May 2014 RCLAS Wordplay at work E-Zine Issue 15
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RCLAS Wordplay at work May 2014 E-Zine Issue 15, ISSN 2291-4269
Transcript of May 2014 RCLAS Wordplay at work E-Zine Issue 15
ANNOUNCING WRITE ON! CONTEST WINNERS 2014 First Place winners, Kyle McKillop and Aidan Chafe read at the LitFest New
West Showcase. Presenter, Deborah Kelly read an excerpt of Clarissa P.
Green’s winning story on Saturday April 26, 2014, Laura Muir Theatre, Douglas
College. Awards $100 first prize $50 second prize and $25 third prize
Poetry Judge: Jonina Kirton POETRY WINNERS
Poetry First Place (LitFest Gala Showcase):
AIDAN CHAFE – PAPI THUNDERCLOUD
Poetry Second Place: Max Tell – The Kid Who Hid His Head In A Box
Poetry Third Place: Vanessa Winn – Western Bleeding Heart: Dicentra Formosa
Non Fiction Judge: Corey Levine NON FICTION WINNERS
Non-Fiction First Place (LitFest Gala Showcase):
KYLE MCKILLOP – THREE DAYS OUT OF UYUNI
Non-Fiction Second Place: Karen Faryna – Tomorrow Is Another Day
Non-Fiction Third Place: Donna Terrill – Etched On Stone
Fiction Judge: Antonia Levi FICTION WINNERS
Fiction First Place (LitFest Gala Showcase):
CLARISSA P. GREEN – NORTHERN NEIGHBOURS
Fiction Second Place: Kyle McKillop – Amid Ravens, A Reader
Fiction Third Place: Elizabeth Schofield – Tango, Solo
Congratulations to all the winners! Thanks to all who submitted!
ANNOUNCING RCLAS WRITE ON! CONTEST 2014 WINNERS & HONOURABLE MENTIONS
POETRY (Judge: Jonina Kirton)
Poetry First Place: AIDAN CHAFE – PAPI THUNDERCLOUD
Poetry Second Place: Max Tell – The Kid Who Hid His Head In A Box
Poetry Third Place: Vanessa Winn – Western Bleeding Heart: Dicentra Formosa
Poetry Honourable Mentions
Spring Hawes - Nurse
Alan Hill – A Great & Glorious Rage
Kyle McKillop – The Fog
NON FICTION (Judge: Corey Levine)
Non-Fiction First Place: KYLE MCKILLOP – THREE DAYS OUT OF UYUNI
Non-Fiction Second Place: Karen Faryna – Tomorrow Is Another Day
Non-Fiction Third Place: Donna Terrill – Etched On Stone
Non Fiction Honourable Mentions
Alexander Birkbeck – The Craters
Jude Neale – Just Like Her Mom
Donna Terrill – Defying The Odds
FICTION WINNERS (Judge: Antonia Levi)
Fiction First Place: CLARISSA P. GREEN – NORTHERN NEIGHBOURS
Fiction Second Place: Kyle McKillop – Amid Ravens, A Reader
Fiction Third Place: Elizabeth Schofield – Tango, Solo
Fiction Honourable Mentions
Julie MacLellan – Balance
Julie MacLellan – Forever, You Said
Jen Ryan – A Night To Remember
Candice James,
Poet Laureate, New Westminster
and LitFest New West
Keynote Speaker,
Gary Geddes
April 26, 2014
Douglas College
Look for the LITFEST Special Edition coming up in our June e-Zine.
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RCLAS WRITER OF THE MONTH
Alan Hill
Alan Hill has to date published two books of poetry The Broken Word
(2013) and The Upstairs Country (2012). His poetry has also appeared in Canada in CV2, Canadian
Literature, Vancouver Review, Antigonish Review, Quills, Sub-Terrain, Poetry is Dead; in the UK in
South, Brittle Star, The Wolf and Turbulence; and in the United States in The Dallas Review and
Cascadia Review. He has also been published in a number of international and Canadian
anthologies. He is currently editing a manuscript of new work, still untitled, that he hopes to
present to publishers this summer.
