Showing posts with label Naomi Beth Wakan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Naomi Beth Wakan. Show all posts

Wednesday, February 21, 2018

Dukkha by Naomi Beth Wakan (for Colten Boushie)


My DNA is crammed
with thousands of years
of persecution and pogroms,
of expulsions and
lives lived in perpetual exile,
so when I hear
of injustice anywhere
(as large as genocide, or
as small as one neighbor
maligning another),
immediately my cells
line up in indignation
and words of protest
overwhelm my mind.
The headline read
“Man Kills Boy”.
No, let me correct that,
“White man kills Indigenous youth.” 
Yes, that’s the trigger,
the trigger that floods
me with images
of Inca-killing Spaniards,
of Leopold’s slaughter in the Congo,
of Mao and Stalin and Pol Pot,
the Armenians, Rwanda, Srebrenica, 

the Kurds, the Isaaqs, the Rohingya, 
and here and there and everywhere
the indigenous people of those lands, 
and for all times and all places
always the Jews, the perpetual Jews . . .


The snapshots pale, and
I am left, once more,
with the stark image
of one white man killing 

one indigenous youth.
An image that may well 

tear a country in shreds. 
And, uncertain what to do, 
I turn to my husband,
who answers my unspoken question
in his usual simple way.
“Life is complex,”
is what he says. 

Monday, February 19, 2018

Poetry That Heals by Naomi Beth Wakan


How can poetry heal? Naomi Beth Wakan shows us through a tour of the different forms of Japanese poetry and ultimately answers the question.

Each chapter pairs the poetic form with the way healing intersects with reading and writing. But first the author asks “Who has not at times of distress sighed, groaned, cried and let out an anguished “Why?””

Chapter headings read like a self help guide: Being Here Now, Reading Haiku, How to Write a Haiku, The Haiku Walk, Healing the Earth, Loosening with Laughter, Freeing the Artist, Letting it all out, The Journey.

How can poetry heal? Naomi Beth Wakan shows us through a tour of the different forms of Japanese poetry and ultimately answers the question.

Each chapter pairs the poetic form with the way healing intersects with reading and writing. But first the author asks “Who has not at times of distress sighed, groaned, cried and let out an anguished “Why?””

Chapter headings read like a self help guide: Being Here Now, Reading Haiku, How to Write a Haiku, The Haiku Walk, Healing the Earth, Loosening with Laughter, Freeing the Artist, Letting it all out, The Journey. But it’s not shallow advice, not a quick-fix-buy-this kind of magical thinking.

Writers throughout took to writing stuff down as a powerful antidote to despair even in the most sad and tragic times. Even sadness expressed at a particular event can fight against depression.  Poems that witness minutes, seconds, days or years, without rushing toward a solution, are revealing an element about life which the ego matures and understands - we are not in control.

Having experienced that catatonic flood. That rock in the stomach that prevents a move forward, that inner system bunged up with too much information for the mind and heart to process, I have turned to something unrelated to gain balance, and it has often given me new insights.

Being Here Now (the first chapter) shuts the door to all the weather swirling around and points to a particular moment: the heron / looks at its image / shallow waters. Nature offers a  returns to the universe. Ah yes, right.  Got it! Vanity is a lonely pursuit.

Reading Haiku and How to Write Haiku is makes it clear this book is not a guide on how to become a post-modern Basho. “Haiku don’t tell you what to think or what insights they might offer.” writes Wakan. “Haiku present images for readers to consider and then experience the resonances within themselves that the strong images of the haiku produce.”

The Haiku Walk is about reconnecting with nature, the eyes, the ears and the mind, using our own feet. 

Healing the Earth when there is so much abuse of this planet and its beings,  “you will find no despairing comments … No “it’s so bad!” or “it’s so terrible! Nor will you find overt comments on the awesome wonder of it all. What you will find is just what someone has sensed intensely at one moment in time.”

This is easier to contemplate than lists of what we can do and what we can’t control, or endless arguments about politics … the promise of a better world and better leaders, and the inevitable hangover after the “drug” wears off.

Anything we cherish needs more care than clever speeches from politicians. It needs a level gaze. It needs to be nurtured.  The difference between sadness and despair is that sadness can evoke our care, whereas despair can lock the heart and mind in a vault.

The poet will share an opinion with humility through careful observation with her senses and her humanity.  “Yes, at such bitter and such sweet times poetry has its uses, I find.” writes Wakan.

This books taps into human nature - the apps that we are born with, that have served us throughout the centuries: the power of humour, freeing the artist, letting it all out, and the journey. 

This book is light in weight and size yet large in its capacity to bring us back to our humanity.

[published by Shanti Arts Publishing 2018
first published in 2014 by Pacific Rim Publishers]
In Canada you can order the book here mail@pagesresort.com 
In US here info@ShantiArts.com

BODY, MIND & SPIRIT / Healing / General
POETRY / Haiku

ISBN: 978-1-947067-28-8 (print; softcover; perfect bound)
ISBN: 978-1-947067-29-5 (digital)

LCCN: 2017964362
Released February 2018
104 pages

Monday, October 17, 2016

Book Launch: October 20, 6 - 7 pm, Gabriola Library


You are invited to a book launch Thursday October 20,  6 - 7 pm

Gabriola Library,
575 North Road Everyone welcome Free, drop in

Join us at the Library for a melodic prelude with Gabriola’s vocalist and pianist: Leah Hokanson. Savouries, beverages, and books for sale.




