Chap Book Launch - Woodwinds by P. C. Vandall

Hear P. C. Vandall read from her new chapbook

Woodwinds

Wednesday May 22

7 - 9 pm

at The Commons

675 North Road

Gabriola

Pamela is a Gabriola poet and writer who resides here with her husband and two children.

Her work has appeared in numerous magazines, anthologies and websites. She is currently working on her first full length poetry collection.

Refreshments and books available to purchase.

For further information: lipstickpress@shaw.ca

Susan J. Falk's Art Show - May 11, 2013 - McLellan Forest East

"Artist Susan J. Falk was inspired by the McLellan Forest East in Glen Valley, Langley and created many stunning paintings of the forest. Over 200 poets contributed poems to help save this forest, and Susan incorporated 12 of the poems directly into her paintings. On May 11, 2013, the poets joined Susan in celebrating her installation, by reading their poems next the paintings. The art is being sold by silent auction and partial proceeds will benefit the Watchers of Langley Forests (WOLF). The installation may be viewed until May 26 at The Fort Gallery in Fort Langley, 9048 Glover Road."

BACK ROW (L to R) Heidi Greco, E.D. Blodgett, Jamie Reid, Susan J. Falk, Susan McCaslin, Christopher Levenson, Ray McGinnis, Celeste Snowber, Catherine Owen; FRONT ROW: Daniela Elza, Roni Haggarty, Fiona Tinwei Lam, Pam Galloway, Elsie K. Neufeld.

Two Lipstick authors - Heidi Greco and Elsie K. Neufeld wrote poems included in that 12.

Happy birthday Kim Clark

Kim's poem "Whether you like it" appears in the Beautiful Women anthology and her chapbook of poems Disease and Desire also is still available.

Beautiful Women Unleashed

"Being essential, authentic, unfazed, theurgical, incandescent, flawed" and "utterly lovable" - is beautiful to Honey Novick, one of the poets in this anthology.

For Katherine L. Gordon beauty begins with love. "Love me as I am / For I am the softness of the world".

Whether you like it or not, says Kim Clark a "Beautiful Woman / is the one / who reflects your worth / [and] magnifies / your joy".

Darryl Knowles lists the strong women we see in history, on the screen, and includes "all the women in this world / who ever gave a f ... k / and never gave up."

Kate Marshall Flaherty remembers learning cursive writing in Grade 4 "under Miss Reed's giraffe lashes, / blinking" for she was the one who inspired her to write.

As a child L. Muirhead "never did want to be a girl / had always fit in with the boys" until her mother insisted it was time to wear a bra. When her brother's friend teased her about it she bloodied his nose.

Angeline Schellenberg's Oma lets down her long hair and suddenly she becomes a young girl again running through the grass.

"Like a soldier marching forward / you fought for independence" writes Debbie Okun Hill in her memorial to the journalist Malvena Hope Morritt.

Shelley Haggard recalls Jackie Ciano whose "vision / that the men who go fishing / create new lines and new knots / that the whales might escape" lived long enough to see the results of her crusade.

Waldemar Ens pays tribute to Feist - "unafraid / taking chances on the edge of disaster / fiery feet dancing on the rooftop ledge".

A mother's wisdom: "there’s no curfew / come home when it’s over / don’t drive fast" is the muse for Franci Louann's haiku.

Can a woman be beautiful when she is laid out in a casket? Louise Carson thinks so -"You model it for us
in sky blue with white hair, / your fastidious fashion sense / intact / before the flame".

Vikash Kumar attributes beauty to the dream "Of another world / A new realm, a divine vista".

Joy Donnell invests beauty in the imagined daughter as the centre of herself  "& find you to be not a woman but a world / walking so high gravity evades".

Beauty has long represented ideals and for Kim Goldberg one ideal is strength, courage: "caked in cow dung and dust, nothing / to slake her burning thirst, her sun-baked / lips, but her own thin spit".

For Vuong Pham, resignation. "rainy night— / somewhere else / the stars shine".

Weighing skin deep beauty with beauty on the inside, Naomi Beth Wakan, asks what "may prevent me being seduced / by a pair of wild brown eyes"?

Can beauty exist within the womb? Pd Lietz writes "moist muscle pulsating / I laboured to be smaller / she implored me to be mightier".

"For in the end it is / to one another that we turn, hands / groping in the dark" writes Ronnie R. Brown.

Heather Brager paints a full circle from the edge of woman-as-object to "the synonym of / protector, the /
reckless bard / a strumpet, girl".

Amen.


Published by Lipstick Press
767 Chelwood Road, RR #1
Gabriola BC V0R 1X1
lipstickpress@shaw.ca
www.lipstickpress.com

ISBN: 978-0-9880043-3-7

$10.00 plus shipping.

Woodwinds by P. C. Vandall now available

Lipstick Press is pleased to announce the publication of P. C. Vandall's first chapbook titled "Woodwinds".

Pamela is a Gabriola poet and writer who resides there with her husband and two children.

Her work has appeared in numerous magazines, anthologies and websites. She is currently working on her first full length poetry collection. When she's not writing, she's sleeping.

Here is what writer Naomi Beth Wakan ("And after 80...") has to say:

Woodwinds is an apt title introducing a very welcome fresh new voice, Pamela Vandall, for the bittersweet sound of woodwinds is echoed so well in her poetry.

Her imaginatively metaphored pieces dig deep into archetypal images, however her characteristic striking rabbit's-foot-kick in her final lines not only adjust the poems into small miracles of tenderness, but also bring the reader back to the sharpness of reality. A fine first book.

Here is a sample of Pamela's poetry ~

Woodwinds

He's the sound of pine and cedar crackling
in a forest, chain oil greased in his palms,
the low lying rustle of salal, sword
ferns, and chanterelles underfoot.  He's snow
crunching under heels of boots, the trumpet

of geese overhead, the drizzle of rain
off black silk boughs. He's the thwack of logs,
the flop of a jean jacket, the swoop
of waxwings to air as the axe catches
glints of light.  He's the shake of leathery

drenched leaves, the brush stroke of branches, 
the sprinkle of saw dust in his damp brown hair.
He's the sound of the wheel barrow creaking
towards the house, one tire deflating soft
as a stiff breeze in snow.  He's the sound of fire

wood being split and stacked, winters breath
haloed in hemp smoke. It's the flutter
of his rumpled blue shirt tied round his waist,
the thump of logs piled beneath the window
sill in tidy rows.  It's the lumbering 

footsteps on stairs, the squeak of the screen door,
the spark of a Red Bird match.  This man who
scarcely says a word can divine a chore
into music.  He witches sound like water
from a woodpile, resonating a pitch

that flows a perfect cord between us.


Published by Lipstick Press

767 Chelwood Road

Gabriola BC V0R 1X1

ISBN:  978-0-9880043-2-0

$10.00 plus shipping and handling

To order email: lipstickpress@shaw.ca