His work strives to be both approachable and original and his poems often feature a strong
storyline weaving together the personal, political and historical. Influences include the established
poets of his native Britain - Larkin, RS Thomas, MacNeice and Charles Tomlinson and from North
America - Sharon Olds, Anne Sexton and Canada’s own Pat Lowther. He believes that there is
never a destination point in a writer’s development and to be a good writer you must continue to
read the work of others and always be prepared to learn and adapt.
Alan originates from the English/Welsh borders and has travelled extensively and worked in jobs
ranging from renovating old graveyards to working in a jellybean factory. He began writing while
living and working in Botswana where he met his Canadian wife to be and he arrived in Canada in
2005. He and his family have settled in New Westminster. He has been and continues to be a
regularly featured reader at many literary events in the Lower Mainland of BC.
Here are some links where you can find out more about Alan and his work -
https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/AlanHill http://www.richmondreview.com/entertainment/230284341.html http://cascadiareview.org/2013/10/14/statement-of-place-alan-hill/ “Alan Hill is a 2014 RCLAS Write On! Contest Honourable Mention in the category of Poetry. Look for his
poem “A Great & Glorious Rage” in a Fall issue of our e-Zine. Congratulations, Alan!”
– Janet Kvammen, RCLAS
A Vanishing England
© Alan Hill
My wife and I
took a short cut across fields
which ended when she ripped her pants
on a barbed wire fence
straddled herself on rusty wire
in her princess issue clothes
she had been saving for our Rome trip
hung there , a wounded fashionista
strung up as she advanced on enemy lines
There is no justice
I, fat and forty eight
am a Jaguar leaping across disaster
perpetual country boy, with my childhood
unstitched, frittered
entertaining myself with solitary walks
going invisible through empty woodlands
beneath the hedge lines at the end
of stranger’s gardens
in all that loneliness which is useful now
that holds my runners firmly on the fence posts
with their century of slip
pulls her over, disentangles her
has the sense not to let me laugh, too much.
Pax Britannica
© Alan Hill
After the tenth duke
was vaporised away at Dunkirk
his family sold the house and land.
The estate
became a school for disobedient boys,
then a home for obedient Hari Krishnas
chanting themselves silly
on the mile wide thigh of lawns
then eventually it all came back
as a heritage park
and public conservation zone
the gardens now
for people just like me
indulging
in butt crack summer napping
picnicking
in vowel smudging apocalypse
with our snot marinated children
playing soccer
with the heads of minor royalty
around the moss stained statues
of the long forgotten.
The rich are still here.
Their
Rolls Royce Silver Ferrets
Jaguar Bone Crushers
Land Rover Colostomies
camouflaged
outside barn conversations
hidden up private laneways
as they squirrel away pension funds
amalgamate mortgage frauds
iron their Sunday Times
plot revenge in forever desperation all
bridge and guzzled cooking sherry
wax jacket, sudoku immortal.
Examining My Own Bones © Alan Hill
Eventually after many months of schoolyard glancing
I wrote a note
too dumb and young to know they almost never work
that they usually get sent when it is all too late.
She arrived, as suggested, to find me at the bus shelter
bringing us our blood, swelling it through her face and into me
to let it take me by the throat, making me speechless
clasping us tight into the mutual impotence of our virginity
bend us down
under the ripe head of forest, voyeuristically leering itself over us
in our small town valley end
where no buses would come, not just once but every day
the only sound under the stiff sash of summer light
made by my fists
caressing themselves to death against concrete
the sonar slap of their flesh, an altar of bruise boned hands
divining out the softest places in the brickwork.
All Poetry unedited.
Published as submitted to RCLAS.
