Calling All Poets of the Regional District of Nanaimo

Our Nanaimo Daily News Column has finished, but we would still like to receive poems with a Nanaimo theme for them to be considered for the Poet Laureate’s Nanaimo City poetry map. The link is www.nanaimo.ca/goto/PoetryMap A pair of anonymous poet judges will look through the submissions and choose site-specific poems.

The rules are simple:

1. You should be a resident of the Greater Nanaimo area;

2. The poem should be solely written by you (If your poem is selected you will be asked to sign a declaration that the poem is your work alone and that you have the rights to it. Submissions from people under 18 will require a parent’s signature)

3. The poem must be about site-specific Nanaimo places and should be no more than 30 lines (200 words).  The places we need for the poetry map at the moment include: Newcastle Island, Protection Island, Mt. Benson, Westwood Lake Park, Bowen Park, Beban Park, Buttertubs Marsh, Cathers Lake, Bird Sanctuary, Piper’s Lagoon Park, Shipyard, Morrell Sanctuary, Duke Point, Churches, Railway Bridge, Cable Bay, ENR station, schools, Vancouver Island University, the malls.

4. The poems can be touching, funny, insightful, bitingly witty or angry, but will not be considered if they contain obscenities or promote hatred or prejudice

5. E-mail two copies of your poem as a pdf attachment (in Times New Roman, 12 point). One copy should have your name, address, e-mail, and phone # written above the poem; the other should contain only the poem

6. Send them to callingallpoets@nanaimo.ca with the words “poetry map” in the subject line

7. There is no deadline, so just keep those Nanaimo poems coming in whenever creativity strikes.

8 We will be using the poem for one-time. If we need it for other places, we will, of course, contact you for permission. The rights stay with you.

We thank all poets in advance for their submissions, but only those poets whose poems have been selected will be contacted. Keep a copy of your submission as it will not be returned to you. So calling all Nanaimo poets – Let’s celebrate poetry. Let’s hear your voices. Get creative about Nanaimo and send us your results.

WRITE WHERE YOU ARE

There you are, pen in hand, paper or computer in front of you, all good intentions on fire. How long do you sit, before you press pen to paper, finger to keys? How many Facebook peeks, dishes washed, to do lists made before the first sentence gets scratched out? This series of Monday evening workshops will help you get started on the “getting started blues” with writing prompts, ideas for sequence poems that will keep you going, and lots and lots of writing to build your mental muscles. We will look at some essentials of writing: imagery, metaphor, syntax, cadence, line length, using some model poems to inspire and guide. Finally, we will look at ways to revise and refine the drafts we write in class and at home.

Barbara Pelman is a teacher and writer with over thirty years experience. She has conducted poetry workshops in her home and in schools and is an active participant in the Victoria poetry community. She has two books, “One Stone” (Ekstasis 2005) and “Borrowed Rooms” (Ronsdale Press 2008) and a number of poems in literary journals. She has received awards for her poetry, including last year’s first prize with the Federation of BC Writers Literary Writes contest.

The workshop will take place in Barbara’s living room (somewhere near Victoria - details on registration), for five sessions of 2 ½  hours each, from 7 to 9:30 Monday evenings from January 11 to February 8, 2016. Cost of workshops is $125.00 for the series. Please contact Barbara at barbarapelman@gmail.com or 250-480-1081 to register.

Nanaimo City Poetry Map

Calling all poets

Looking for poems with a Nanaimo theme to be considered for the Poet Laureate’s Nanaimo City poetry map. A pair of anonymous poet judges will look through the submissions and choose site-specific poems.

The rules are simple:

1. You should be a resident of the Greater Nanaimo area;

2. The poem should be solely written by you (If your poem is selected you will be asked to sign a declaration that the poem is your work alone and that you have the rights to it. Submissions from people under 18 will require a parent’s signature)

3. The poem must be about site-specific Nanaimo places and should be no more than 30 lines (200 words).  The places we need for the poetry map at the moment include: Newcastle Island, Protection Island, Mt. Benson, Westwood Lake Park, Bowen Park, Beban Park, Buttertubs Marsh, Cathers Lake, Bird Sanctuary, Piper’s Lagoon Park, Shipyard, Morrell Sanctuary, Duke Point, Churches, Railway Bridge, Cable Bay, ENR station, schools, Vancouver Island University, the malls.

