Viva la Vida de Frida/Viva the Coming of Spring!

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What a busy month February turned out to be!

I read at Oxygen on the 15th, with Jane Byers and Timothy Shay. It was great fun, and about two dozen people came out to hear us in spite of the fact that The Union was playing at a film festival in Nelson that night.

Here's Tim Shay

Jane Byers

Me, with Tim in the background

Having a chat with my friend Sandi who was up from Vancouver. Tim's talking with Susan Andrews Grace.



I've been to Victoria and back, not as easy a venture as it might seem. I flew out of Castlegar on a brilliantly beautiful day. It was so lovely I took a bunch of pictures out the window and was all but pounding myself on the back for being so brilliant to have picked such a perfect day for flying.

Out the window


Still


And still more


Until we reached Vancouver




Turned out to be a nice night for a ferry ride over to the Island because the flight to Victoria cancelled due, they said, to a mechanical problem, the specifics of which were never revealed.

Sunset on the way to Vancouver Island



While in Victoria I got do a workshop with Sheri-D Wilson. Saw her perform at the weekly Planet Earth poetry night at the Black Stilt Coffee Lounge. I managed a browse at both Bolen Books and Munro's Books, picked up a few new poetry books by Patrick Lane, Bernice Lever, Gary Geddes, Susan McCaslin, David Fraser and W.B. Yeats. Yes, Yeats...I'm going to be spending a couple of days in Sligo in June and figured I ought to brush up!

And just a word about Gary Geddes' poetic tribute to the men and their loved ones who were involved in the collapse of the Ironworkers Memorial Bridge (Second Narrows) in Vancouver in 1958. Falsework is a wonderful collection of poems and I hope it gets nominated for the Dorothy Livesay Award at the BC Book Prizes. The shortlist will be announced next week.

I was supposed to be home Sunday but the flight couldn't land in Castlegar because of weather, so back to Vancouver we went. Twenty-four hours later we flew in, right over the house.


And over at Penn Kemp's MyTown site I have a poem called Waiting For You here. You have to scroll down aways, or else use your Find function and search by either my name or the title of the poem. But take your time getting to it...there are a number of good poems here that honour Frida Kahlo.

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