Poetograph Art by Janet Kvammen
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May 2014 @ POETIC JUSTICE
View Calendar and Bios at www.poeticjustice.ca
HERITAGE GRILL, BACK ROOM
3-5 pm Sunday Afternoons—three features and open mic 447 Columbia St, New Westminster, near the Columbia Skytrain Station
CO-FOUNDER & BOOKING MANAGER—Franci Louann [email protected]
Website & Facebook Manager, Photographer—Janet Kvammen [email protected]
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/groups/poeticjusticenewwest/
May 4 Sunday 3-5pm
Poetic Justice Featuring Alan Girling/ Jude Neale/ Bonnie Nish
Host: Deborah Kelly
May 11 Sunday 3-5pm
Poetic Justice Featuring Carleigh Baker/ Frances Cabahug/ Paul Falardeau
Host: Sho Wiley
May 18
Poetic Justice Closed Victoria Day Long Weekend
May 25 Sunday 3-5pm
Poetic Justice Featuring Lee Johnson/ Susan McCaslin/ Russell Thornton
Host: Franci Louann
{IN REVIEW}
Candice James, Poet Laureate, City of New Westminster, BC
Title: A Quiet Coming of Light – A Poetic Memoir Author: Jude Neale Publisher: Leaf Press ISBN: 978-1-926655-68-0 Price: $18.00
Jude Neale’s A Quiet Coming of Light - A Poetic
Memoir lassoes your heart in rainbow strings
and pulls you gently into her world of brilliant
imagery, mysterious moods and stark realism,
from the beginning lines of the first poem
“Places Beyond”: ‘I see the sky unbuttoned by wishes’.
Jude is a master at mixing deep sensuality and
the scars of love into a tender stew of torn yet
delicious eloquence, so well evidenced in “The
Affair’: ‘I knew what was mine when I’d found
it. So did you - though you blackened my wings in your fire’.
Her essence moves smoothly through each
poetic offering, like black velvet whiskey,
satisfying the reader’s thirst while running the
full gamut of emotion’s landscape. The subtle
depth of grieving in “An Avalanche” exposes her
soul; then blankets it softly: ‘She sleeps with his sweater wrapped ‘round her indigo grief.’
I am particularly keen on her poems “A Falling of Blue” and “Ice Fisher”. The imagery in these poems is nothing short of excellence at its finest.
This is truly a worthy offering of poetic art from a poet who has seen too
much and felt too deeply; A crushed flower blooming again: She is a
phoenix rising from the ashes to shine her inner flame onto these pages that we may read them. Thank you Jude Neale!
~ Candice James, Poet Laureate, City of New Westminster, BC
WORKSHOP TESTIMONIALS
Sherry's teaching style is warm, inviting
and creative.
I felt that she helped me move past my
writer's block and truly see myself as a
writer and an artist of words. She
supported us in digging deeply into our
experiences and she listened
compassionately to group members
stories of pain. She prompted us with fun
topics such as love, and encouraged us to
think outside the box as we put our stories together. It was a beautiful experience.
- Jessica Bleuer M.A., M.Ed.
Sherry is an enthusiastic teacher and an experienced "listener" supporting the unique writing styles
and "voices" of all participants. I very much appreciated the encouraging atmosphere at the
workshop. I really did enjoy the experience and I felt that it was especially helpful for beginning
writers as it was great how Sherry managed to produce an atmosphere in which we were able to just
let go and write.
- Marianne Tolar
I very much enjoyed and recommend Dr. Sherry Duggal's Workshop on Healing, Writing and
Creativity. It was a great mix of self-discovery and fun! Dr. Sherry's passion for teaching and sharing is
evident in this workshop. As is her generosity in sharing her healing knowledge and illuminating my
creativity in a most respectful and enjoyable way. A wonderful experience!"
- Marusha Xerox
I attended Sherry's workshop and found the experience to be very introspective. It was interesting to
learn about the correlation between the physical and spiritual effects of writing and how it changes
us. I can certainly attest to the truth in those statements as I certainly feel that I am transforming
through the work I have been doing.
- Nancy Pilling
Sherry brings a wealth of experience and knowledge to her workshops . But what made the workhop
memorable was her enthusiasm and the positive energy she invested in the time we spent together .I
read over one of my exercises after a lapse of two years and was surprised at how I had found a voice
to express a very personal event in my life. It was cathartic and I'm grateful for the experience.
- Patricia Fimio
POETIC JUSTICE April 6, 2014
It was the kind of poetry event that inspired one of the features,
the eloquent Renee Saklikar, to compose on the spot a poem to
the participants which she read with great enthusiasm as the
last presenter on Open Mic, ending the afternoon on a
celebratory note. "All poets are earth diggers and sky
watchers," she offered. We agreed, naturally, because we had
spent the afternoon digging in soul earth and watching the stars
revolve around us.
