Honoured to be part of the Campbell River Writers’ Festival this year at the Maritime Heritage Centre:
Category: about doing the work
Jan 20: A Beekeeper’s Journey
Nov 3, THOT-J-BAP: extractions Book Launch
This week on Friday, I’ll be launching my new chapbook, THOT-J-BAP: extractions from Nomados Press alongside Marguerite Pigeon and her chapbook, My Model Poem. Hope to see you there!
Like the bees who populate it, Saklikar’s THOT-J-BAP is humming, productive, and vital, performing an urgent gathering of specimens amassed, dissipated, and recollected from which it extracts ‘those gems they would steal’: fragments of stories, of love, of violence, of remembering, of ‘what once was, compressed.’ This is fecund, fabulous work.”
– Catriona Strang
I always have my eye out for a truly ambitious poetry—and here it is, epic in scope, running through its own newly-created dimension just outside of recognizable time and space, a mobile world moving by, line by line, touching “what hurts, what helps, what heals,” transformed. Saklikar manages a near perfect merger of forward-momentum narrative and paratactic detail where each word is a hypnotically pronounced incantation, the story pulled into glittering erotic fragments, each piece a world in itself, glowing, refracting, the ambition of the part to overwhelm the whole. THOT-J-BAP is poetry to lose and find yourself in. I’m hooked.”
– Stephen Collis
Date: Friday, November 3 at 8 PM – 10 PM
Time: 8:00-10:00pm
Location: People’s Co-op Bookstore, 1391 Commercial Drive, Vancouver
Click Here for More Details
THOT-J-BAP: extractions from Nomados Press
This week on Friday, I’ll be launching my new chapbook, THOT-J-BAP: extractions from Nomados Press alongside Marguerite Pigeon and her chapbook, My Model Poem.
Like the bees who populate it, Saklikar’s THOT-J-BAP is humming, productive, and vital, performing an urgent gathering of specimens amassed, dissipated, and recollected from which it extracts ‘those gems they would steal’: fragments of stories, of love, of violence, of remembering, of ‘what once was, compressed.’ This is fecund, fabulous work.”
– Catriona Strang
I always have my eye out for a truly ambitious poetry—and here it is, epic in scope, running through its own newly-created dimension just outside of recognizable time and space, a mobile world moving by, line by line, touching “what hurts, what helps, what heals,” transformed. Saklikar manages a near perfect merger of forward-momentum narrative and paratactic detail where each word is a hypnotically pronounced incantation, the story pulled into glittering erotic fragments, each piece a world in itself, glowing, refracting, the ambition of the part to overwhelm the whole. THOT-J-BAP is poetry to lose and find yourself in. I’m hooked.”
– Stephen Collis
Date: Friday, November 3 at 8 PM – 10 PM
Time: 8:00-10:00pm
Location: People’s Co-op Bookstore, 1391 Commercial Drive, Vancouver
Click Here for More Details
The 2017 bpNichol Chapbook Award Shortlist
Delighted to announce that my chapbook After the Battle of Kingsway, the bees–, was shortlisted for the 2017 bpNichol Chapbook Award:
“The prize, awarded annually since 1985, goes to the author of the best poetry chapbook – in the estimation of the judges – published in Canada in the previous year and submitted for consideration. It is named in honour of the late poet, novelist, mentor, and micropress publisher bpNichol (1944–1988).
The $4,000 prize purse, donated by an anonymous benefactor, makes this the richest annual literary award for a poetry chapbook, specified as a collection of no more than 48 pages. The publisher of the winning title also receives $500, thanks to an annual donation by Toronto writers Brian Dedora and Jim Smith.
Judges Helen Guri of Montréal, Québec, and Hoa Nguyen of Toronto, Ontario, chose the finalists from more than 60 submissions from across the country.
The finalists for the 2017 bpNichol Chapbook Award are:
Dana Claxton. The Patient Storm. above/ground press
Doris Fiszer. The Binders. Tree Press
Stevie Howell. Summer. Desert Pets Press
Sonnet L’Abbé. Anima Canadensis. Junction Books
Nanci Lee. Preparation. FreeFall Literary Society of Calgary
Renee Sarojini Saklikar. After the Battle of Kingsway, the bees. above/ground press
The winner will be announced at 2 p.m. on November 18, 2017, at the annual Meet the Presses Indie Literary Market, open from 12 noon to 5 p.m. at Trinity-St. Paul’s Centre, 427 Bloor Street West, in Toronto. The Market introduces the public to independent literary publishers of books, chapbooks, magazines, ephemera, and recordings generally not available in bookstores. The free event is curated by Meet the Presses, a volunteer literary collective devoted to showcasing the work of independent publishers of fiction, poetry, and creative non-fiction.”
Listening to the Bees: Field Notes and Poems
Very excited to reveal the cover of the latest book I’m working on with Mark Winston, forthcoming by Nightwood Editions. Stay tuned!
Arts 2017: Reflections on Canada – A Panel Discussion
In light of Canada’s 150th anniversary this year, there is a lot of conversation about our country—its past, present, and future. How are local artists responding to Canada?”
Looking forward to being on a panel this Thursday with visual artist Kira Wu, ceramic artist Laura Wee Lay Laq, and musician Amarjeet Singh. A slide from my presentation:
Location: Surrey Art Gallery, 13750 88 Avenue
Date & Time: July 27, 2017 7:00 PM – 8:30 PM
Admission: Free!
Presented by the Surrey Art Gallery and Arts Council of Surrey