Appreciation to Paul Grignon for the cover art "Heroic Journey", Naomi Beth Wakan and Heidi Greco for the blurb and support, and Richard Olafson for publishing this.

Sunday, July 5, 2015

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                                                                                     

Thursday, January 2, 2014

Poet Laureate: Naomi Beth Wakan




"If you only do a page a day, in one year you have a book"  Such is the practical way Naomi approaches big things.

This is a video interview from Kelly Robinson of Shaw TV Nanaimo.


Monday, November 18, 2013

Poetry Gabriola sponsors Beautiful Poets, November 21, at The Old Crow Cafe on Gabriola

Thursday from 7 pm until 9: the evening begins with the regular open mic, then will be followed by these beauties reading their poems from the Beautiful Women anthology and other publications.

Disease and desire, mothering and the mundane propel Kim Clark’s ongoing journey between poetry and prose, page and stage. Her debut fiction collection, Attemptations (Caitlin Press), was launched in 2011 and one of its novellas has been optioned for a 90 minute feature film. Her chapbook, Dis ease ad De sire, the M anu S cript (Lipstick Press), came out in April, 2012. Her new poetry collection, Sit You Waiting, hit bookshelves in August, 2012 via Caitlin Press and she was a finalist in Theatre BC’s 2013 Playwrights competition. Professional stage-reading upcoming. She lives in Cedar on Vancouver Island.

Kim Goldberg's Red Zone collection of poems about urban homelessness as been taught in university literature courses. Her previous collection, Ride Backwards on Dragon, was a finalist for Canada's Gerald Lambert Award. She is a winner of the Rannu Fund Poetry Prize for Speculative Literature, the Goodwin's Award for Excellence in Alternative Journalism, and other distinctions. She is currently writing a nonfiction book about people sickened by WiFi and other sources of electromagnetic radiation. 



Darryl Knowles
Lives on Vancouver Island. He is an old fashioned sign painter who went on to a degree in graphic arts, and has been writing songs and poetry since Dick and Jane saw spot run.






Naomi BethWakan, Nanaimo’s inaugural Poet Laureate, has published over 40 books. Her most recent A Roller-coaster Ride: thoughts on aging (Wolsak and Wynn) and And After 80… (Bevalia Press).








Robert Martens grew up a village Mennonite, and so feels quite at home in the village of Gabriola. His poems address the loneliness of our times and attempt in some small way to heal the malaise. Robert has co-edited and co-written a number of books, including Half in the Sun, an anthology of Mennonite west coast writing. He has a manuscript of poems which he hopes will soon be published.

"ROBERT MARTENS' book "little creatures" must be read with caution, for inside its covers is a jumble tumble playground of poems, a riff on the existentialism of insects, creatures of twilight, and six-chambered souls. And oh, for a thousand legs to flea the flea, the fly, the rat, the snake, and crickets with moods. Shelled things and slimy, furry, and wondrously winged. Blood junkies that buzz in the night, hump pump the skin, tickle and creep, expire. Humans, too, in the book, transfixed by the brilliance of sun mirrored on beetle’s back, the poet, line after line, leading readers into the sadness of things. The glory."

-- Elsie K Neufeld, personal historian, poet, essayist and editor.

For further information or to sign up for the open mic portion email Lisa at altogetherlisa@yahoo.ca, or Janet at lipstickpress@shaw.ca

Deep gratitude and thanks to Poetry Gabriola and The Old Crow Cafe.

Wednesday, May 1, 2013

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


Friday, March 29, 2013

Saturday, November 3, 2012

Pause - Response Tanka by Naomi Beth Wakan and David Bateman


Two very distinct voices, Naomi Beth Wakan and David Bateman have created a beautiful new blog of response tanka. Not only is it finely crafted, it is free.  You can find it here . . . Pause



the honesty, my token
flower – profuse in seeding.
I too aim
for its transparency so that
you can see right through me
                                                          Naomi

seeing in the dark
all the lightness we have shared
ink woman, diva
we unite in othered woods
infirm against firm earth 
                                                         David    

Says David "When I approach haiku, and response tanka, I approach them through a phrase from a Wallace Steven’s poem - “uttered word by word.” These forms graciously offer me the opportunity to deposit my emotions into a very measured, and for me, liberating form. Writing response tanka can be an act of reclamation and self-preservation. The literal translation of kokoro, a healthy heart, contributes literally and figuratively to my personal sense of an idea of order in the midst of a chaotic world."

Naomi asks "What on earth could a rather domesticated, unsophisticated woman living on a small, very rural island have in common with a transvestite, city-smart man twenty-five years younger?  How could they have enough in common to cause them to write back and forth for several months sharing their momentary thoughts in the form of tanka?  Even here the gap between them is large, as he sticks, for the most part, to the 5,7,5,7,7, syllable count of traditional Japanese tanka form, while she adopts the short, long, short, long, long lengths of line that many non-Japanese tanka writers have adopted."

You'll find the answer to Naomi's question if you read some of them.

                                                        
                                                                                                     




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...