4. The poems can be touching, funny, insightful, bitingly witty or angry, but will not be considered if they contain obscenities or promote hatred or prejudice

5. E-mail two copies of your poem as a pdf attachment (in Times New Roman, 12 point). One copy should have your name, address, e-mail, and phone # written above the poem; the other should contain only the poem

6. Send them to callingallpoets@nanaimo.ca with the words “poetry map” in the subject line

7. There is no deadline, so just keep those Nanaimo poems coming in whenever creativity strikes.

8 We will be using the poem for one-time. If we need it for other places, we will, of course, contact you for permission. The rights stay with you.

We thank all poets in advance for their submissions, but only those poets whose poems have been selected will be contacted. Keep a copy of your submission as it will not be returned to you. So calling all Nanaimo poets – Let’s celebrate poetry. Let’s hear your voices. Get creative about Nanaimo and send us your results.

Naomi Wakan - Nanaimo Poet Laureate

Haiku and Haibun & Small Book Making March 30

WordStorm November 24th at TheFirst Unitarian Fellowship Hall

Come on out to hear the words of Susan McCaslin and Pam Galloway and listen to the music of Mary Flaherty.

Music startes at 6:30.

Open Mic at 7:00

See Posters Attached

Two Great Workshops in February and March

Sign-up Early Before the Holidays

February: Jane Munro, 2015 Griffin Prize Winner

March: Terry Ann Carter, Haiku and Haibun and Bookmaking

SIGN UP EARLY

February 24 Workshop with Jane Munro

George Elliott Clarke reading at VIU October 22

Celebrated "Africadian" poet George Elliott Clarke reads at Vancouver Island University on October 22

https://www2.viu.ca/gustafson/

Toronto Poet Laureate, playwright, and literary critic George Elliott Clarke, VIU’s 2015 Gustafson Distinguished Poet, will deliver a free public lecture, "On Entering the Echo Chamber of Epic: My 'Canticles' Vs Pound's Cantos," at 7 p.m. on Thursday, October 22, in Building 355 on the Nanaimo campus. Clarke will introduce his epic poem, Canticles, in response to Ezra Pound’s contentious Cantos, a twentieth-century post/modern epic both vilified for its integration of fascist propaganda and heralded for its haunting lyricism. Pound, a classicist, nodded to T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land and Stephen Vincent Benet’s John Brown's Body, both of which skirted racist material yet refused to be contained, or restrained, by formalism.       

Dr. Clarke will recite excerpts from his work-in-progress,Canticles, which echoes slave and imperialist debates from Cleopatra to Celan. He will also invoke contemporary poets Derek Walcott and NourbeSe Philip, who invite harmonious, multiple, and multicultural voices in their revisions of Pound’s controversial masterpiece. Clarke champions writers of African descent and coined the term “Africadian” to identify the black culture of Atlantic Canada, a term he says is both, “...literal and liberal—I canonize songs and sonnets, histories and homilies.”

Clarke traces his own inspiration to “poet-politicos: jazz trumpeter Miles Davis, troubadour-bard Bob Dylan, libertine lyricist Irving Layton, guerrilla leader and poet Mao Zedong, reactionary modernist Ezra Pound, Black Power orator Malcolm X, and the Right Honourable Pierre Elliott Trudeau.” Dr. Clarke finds their "blunt talk, suave styles, acerbic independence, raunchy macho, feisty lyricism, singing heroic, and scarf-and-beret chivalry quite, well, liberating.”

Clarke’s colleague and VIU English Professor Paul Watkins says, “For George, poetry is not only a printed form, but also an oral art. His boisterous readings present the listener with a gumbo-concoction of jazz rhythms, blues-infused gospel vernacular, and plenty of play upon the standards of the larger literary tradition. This is poetry presented with the ‘lightning of prophecy’.”

Dr. Clarke has published a dozen works of poetry including Whylah Falls (2002 Canada Reads contender),Execution Poems (winner of the Governor-General’s Award for Poetry), and his latest, Red; four plays, screenplays, and libretti (One Heart Broken Into Song, Beatrice Chancy, Quebecite, and Trudeau); the novelGeorge and Rue; and four anthologies of African-Canadian writing, including Directions Home: Approaches to African-Canadian Literature.

For the last twelve years he has been the E.J. Pratt Professor of Canadian Literature at the University of Toronto; and he holds honourary doctorates from Dalhousie, New Brunswick, Alberta, Waterloo, Windsor and Saint Mary’s Universities. He has received the Martin Luther King Jr. Achievement Award, the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Fellows Prize, and the Order of Canada.

A catered reception, cash bar, and book signing will follow in VIU's Royal Arbutus Room (in Building 300). Several of George Elliott Clarke's books will be available for purchase at the VIU Bookstore. Courtesy parking will be available in Lot N, in front of Building 355. Clarke will also perform with musician James Darling at the Corner Lounge on Wednesday, October 21, from 7:30 to 8:30 p.m. These events are sponsored by VIU’s Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Writers on Campus, and the Canada Council for the Arts.

