Tag Archives: lunch poems @sfu

Poetry, science get togethers, and/or song in Vancouver (Canada)

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I’ve been asked on occasion how one (this was from another writer) keeps creative. Sometimes banging out one piece after another can exhaust every creative idea or approach you’ve ever had and your writing, or if you’re in another field, your work has become pedestrian and/or repetitive. It’s not possible to avoid the problem entirely but I find that checking out other writers (both in fields similar to my own and entirely dissimilar) and checking out events and projects that are in unrelated fields can help a lot. So, this is a potpourri of events some science-oriented and some not and some literary-themed events and some not, but all are taking place in Vancouver, BC, Canada sometime in January or February 2013.

First off, jazz vocalist, Colleen Savage is offering SingShop,

‘SingShop© – the basics’ gives you a fun introduction to the
vocal technique and essential musical skills that you need to make singing
a life-long enjoyment.  This is the course that grows with you because we review,
renew and strengthen the ‘the basics.’

You will relax! Breathe deep! and Express your unique, clear sound.
We’ll build and blend our sound, developing ‘the ear’ and the ensemble singing skills that
lend themselves to every popular style – gospel, blues, doo-wop, jazz and world beat.

‘SingShop© – the basics’ starts Monday, Jan. 28th. and runs to Mar. 4th.
with 6 evening classes from 7 till 8:30 p.m.  The Studio is just off Commercial Drive.

To register for SingShop, please contact Rosemary at the Movable Music School (604) 733- 5571.
Fee is $120.    Thank you!  – Colleen

In addition to learning to sing, you can explore the science/music relationship at Symphony of Science (many videos and downloads) and/or at the Musicians and Science blog.

For the explorer/memoirist/poet  in you, here’s  a set of courses with Ingrid Rose (it’s a bit late to register for some of these but you may want to contact Ingrid personally to see if there’s room),

writing from the body  jan 8 – feb 26

8 tuesday mornings 9:30-12:30  $200

it takes time    it takes attention   time

and again     attention

to words and how

they come

into awareness   their

import   our transport

our bodies know what we want to say and how to write it.

this course will take the writer on a journey of breath sound and movement in good company;  will give you time, encourage attention, feedback & writing explorations to grow your writing fin & wing.

writing memoir: re-minding & re-drafting the story jan 9 – feb 27

8 wednesday evenings 6:30-9:30   $200

you want to tell this story that fascinates and deceives you

how to pin it down–

the ever-changing formlessness of a life still lived?

this series will focus on what’s under the surface and help edge it into the light–through writing exploration, readings, listening to your own & others telling, feedback and at-home writing assignments.

writing the body electric  sunday 3 feb  10:30-17:00

$100 includes light lunch @ studio in eastside vancouver

The voice, articulation, language, whispering, shouting aloud,
Food, drink, pulse, digestion, sweat, sleep, walking, swimming,
Poise on the hips, leaping, reclining, embracing, arm-curving and tightening,
…O I say, these are not the parts and poems of the Body only, but of the Soul…                               Walt Whitman

For those who have some poetry or excerpts from other works ready to be heard, here’s a call for readers at Simon Fraser University’s The Writer’s Studio’s (TWS) next event in February 2013,

February Call for Readers – TWS Reading Series

This is the official call for readers for our next TWS Reading Series. If you can’t be in Mexico on February 7, why not be at Cottage Bistro [470 Main Street Vancouver]? Featured readers will be contacted in seven days. If you’d like to be considered, please respond to this email with the following information:

  • Your name:
  • The genre you plan to read:
  • The year you attended TWS (if you did):
  • The last time you read for our Reading Series (if you have):
  • Your 50 word bio for the playbill

twsinfo@sfu.ca

Please Note:

  • There are only seven reading spots per month. In order to avoid problems associated with the first-come, first-served approach, we will receive bios of those who are interested in reading for 48 hours and then set the playbill based on a balance of current TWS participants, alumni, emerging writers, and established authors. If you’ve been trying for a while and haven’t been able to secure a reading spot, be sure to try again. Our policy is that people can potentially read every four months to give everyone an opportunity
  • Reading spots will be confirmed within seven days and a playbill will be sent out in January. Only confirmed readers are contacted.
  • Each reader is given 10 minutes total speaking time. This includes your selection and any introductory remarks you choose to make. Please time yourself in advance.

