Exciting October Calendar for Planet Earth Poetry!

October 1: Camosun College launches the first edition of Beside the Point in print.

Since 2008, Beside the Point has been publishing writing in four main genres (fiction, poetry, drama and creative non-fiction) as well as art and graphica. Edited by students and faculty at Camosun College, the journal welcomes contributions from British Columbia and beyond. Fall 2010 marks its first joint print and online edition. Visit us at www.besidethepoint.net or on facebook/twitter.

October 8: Antony Di Nardo and Julie Paul

Julie Paul was born and raised in the village of Lanark, in the Ottawa Valley, and has recently moved back to Victoria, BC, after a year in Montreal and six months in Lanark County. She wears the hats of writer, massage therapist, mother and teacher. Her stories, poems and essays have been accepted for publication in numerous journals, including The New Quarterly (http://theliterarytype.ca/), The Malahat Review, The Fiddlehead, The Dalhousie Review, Geist, Vallum, existere, Boulevard, Canadian Living, and in the anthologies Coming Attractions 07 and Women Behaving Badly. Her collection of stories, The Jealousy Bone, was released in February, 2008, by Emdash Publishing.

Antony di Nardo is the author of two new collections, Soul on Standby (Exile Editions) and Alien, Correspondent (Brick Books). The latter is a collection of outsider pieces taken from the poet’s years spent living in Beirut, Lebanon. It’s a surprising book; as successful an act of reportage as a collection of personal lyrics. Di Nardo’s tone is mature, concerned, and almost radically apolitical at times, a thorough and meticulous attempt at documenting and translating an experience too massive for simple accounting, but too specific for the blunt force of the proclamation. It’s also a surprisingly beautiful work, filled with a sneaky craftsmanship that belies its formal casualness and twists the rhythmic presentation of the lyrics in unexpected ways.

October 15 Carolyn Smart reads from Hooked

Carolyn Smart is the author of five volumes of poetry, including Stoning the Moon and The Way to Come Home. Hooked - Seven Poems was published by Brick Books in 2009. An excerpt from her memoir At the End of the Day (Penumbra Press, 2001) won first prize in the CBC Literary Contest (Personal Essay Category) in 1993. Her poems have appeared in over 150 magazines and anthologies, and she is the editor of "Lake Effect", a bi-annual anthology showcasing the work of the creative writing students at Queen's University. She is the founder of the Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers, and since 1989 has taught Creative Writing and Contemporary Canadian Poetry at Queen's University. Since 1983 she has lived in the country north of Kingston with her family.

Hooked is a stunning new collection of seven poems about seven famous or infamous women: Myra Hindley, Unity Mitford, Zelda Fitzgerald, Dora Carrington, Carson McCullers, Jane Bowles, and Elizabeth Smart. Each of these women was hooked on, and her life contorted by, an addiction or obsession. Here we have seven variations on the insoluble conundrum of sexuality - each in a remarkably distinct, authentic voice.

Planet Earth Poetry thanks The Canada Council for The Arts for funding this reading.

October 22 Patrick Lane and Pamela Porter launch new books.

Planet Earth Poetry with Harbour Publishing and Ronsdale Press presents the launch of two new books by two of our most loved writers.

Pamela Porter is the author of the multiple award-winning novel The Crazy Man, and two previous volumes of poetry: Stones Call Out, and The Intelligence of Animals. In 1988, she travelled to Nicaragua and Guatemala to document the experiences of ordinary people caught in the Contra war and the government sponsored terror against Guatemalan teachers and aid workers. Later with two children, she and her husband worked in Angola and Ghana. Pamela Porter is now a sessional instructor at the University of Victoria and lives on Vancouver Island with her husband, children and a menagerie of rescued animals.

Patrick Lane, considered by most writers and critics to be one of Canada's finest poets, was born in 1939 in Nelson, BC. He grew up in the Okanagan region of the BC interior, primarily in Vernon. He came to Vancouver and co-founded a small press, Very Stone House with bill bissett and Seymour Mayne. He then drifted extensively throughout North and South America. He has worked at a variety of jobs from labourer to industrial accountant, but much of his life has been spent as a poet, having produced twenty-four books of poetry to date. He is also the father of five children and grandfather of five. He has won nearly every literary prize in Canada, from the Governor General's Award to the Canadian Authors Association Award to the Dorothy Livesay Prize. His poetry and fiction have been widely anthologized and have been translated into many languages. Lane now makes his home in Victoria, BC, with his companion, the poet Lorna Crozier.

Patrick Lane will launch his selected poems Witness: Selected Poems 1962-2010

October 29: Jenna Butler and Bren Simmers

Two young poets from Edmonton and Vancouver launch new work at Planet Earth Poetry.

Jenna Butler was born in Norwich, England, close to the North Sea. Her family emigrated to Canada in the early eighties, initially moving to Toronto and finally settling in Alberta. The sense of belonging to, and simultaneously not quite fitting into, two places—England and Canada—has heavily influenced her work, which often focuses on the varied landscapes of these two countries. Butler holds BA and B.Ed degrees from the University of Alberta, in addition to an MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia. She is currently immersed in her Doctorate of Creative and Critical Writing from UEA under the supervision of contemporary British poet Denise Riley. She also runs her own poetry house, Rubicon Press, and teaches English at Grant MacEwan University in Edmonton. Aphelion, her first poetry collection, will be published in April 2010.

We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the League of Canadian Poets.

Humour and humanity mix beautifully in Bren Simmers’ debut collection of poetry, Night Gears, released by Wolsak and Wynn in September 2010. Attuned to the intricate machinery of the world, here is a poetry committed to the human and the natural, and to the intersection between. Born in Vancouver, Bren Simmers studied writing at the University of Victoria and has a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from The University of British Columbia. Winner of the Arc Poem of the Year Award and shortlisted for the Bronwen Wallace Memorial Award, her poetry has been published in The Antigonish Review, CV2, Event, The Fiddlehead, Prairie Fire, and Prism International.