TWO GREAT POETRY EVENTS THIS AUGUST

On Tuesday, 2 August, 7:30 pm – Poetry at the PO in the secondhand bookshop at Main & Station (the old post office) in Parrsboro

Featuring Giovanna Riccio, Richard Dittami, and Karenlee Thompson

Plus open stage!

Relax in a convivial atmosphere amid books and art while and enjoy performances from these authors and more! If you would like to participate by reading for the open stage, please contact us at [email protected] or show up early to get your name on the list.

Giovanna Riccio was born in Calabria, Italy and immigrated to Canada as a child. She is a graduate of the University of Toronto where she majored in philosophy.  Her love of poetry is her inheritance from a gifted, autodidact father who penned his own verses. Giovanna is the author of Vittorio (Lyricalmyrical Press, 2010) Strong Bread (Quattro Books, 2011), and Plastic’s Republic (Guernica Editions, 2019) which is shortlisted for the 2022 Bressani Prize. Her poems have appeared in national and international publications and numerous anthologies and her work has been translated into 6 languages. Giovanna is the 2021 winner of the Venera Fazio Poetry Prize.  Website and contact:  giovannariccio.com

Richard Dittami is a lifelong writer of poems, stories and children’s tales. He is also a lifelong tradesman and a retiree of the Laborers International Union of North America. Richard is the author of Shredding Plywood (Black Dog & One-Eyed Press, 2020). He lives in Nova Scotia with his partner Louise Cloutier.

Karenlee Thompson is a Tasmanian-born writer of fiction, non-fiction and poetry. Flame Tip: short fictions (Hybrid Publishers, 2017) received excellent reviews and was named ANZ LitLovers Book of the Year 2017. The novel 8 States of Catastrophe (Brolga) was published in 2011. Karenlee’s short stories have appeared in The Big Issue and Woman’s Day and the Education Department magazines Orbit and Countdown. She has been shortlisted for the ‘Hal Porter Short Story Prize’ and three times for the ‘Tasmanian Writers Prize’.Her non-fiction has been published in The Weekend Australian, Antipodes: a North American Journal of Australian Literature and Writing Queensland with memoir pieces placed in The Big Issue and The Lane Cove Literary Award Anthology.She has won some minor poetry awards, most recently the 2018 ‘Blue Knot Foundation Award’ in the Hunter Writers Grieve Competition for her poem ‘Hashtag’.Karenlee is passionate about reading and writing the Australian voice and has provided numerous author talks and story writing workshops.She is based in Brisbane but is travelling throughout Canada, the USA and the UK during 2020 2022, researching her next work. www.karenleethompson.com 

On Friday, 5 August, beginning at 3 pm – Poetry Picnic at the end of the road, Soley Cove, Lower Economy

Featuring George Elliott Clarke, erika white, Zev Bagel, and Geordie Miller

Plus open stage!

• Weather permitting there will be a campfire, picnicking, and swimming in the cove.
• To get there, take highway 2 and turn off onto Soley Cove Rd. Follow the little road to the end. There we are. Maps below. To map it yourself, use civic address: 342 Soley Cove Rd, Economy, NS B0M 1K0 or click here….

https://goo.gl/maps/rkwQpDWEAKbLzg2u5

Please Note: The event is outdoors in a meadow. There is an old sawmill adjacent and we will have a cookfire going. There will be some seating provided but we don’t know how many will show so encourage you to bring folding chairs and/or a blanket to sit on. There is an outhouse but no indoor plumbing or power.

• In case of terrible weather, this event will instead be held at Main & Station in Parrsboro  (the old Post Office).

George Elliott Clarke: The 4^th Poet Laureate of Toronto (2012-15) and the 7^th Parliamentary/Canadian Poet Laureate (2016-17), George Elliott Clarke was born in Windsor, Nova Scotia, in 1960.  A professor of English at the University of Toronto, Clarke has also taught at Duke, McGill, UBC, and Harvard. His recognitions include the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Centre Fellowship (US), the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Fellows Prize, the Governor-General’s Award for Poetry, the National Magazine Gold Award for Poetry, the Premiul Poesis (Romania), the Eric Hoffer Book Award for Poetry (US), and International Fellow Poet of the Year, Encyclopedic Poetry School [2019] (China).  His acclaimed titles include Whylah Falls (1990, translated into Chinese), Beatrice Chancy (1999, translated into Italian), Execution Poems (2001), Blues and Bliss (selected poems, 2009), I & I (2008), Illicit Sonnets (U.K., 2013), Traverse (2015), and Canticles II (MMXX) (2020). https://www.georgeelliottclarke.net

Marilyn Lerch: Maybe it was something in the Maritime water, certainly it was love, that allowed my poet self to emerge.  Twenty-six years in Canada has brought forth “Lambs & Llamas, Ewes & Me”, “Moon Loves Its Light”. “Witness and Resist”, “The Physics of Allowable Sway” and “That We Have Lived at All”.  Other chances to give back to the community I love came as president of the Writers’ Federation of New Brunswick and as Sackville’s Poet Laureate.  The sixth collection is moving slowly through earth heating, pandemic, war, and global capitalism’s incessant drum beat.  The wide world web, the web of life and Webb telescope: convergence everywhere to what end? 

erika n white is a recently converted reformed lapidarian with horticultural leanings, formally of Montréal, she founded the ‘Twigs & Leaves’ reading series, as well as Broken Rules Press. She now resides in Parrsboro, Nova Scotia. erika is currently living in a poem she began to write when she was five. It is not finished yet.

Zev Bagel is the pen-name for Warren Redman. He is author of seventeen books of non-fiction and three published novels, as well as poetry and short stories. He is past president of the Writer’s Federation of New Brunswick. He lives in Shediac, New Brunswick. https://zevbagel.ca

Geordie Miller is a poet who lives in Sackville, in the Siknikt District, within the greater territory of Mi’kma’ki. He published a poetry collection called Re:union (Invisible, 2014) and made an EP called Tire Fire (with his band, flour). His writing has recently appeared in various guises in Fifteen Dreams, Canadian Art, Canadian Literature, BILLIE, and Visual Arts News.