Thursday, June 30, 2011

Martens and others at Literary Cafe: July 11 at Harrison Memorial Hall

 Cheryl Isaac, director of  Continuing Studies at the University of the Fraser Valley, proudly presents this year's Literary Cafe ...

7:30 to 9 pm, Monday, July 11, at the Harrison Memorial Hall, 280 Esplanade Ave., Harrison Hot Springs. (Doors open at 7:15)
Tickets: $12 at the door or in advance at 604-796-3664
Alt-country singer: Franklyn Currie

 


Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Happy Birthday to the author of The Picket Fence Diaries - Al Rempel

As well as The Picket Fence Diaries, Al Rempel’s work includes  understories, published by Caitlin Press (April 2010), has appeared or is forthcoming in The Malahat Review, GRAIN, CV2, and Event. Al’s poetry has been published in various on-line publications and anthologies, including 4 Poets, Rocksalt, Half in the Sun, and The Forestry Diversification Project, and can be seen in Vancouver  through Poetry in Transit. Al is currently an alternate teacher in Prince George.

May your day be lyrical.

Sunday, June 19, 2011

Poltergeist by Robert Martens

i don't like to tell
this story, i sd, &
sipped my coffee
black, because people
will think i'm
crazy, & i smiled,
but maybe, i sd,
maybe i should write
a poem about it,
sure why not, she
sd, because they
think you're crazy
for writing poems
anyway

We are all haunted by the past, but for some, the past is so close to the present, it invades the future. Robert Martens playfully locates the unseen trickster, the poltergeist that hide in the corners of Ukrainian rooms, Bavarian towns, the Vedder Canal, the village of Yarrow, the Sunday School class,  the zoo, the restaurant in the city.

In this collection of poems we travel through the halls of academia and across two continents weighing the ghosts against reality. Throughout this thread the Mennonite church promises stability for the people (whose history of persecution is remembered personally) as they search for a place to settle in peace. Yet no matter how certain the voice from the pulpit delivers its wisdom, that peace is never guaranteed. The boy of the Fraser Valley may not be persecuted like his grand-father or great-uncle in Russia, but the skin's memory of the terrible past still invades the pastoral landscape.

Martens' skilfully transcends his particular cultural knowledge locating the ghosts across Europe that shape-shift into the luminous eyes of fascist young men looking for foreign bones to break. This is where the menacing allusions of these poems will provoke us all to think about the poltergeist in our politics and to wonder if there is anything anywhere that is not haunted.

The cover image titled "Ghosts" is a watercolour by the gifted, award winning painter Chiu Ming Chiang. Born in Taiwan, Chiu Ming spent much of her time as a child, drawing. Her grade one teacher spotted her talent and sent one of her paintings to the World's Children Drawing Competition in Germany, where it received second place. Later Chiu-Ming went on to study Chinese brush painting at the National Defense University in Taiwan and received her Fine Arts degree in 1981.

 Chiu-Ming has exhibited her work in shows throughout Abbotsford, Mission, Port Coquitlam, and the Canadian Society of Painters of Watercolour’s Open International Juried Art Exhibition at the Calgary Leighton Art Centre.

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

lipstickpress@shaw.ca
http://www.lipstickpress.com/

ISBN: 978-0-9781204-9-8

Cover image "Ghost" watercolour © 2011 Chiu Ming Chiang
28 pages

$8 plus shipping
To order send an email to lipstickpress@shaw.ca

Lipstick Press is not publishing books now

Dear Poets Sorry to let you know we have not been publishing chapbooks since 2010. We did some online publishing - mainly for social iss...