planet earth poetry is back — Live and in person at russell books!
Welcome back to in-person PEP readings! We will be meeting on Friday nights at our new venue, Russell Books (747 Fort St). Doors open at 7:00pm, event begins at 7:30pm. Sign up for the open mic between 7:00 and 7:15. Please note that as per the latest provincial health orders, we will be requiring all attendees to wear masks and to bring proof of vaccination. While we hope to offer refreshments in the longer term, to keep things simple and avoid having too many occasions to remove our masks, for now we will simply be encouraging attendees to bring a drink or a snack along with them if they wish.
If you wish to tune in via Zoom for the featured reader portion of the evening (approximately 8:15-9:00pm Pacific time), please use the following credentials. Join Zoom Meeting: CLICK HERE. Meeting ID: 494 660 4447 Passcode: 2129
As always remember that you can tune in audio-only via landline by dialing +1 778 907 2071. While this won't allow interaction from the Zoom portion of our audience, we are happy to be able to share the featured reading with all who wish to tune in. Please note that we have disabled audio, video, and chat input from Zoom attendees to avoid any Zoom-bombing issues.
Planet Earth Poetry gratefully acknowledges all of its supporters.
october 2021
BONUS EVENT: Tuesday, October 26 Raven Chapbooks Zoom Launch
Readers: Kyeren Regehr, Lorraine Gane, David Haggart and Diana Hayes DETAILS HERE
Visit victoria festival of authors for full schedule
friDAY, October 1, 2021
victoria festival of authors
Join a conversation with, and a reading by, three poets whose distinctive aesthetics give voice to a continuum of existential challenges that living asks us not only to embrace, but to embody. Against a background of exuberant affirmation and lingering threat, Hasan Namir recounts how the birth by surrogate of his and his husband’s son joins the three of them in Umbilical Cord. Through a rough cut of found texts in Grey All Over, Andrea Actis curates the earnest recall of her beloved father in the shattering days, months, and years after his death. In The Shadow List, Jen Sookfong Lee narrates the contemporary urgency to find and put love into perspective in a culture where the chance ways that men and women connect, exerts unnerving pressures on intimacy. True seriousness, joy, and candour are the tonalities of these thought-provoking poets.
Birth, Death, The Restlessness In Between
Moderated by John Barton
This event will have captioning for in-person and livestream options.
Poetic Opener: anne hopkinson
The Milk of Amnesia
by Danielle Janess
friDAY, October 15, 2021
danielle janess
Danielle Janess grew up on the shores of Lake Huron in Bright's Grove, Ontario, Treaty 29 territory. She holds an MFA in Writing and a BFA in Theatre from the University of Victoria. Her interdisciplinary work as a writer, actor, editor, and translator, has appeared in journals and anthologies, on stage and on film, in Canada, Germany, France, the USA, and the UK. Her debut poetry collection, The Milk of Amnesia, was adapted to short film, and is available now from McGill-Queen's University Press.
Poetic Opener: richard osler
RC Weslowski’s My Soft Response to the Wars
friDAY, October 22, 2021
RC Weslowski
RC Weslowski is the 2021 Zaccheus Jackson Nyce Memorial Award Winner and The 2016 Sheri-D Wilson Golden Beret Award Winner. He’s been co host of the radio program Wax Poetic on Co Op Radio for 20 years and is the Artistic Director for Hullabaloo: The BC Youth Spoken Word Festival. RC’s first collection of poetry “My Soft Response to the Wars” is available now from Write Bloody North Publishing www.writebloodynorth.ca
My Soft Response To The Wars is the debut poetry collection from Canadian Poetry Slam Champion, RC Weslowski. With a clown’s eye and a trickster’s lip these poems work to rewrite the trauma of childhood sexual abuse with the scissors of surrealism and absurdity. Love and how to survive its loss and transform it into something we can carry forward no matter how wretched, weird and ridiculous it may seem in the aftermath of betrayal is the driving principle in all these poems.
Twitter, Instagram and Facebook under RC Weslowski. rcweslowski.com
Poetic Opener: jamie dopp
Laura Apol’s A Fine Yellow Dust
friDAY, October 29, 2021
laura apol
Laura Apol is the author of several collections of poetry, including Nothing but the Blood, winner of the Oklahoma Book Award for poetry and the silver medal for the Independent Publisher Award for poetry. From 2019-2021, she served as poet laureate for the Lansing area in mid-Michigan.
A Fine Yellow Dust maps the first year of loss following the death of Apol’s 26-year-old daughter to suicide, giving voice to grief as it is lived, moment by moment, memory by memory. While most writing about loss does so from a distance, Apol writes from inside those early days and months and seasons, allowing readers to experience alongside the poet the questions, the longings, and the tenacious love that shape the first grief-year.
I lost her
is not the same as she is lost.
Get it right this time. Go now.
It is April again...
—from “The Cruelest Month”
POETIC OPENER: Anne Hopkinson
Anne Hopkinson writes poetry, fiction, and non-fiction from her home in Victoria. Her work appears in anthologies: Walk Myself Home by Caitlin Press, V6A, Writing from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside (Arsenal Pulp Press), and Poet to Poet by Guernica Press. Most recently Refugium, by Caitlin Press.
POETIC OPENER: Richard Osler
Richard’s laugh may be better known than his poetry! But his poetry has made him and his world better known to himself! Yet his laughter also reminds him that in spite of times of darkness his laughter, like a poem, can seem to come from nowhere and delight him!
Jamie Dopp is a poet, novelist, and musician, as well as a professor of Canadian Literature at the University of Victoria. His most recent book is a novel, Driving Lessons.
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.) We have eight CRD poets up; one more to come. After that, we’ll be adding more poets who live in Victoria, thanks to a grant from the City of Victoria.)
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.