Join poets Kate Braid, Al Rempel, Daniela Elza, & musician Clyde Reed (on bass) Sunday, July 11, 7:00pm @ Café Montmarte (4362 Main St.). Guest poet Al Rempel will be launching Understories, (Caitlin Press, 2010). Kate will be reading from her last three books, including Inward to the Bones: Georgia O’Keeffe’s Journey with Emily Carr, which has just been reprinted by Caitlin Press. Books will be available for sale and signing by the authors. The event is free.
Reading, Edmonton, June 9, 2010
Women’s Words: A Fantastic Faculty Reading, in Edmonton, Wednesday June 9 at The Artery, 9535 Jasper Avenue, $5. With Marita Dachsel, Reinekke Lengelle, Valerie Mason-John, Conni Massing, Shirley Serviss and Sheri-D Wilson.
Reading, Vancouver, May 26, 2010
Spiritual Smorgasbord: A reading for the Thomas Merton Society of Canada with Sandy Shreve and Richard Osler on Wednesday, May 26 from 7-9 p.m. at the Wired Monk Café, 2610 West 4th Avenue in Kitsilano. Open to the public.
The reading is free and all are welcome. For more information see www.merton.ca
Readings, Nanaimo, April 27 and 28, 2010
I’ll be reading April 27 and 28 at Dover Bay Secondary School for students and teachers of Dover Bay, only. Please contact Linda Irvine at lirvine@sd68.bc.ca for more information.
Reading, Nanaimo, April 6, 2010
A reading at the launch of Portal Magazine (open to the public) on Tuesday, April 6 at Vancouver Island University, 4 p.m. I’ll be reading with cellist, Allannah Dow. For further information, contact Rhonda Bailey at Rhonda.Bailey@viu.ca
– from the Portal Magazine website:
The PORTAL 2010 launch will be held in the Royal Arbutus Room at VIUs Nanaimo campus, 2-5 p.m. Special guest poet Kate Braid, sponsored by the Canada Council for the Arts, will read from her new work.
Reading, New York, March 26, 2010
Stain of Poetry reading series in NY this Friday, March 26 at 7 p.m. at:
Goodbye Blue Monday
1087 Broadway (corner of Dodworth St)
Brooklyn, NY 11221-3013
(718) 453-6343
Emily Carr: Rebel Artist
“The more isolated Emily felt from her family, the more she clung to the idea of painting. No doubt her sisters saw it as a mere hobby, a pastime. But Emily’s dream of becoming an artist was nurtured by the French painter C.A. de L’Aubinière and his English artist-wife, Georgina, who probably taught Emily briefly in 1886.
“She was in awe of them because they were the first ‘real’ artists she had met – but she was oddly disappointed when she saw their pictures. Their landscapes did not seem at all Canadian to her, though no one yet knew exactly what a ‘Canadian’ painting should look like. In the European tradition, landscapes were panoramas of peaceful meadows with the odd tree, a cow perhaps, beside a quiet stream. They didn’t look at all like the British Columbia Emily knew, where, just outside the city, endless acres of trees towered above an almost impenetrable undergrowth, and the cow was in her back yard.
“Nonetheless, the two Europeans sowed a seed that made Emily sling an old pair of shoes across her rafters. Now, every time she had a little money she pushed it into the shoes. She had a plan.”
Red Bait! Struggles of a Mine Mill Local
Written with Al King.
Al King was an organizer, Local 480 (Trail, British Columbia) president and eventually western Board member of the International Union of Mine-Mill & Smelterworkers, a trade union that was – depending on your point of view – a Communist hotbed or one of the most progressive unions in North American history. He tells a fascinating story, unrecorded elsewhere, of the growth and challenges to Mine-Mill from 1937 when he got his first job as a labourer at Consolidated Mining (now Cominco) in British Columbia, to the time when the union voted to merge with the Steelworkers Union and beyond.
“We had known they were planning to do something but this was astounding. Following the raiding actions, John Gordon…called a big meeting in the Legion Hall to decide what to do. When I left to go to the meeting Lillian said to me, ‘Please be careful.’ She knew feelings were running high and she was worried about fist fights.
“The usual turnout for a union meeting was twenty or thirty men but that night 600 showed up, many of them young veterans. There were so many, they couldn’t all fit in the hall. They filled up the building and overflowed outside, down the steps and into the street. When we saw those numbers, we knew we had a chance.”
The Fish Come in Dancing: Stories from the West-Coast Fishery
A collection of interviews of eight of British Columbia’s fishermen – including one fisherwoman – who in 2002 still worked in the rapidly disappearing fishing industry off British Columbia’s west coast.
”Meanwhile on the beach, the beach man had tied the net to a tree. I guess it was a good two-foot around. Just at the right time, the tide changed. Old Frankie says, ‘Now you’re gonna catch some fish.’ We’re straining against the tide when all of a sudden the tree the net’s tied to comes out of the ground. It flies up in the air and comes right down on top of the skiff. Now, there’s a fifty-foot tree across the skiff and it’s being towed away from shore. Both the skiff man and beach man are standing on the beach, helpless.
The skipper is embarrassed. Everybody’s laughing. All the seiners were blowing their horns. It looked like an absolute mess, our first set of the year.”
Dave Cochrane, interviewed by Robert Boyd
Turning Left to the Ladies
Spy
I parachute into man’s country,
hoist my beer in the bar as if native.
Cool, I talk shop, stand as they stand,
not quite sure
of the cocky swing of hips,
lift of the glass in a loud bass,
confidence laughing.
This is the world of the knowing.
It’s only a small slip into a minor key
when I turn left to go to the Ladies.