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 7:30 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 7 and 7:15, put your name in the hat to read at open mic.

FRIDAY, february 3, 2017

amber mcmillan &
melanie siebert 

Amber McMillan is the author of The Woods: A Year on Protection Island (2016) and the poetry collection We Can’t Ever Do This Again (2015). Her work has appeared in Arc Poetry Magazine, PRISM International, Best Canadian Poetry, The Walrus and others across North America. She lives and works on BC’s Sunshine Coast.

Melanie Siebert’s  first book Deepwater Vee was shortlisted for the Governor General's Award for English language poetry at the 2010 Governor General's Awards. She is well known as a backcountry guide in Northern Canada and has been awarded the prestigious Berton House Residency, located in Pierre Berton's childhood home in Dawson City, Yukon.

FRIDAY, february 10, 2017

gisela ruebsaat &
miranda pearson

Gisela Ruebsaat lives in Victoria BC. Her poems have been anthologized and have appeared in both literary and academic journals and in chapbooks edited by Patrick Lane. Heart Mechanic is her debut collection. 

Gisela’s work explores personal and collective histories, asks how these narratives shape both our professional and lyrical voices. Gisela, a former lawyer, has worked in a variety of jobs in the justice system including speechwriter for Justice Ministers and as Legal Analyst for a feminist advocacy organization: the Ending Violence Association. The poems in Heart Mechanic explore the roots of voice: the strains we hear in the chambers of the heart, in the families that house us, and in the body with all its glory and decay.

Miranda Pearson’s latest poetry collection is titled The Fire Extinguisher (Oolichan Books 2015). The Fire Extinguisher was a finalist for the 2016 Dorothy Livesay Prize. Previous collections include: Prime, The Aviary and Harbour. Miranda lives in Vancouver.

The Fire Extinguisher is threaded through with natural imagery—fire, the sea, animals and plants—alongside many references to visual art. These poems ask brave and difficult questions: how do we find a balancing place between peril and safety, can we endeavour to live in the contemporary world with compassion and hope, how do we live with uncertainty?

FRIDAY, february 17, 2017

bren simmers &
d.n. simmers

Bren Simmers is the author of two books of poetry: Night Gears (Wolsak and Wynn, 2010) and Hastings-Sunrise (Nightwood Editions, 2015), which was a finalist for the City of Vancouver Book Award. Her latest project is a collaborative art show called Narratives of the Lost that uses photographs, drawings, and poems of lost objects to create conversation about changing community identity in Squamish. She recently relocated from the Sea-to-Sky region to Harrison, where she is the 2016-2017 Writer in Residence at the Ranger Station Art Gallery.

d.n. simmers is an online special editor with Fine Lines. He is in seven current anthologies. He is on line in the new riverbabble and is in the chapbook Menu launched this past summer.

He is a graduate of the Writers Studio with a two year creative writing certificate (2015). He has won first place in the California State Poetry Society Monthly contest, second prize in Philadelphia Poets’ John and Rose Petracca’s Award. Second prize in the Poetry Society of New Hampshire’s members contest and a recent third place prize. He has six published chapbooks and various reviews of them.

His current book of poems, Red School Bus, is out in the Wallace Stevens book award, as is a new chapbook in contests. He has been published internationally in Poetry Salzburg, Orizonty Litetrar Contemporan and translated into Bulgarian and Spanish. He was in the international anthology Van Gogh's Ear, Paris, France.   

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 2017

alice major &
alison calder

Alice Major emigrated from Scotland at the age of eight, and grew up in Toronto before coming west to work as a weekly newspaper reporter in central BC. She has lived in Edmonton since 1981. 

She has published 10 collections of poetry, a book of essays (Intersecting Sets: A Poet Looks at Science) and two novels for young readers. Her work has appeared in dozens of literary magazines and other publications, as well as more than 20 anthologies, and she has read her work across Canada and the U.K. as well as in Australia.

Her latest book, Standard Candles, received the Robert Kroetsch Award for Poetry (Book Publishers Association of Alberta), and was shortlisted for the Raymond Souster Award (League of Canadian Poets) and the Stephan G. Stephansson Award (Writers Guild of Alberta.)

Alison Calder’s third poetry collection, Connectomics: Poems of the Brain has just been published by the UK’s IRON Press. Originally from Saskatoon, she now lives in Winnipeg, where she teaches at the University of Manitoba.

Connectomics is the neuroscientific field concerned with mapping the brain. In Connectomics: Poems of the Brain, Alison Calder muses on the possibility and implications of a transparent brain, focusing on the inextricable bonds between language, identity, and metaphor. Moving between the clinical precision of the lab and the jumble of lived experience, these poems turn the microscope upon the viewer and assert the importance of emotion in the face of a demand for scientific rationality.