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

Art can change your mind and change the world

Dear Han Shan Poets:

A local artist in Langley named Susan Falk has been inspired by McLellan Forest and by some of the poems of the Han Shan poets to create a series of forest paintings in which she has embedded phrases from selected forest poems. Unfortunately, Susan was able to work with only 13 of the many excellent poems contributed to the initiative.

On Saturday May 11 from 12-3 pm at The Fort Gallery in Fort Langley, Susan is having an art show opening during which thirteen of the Han Shan poets will be reading their forest poems.

You are most cordially invited to attend this wine and cheese gala if you happen to live within a reasonable range of the area. If not, I’m sure you will be with us in spirit.

Susan is conducting a silent auction of her work whereby proceeds from the sale of the paintings will go to the continuing work of WOLF (Watchers of Langley Forests) to ensure that the forest is officially and permanently protected.

It would be a pleasure to see some of you there to support our endeavour and your fellow poets. Perhaps there will be future occasions where I am free to invite more of you to perform your work.

Please circulate the attached e-vite widely to your friends and associates. It contains all the pertinent information.

All the best,

Susan McCaslin

Oops I missed Robert Martens birthday

which was yesterday.  

(This is the danger of keeping tabs on birthdays - some get missed.)

Robert Martens is the author of Poltergeist which was published in 2011 and shortlisted for the bpNichol Chapbook award in 2012.

Hope it was happy Bob.

Poetry goes Swish

Marion Quednau

...says Marion Quednau who is organizing a reading to celebrate National Poetry Month, April 18th, in Gibsons. Doors open at 6:30pm at Swish (309-287 Gower Point Road, Gibsons)

Three BC poets will be reading - myself (Janet Vickers), Heidi Greco - previous Surrey poet-in-residence, and Gibson's new bard, Marion Quednau - one of the five 2012 Canada Writes Poetry shortlist.

Admission is free.  You can find more information in Thursday, April 11th issue of The Local.



We gratefully acknowledge support from the Canada Council of the Arts and the League of Canadian Poets

April 14 at Poetic Justice

Jordan Abel, Eileen Clyde and Janet Vickers
at the Heritage Grill, New Westminster
April 14th 
Please visit the website for more information

www.poeticjustice.ca 

Poems from Planet Earth

Happy Birthday Heidi Greco

Heidi Greco by George Ormorean

Heidi was the first writer to sign up with Lipstick Press in 2009 allowing us to publish her beautiful speculative tribute to Amelia Earhart.

Since then Heidi has published a novella called Shrinking Violets,  and her poetry has appeared in many anthologies, including A Verse Map of Vancouver (ed. George McWhirter) and radiant danse uv being (eds Pew, J. & Roxborough, S.)

You can find out more about Heidi through her blog Out on the Big Limb. 

And After 80... Naomi Beth Wakan's new book

http://www.pagesresort.com/bookstore.html

Thanks to Page's Resort and Marina for supporting the literary arts and local writers.  This image comes from them.

League of Canadian Poets - National Poetry Month Begins April 1st

Visit their blog: https://lcpnationalpoetrymonth2013.wordpress.com/

Happy Birthday rob mclennan

Author of  how it is I am not married / I want to sleep in the runcible spoon (published 2010) celebrates another birthday.  The news for this year is that rob is now married.  In 2012 he married Christine McNair. Congratulations to you both - many happy years together.