planet earth poetry is online on friday nights. Click Here to Register.
We are excited to bring our poetry community together online. Each week, the Planet Earth Poetry newsletter will include a link to the Zoom reading scheduled for Friday nights at 7:15, with open mic and the featured reader starting at 7:30. If you aren’t already signed up to get our weekly news, click here to ask to be added to the email list. Scroll down or check out our Facebook page for what’s coming up.
to sign up for open mic, visit this link between tuesday and Friday noon.
Planet Earth Poetry gratefully acknowledges all of its supporters.
online readings in May & June 2021
open mic as usual — click here between tuesday and Friday noon to sign up
Arleen Paré’s First
Vanessa Shields’ thimbles
Kamal Parmar’s Still Waters
Essential Tremor by Barbara Nickel
Louise Bernice Halfe
friDAY, may 7, 2021
arleen parÉ & beth kope
First is an intriguing Gertrude Stein / Nancy Drew mystery," writes Fred Wah, which documents the search for a long-lost first best friend. "It revolves around firsts, especially a first friend," writes Lorna Crozier.
Arleen Paré is a Victoria writer with seven collections of poetry and a new chapbook to be released in July, 2021. She has been short-listed for the BC Dorothy Livesay BC Award for Poetry and has won a Golden Crown Award for Lesbian Poetry, a Victoria Butler Book Prize, a CBC Bookie Award, and the Governor Generals’ Award for Poetry.
Beth Kope’s Atlas of Roots
Beth Kope lived in Alberta, Quebec and Australia and now calls Victoria home, territory of Lekwungen and W̱SÁNEĆ peoples. She has three books of poetry; Falling Season, Average Height of Flight and Atlas of Roots, Caitlin Press. Her poems are in the following anthologies; Voicing Suicide, Refugium and Sweet Water. She hosts the popular Forest Poet-tree event at Victoria Festival of Authors with Yvonne Blomer.
Atlas of Roots delves into questions of belonging, identity and family through the many facets of adoption. These brave, tough poems witness and question, bringing readers on her quest as she uncovers her family history. Through weaving the fictional, the known, and sharing voices of other adoptees and parents of relinquished and adopted children, Atlas moves beyond the personal to the archetypes of our own search for identity.
friDAY, may 14, 2021
vanessa shields
In this heart-wrenching collection, Vanessa Shields chronicles the life of her Nonna, Maria, from her origins as a seamstress in Italy to her eventual death from dementia. These raw, prosaic poems thread grief, memory, loss, and love together into a conversation that speaks across years and oceans. Shields bravely interrogates her feelings of guilt, grief, and curiosity with unflinching precision. As she navigates and accepts Nonna’s decline, Shields takes on the role of witness by excavating the larger narrative that is her Nonna’s legacy. Thimbles is a courageous celebration of the transformative power of love across generations.
Vanessa owns Gertrude’s Writing Room –A Gathering Place for Writers. You can find her mentoring, editing, teaching and writing at Gertrude’s or having a dance party in her kitchen with her handsome husband, two amazing kids, and two golden retrievers. Visit her website: www.vanessashields.com
Vanessa Shields
friDAY, may 21, 2021
kamal parmar, jude neale & kieran egan
Kamal Parmar has been passionately involved in writing since high school and University years. Her genre is poetry and creative non-fiction. Her poems are simple, though poised and evocative enough to set the reader thinking. She has a few books published in UK, Canada and India and many publications in reputed US and Canadian literary journals and anthologies. Her writings have won many honorable mentions and prizes.
Kamal has been a member of a several writers' organizations and Writers’ Guilds. She was an active member of Saskatchewan Writers Guild for many years and was a voluntary peer reviewer with the Manitoba Writers organization. Currently, she is an Associate member of the League of Canadian Poets and a Board member of the Federation of BC writers. She is also a member of Haiku Canada and of The Writers Union of Canada, with whom she is a voluntary peer reviewer, screening poetry manuscripts for self-published writers.
Jude Neale’s The River Answers
Jude Neale is a Canadian poet, flash fiction writer, opera singer, retired master teacher, spoken word performer, editor and mentor. She has been shortlisted, highly commended and finalist for many international and national competitions, including the Gregory O’Donoghue Prize (Ireland), The Poetic Republic Award (UK), The SPM book prize and publication (UK),The Wentlock Poetry Prize (UK), and a finalist for the Pat Lowther Award (CA). Jude has written nine books. Her most recent is The River Answers with Ekstasis Editions.
Her forthcoming book, Inside the Pearl (Guernica Editions), will be out in September 2021.
The River Answers contains love songs to strangers and anthems for the earth. It is a telling of my story as mother, lover, grandmother, friend, and feminist.
I try in each poem, to write so my reader can be surprised, illuminated, and ultimately, bear witness to my journey.
