Grief Blading Up available September 29, 2009

The title of Elsie K. Neufeld's latest poetry collection, available through Lipstick Press, reveals loss and grief as they work through the seasons of birth, growth, death and re-birth of a garden.

The chapbook epigraph alludes to the indefinable spirit:

on a grey day
a yellow leaf
scrambles across
the road

who’s there?

This fleeting question acknowledges the way we are haunted without attaching it to a theory. Elsie's poetic gift addresses what is often felt but can't be seen. She is no stranger to that presence.

Elsie grew up with stories that brought home the ghosts of her ancestors who never made it out of Russia. As a young girl she would write to family she had never met, and couldn't expect to meet, as they were in Siberia and Germany.

Later losing a brother, a brother-in-law, a father, a sister-in-law, and several dear friends, established too early the fleeting aspect of all forms uniting in grief: "Trees startle, / colours drift off as we continue / to learn – as everyone must – / the terribleness of unhinging /" (Mums on the Stairs, page 17).

"Family, friends, memoir work, reading, gardening and volunteering with hospice continue to befuddle, challenge, astonish and enrich" her life, and so Elsie concludes "that life is, and always will be, a mixture of muck, madness and glory. Writing is the perfect container for all. Hence, Grief Blading Up."

Published by Lipstick Press
767 Chelwood Road, RR 1
Gabriola BC V0R 1X1

lipstickpress@shaw.ca

ISBN: 978-0-9781204-3-6

24 pages

Cover photo: Janet Vickers

$8 plus shipping and handling
To order send an email to lipstickpress@shaw.ca
(We are currently out of stock of this book, but if you let us know you would like a copy, we will look into re-printing a second run)

Book Launch for A: The Amelia Poems

There is a warm feeling when people gather for a chapbook launch. The link between a writer's creativity shared with friends, family and peers, is reminiscent of a child naming ceremony - a celebration of something we all knew was incubating now dedicated to the community.

Even though I had read the poems in this book many times, Heidi Greco's reading aloud, accompanied with her informative narration brought new depth to the skilled storytelling within the short poems.

Twenty seven people attended the launch at Pelican Rouge Cafe in White Rock, bringing their own questions and speculations about Amelia Earhart's life and the times in which she lived.

But something equally as interesting, enriching even, is the sense of community when we gather to celebrate the imagination - even listeners become co-creators of culture by participating in the event.

Special thanks to Shelly at Pelican Rouge for opening up the cafe this evening for the launch.

(Photographs by George Omorean)