Surrey Muse – in person reading
Posted by Daniela Elza on Mar 06 2023 | Comment now »
In March I will be reading (in person) in Surrey. Here are the details below. This is their first in-person Surrey Muse gathering after the COVID Lockdown in March 2020.
- MARCH 25, 2023
READING AT SURREY MUSE: An Interdisciplinary Art and Literature Presentation Group
1:00 – 4:00 PM (PT)
Room 418, City Centre branch, Surrey Libraries
10350 University Dr, Surrey, BC V3T 4B8
Free & Accessible event
Performers:
Poet Daniela Elza, Author Daniel Scott, Musician Tamar Haytayan, Emerging Poet Carol Neuman, Emerging Writer K.R. Byggdin
Host Michael Stark
Out of town artists will participate via Skype, and for that, we’ll need your Skype name and
phone number.
Underground parking is available, Surrey Central
skytrain station is nearby, and the venue is wheelchair accessible.
For more information Contact:surrey.muse@gmail.com
Website: click here.
Discovery Centre writing workshop
Posted by Daniela Elza on Feb 25 2023 | Comment now »
Thank you to those who came out today to have some fun with words at the Discovery Centre in Delta/Ladner. I discovered that things have more than one name, and streets are known by numbers and names sometimes. Even Delta and Ladner are interchangeable? How does google even do it? I was supposed to turn right on 48th, which was in reality 10th Ave, which is also called Arthur Street? At least that is how I think it went, before I ended up driving miles and miles through farmland, and then had to be talked off a bridge. :-)
Thank you to women who work hard at organzing so many of the literary events in the area. And the lunch treat and laughter was great.
language, land, and belonging
Posted by Daniela Elza on Feb 08 2023 | Comment now »
Finally this book is out. I have two poems and an essay included in it.
Language, Land and Belonging: Poetic Inquiries, Honein, N. & McKeon, M. (Eds.), Vernon Press, 2023.
Available at 24% discount using coupon CFC124152876D
I did not get paid to publish in this book and it is overwhelming to think how expensive it is.
a sack of salt
Posted by Daniela Elza on Jan 26 2023 | Comment now »
First acceptance of the year will be my essay called A Sack of Salt to be published in New Traditions issue #14 of UNTIL Magazine a publication of the Victoria Arts Council. It is all about food and making and connecting and traditions. The magazine also did a little interview with me on the piece and the topics which follows the essay.
The Infidels Presents: Daniela Elza with Clyde Reed & Jared Burrows
Posted by Daniela Elza on Jan 03 2023 | Comment now »
I will begin this January with one of my favourite things: jamming and improvising with the amazing Clyde Reed and Jared Burrows.
The Infidels Presents:
Daniela Elza with Clyde Reed & Jared Burrows at Frankie’s After Dark
SATURDAY, JANUARY 28, 2023 AT 11 PM – 12:15 AM
@ Frankie’s Jazz Club, 755 Beatty St, Vancouver, BC V6B 2M4
Award winning poet Daniela Elza, has been collaborating with Vancouver improv veterans Clyde Reed (bass) and Jared Burrows (guitar) for over a decade, but poetry and music are an ancient combination. Notes and tones, metaphors and meanings swirl in the vortex of the improvised moment.
Frankie’s After Dark takes place every Friday and Saturday at Frankie’s Jazz Club in downtown Vancouver and is curated by Tim Reinert of Infidels Jazz. Shows start at 11PM and tickets are $10.
For the FB event page click here.
for kith and kin and ki
Posted by Daniela Elza on Jan 02 2023 | Comment now »
What is a year without new beginnings? I am happy to think back on the last year with a number of beginnings. Let there always be new beginnings to remind us that we should never stop learning and growing in our hearts and minds and abilities.
Last year was another year of transitions as well. Some not as exciting as I would have liked. So much of what I did in the last few years involved one learning curve after another. During the pandemic a lot of those curves felt like curveballs. I kept dreaming of a teaching term in which I could teach without having to learn another platform, or technology, or fight with technology, or try to outsmart technology, just to be able to get to my work.
The pandemic also forced more of us to think about time and rethink how we spend our time. That has brought on a lot more focus on what we are doing with our lives, the planet, and an awareness when we have reached our limit with the speed with which our lives move. I too have been doing these kind of re-evaluations and have made more progress toward balance in my life. I can do better still. I probably did the most yoga in the last year compared to previous years. I sure needed it. Thank you, Yoga with Adriene.
In keeping with these thoughts, an idea has been percolating in the back of my head on how to rethink our relationships with the living world. Ever since my kids went to kindergarten the world was split into animate and inanimate. I resented that. It felt like doing damage to their spirit and souls. It went downhill from there. The world they lived in was sensate and animate and they could talk to a tree, a rock or an animal with no trouble. What if we continued to have that stance the the living world. Many cultures do, so why not this culture that decides so much of the fate of the planet?
My wish going forward is to be mindful how we speak of the living things that are not human, without rendering them dead or taking away their agency with the strike of the small word “it”. Here is a piece to inspire you by Robin Wall Kimmerer. I heard her speak of this a while back:
“Inspired by the grammar of animacy in Potawatomi that feels so right and true, I’ve been searching for a new expression that could be slipped into the English language in place of it when we are speaking of living beings. Mumbling to myself through the woods and fields, I’ve tried many different words, hoping that one would sound right to my leafy or feathered companions.
…With full recognition and celebration of its Potawatomi roots, might we hear a new pronoun at the beginning of the word, from the “aaki” part that means land? Ki to signify a being of the living earth. Not he or she, but ki. So that when the robin warbles on a summer morning, we can say, “Ki is singing up the sun. Ki runs through the branches on squirrel feet, ki howls at the moon, ki’s branches sway in the pine-scented breeze, all alive in our language as in our world.”
With her permission I would like to adopt this generous and aware word ki. I invite you to join me in your own way of acknowledging the animate and sensate world around us: all our kith and kin, where kith used to mean the land and living earth and kin is all our relatives.
Wishing you all a lighter step and breath in 2023. Let’s hope it is healthier and saner from the last few. And let it be more animated and alive with the respect each living being deserves. We will not be here without this circle of relations and life that made it possible.
another longlist
Posted by Daniela Elza on Nov 25 2022 | Comment now »
My essay He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not: In the Murky Waters of Online Dating has been long-listed for the Creative Non-Fiction contest of the BC Federation of Writers. It is nice to see this piece getting some love. It is itself a humorous take of a journey of finding and figuring out love.
book review of Cornelia Hoogland’s chapbook
Posted by Daniela Elza on Nov 20 2022 | Comment now »
It has been a while since I have written a book review and thought this fall I will do a few. Here is the first one up on the British Columbia Review (previously known as the Ormsby Review). It looks at Cornelia Hoogland’s chapbook
Dressed in Only a Cardigan, She Picks up Her Tracks in the Snow
Click on the title to read it.
*to be or not to be: a recipe*
Posted by Daniela Elza on Nov 12 2022 | Comment now »
My poem to be or not to be: a recipe received an Honourable Mention in the Dr. William Henry Drummond Poetry Contest 2022. All the winning poems and Honourable Mention poems are published in Dr. William Henry Drummond Poetry Contest Anthology 2022, a chapbook.