Kieran Egan’s Amplified Silence
Kieran Egan lives in Vancouver, BC. His first book, Amplified Silence, was published by Silver Bow Publishing in 2021. His chapbook, “Among the branches,” was published by Alfred Gustav Press in 2019. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in many Canadian, US, and UK magazines.
Kieran Egan’s first book of poetry, Amplified Silence, evokes the lives of children and animals, time passing in the natural world and the worlds of imagination, and the poignancy of human relationships. The poems are rich in humour, alert to changing times and circumstances, and the mysteries that lie behind our everyday experience.
friDAY, may 28, 2021
barbara nickel
Essential Tremor is Barbara Nickel’s third collection of poetry. Her first, The Gladys Elegies, won the Pat Lowther Award. Her work has appeared in The Walrus and Poetry Ireland Review, and is forthcoming in Best Canadian Poetry 2021. Barbara is also an award-winning author of books for young people.
Taking the name of a nervous system disorder that causes involuntary shaking, Essential Tremor undertakes an exploration of the body that holds disruption at its heart. These poems attend to many bodies—the body of the world, changing, unreachable, at times momentarily illumined; the human body, loved, ill, mourning, passing or passed from this world; and the divine body, questioned, encountered and not, sought by people from the margins in the body of a biblical palimpsest.
Barbara Nickel
friDAY, june 4, 2021
louise bernice halfe & James summer
City of Victoria Poet Laureate John Barton will host the evening.
Louise Halfe, Sky Dancer, was born in Two Hills, Alberta. She was raised on the Saddle Lake First Nation and attended Blue Quills Residential School.
Her books of poetry include Bear Bones and Feathers, Blue Marrow, The Crooked Good, and Burning in This Midnight Dream. They have won and been finalists for major national and provincial awards.
In her latest book awâsis – kinky and dishevelled “A gender-fluid trickster character leaps from Cree stories to inhabit this raucous and rebellious new work. There are no pronouns in Cree for gender; awâsis (which means illuminated child) reveals herself through shapeshifting, adopting different genders, exploring the English language with merriment, and sharing his journey of mishaps with humour mystery, and spirituality. Opening with a joyful and intimate Foreword from Elder Maria Campbell, awâsis – kinky and dishevelled is a force of Indigenous resurgence, resistance, and soul-healing laughter.”
Victoria Youth Poet Laureate James Summer
From the City of Victoria website:
James Summer began writing poetry in his junior year of high school when he joined Vic High School’s slam poetry club. Over the years he participated and competed in Vic Voices, Hullabaloo and various open mics, becoming president of the club in his senior year.
As the next Youth Poet Laureate, he hopes to connect with other youth in Victoria and share his love of poetry. He finds that poetry is a medium that can express growth, pain and love through self-expression in a safe space, and wants to be able to help create that safe space for others.
“Poetry has helped me cope with feelings of loneliness and memories of a bittersweet childhood,” said James Summer. “As a transgender individual and as Youth Poet Laureate, I hope that I can bring awareness about the topic of being transgender and to have important conversations about stigma and labels.”
POETS CARAVAN
We are excited to launch our latest project to share poetry!
The Planet Earth Poetry Poets Caravan highlights the rich cultural landscape of the CRD, with readings from poets in all of its nine regions. Each poet is represented by a pin on Google Earth of a spot meaningful to them in the CRD – somewhere they like to do their writing or find particularly inspiring.
CLICK HERE to go to google earth & watch our poets.
(Be patient, the program needs a bit of time to load in your browser.)
Do you want to put your poetry on the map?
We are now accepting applications for the Poets Caravan. Thanks to funding from the BC Arts Council and the City of Victoria, we can now film more poets in Victoria as well as further afield on Vancouver Island. Click here to fill out an application. PEP welcomes applications from poets who may face structural barriers to reaching some of the milestones in our general requirements, and encourages poets of colour, Indigenous poets, LGBTQIA+ poets, and poets living with disabilities to apply regardless of experience-level. If you or someone you know wishes to apply and is unable to fill out the form due to a print disability or lack of computer access, please feel free to get in touch with us directly by email. Click here.
The Poets Caravan is accessible to audiences both in the CRD and worldwide. This interactive experience will be available over time and provides a way for poets and poetry to reach a wide audience in this time when in-person reading events aren’t possible. Digital projects come with accessibility challenges for those who may not have access to a computer or have disabilities which stop them from using the selected platform. We have made the videos and text available for download separately on request. Please email Planet Earth Poetry if you’d like this option.
Thank you to the CRD Arts and Culture Support Fund, the BC Arts Council and the City of Victoria for their support and funding of the Poets Caravan. Thanks to videographer Lorraine Scollan for capturing each poet's unique voice with care and enthusiasm!
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 currently a digital reading series. 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.