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