The Gustafson Distinguished Poetry Chair was established in 1998 from the estate of the late, preeminent Canadian poet Ralph Gustafson and his wife, Betty. The Chair has been held by celebrated poets Kathleen Vermette, Michael Crummey, Dennis Lee, Jan Zwicky, Don McKay, Carol Ann Duffy, Daphne Marlatt, Tom Wayman, Dionne Brand, Don Domanski, Liz Lochhead, Robert Bringhurst, Patrick Lane, Gary Geddes, Susan Musgrave, and Patricia Young, some of whom have had their lectures published as chapbooks. The Gustafson Distinguished Poets Series is sponsored by VIU's Faculty of Arts and Humanities, with support from the Vancouver Writers Fest.

An interview with George Elliott Clarke will appear in Portal 2016, VIU’s full-colour literary magazine.

For more information contact Toni Smith, Chair of the Gustafson Committee by email to:Toni.Smith@VIU.ca.

To buy a chapbook, visit the Chapbooks Series page.

Fat Oyster Reading Series

Calling all poets.

The Nanaimo Daily News is running a monthly column featuring a poem of the month to promote local poets and to encourage people to write poetry themed on Nanaimo.


A pair of anonymous poet judges will look through the submissions and choose one poem each month and it will be printed in the Daily News. City of Nanaimo inaugural poet laureate Naomi Beth Wakan will comment on the chosen poem so you can see why we liked it, and also to encourage you to write poetry.


The rules are simple:
1. You should be a resident of the Greater Nanaimo area;
2. The poem should be solely written by you (If your poem is selected you will be asked to sign a declaration that the poem is your work alone and that you have the rights to it. Submissions from people under 18 will require a parent’s signature)
3. The poem must be about Nanaimo (places and events – its past, present, future, places you like visiting, the cultural aspects, sports… whatever inspires you) and should be no more than 30 lines (200 words)
4. The poems can be touching, funny, insightful, bitingly witty or angry, but will not be considered if they contain obscenities or promote hatred or prejudice
5. E-mail two copies of your poem as a pdf attachment (in Times New Roman, 12 point). One copy should have your name, address, e-mail, and phone # written above the poem; the other should contain only the poem
6. Send them to callingallpoets@nanaimo.ca with the words “poetry submission” in the subject line
7. There is no deadline, so just keep those Nanaimo poems coming in whenever creativity strikes.

We thank all poets in advance for their submissions, but only those poets whose poems have been selected will be contacted. Keep a copy of your submission as it will not be returned to you. All poems submitted will be kept for consideration for inclusion in a possible anthology to be printed next year.



So calling all poets – Let’s celebrate poetry. Let’s hear your voices. Get creative about Nanaimo and send us your results.

call: Poems for Homeless Veterans

Dear Poet Friend,

Doug Johnson of Cave Moon Press has invited me to edit a book that will benefit homeless veterans. The call is below and a pdf attached so you can spread the news far and wide. This is a worthwhile project which will have some big name poets involved and Alfredo Arreguin’s wonderful cover art. (pdf of call here). 步Footsteps Poems for Homeless Veterans Edited by Paul Nelson and Doug Johnson April 2015-September 2015 Send Submission to: cavemoonpress@gmail.com by September 30, 2015.

Cave Moon Press is requesting original poems centered around the theme of footsteps. Take license in interpreting whose footsteps you honor. Translations welcome. We will also be checking with past contributors to the blog about reprinting their pieces. This book is to honor the people instead of the causes. Cars wage war on the environment. Politics change like the newspaper wrapping fish. The invisible still wander. Write to honor the ignored.

​Please feel free to put the call out to poets you know. The deadline is in 8 days.

Thanks for considering sending work.

Sincerely,

Paul Nelson​

--

www.PaulENelson.com

www.SPLAB.org

www.CascadiaPoetryFestival.org

www.SpringStreetCenter.com

(206) 422.5002

100,000 Poets for Change

Book launch: The Literary Storefront by Trevor Carolan

Saturday October 10, 2015

7 pm

303 E. 8th Avenue

Vancouver

Appies and Cash Bar

Memoir Writing Workshop

Enjoy the 2015 Sidney and Peninsula Literary Festival

Celebrate words, imagery and books through the talents
of 16 award-winning regional authors 

at the Sidney and Peninsula Literary Festival 

to be held October 2-4, 2015. 

Readings, author-audience discussions, workshops, writing contests, book signings, local musicians and more.

Invited authors represent genres from mysteries and memoirs to poetry, novels, short stories and non-fiction.

