• May 13, 2012

  

  A new multidisciplinary performance series of poets, spoken-word performers joined by a band improvising with their work, and a live painter putting the energy onto canvas. Our first feature is Daniela Elza. Other performers include Pam Galloway, Raoul Fernandes, and Heidi Greco. The Band: Clint ‘Father Goose’ Wilson, Joshua Viau, and Dex Arizona. Special musical guest: Christie Watson. A surprise spoken word performance will also be included.
  Hosts: Kyle Hawke and Shannon Horan.

  May 13, 2012
  7:30pm-11:30pm
  @Montmartre Cafe, 4362 Main Street. Second Sunday of each month.

Here it is now on u-tube in three parts. It is about 50 min long all together.

What is this thing called love
Part 1 (about 17 min.)
Part 2 (about 17 min.)
Part 3 (about 15 min.)

Hope you enjoy it.
And, really, what is this thing called love. I still keep asking…

Thursday May 3,
7-8:30 pm.
@ Alma VanDusen Room, Central Library,
350 West Georgia Street. Admission Free.

Photo Credit: Kim Gilker

The audio was taped and broadcasted on SFU radio and here is a link to the broadcast if you would have liked to be there, but could not. I know it is not the same. But still better than nothing. There were over 60 people who came to the event and it was a lovely happening.

Photo Credit: Kim Gilker

This series will be held once a month at SFU Harbour Centre in downtown Vancouver. It is free to the public. Take a break for lunch. Ingest some poems. Tell your friends, who might or might not yet have a taste for such a lunch.

In the evening I had the pleasure of reading alongside E. D. Blodgett. The event was to celebrate National Poetry Month with Semiahmoo Arts. The location was a beautiful room at the Ocean Park Library in Surrey. The reading was also part of the Readings by the Salish Sea.

Photo Credit: Barbara Cooper

See how beautiful the view is. I found it quite appropriate to be standing before those picture windows when our reading had the theme of earth and balance.

Photo Credit: Barbara Cooper

E. D. Blodgett read from a few of his books. I really enjoyed his reading. I now have his book Sleep ‘ You ‘ a Tree and I am loving it. I felt a very congenial sensibility moving through those poems. So many poems with the trees in them and the leaves. (You can see time has passed. It is getting dark behind Ted.)
(Here is an excerpt from the poem Infinity in Sleep ‘ You ‘ a Tree)
“If we should choose/
to speak, would words, like music of the spheres, surround us so with sound/
that all inflection would be blurred? we are so young in this place/
that we might stumble and never be heard of after. The infinite,/
where we are drawn, is that hypothesis that cannot be at home//

in our tongue, a language too minute to speak of what the small/
might be, other than the almost silence of our breathing into our mouths,/
a small that has a rhythm that is carried into space, its grandeur/
all that we can give, and in the winter air the whiteness of/
it semblance of the thing we think infinity might be,…”

Thank you Barbara Cooper for being a big part of the organizing and promoting of this event, and for sending these photos along. Thank you League of Canadian Poets for sponsoring this event. Thank you Ben Nuttall-Smith for the lovely introduction. And thank you Heidi Greco for your work on this event and for hosting me between the school visit and the reading in your lovely home with a delicious dinner, and delightful company over a glass of wine.
Yes, a balancing act indeed and one of many hands. How many people come together to make these readings possible. Truly a labour of love.

This Saturday I will be launching the weight of dew on Salt Spring Island.
April 21, 2012
4:30pm
@ Mother Tongue Publishing’s Letterpress Studio and The Porch Gallery, 290 Fulford-Ganges Road, Salt Spring Island. (park on the road please)
Free Event.
There will be cake, I think. And I will read free-range poems.

• April 14, 2012, 3:30-5:30pm.
  Reading at Poetry Around the World along side Dennis E. Bolen, Bonnie Nish, Pam Bentley, Kyla Bourgh, Steve Duncan, Kyle Hawke, Timothy Shay. We each will read for about 10 minutes.

• April 15, 2012, 2-5pm.
  Launching The Weight of Dew at Poetic Justice Reading Series. Reading along side poets Rob Taylor and Tomothy Shay.

• Wednesday, April 18 at 7:30 pm,
  Ocean Park Library, 512854 – 17th Avenue, Surrey, BC V4A 1T
  Readings by the Salish Sea Presents:
  A Balancing Act in Two Voices: Featuring Poets Daniela Elza and E.D. Blodgett

• Saturday, April 21, 2012, 4pm
  Book Launch Celebration: at Mother Tongue Publishing Letterpress Studio and The Porch Gallery, 290 Fulford-Ganges Rd ( park on the road please), Salt Spring Island.
  Author reading, books for sale, refreshments.

Also I will be doing the CV2’s 2 Day Poem Contest this weekend. Starting tonight really. So at 10pm I will receive the 10 words.
Hope you are too.
That kind of crazy.

while walking through the streets of DC we came upon a cherry blossom grove

we sat under cherry blossom snow

there were many people there in the cherry blossom oasis, playing, reading, eating, talking, sitting

we watched the light paint the blossoms with sunset hues

and watched…

and watched…

until we had to go.

a few days later they were gone and so was I.

(thanks Ari for sending this last photo: taken after I had left)

There will also be an open mic part of the evening. So please bring something for the open mic.
Sign up for open mic is at 7pm on a first come first serve basis.
Thursday, April 5, from 7-10pm
@ The Prophouse, 1636 Venables Ave.
All are welcome. Suggested donation: $5.

Here I am at the Lunch Poems Event which brought together 60 + of you on March 28th at the SFU Harbour Center, Tek Gallery. Thank you to all who came and partook in this eating of poems. And thank you for your questions and comments at the end.

Yes, the view to the North Shore was and still is spectacular. It was a feast for the ears and the eyes.