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Nelson lit lovers alert!
Heather Spears, Governor General and Pat Lowther Award winning poet and artist, is reading at the Nelson Municipal Library on Monday, June 1, 7PM.
Heather lives in Denmark now, so it's not like we have the opportunity to hear her read every day.
Because I'm trying to be both inside and outside today, I'm going to copy from the blurb Anne DeGrace, our Southeast regional rep for the Federation of BC Writers sent out :
"A multiple-award-winning poet is coming to Nelson. Governor-General’s Award-winning author Heather Spears reads from her new collection of poetry, I can Still Draw, June 1st at 7pm at the Nelson Library. The new volume, illustrated with the author’s beautiful, sensitive renderings, is nominated for the 2009 Pat Lowther Award.
In 1989 Ms. Spears’s collection The Word for Sand won both the Governor-General’s Award for Poetry and the Pat Lowther Award. She won her first Pat Lowther Award in 1987 for How to Read Faces, and her most recent in 2002 for Required Reading: a witness in words and drawings to the Reena Virk trials 1998-2000.
Heather Spears has held over 75 solo exhibitions and published 11 collections of poetry, four novels, a nonfiction series on visual perception, and three books of drawings in addition to her books of poetry. It is a rare gift to have her read in Nelson."
If you've not seen the sort of drawings Heather does, you owe it to yourself to have a look at the links above to get an idea of the incredibly beautiful work she does. I'm hoping she'll have books for sale.
The winner of the Pat Lowther Award will be announced in a couple of weeks, at the League of Canadian Poets' 43rd Annual Poetry Festival and Conference in Vancouver, June 12-14.
And speaking of the middle of June, there's Write in the Kootenays, thanks to the Fed's Anne DeGrace and a whole bunch of people in and around Creston who are organizing the weekend of workshops, readings, and camaradarie June 12-14. Details about all the wonderful workshops, presenters, etc., plus a downloadable registration form may be found here.
Love to chat, but it's outside to the garden for me!
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Sunday, May 31, 2009
Friday, May 22, 2009
READING AT OXYGEN IN NELSON TONIGHT
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Student Art Show and Reading tonight, Friday, May 22 at 7:30pm, featuring students of Oxygen's many classes in writing and visual art. Fresh Art 2009 showcases up-and-coming talent and gives students an opportunity to present their work to the public. As one of those students, I'll be reading a handful of new poems and I'd love to see you there.
Earlier in the year I took a partly online, partly face-to-face poetry course with Susan Andrews Grace. It was a great experience—Susan is a wonderfully perceptive editor and I learned a lot. She is also very good at prying new work out of you, thanks to various exercises and writing prompts. At the beginning of the course we got to choose a book of poems to work with during the eight weeks. I picked The Burning Alphabet by Barry Dempster, a poet whose work I was not familiar with. I enjoyed it enough to buy his new collection, Love Outlandish, which I'm looking forward to reading.
Last night I was there for Stuart Ross' Kootenay launch of Buying Cigarettes for the Dog. Can't put up any photos until I get home (forgot that particular cable) as I'm still in New Denver, but I will. It was a great evening.
Oxygen Art Centre, site of tonight's reading/art show, is located in the alleyway behind Hipperson Hardware in Nelson.
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Student Art Show and Reading tonight, Friday, May 22 at 7:30pm, featuring students of Oxygen's many classes in writing and visual art. Fresh Art 2009 showcases up-and-coming talent and gives students an opportunity to present their work to the public. As one of those students, I'll be reading a handful of new poems and I'd love to see you there.
Earlier in the year I took a partly online, partly face-to-face poetry course with Susan Andrews Grace. It was a great experience—Susan is a wonderfully perceptive editor and I learned a lot. She is also very good at prying new work out of you, thanks to various exercises and writing prompts. At the beginning of the course we got to choose a book of poems to work with during the eight weeks. I picked The Burning Alphabet by Barry Dempster, a poet whose work I was not familiar with. I enjoyed it enough to buy his new collection, Love Outlandish, which I'm looking forward to reading.
Last night I was there for Stuart Ross' Kootenay launch of Buying Cigarettes for the Dog. Can't put up any photos until I get home (forgot that particular cable) as I'm still in New Denver, but I will. It was a great evening.
Oxygen Art Centre, site of tonight's reading/art show, is located in the alleyway behind Hipperson Hardware in Nelson.
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Thursday, May 14, 2009
STUART ROSS READING IN SILVERTON, BC, MAY 21
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He's becoming a bit of a legend, the Toronto poet with the curly hair, the one who used to sell his poetry on Yonge Street back in the day. Here in Kootenays, many of us have taken a Poetry Boot Camp with him, or shared a bowl of borscht, and based on his lovable quirkiness, we've sort of unofficially made him an honorary citizen, so it is entirely appropriate that he is having a Kootenay launch for his new book, a collection of short stories this time, this coming Thursday, May 21.
The book: Buying Cigarettes for the Dog, Freehand Press (my new favourite press, just read Marina Endicott's Good to a Fault and loved it), 2009.
Launch venue: The Cup and Saucer Café, in beautiful downtown Silverton, 7PM. Also appearing, special guests Diana Hartog and Peter McPhee, another former Torontonian (he was very involved with Scream in High Park from the start) who seems to have wound up in the Koots.
If you're anywhere nearby, you don't want to miss this one!
I'm calling this photo "Live Cars in Ootischenia"
Signing a copy of Dead Cars in Managua...
...which I proceeded to read after he left.
So...Thursday, May 21, 7PM, Silverton, Cup and Saucer Café. You know what to do.
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He's becoming a bit of a legend, the Toronto poet with the curly hair, the one who used to sell his poetry on Yonge Street back in the day. Here in Kootenays, many of us have taken a Poetry Boot Camp with him, or shared a bowl of borscht, and based on his lovable quirkiness, we've sort of unofficially made him an honorary citizen, so it is entirely appropriate that he is having a Kootenay launch for his new book, a collection of short stories this time, this coming Thursday, May 21.
The book: Buying Cigarettes for the Dog, Freehand Press (my new favourite press, just read Marina Endicott's Good to a Fault and loved it), 2009.
Launch venue: The Cup and Saucer Café, in beautiful downtown Silverton, 7PM. Also appearing, special guests Diana Hartog and Peter McPhee, another former Torontonian (he was very involved with Scream in High Park from the start) who seems to have wound up in the Koots.
If you're anywhere nearby, you don't want to miss this one!
I'm calling this photo "Live Cars in Ootischenia"
Signing a copy of Dead Cars in Managua...
...which I proceeded to read after he left.
So...Thursday, May 21, 7PM, Silverton, Cup and Saucer Café. You know what to do.
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