Poets Corner Reading Series

Tag Archive: Tom Wayman

Worth More Standing — An anthology of poets and activists paying homage to trees

For poet-tree lovers!

Worth More Standing
Poets and Activists Pay Homage to Trees

Edited by Christine Lowther

 

Poets, both settler and Indigenous, pay tribute to trees through reflections on the past, connections to the present, and calls for the protection of our future.

In Worth More Standing: Poets and Activists Pay Homage to Trees, celebrated poets and activists pay homage to the ghosts of lost forests and issue a rallying cry to protect remaining ancient giants and restore uncolonized spaces.

Themes of connection, ecology, grief, and protection are explored through poems about trees and forests written by an impressive number of influential poets, several of whom have attended the recent Fairy Creek blockades and still others who defended old growth ecosystems in Clayoquot Sound nearly 30 years ago.

Contributors include ninth Parliamentary Poet Laureate Louise Bernice Halfe-Sky Dancer, GG winner Arleen Paré, Canadian icon bill bissett, Griffin Poetry Prize winner Eve Joseph, ReLit Award winner Patrick Friesen, Order of Canada and Order of the Rising Sun recipient Joy Kogawa, Vancouver Poet Laureate Fiona Tinwei Lam, Harold Rhenisch, Jay Ruzesky, John Barton, Kate Braid, Kim Trainor, Kim Goldberg, Pamela Porter, Patricia and Terence Young, Russell Thornton, Sonnet L’Abbé, Susan McCaslin, Susan Musgrave, Tom Wayman, Trevor Carolan, Yvonne Blomer, Zoe Dickinson and the late Pat Lowther.

Join us for our next Poetry Reading on September 16 –FINISHED!

Posted on behalf of Evelyn Schofield.

Wow, where did the time go?  Summer is drawing to a close and the cycle of the seasons propels us into fall.

The days are getting shorter and we instinctively know that it is time to get serious. In keeping with the traditional back to school / back to work feeling of this time of year, our next reading will feature two poets who are well known for their writing about the experience of work.

Join us on Wednesday September 16 at 7:30pm (West Coast time) to listen to M.C. Warrior and Tom Wayman bring their words to life in their own voice. You really don’t want to miss it, and you will find all the information you need to attend by scrolling down the page. But first, let’s tell you a bit more about these two fine poets.

Born in England and educated there and at UBC, M.C. Warrior worked for over thirty years at the sharp end of production in B.C., as a logger and commercial fisherman. He has also worked as a union organiser, an environmental campaigner, and a trade union researcher and historian. His new book Disappearing Minglewood Blues contains reflections on his experienceworking on the coast and the political meaning of work, as well as observations on topics ranging from Buddhism to Ovid in the afterlife. His poetry has been published in numerous magazines and anthologies as well as in a chapbook, Quitting Time(McLeod Books, 1978).

 

In 2015 the Vancouver Public Library named Tom Wayman a Vancouver Literary Landmark with a plaque on Commercial Drive to commemorate his championing of people writing about their own employment. Since 1973, he has had published innumerable volumes of his poetry, fiction and cultural criticism. Recent titles include The Shadows We Mistake For Love (short stories; Douglas & McIntyre, 2015), If You’re Not Free at Work, Where Are You Free?: Literature and Social Change(essays; Guernica Editions, 2018) and Watching a Man Break a Dog’s Back: Poems For a Dark Time (Harbour Publishing, 2020). Since 1989 he has been based in the Slocan Valley in southeastern British Columbia. www.tomwayman.com.

Please join us for our 5th Virtual Live Reading at Poets Corner!

If you want to hear these great poets, you need to register ahead of time. YOU WON’T BE ABLE TO JOIN UNLESS YOU REGISTER.

To attend this month’s virtual live reading, here’s what you need to know…

 

Venue:                 Zoom platform online (click the link below to register)
Date:                    Wednesday, 16 September 2020, from 7:30 to 9:30pm, PDT

Register in advance by clicking this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZwocOqhrjIpHtNNIZOGxZ1iWoQdKtqUD_a_

 

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about how to join the meeting. If you have any questions contact us in advance at:  socialmedia@poetscorner.ca.

Sign up for the open mic

A regular feature of our poetry readings is the Open Mic segment, which is an enduring favourite with both the readers and the audience. To sign up for the Open Mic for September (limit of 10 readers; 3 minutes per reader!) please REGISTER first for the event and then contact us at socialmedia@poetscorner.ca

Looking forward to seeing you online at our next reading on Wednesday Sept. 16 at 7:30 pm.

FINISHED! Poetry Reading on August 19

At our August reading, 45 poetry lovers were treated to provocative readings by no less than four featured poets. Yvonne Blomer joined forces with Jenna Butler and Tanis MacDonald to offer us poetry about water, women and walking. Their voices reached us from Alberta, BC and Ontario, sometimes calling out alone, other times alternating in antiphony, or even competing for our attention. They read selections from the just-released anthology Sweet Water: Poems for the Watersheds, as well as other works with a particular focus on the paths that women seek to travel, often unsuccessfully. The final poet of the evening, Sarah deLeeuw, read poems from Outside America, reflecting on tragedies of both global and intimate scale, and continued the auditory delight of the evening with new work that features chanting repetitions, making us think about how language shapes our understanding of the world.

The evening was rounded out by short Q&A sessions with the featured poets, as well as readings by nine talented individuals who signed up for the Open Mic. If you missed this wonderful feast of poetry, or want to hear it all again, video clips of the readings are posted here from our YouTube channel Poets Corner Reading Series.

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