Thanks and remember, daffodils often bloom here in February.

Karen & Ivan

TWS Reading Series Co-hosts

If you prefer to listen, you may want to reserve that Feb. 7, 2013 date or here”s another opportunity coming more shortly, a poetry reading at Simon Fraser University’s (SFU) Harbour Centre campus in downtown Vancouver,

Wednesday, January 16 [2013[

Lunch Poems @ SFU

Time: 12-1pm

Place: Teck Gallery, Harbour Centre, 515 West Hastings St.

Cost: Free

Come to the Teck Gallery to enjoy two poetry readings. Stick around for a question and answer session after. This week’s sessions features the poetry of lunch poems @SFU features Daniel Zomparelli and Elizabeth Bachinsky.

There are also a couple of science-themed get-togethers,

Wednesday, January 16 [2013]

Café Scientifique

Time: 7-8pm

Place: CBC, 700 Hamilton St.

Cost: Free, reserve by emailing cafesci@sfu.ca

Café Scientifique: Stem cells and the treatment of congenital heart disease. New techniques that generate inducible pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) represents a powerful new approach to the study and treatment of congenital heart disease and other genetic disorders. Dr. Glen Tibbits, of SFU’s Dept. of Biomedical Physiology and Kinesiology, will focus on how iPSCs can be used to investigate the causes of congenital heart diseases, create new strategies for their treatment and potentially lead to a new era of personalized medicine in managing patients with these disorders. Refreshments will also be served.

Note: There are four different Café Scientifique groups in Vancouver. One meets at the Railway Club but is organized (or at least seems to be organized) by folks at the University of British Columbia (UBC), another is the LSI (Life Sciences Institute) Café Scientifique  and this is definitely organized at UBC; there’s also the Canadian Institutes of Health (CIHR) Café Scientifique (Science on tap; next meeting:  Does Communication Really Matter in Cancer Care? on Jan. 30, 2013 at Steamworks Brewing Co. 375 Water Street, Vancouver) which is associated with UBC (again) and now,there is a fourth Café, this one organized at SFU. I wish these folks would get together and have one gathering place for their notices, as well as, putting up notices institution by institution.

For those who find the Café Scientifique plethora somewhat confusing, there is the ScienceOnlineVancouver meeting planned for Jan. 17, 2013. Thematically this is on target but the group is meeting at The Whip Restaurant and Gallery and Neighbourhood House rather than at Science World as is more usual.

ScienceOnlineVancouver

Refresh for 2013
Jan. 17, 2013 at 7 pm
The Whip
229 E. 6th Avenue
Vancouver

Happy weekend!

Simon Fraser University (Vancouver, Canada) poems at lunchtime June 2012

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Coming up tomorrow (June 20, 2012) is another entry in the Lunch poems @sfu (Simon Fraser University) series in downtown Vancouver (Canada):

This month lunch poems @sfu presents:

Sonnet L’Abbé and her guest poet Renée Sarojini Saklikar

When: Wednesday, June 20th, 2012, 12 noon to 1 pm

Where: Teck Gallery (on main floor), SFU Harbour Centre,

515 West Hastings Street,

Vancouver, BC

Sonnet L’Abbé is the author of two collections of poetry, A Strange Relief and Killarnoe, and a reviewer of Canadian fiction and poetry for The Globe and Mail. She is currently at the University of British Columbia writing a dissertation on botanical metaphors in representations of human cognition in the work of American poet Ronald Johnson.

Renée Sarojini Saklikar writes thecanadaproject, a life-long poem chronicle. Work from thecanadaproject appears online and in newspapers and literary journals. Poems from thecanadaproject will be the focus of a seminar at the Association of Cultural Studies Crossroads conference, Paris, July 2012. Renée is working on her first book, a sequence of elegies about Canada / Air India.

Neither poet appears to have a website but I did find this about L’Abbé in a Wikipedia essay (Note: I have removed links and footnotes.),

Sonnet L’Abbé is a Canadian poet and critic. As a poet, L’Abbé writes about national identity, race, gender and language. She has been shortlisted for the 2010 CBC Literary Award for poetry and has won the Bronwen Wallace Memorial Award for most promising writer under 35.As a critic, she is a regular reviewer of fiction and poetry for The Globe and Mail and has written scholarly articles on Canadian contemporary poetry.

