The lagoon of potentiality
October 07th, 2015
Two veterans of the poetry wars, Fred Wah and John Pass, are releasing new books of old poems.
Launched with a collective reading at the Western Front, Fred Wah’s Scree: The Collected Earlier Poems, 1962-1991 (Talon $45) includes two facsimile editions of early chapbooks as well as the complete poems from thirteen now out-of-print or rare books.
Similarly, John Pass has gathered a selection of early, out-of-print poems for Forecast: Selected Early Poems 1970–1990 (Harbour $18.95).
Wah was selected as Canada’s Parliamentary Poet Laureate in 2012 and appointed to the Order of Canada in 2013.
Pass, who is married to writer Theresa Kishkan, received the Governor General’s Award for Poetry in 2006.
John Pass with Theresa Kishkan, 1980
In his foreword, Pass states, “I came of age in a society devolving into conformity and anxiety, but British Columbia’s southwest coast felt simultaneously timeless, gorgeous, spacious–a lagoon of potentiality welled within wild borders of vast geography, unopened history–and my path was lit with the time’s late flare of Romantic idealism and Modernist authority.”
Scree 978-0-88922-947-1; Forecast 978-1-55017-731-2
Launches, Readings & Appearances
Fred Wah
FOR FRED WAH
Thursday, October 29th
8:00–9:15 PM (doors open at 7:30)
Western Front
303 8th AVE E,
Vancouver, British Columbia
FOR JOHN PASS & THERESA KISHKAN
September 19: Theresa, launch of Patrin, Sechelt Arts Center, 7 pm
September 27: WORD Vancouver: Sunday, Vancouver Public Library and environs
John, reading from Forecast, 4:15 pm
Theresa, reading from Patrin, 4:40 pm
October 18: Raw Sugar Café, 692 Somerset St., Ottawa, 3pm
October 20: John, reading, Art Bar, Black Swan Tavern, 154 Danforth Ave., Toronto, 8 pm
October 31: John & Theresa (High Ground Press) Alcuin Society Wayzgoose, Alice MacKay Room, Vancouver Public Library 10 am – 4 pm
November 5: John & Theresa & Sarah deLeeuw, readings/launches, Russell Books, 734 Fort St., Victoria, (time TBA)
November 7: Theresa & Trevor Carolan, launch of Patrin and The Literary Storefront, The Glory Years, Vancouver’s Literary Centre 1978-1985, Salt Spring Island, 7:30 pm
November 19: John & Joe Denham, launch of Forecast and Regeneration Machine, Sechelt Arts Centre, 7 pm
November 26: John & Theresa, reading, Cottage Bistro, 4470 Main St., Vancouver, 7:30 pm
February 19 – 21, 2016: John & Theresa, Galiano Island Literary Festival (times TBA)
Leave a Reply