Amongst the line-up are Richard Wagamese (Indian Horse), Fred Stenson (The Trade and Who by Fire), Lorna Crozier (14 books of poetry and a Governor General award-winner), Naomi Beth Wakan (Nanaimo’s Poet Laureate), Steven Galloway (Cellist of Sarajevo and The Confabulist) and William Deverell (Arthur Beauchamp detective series).

Two free workshops at Sidney’s library too: memoir writing by Wakan and creative writing for kids ages 9-12 by children’s author Nikki Tate.

A separate series of workshops will be presented by three local authors at two schools near Sidney. “This is one way we like to give back to the community,” says Sharon Hope, president of the organizing society.

The three-day Festival will wind up Sunday with a “Breakfast with the Authors” at Haro’s Restaurant where each author shares a table with half a dozen participants.Weekend pass and individual event tickets are available online at http://sidneyliteraryfestival.ca/tickets/ or at Tanner’s Books in Sidney and Munro’s Books in Victoria. Support the literary arts!

Contact: Gillian at sidneyliteraryfestival@gmail.com

Website: http://sidneyliteraryfestival.ca

The Living Room

A free and open democratic reading where people read their own work and listen to others in a circle format.

Nanaimo North Branch of  the VIRL

Location: 6250 Hammond Bay Road

Second Thursday of the Month

September 10, 2015

4:30 to 6:30 p.m.

Other Dates: Sept. 10th, Oct. 15th, 

Nov. 12th

Bring 3 or 4 poems to read.

The Living Room is designed for new, emerging, and established poets to come together in a sense of poetic community to share their work. Each poet will have opportunities to read original work of a maximum of 3 minutes. We will go around the circle without critique in the celebration of sharing. Each reading will have a host who will keep the group within these guidelines. Listeners are welcome.

The Living Room was initially conceived at the Taos Poetry Circus by Amalio Madueno  and established as a regular event in Seattle by Paul Nelson of SPLAB, The Seattle Poetry Lab. The Living Room was a part of the Cascadia Poetry Festival in Nanaimo April 30 to May 3, 2015 where participation was 31, 42 and 52 poets at the Living Room circle held at the Nanaimo Museum as a special event of the festival. Come out to the Vancouver Regional Library North Branch and continue the tradition.

Malahat Open Season Awards

I Want by Joseph A. Dandurand September 10,2015

Memoir Writing Workshop September 21

15 minutes of Infamy!!!

Wordstorm has a new venue

Random Writings in the Garden

Hazelwood Herb Farm in conjunction with Economusee B.C.   (http://bc.economusee.com/en/), is putting on a guided garden tour on Aug 28-29. 

As part of the event they are issuing a call for submissions for “random writings in the garden”: these can be poems, phrases, or excerpts from other works. Must be no more than 57 words, or 10 lines. 

Selected entries will be mounted on 8 ½” x 5 ½” sheet and displayed in the garden. Deadline August 24. 

Hazelwood Farm, 13576 Adshead Road, Ladysmith, B.C., Canada V9G 1H6 Phone: (250) 245-8007 info@hazelwoodherbfarm.com

Naomi Beth Wakan - A Gabriola Notebook

Available at Page's Resort for $20

In Gabriola Notebook, Naomi Beth Wakan offers clear-eyed observations of her chosen home of Gabriola Island. The book is wise and cynical, yet also rich, respectful and amusing. Naomi wryly contemplates the big questions—mortality, spirituality, love, enlightenment—while honouring the daily interactions and local heroes that form our community. Delightful and imaginative, funny and fearless, this is the guidebook to life on Gabriola that you won’t find at the tourism office.

Michelle Benjamin, Executive Director, Gabriola Arts Council

Written in a warm and playful tone, A Gabriola Notebook includes a series of elegant tanka poems that are introduced in lucid prose. Subjects ranging from politics to fashion are tackled with enthusiasm, honesty, and the occasional well aimed nudge by a highly sharpened literary elbow.

Jesse Birch, Curator, Nanaimo Art Gallery

Naomi Beth Wakan’s new book, A Gabriola Notebook, is a homage to Gabriola residents. Her writing is humorous, ironical, sometimes satirical, but very warm. The photos by her husband, Elias Wakan are also very enjoyable.

Kozue Uzawa, editor of GUSTS: Contemporary Tanka

When I sat down to read Naomi's notes about her island I quickly become lost; lost in the stories of the people, their newspapers, their singing and their politics. I whiled away an afternoon seeing the island world and its people through her unerring critical eye. Sipping tea, wearing a wry smile, and all the time thinking, with delight, how well Naomi has caught her islanders.