The features, Jenny Getsinger, Franci Louann and Renee
Saklikar, were moving and inspiring, with humour mixed in.
Poetry was defined as being about our many connections to
other humans; to those present and to our ancestors; to the
cities we build and infuse with our lives; to the rivers carrying
our stories; to history in general. Jennifer Getsinger also
presented at Open Mic an amusing and memorable lesson on
writing poetry.
The Open Mic poets were diverse, dramatic, moving, inspiring,
funny and memorable. Thanks to Lausanne Ham, Alan Girling,
Diane Tucker, Dominic DiCarlo, George Chris Michas, Franci
Louann, Jennifer Getsinger and Renee Saklikar.
Lilija Valis
WEST MY FRIEND and guest LAWREN
NEMETH
Renaissance Books April 11, 2014
What a lovely evening with indie folk band, West
My Friend, and New Westminster songwriter
Lawren Nemeth, who co-hosts with musician-
songwriter Enrico Renz, our weekly Sunday night
RCLAS Songwriters Open Mic at the Heritage
Grill.
No recycled Las Vegas songs here. Everything is
original, unique, reaching for the heart and
engaging the spirit.
Lawren is not only a talented musician but he is a
cool, charming humourist too.
Q: What's the difference between a songwriter
and a laptop?
A: To find out, you'll have to come to his next gig!
Poetic Justice
Featured Poets
Franci Louann, Jenny Getsinger
and Renee Saklikar
With Host : Lilija Valis
Photos By Lilija Valis
The Heritage Grill April 6, 2014
RCLAS SONGWRITERS OPEN MIC April 13, 2014
Evening's word: Forgiveness
The evening started out with Songwriters forgiving the Heritage Grill for changing
our schedule at the last minute. After moving to Lavana La Brey’s Renaissance
Bookstore, we continued forgiving, musically, anyone who had crossed our
desires, and we ended the night forgiving the whole world for being what it was.
One presenter left the troublesome business of forgiving entirely.
Skye Weste's song was a hit: "I learned I can't make everybody happy (repeat) but
I can get everybody mad at me..."
Synn Kune and Dawn spread peace by sending out "the light from the centre of
{their} heart{s}."
"...night of the full moon, I follow the blue butterfly..."
RCLAS SONGWRITERS OPEN MIC April 27, 2014
Oceans of guitar music and words flowed out at Songwriters, in pursuit of anything in any way
related to our challenge word - ocean. When that ran dry (not for Enrico Renz), we explored
forgiveness, rejection, lies, making promises of fidelity while drinking beer, cold nights, cages
and tears. Enrico ended the night with a theological song, his famous crab one.
Two new musicians, Azura Yaleo and Jesse Goodwin, joined our group for the evening, and
another, Richard Papiernik, who has come by previously, dropped in to share his new songs.
Janet Kvammen, RCLAS Director/ Newsletter Editor & Design [email protected]
Deborah Kelly [email protected]
Open Call for Submissions - RCLAS Members Only
Poems, Short Stories, Book excerpts & Songs are welcome for submission
to future issues of Wordplay at work.
RCLAS Members:
Please send us your latest news, feedback on our newsletter and any
ideas/suggestions that you may have.
Would like to write a feature, a review or an article for the newsletter ?
Feel free to submit your ideas.
VOLUNTEERS NEEDED!
*** Events Coordinator needed to
compile literary events/contests/ call
for submissions listings for distribution
to our members bi-weekly
*** Volunteer Coordinator
*** Event Volunteers
FEEDBACK & e-ZINE SUBMISSIONS
Drop us a line –
RCLAS Book Reviews Call for Submission:
Submit your book to
Royal City Literary Arts Society Box # 5, 720 Sixth St. New Westminster, BC V3L 3C5
for review in our new monthly review section of our magazine
Wordplay at work.
SPONSORS
Arts Council of New Westminster
Wayne Wright
Chuck Puchmayr
The Heritage Grill
Poetic Justice
Poetry In The Park
Saddlestone International
Silver Bow Publishing
MAY 2014 Wordplay at work ISSN 2291-4269
Contact:
[email protected] RCLAS Director/ Newsletter Editor & Design
