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.

Happy birthday Franci Louann

Author of Beach Cardiology has a birthday today and to celebrate I upload a poem from Franci's chapbook.

Ecstasy

perhaps it was the red wine and this week’s 

news about Christ’s face

appearing on a condo wall in Ladysmith

burgundy, crimson, scarlet

when we loved, red flowed through me

I was androgynous

partly Christ, partly Mary, your Sacred Heart

robes, banners, crucifix

burgundy, crimson, scarlet

when our love came, red flowed through me    

Beautiful Women Contributors

Here are the contributors' poems.  The plan is to publish in the spring.

"Unwinding" Angeline Schellenberg
"Malvena Salutes in a Howling Wind" Debbie Okun Hill
"All the best" D K Knowles
"My Mother's Wisdom" Franci Louann
"Outlier" Heather Brager
"Beautiful" Honey Novick
"Directions for the Daughter I May Never Have" Joy Donnell
"Indelible" Kate Marshall Flaherty
"Where Beauty Begins" Katherine L. Gordon
"Whether You Like It" Kim Clark
"Hide Lotus Under Leaf" Kim Goldberg
"One of Them" L Muirhead
"Funeral Home" Louise M. Carson
"Beauty is Skin Deep" Naomi Beth Wakan
"Placenta Encapsulation" Paula Lietz
"Revelation IV: The Art of the Garden" Ronnie R. Brown
"Jackie Ciano the Right Whale Hero" Shelley Haggard
"Dream of Another World" Vikash Kumar
"Revelations" Vuong Pham
"Feist" Waldemar Ens


The image on this blog is not necessarily the image for the book's cover - that is yet to be decided.

Thank you all for your beautiful poems.

Beautiful Women

Thanks to all who have submitted beautiful poems to this project.  I plan to read through them all in the next week and will reply to all, whether selected or not, as soon as a decision has been made.

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Lipstick Press is planning on publishing a chapbook anthology (which means 20 poems) about beautiful women, beauty that is true and natural. To challenge the oppressive images of beauty that teaches young girls, through clever advertising and propaganda, to strive for a false ideal. To challenge the idea a woman's worth depends upon a man's opinion.

Apart from the trillion dollar industry designed to instill insecurity in consumers, urging them to strive for a certain look, it sends young, vulnerable girls and boys into destructive, soul-destroying activities in search of a vague success.

Children are the canaries in our hyper-capitalist world. While a woman has more options than a hundred years ago, media influence has placed her on the slut continuum - popular and desirable at one end, or invisible and cold at the other; and the level of bullying in schools illuminates the confusion, self-doubt and fear our youth are trying so hard to overcome.

So why a book of poems on beauty? To reclaim the original meaning of beauty. What is beautiful to the poet? Who are the beautiful women around you? What is it that makes them beautiful? Is it grace, confidence, kindness - or is it something that cannot be objectified? Yes, men are beautiful too but that is a topic for another occasion.

Please send three short, previously unpublished poems to Lipstick Press - lipstickpress@shaw.ca
with "Beautiful Women Anthology" in the subject line.

Deadline February 14, 2013. 

All submissions will receive a response.  

Freedom to Read Week February 24 - March 2

We cannot take anything we have for granted including the freedom to read. Canada is a free country by world standards yet books and magazines are banned at the border. Libraries and schools are regularly asked to remove books.

Who asks for books to be banned?  Those who get organized, who are offended by some materials. But are they the books you would like to see banned?

I know there are some things I would like to see banned but they are not books. This is where freedom of information and conversation helps us become informed citizens engaged in creating a better world. 

You can order your kits here. 

Jack Layton: Art in Action, edited by Penn Kemp

Looking for a chance to win a prize?

Malahat 2013 Long Poem Prize!

Deadline: February 1, 2013 (postmarked)
Prize: two $1000 CAD prizes will be awarded
Entry fee:
$35 CAD for Canadian entries
$40 USD for entries from the USA
$45 USD for entries from elsewhere
(entry fee includes a one-year subscription to The Malahat Review)

Enter one long poem or a cycle of poems between 10 and 20 published pages (one published page = 32 lines or less).

Book Launch - a friendly reminder

Congratulations to Adrienne Gruber

Poet Adrienne Gruber is the winner of the 2012 bpNichol Chapbook Award for her chapbook Mimic, published by Leaf Press of Lantzville, B.C.

Lipstick Press was honoured to have Robert Martens' Poltergeist among the short-listed, including:

• Spencer Gordon, Feel Good! Look Great! Have a Blast!, Ferno House (Toronto)
• Liz Howard, (skullambient), Ferno House (Toronto)
• Elizabeth Rainer and Michael Blouin, let lie, above/ground press (Ottawa)
• Hugh Thomas, Opening the Dictionary, above/ground press (Ottawa)