:@reneesarojini 

Friday, January 31, 2014

MELANIE SIEBERT & LAURIE D. GRAHAM

Melanie's Siebert's first book, Deepwater Vee (M&S), was a finalist for Canada's Governor General's Literary Award for poetry. Melanie completed her MFA at the University of Victoria where she received the Lieutenant Governor's Silver Medal for her master's thesis. She has worked as a wilderness guide on rivers in the Northwest Territories, Nunavut, and Alaska including the Nahanni, the Tatshenshini, the Burnside, and the Thelon. Melanie was the writer in residence at the Berton House from April to June 2013.

Laurie D. Graham writes, reviews, edits, and teaches in London, Ontario. Her first book of poetry, Rove, is out now with Hagios Press. She is an editor of Brick magazine and a regular reviewer for the Malahat Review and the Fiddlehead.

Sherwood Park, Alberta, is her home hamlet, and her people come from Derwent, Alberta, by way of Ukraine and Poland, and Semans, Saskatchewan, by way of Scotland and Northern Ireland. She has a second poetry manuscript and a half-novel on the go, and when she's not working on those, she's gardening, riding bikes, and playing accordion.
Laurie's website