Featured readers september 2022

All in-person PEP events will be taking place at Russell Books, 747 Fort Street in downtown Victoria. Doors open at 7:00pm, event starts at 7:30 and sign up for the open mic is between 7:00–7:20. Masks are encouraged but no longer required. Unless otherwise noted, in person events will be livestreamed HERE (Meeting ID: 494 660 4447 /Passcode: 2129) **please note, livestream begins at approx. 8:00–8:15pm with featured readings**

*Flyway* is the second collection from Sarah Ens

September 9
sarah ens

Sarah Ens is a writer and editor based in Treaty 1 territory (Winnipeg, MB). Her debut collection of poetry, The World Is Mostly Sky was shortlisted for the 2021 McNally Robinson Book of the Year Award and the 2022 Lansdowne Prize for Poetry. Her second book, Flyway (Turnstone Press), was launched in the spring of 2022.

Flyway is a meditation on the impact of human and ecological trauma which explores the cost of survival for three generations of women living between empires. Writing from within the disappearing tallgrass prairie, Sarah Ens follows connections between the Russian Mennonite diaspora and the disrupted migratory patterns of grassland birds. Drawing on family history, eco-poetics, and the rich tradition of the Canadian long poem, Flyway migrates along pathways of geography and the heart to grapple with complexities of home.

Instagram @sarahaens and on Twitter at @sarah_ens

Poetic Appetizer

After many minutes listening:

savannah sparrow; clay-coloured sparrow; red-winged blackbird;
brown-headed cowbird; western meadowlark; mourning dove

Birds, like poems, follow the river.

September 9
Poetic Opener—Herb Bryce

H. W. Bryce, BA is a former journalist, book editor, teacher, courier, and kidnap victim. His poetry appears in anthologies in Canada, the US, and India. He served as a judge for the Rabindranath Tagore Award International 2017. He is the author of Chasing a Butterfly. Writing poems saved him from depression.

Stock up on books at our PEP fundraiser!

September 16
Book Sale Fundraiser—All open mic

Join us for our traditional beginning-of-the-season all-open-mic fundraiser! We’ll be selling gently used books for $5 each, so bring some cash and your reading glasses! And as always, we ask that you bring a poem by someone other than you to read at the open mic. It could be something from a favourite poet, a poem that has inspired or moved you, or simply a poem that you think the rest of us need to hear. Please note that our usual open mic rules (max 3 minutes/one poem) apply!

Because we have (so far!) not been successful in securing grant funding this year, we’ve decided that this year’s fundraiser will be for PEP itself. We have been doing this for 26 years through thick and thin, thanks to incredible and ongoing support from our community—and right now, we need some of that support to keep going! So please bring your appetite for books, and of course if you don’t need any books but would like to support PEP we will gladly accept donations of any size either on our Donations page or in person on the night of the fundraiser. We will provide tax receipts for donations of $25 or more.

Would you like to donate books for us to sell on September 16? Please contact Nancy Issenman issenman@shaw.ca.

Joanne Leow’s debut collection *Seas Move Away.*

September 23
Joanne Leow

Joanne Leow is an Associate Professor at the University of Saskatchewan. Her essays, fiction, and poetry have been published in Brick, Catapult, Evergreen Review, The Goose, Isle, The Kindling, The Town Crier, QLRS, and Ricepaper Magazine. She grew up in Singapore and currently lives on Treaty 6 Territory (Saskatoon, SK). Seas Move Away is her first book.

Twitter: @joleow. Instagram: @joanneleowpoetry

SEPTEMBER 23
POETIC OPENER—Joey Scarfone

Joey Scarfone is a multi-media artist. His latest releases are a CD of spoken word over music and a chapbook. His work has been published in Monday magazine and fleasonthedog.com. His column entitled Midnight Fiction will be coming out in issue 12 of FOTD in September.

!!NOTE: Thursday, September 29
VENUE: Metro Theatre

A Corrective Lens
with Nancy Holmes, Cecily Nicholson, and Jan Zwicky

Sometimes, reading poetry is like putting on prescription glasses after years of myopia. Suddenly everything becomes sharper. Join three master poets—Nancy Holmes, Cecily Nicholson, and Jan Zwicky—as they read from their new collections. In these poems, perception shifts. Humans fall into place as one form amongst all the marvels that inhabit our hurting planet. In Arborophobia, Nancy Holmes gives voice to the multitude of grasses, to saints, to the ponderosa pine. Cecily Nicholson explores complexities of Black history alongside colonial agricultural practices in Harrowings. And with a distilled freshness, Jan Zwicky in Sixty-Seven Ontological Studies invites our closest attention to a favourite armchair, to snow and sunshine, to all that surrounds us.

Listen and engage in a heartfelt conversation and find out what shapes poems and poetic practice in this time of uncertainty—as we gaze on a glorious world (past, present, and future) that we humans have irrevocably changed.

A Victoria Festival of Authors event curated by Planet Earth Poetry and moderated by Susan Alexander
Thursday, September 29, 7:30 p.m.
Metro Theatre, 1411 Quadra Street
Tickets $18/$10 – low-income or unwaged

Free livestream available
Captioning for in-person and livestream