And, I found this poem of Renée Sarojini Saklikar’s (from the Leaf Press website),

Carnarvon Street Lament

Oh I like the fog bound morning
hours when light casts a shadow
on my raggedy sweater and shoes cause
I’m now what I always knew I’d be
a raggedy woman just off the streets Oh
I sing in my veins a trapped noise
not let to the air cause I’m a raggedy girl
gone home from high towers to the ground
Oh watch me that’s where I’ll be
learning to spin wool to plant carrots in the dark soil Oh
I pound my feet ‘neath the big box towers
driven from road to road I’m the Raggedy One
claiming the moon oh the stars the sun.

As it turns out, Saklikar is married to Adrian Dix, leader of the New Democratic Party and of the opposition in the BC (British Columbia)  Legislative Assembly according to an April 17, 2011 article by Charlie Smith for the Georgia Straight newspaper when Dix was chosen to be party leader.

Poetry in downtown Vancouver (Canada) on March 28, 2012

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Lunchtime poetry readings are being held at Simon Fraser University at its Harbour Centre campus in Vancouver’s downtown core and this one on March 28, 2012 marks the beginning.

Wednesday, March 28, 2012

lunch poems @sfu with poets Evelyn Lau and Daniela Elza

Time: Noon-1 pm

Place: The Teck Gallery, Harbour Centre, 515 West Hastings

Cost: Free

Lunch poems @sfu is a new series of volunteer-run poetry readings held monthly, featuring well-known and new poets. This inaugural event features Evelyn Lau, current Vancouver Poet Laureate, and Daniela Elza.

Evelyn Lau was born in Vancouver in 1971 and is the author of five volumes of poetry, two works of non-fiction, two short story collections and a novel, with works translated into a dozen languages worldwide. She is at work on her sixth collection of poetry. She has received various awards for her work. Runaway: Diary of a Street Kid, published when she was only 18, was a Canadian bestseller and was made into a movie.

Daniela Elza’s work has been published in more than fifty literary and peer-reviewed publications and to date she has released more than 200 poems into the world. In 2011 Daniela received her doctorate in Philosophy of Education from Simon Fraser University.

Here’s a bit more about Poet Laureates in Vancouver, from  the City of Vancouver’s Poet Laureate page,

The Poet Laureate is an honorary position that was established by City Council in December 2006 to honour and celebrate the contribution of literature and poetry to life in Vancouver. The position is funded by a generous endowment established by Dr. Yosef Wosk, OBC [Order of British Columbia], in 2006.

George McWhirter, Professor Emeritus of UBC’s Creative Writing Program was named Vancouver’s first Poet Laureate on March 8, 2007. In 2009, McWhirter published the anthology A Verse Map of Vancouver with Anvil Press, which included upwards of 100 poets who mapped Vancouver’s verse geography.

Brad Cran, Vancouver’s second Poet Laureate, [completed] his term on October 22, 2011. He organized the Vancouver 125 Poetry Conference (October 19-22, 2011), a national gathering of a generation of poets who published their first book after 1990.

Evelyn Lau is Vancouver’s 3rd Poet Laureate. Here’s more from the City of Vancouver Oct. 14, 2011 news release announcing her appointment,

The City of Vancouver, in partnership with the Vancouver Public Library and the Vancouver International Writers Festival, is proud to announce celebrated local poet and author Evelyn Lau as Vancouver’s third Poet Laureate.

…

Ms. Lau plans to raise the profile of local poets and bring poetry into public spaces and public discourse, continuing the work her predecessor. She will also meet with aspiring poets in the community through a series of poet-in-residence consultations and continue to work on her sixth collection of poetry.

….

Runaway: Diary of a Street Kid, published when she was 18, was a Canadian bestseller and was made into a movie. You Are Not Who You Claim won the Milton Acorn People’s Poetry Award, and Oedipal Dreams was nominated for the Governor-General’s Award for poetry. Her poems have been included in Best American Poetry and Best Canadian Poetry and received a National Magazine Award. Her most recent collection, Living Under Plastic, won the Pat Lowther Award for best book of poetry by a woman in Canada.