november 11
kevin andrew heslop

Kevin Andrew Heslop is the author of there is no minor violence just as there is no negligible cough during an aria (Frog Hollow Press), Human Beings Have Met to Suture the Wounds the Railroads Have Made Across This Country (Anstruther Press), and the forthcoming everything sfumato (Knife | Fork | Book).  

“Read with admiration” by Nobel Prize-winner J.M. Coetzee and hailed as “among the most promising poetic projects to come out of Canada in recent years” (Jim Johnstone) “no poet, no lover of poetry, should be without” (Arleen Paré), Kevin Andrew Heslop's the correct fury of your why is a mountain nods to its author’s training as an actor, combining a command of language, form, character, and polyphony to make something performatively unique. 

Poetic Appetizer
Poetry is philosophy in evening-wear.

[…]

And amid the old blear slant of light angling through the window at dawn, I learned that the impulse to apply deodorant is a will to alienation even as the cosmic stupor of lit dust churning by the sill takes it upon itself to tell us what we’re meant to do to be together here and we—desperate for but oblivious to the how of it—smeat that wet duck’s feather-tuft of hair with incorporated scent.

kevinandrewheslop.com

novemBER 18
daniel g scott — sponsored by anonymous

Daniel G Scott has recently published Travels with Athóma (2022), Aftertime (2019), Voicing Suicide (2020), an edited anthology of suicide poems, [klee-shays] undone, volume one (2020). He has also published four books of poetry, three chapbooks and individual poems in journals, anthologies and chapbooks. He is past Artistic Director of Planet Earth Poetry and producer for Poets Caravan.

Travels with Athóma, a long poem in titled sections, is a fictional memoire in verse. The narrator recounts his boyhood experiences with Athóma, a woman in their village who instructs him in the use of herbs, and through her songs, guides his spirit into trees, birds, insects, animals, stone and out of time. He learns to see the world from the perspective of the other creatures in it, discovering how alive the world is.

Poetic appetizer
It is all I remember now:
the moment the earth fell away,
the sweetness of the air
and how different a forest looks
from above,
so clear. Eagle eyes
and the quiet of the wind
against my face.

november 18
Poetic Opener – sandy o’reilly

 Sandy O’Reilly has been involved in the PEP community for the past few years as a member of the Planet Earth Poetry BEES and recites her poetry as often as possible on Friday evenings. She has been published din the Pandemic anthology The Sky is Falling The Sky is Falling.

november 25
Manahil Bandukwala — funded by the League of canadian poets

Manahil Bandukwala is a writer and visual artist. She works as Coordinating Editor for Arc Poetry Magazine, and is Digital Content Editor for Canthius. She is a member of Ottawa-based collaborative writing group VII. Her debut poetry collection is MONUMENT (Brick Books). See her work at manahilbandukwala.com.

MONUMENT is a conversation with Mughal Empress Mumtaz Mahal, which moves her legacy beyond the Taj Mahal. MONUMENT upturns notions of love, monumentalisation, and empire by exploring buried facets of Mumtaz Mahal’s story. The collection layers linear time and geographical space to chart the continuing presence of historical legacies. It considers what alternate futures could have been possible. Who are we when we continue to make the same mistakes? Beyond distance, time, and boundaries, what do we still carry?

Poetic appetizer
If love is an empire, 
reel conquest back in. The land
was someone’s before, and before
it was owned, land was love.

november 25
poetic opener – miranda pearson

Miranda Pearson is the author of five books of poetry: Rail, The Fire Extinguisher, Harbour, The Aviary and Prime. The Aviary won the Alfred G.Bailey prize,  Harbour and The Fire Extinguisher were finalists for the BC Book Prize. Since completing a Masters of Fine Art at the University of British Columbia, where she was the Poetry Editor for Prism International, Miranda has taught at UBC and Simon Fraser University. Miranda currently lives between the UK and Vancouver and is working on a new poetry collection, and is an editor at Taproot Press. Her most recent book is Rail, published in October 2019 by McGill-Queen's University Press.  www.mirandapearsonpoetry.com

december 2
Yvonne Blomer

In Book of Places, Yvonne Blomer invites us along for a journey spanning across decades and countries. From a solitary traffic controller on a lonely Nevada highway, to the quizzical regulars of a dodgy pub in the UK, we follow Blomer’s meandering path through poetic snapshots of the figures and sights that populate it. This updated 10th anniversary edition also features an expanded collection of poems, integrating suites of meditations on childhood, and more recent poems reflecting on the ever-developing journey of life. The Book of Places invites us along for a grand adventure, but always leads us home. (from Palimpsest website)

Yvonne Blomer is an award-winning poet and author of the critically acclaimed travel memoir Sugar Ride: Cycling from Hanoi to Kuala Lumpur. Her most recent books of poetry are The Last Show on Earth, As if a Raven and the anthologies Refugium: Poems for the Pacific and Sweet Water: Poems for the Watersheds, published by Caitlin Press. Yvonne served as the city of Victoria’s poet laureate from 2015 to 2018. She lives, works, and raises her family on the traditional territories of the WSÁNEĆ (Saanich), Lkwungen (Songhees), Wyomilth (Esquimalt) peoples of the Coast Salish Nation.

Poetic appetizer:
From “Love Poem”

I love you the way
love loves an Elephant
in her leathered, greyed,
her painted toes, her enormity.

The way China does Asia,
sometimes murderously.

december 2
poetic opener – Laurence hutchman

Laurence Hutchman was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and grew up in Toronto. He received a PhD from the Université de Montreal and has taught at several universities. For twenty-three years he was a professor of English literature at the Université de Moncton at the Edmundston Campus. Hutchman has published 12 books of poetry, co-edited the anthology Coastlines: the Poetry of Atlantic Canada and edited two volumes of In the Writers’ Words. 

His poetry has received many grants and awards, including the Alden Nowlan Award for Excellence and has been translated into numerous languages. In 2017 he was named poet laureate of Emery, north Toronto. He lives with his wife, the artist and poet Eva Kolacz in Victoria, British Columbia.