Diane Brennan, Nanaimo city councillor

     I like Gabriola Notebook, as I like Naomi Wakan’s Gabriola Island, where “new kale is sprouting from the compost.” Her own Gabriola world, her own curiosity: “I’ve always wanted to know what happens next” she writes. So do we.

Wendy Morton, roving prize-winning poet, maker of wonderful soup and a raven-watcher. She lives west of Sooke where kale also sprouts from the compost.

Pacific-Rim Publishers                                                                                                                     ISBN 978-0-921358-40-4

www.naomiwakan.com                                                                                     

A Call to All Poets from Vancouver Island Regional Library

POETRY COMPETITION FOR EYEWEAR 10TH ANNIVERSARY!To celebrate the tenth birthday of Eyewear Blog - a major literary milestone in British poetry history perhaps (or not) - its spin-off sister, Eyewear Publishing is offering a £110 poetry prize for the best ten line poem using imagery in relation to eyewear, vision, opthamology, or something to do with monocles, glasses, glass eyes, eye patches, or optomosterists, including eye charts... and those tests that put a puff of air into your eye - ouch! Just email the poems as word docs within BEFORE MONDAY MAY 25TH to EYEWEAR TENTH BIRTHDAY POETRY PRIZE to info at eyewearpublishing dot com. Please share and retweet peeps! from Eyewear Blog

POETRY COMPETITION FOR EYEWEAR 10TH ANNIVERSARY!


To celebrate the tenth birthday of Eyewear Blog - a major literary milestone in British poetry history perhaps (or not) - its spin-off sister, Eyewear Publishing is offering a £110 poetry prize for the best ten line poem using imagery in relation to eyewear, vision, opthamology, or something to do with monocles, glasses, glass eyes, eye patches, or optomosterists, including eye charts... and those tests that put a puff of air into your eye - ouch! Just email the poems as word docs within


BEFORE MONDAY MAY 25TH to EYEWEAR TENTH BIRTHDAY POETRY PRIZE


to info at eyewearpublishing dot com.


Please share and retweet peeps!

from Eyewear Blog

bpNichol Chapbook Award - Call for Submissions

2015 bpNichol Chapbook Award

Posted on February 11, 2015 by meetthapresses

The bpNichol Chapbook Award recognizes excellence in Canadian poetry published in chapbook form. The prize is awarded to a poetry chapbook judged to be the best submitted. The author receives $4,000 and the publisher receives $500. Awarded continuously since 1986, the bpNichol Chapbook Award is currently administered by the Meet the Presses collective.

Interested authors or publishers should submit three copies of a chapbook of poetry in English published in Canada.

Chapbooks should be not less than 10 pages and not more than 48 pages. The chapbooks must have been published between January 1st and December 31st of the previous year (2014), and the poet must be Canadian.

Submissions must be sent by Canada Post or courier (and not hand-delivered to a Meet The Presses collective member) and include a completed submission form or accurate facsimile (download the 2015 Submission Form), a brief C.V. of the author, including address, telephone number, and email address. Publisher contact information (contact person, mailing address, e-mail address, telephone contact) must also be included. Incomplete submissions will not be considered.

The closing date for the 2014 bpNichol Chapbook Award is May 29, 2015. Submissions must be received by this date. If submission confirmation has not been received by e-mail by June 30, 2015, please send a query to Beth Follett at: feralgrl@interlog.com.

Send submissions to:
Meet the Presses / bpNichol Chapbook Award
113 Bond Street, St John’s NL A1C 1T6

The Living Room, Cascadia Poetry Festival April 30 - May 2

Naomi Beth Wakan at Nanaimo North Public Library April 18th

Cascadia Poetry Festival Poetry Contest

The Greater Victoria Public Library and the Vancouver Island Regional Library invite you to send an original
poem (max. 30 lines) in any form on the subject of the Cascadia bioregion for a chance to win tickets to the
Cascadia Poetry Festival.

The Cascadia Poetry Festival runs April 30-May 3 in Nanaimo, BC.

Each poet can submit up to 3 poems (individual entries). Poems will be blind-judged by Victoria Poet Laureate Yvonne Blomer and Nanaimo Poet Laureate Naomi Beth Wakan.

The contest is open to library cardholders of the Greater Victoria Public Library and the Vancouver Island
Regional Library.

1st prize: 2 gold passes

2nd prize: 1 gold pass

3rd prize: 2 tickets

Deadline is April 7, 2015.

Entry form at http://forms.gvpl.ca/view.php

Cascadia Poetry Festival April 30 - May 3

Naomi Beth Wakan at West Vancouver Memorial Library