It’s National Poetry Month and spring is a fabulous time to celebrate everything poetic!

I live in a city full of poets, Nanaimo, B.C, and we have our own Poet Laureate, Kamal Pamar. We’ve had two  previous poets laureate: Naomi Beth Wakan and Tina Biello.

This blog (since 2014 or so)  is called “A Poet’s Nanaimo” as I’ve appreciated, as a poet and writer,  being part of a vibrant writing community in my home city and further afield on Vancouver Island. Last April, I was pleased to publish my chapbook of poetry, Mending, along with MJ Burrows and Marlene Dean who also had new chapbooks. We were published by house of appleton, my partner Sarah’s publishing venture. She has published other poetry books since those first by the three Ms. Have a look here.

New books of poetry I’ve been reading recently are Crushed Wild Mint by Jess Housty (Nightwood Editions) (I wrote an earlier blog about it and am pleased to learn Crushed Wild Mint, poems about “land love and ancestral wisdom,” has been nominated for a BC book prize along with some other poetry prizes);

The Weight of Survival by Tina Biello (Caitlin), a poignant collection of poems about her Italian family with some queer erotica;

Midway by Kayla Czaga (House of Anansi) which is a wonderfully quirky and poignant collection (review forthcoming in the British Columbia Review); and

Hazard, Home by Christine Lowther (Caitlin). Here’s a link to my review.

Reading poetry intrigues and inspires me to write my own poetry going back to the nineties when I was enjoying Pablo Neruda’s odes to ordinary things. I’ll be going to a poetry retreat with Lorna Crozier later in the month in Honeymooon Bay on Lake Cowichan, Vancouver Island. It’s a fine way to celebrate poetry: to read, write and listen in community with a circle of other poets and be taught by a master poet and teacher. (The photo is of the labyrinth at Honeymoon Bay Lodge.)

In an article Lorna Crozier published a long time ago and which was included in 20th Century Poetry & Poetics (Gary Geddes, editor), she said:

I throw out the poem like a net and pull things together with thin threads of language that need mending, that need new patterns to catch the light. This is my woman’ work, pulling these threads through my voice. I write for the deer I become in the forest, for Gwendolyn MacEwen’s green thunder, for the woman who named her daughter ‘Liberty’, for the man next door shovelling his walk before his children get up for school.

Alas, that poetry retreat with Lorna is full just in case you thought you’d like something like that. Here’s another possibility: I will be leading a one-day writing circle called “Writing for the Love of It” at Bethlehem Centre in Nanaimo on Friday, May 10th from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. This is an opportunity  to write in community and to spend a day on a beautiful property on Westwood Lake in sight of Te’tuxwtun, the Grandmother of All Surrounding Mountains. No previous writing experience is necessary, just the desire to explore your rich lived experience and embrace the fullness of the stories from your life. (You can arrange to stay over night if you’d like to.) (Photo of the grounds and view of the lake at Bethlehem Centre.)

Even writers who have a lot of books to their credit say the actual writing is the gift. That’s something Gail-Anderson Dargatz said in a webinar I watched through the Federation of BC Writers and she has published twenty books.

“Writing for the Love of It” is an invitation to experience and create writing as your own spiritual practice. Together, we’ll create a sacred ceremony of writing, sharing and listening to yourself and others. Each participant is respected for their presence and contributions. The circle is an opportunity to acknowledge who you are, what you’ve done, and what you’d like to do. While writing is usually a solitary practice, together we will become writing companions opening ourselves to delights and surprises while exploring an inspiring variety of writing forms.

Some of the themes we’ll explore are a ceremony of your own; a walk of your own; daily practices and delights of your own; dreams of your own; and creating boundaries of your own to reaffirm the value (and necessity) of writing and sharing your own stories.

Here’s the link for registering for the May 10th “Writing for the Love of It” circle: Bethlehem Centre. I’d love to see you there!