a life-long poem chronicle by Renée Sarojini Saklikar
This Thursday, Sandy Shreve and Kate Braid will be launching the second edition of In Fine Form: A Contemporary Look at Canadian Form Poetry in Vancouver. Poets reading their work include Barbara Nickel, Leslie Timmins, W.H. New, Jane Munro, Thuong Vuong-Riddick, Kayla Czaga, Pam Galloway, Elizabeth Bachinsky, Joe Denham, Rachel Rose and Rob Taylor.
RSVP if you can. Otherwise, just come. All are welcome!
Delighted to be part of “Fresh Local Poetry” this Saturday from 11:30am to 2:00pm at Trout Lake Farmers Market as part of Vancouver’s Poetry in Parks Project… I’ll be one of several “free-range poets” on hand to create poetry and to welcome folks to create their own poems. Thanks to the City of Vancouver Parks Board, Vancouver Public Library, and Vancouver Verse Poet Laureate Rachel Rose for this great initiative…
This piece first appeared on the League of Canadian Poets blog on April 24, 2015:
“Next I’ll speak about the celestial gift of honey”
~ Virgil, Book IV, Georgics
From the slow press of hours in ancient times to today’s digital staccato, poets obsesses about bees. For example, there’s Stephen Collis’ bee poems in his award winning poetry book, On the Material as well as Carol Ann Duffy’s The Bees, and of course, famously, Sylvia Plath’s “bee sequence” in Ariel and Yeats’ Lake Isle of Innisfree.
Bee poems pop out everywhere once you start looking, and you might find yourself clipping poems to carry around in your pocket, such as Eamon Grennan’s delightful “Untitled [back they sputter]. Start googling any poetry website and you’ll quickly discover poems about bees, bee-keeping, hives and honey. As well-known bee expert, scientist and author, Dr. Mark Winston says, “Art with bees energizes our capacity to imagine and deepens our attentiveness to the world around us.” His latest book, Bee Time, Lessons from the Hive, includes environmental analysis, memoir, and a lyric prose meditation on bees, art and culture. In the research for his book, Dr. Winston connected with Vancouver poet, Renée Sarojini Saklikar, author of a life-long poem chronicle, thecanadaproject that includes, among other things, bee-poems.
This year, Saklikar and Winston will collaborate on a lyric prose-poetry performance for which Saklikar has written a sequence of bee poems in honour of, and using text from not only Virgil but also Winston’s scientific data and publications. In preparing for performance, Mark and Renée were delighted to learn of Rachel Rose’s call to poets to investigate, explore, and celebrate food and poetry. As the new City of Vancouver’s poet laureate, Rose’s vision shimmers “bee energy.” She writes, “we want to investigate the ways in which food is ‘personal, political, sensual and powerful.’” Saklikar, a League member who studied with Rachel Rose at Simon Fraser University’s The Writers Studio, saw a nexus of community connections beginning to form: what might poets, community, and bees get going in Vancouver? Continue reading “Poets.ca: On Honey, Hives and Poetry”
On April 27, Vancouver Poet Laureate Rachel Rose will be reading at Honey, Hives, and Poetry in the City, an event that explores food and poetry as a means for activism and community building.
“Rachel Rose has won national awards for her poetry, fiction, and non-fiction, including a 2014 Pushcart Prize. She has published poems, short stories, and essays in Canada, the US, New Zealand, and Japan.
Her most recent collection, Song and Spectacle, won the 2013 Audre Lorde Poetry Prize in the US and the Pat Lowther Award in Canada.”
Date: April 27, 2015 Time: 7:00pm to 8:30pm Location: Vancouver Public Library, Central Branch Address: 350 West Georgia Street, Alice McKay Room Admission: Free
Looking forward to this unique collaboration with Mark L. Winston, and honoured to be part of this event with Elee Kralijii Gardiner from the Thursday Writing Collective and of course, the esteemed Rachel Rose, Vancouver’s Poet Laureate.
Thanks to Vancouver Public Library, the SFU Centre for Dialogue, the Canada Council for the Arts, The League of Canadian Poets, and Hives for Humanity for making this wonderful event possible… Hope to see you there.
thecanada?project 
