I am stoked to be one of the 75! Three of my poems, including Voracious, will be featured in the FORCE FIELD-75 Women Poets of British Columbia anthology, edited by Susan Musgrave, published by Mother Tongue and coming in April, 2013. From their press release: “Not since Dorothy Livesay’s ‘Women’s Eye, 12 B.C. Women Poets’- AIR Press, in 1974, and ‘D’Sonoqua, An Anthology of Women Poets of British Columbia’, edited by Ingrid Klassen-Intermedia Press in 1979, has there been an anthology of contemporary B.C. women poets.
Gathering is an art that women do well, and as Jean Mallinson stated in her introduction to D’Sonoqua, “Anthologies are a sign of vitality.” In FORCE FIELD we gather together seventy-five women poets who currently live and write in British Columbia so readers can more easily share, study and take pleasure in the range and vitality of women’s poetry today. It is an extensive and flourishing community that owes a debt to many early women poets, such as P.K. Page, Dorothy Livesay, Anne Marriot, Phyllis Webb, Rona Murray, Skyros Bruce, Gwladys V. Downes, Pat Lowther, Helene Rosenthal, Nellie McClung, and Elizabeth Gourlay. Women who forged the way for poetry in mid-century B.C., between working and mothering, struggling, transforming and creating. FORCE FIELD is a strong celebration of women’s voices, from emerging to established. FORCE FIELD is not a definitive, but a wellspring.
POETS included are; Maleea Acker, Joanne Arnott, Elizabeth Bachinsky, Jacqueline Baldwin, Michelle Barker, Rhonda Batchelor, Yvonne Blomer, Leanne Boschman, Fran Bourassa, Marilyn Bowering, Kate Braid, Connie Braun, Margo Button, Anne Cameron, Marlene Cookshaw, Judith Copithorne, Susan Cormier, Lorna Crozier, Jen Currin, Daniela Elza, Cathy Ford, Carla Funk, Maxine Gadd, Rhonda Ganz, Elee Kraljii Gardiner, Heidi Garnett, Lakshmi Gill, Kim Goldberg, Alisa Gordaneer, Heidi Greco, Karen Hofmann, Leah Horlick, Diana Hartog, Heather Haley, Joelene Heathcote, Diana Hayes, Aislinn Hunter, Elena E. Johnson, Eve Joseph, Donna Kane, Fiona Tinwei Lam, Zoe Landale, Larissa Lai, Evelyn Lau, Julia Leggett, Angela Long, Christine Lowther, Sandra Lynxleg, Rhona McAdam, Susan McCaslin, Hannah Main-van der Kamp, Daphne Marlatt, Jessica Michalofsky, Jane Munro, Catherine Owen, Shauna Paull, Miranda Pearson, Meredith Quartermain, Rebekah Rempel, Linda Rogers, Rachel Rose, Laisha Rosnau, Renée Sarojini Saklikar, Sandy Shreve, Melanie Siebert, Susan Stenson, Cathy Stonehouse, Sharon Thesen, Betsy Warland, Gillian Wigmore, Ursula Vaira, Rita Wong, Onjana Yawnghwe, Patricia Young, Jan Zwicky. Due: April 2013, 400 pages, ISBN 978-1-896949-25-3, $32.95 aprox, Mother Tongue Publishing, 290 Fulford-Ganges Rd, Salt Spring Island BC, V8K 2K6
VORACIOUS
A kiss.
Coral. Incandescent.
We wanted a kiss.
We wanted a moment
of, no one knows us.
In a hovel or the firs
we wanted a moment
of, no one watching.
We wanted a ride,
the roiling innards.
We wanted a night.
One night, to escape
the ether, the library,
all that shushing.
We wanted more
than one season
of abundance.
He has entered text
red as a target,
invited a stoning,
but, we are very bear.
Mewling accomplice
pawing at the door,
I track charred meat
from bower to suite.
From a fly coastal trip
drenched in dark highway,
through a fuming winter
of snarling heat,
to blasted spring robins
and lilacs blaring perfume,
we have muzzled nothing,
growling in the gut wicked
as songs loud as our heads,
deafening aches
silent as screen voices
deep at night.
Smoked out,
files burned,
anointed with ash,
we are fallout.
Ruthless particulars
roaming summer,
lapping up
bare mounds and berries,
moving and moved
by shattered outcrops,
words of praise,
generous mouths.