WordStorm

Now at
THE RED MARTINI GRILL
75 Front Street 1, Nanaimo, BC V9R 5H9
(Cross Street: Front ST and Anchor WAY)
Phone: (250) 753-5181

The Red Martini Grill Home Page
Location Map

MONDAY, September 27th, 2010

Scroll down for details about future featured readers.

WordStorm Society of the Arts

Sheri-d Performance Photos

About     Guidelines     Article     Photo Gallery     Crew     Performers     Links     Directors    

For further details visit What's New

Performers

Naomi Wakan

Naomi Beth Wakan has written/compiled over thirty-five books, including Haiku – one breath poetry, (Heian International), an American Library Association selection. Recent titles are Segues, Late Bloomer – on writing later in life, Compositions: notes on the written word, and Book Ends: a year between the covers, all from Wolsak and Wynn, Double take – response tanka from The Modern English Tanka Press, and Sex After 70 and other poems from Bevalia Press. Her writing workshops inspire and empower the novice writer. Naomi is a member of Haiku Canada, Tanka Canada, The League of Canadian Poets, and Poetry Gabriola. Her poetry and essays have been printed in numerous magazines including Geist, Room of One’s Own, Moonset and Red Light and been read on CBC. She lives on Gabriola Island with her husband, the sculptor, Elias Wakan.
Email
Web Site

Clea Roberts

Clea Roberts lives in Whitehorse, Yukon on the Takhini River. Her poems have appeared in The Antigonish Review, CV2, The Dalhousie Review, The International Feminist Journal of Politics, Lake: A Journal of Arts and the Environment, The Malahat Review, Prism International, and Room. Roberts has received fellowships from the Vermont Studio Centre, the Atlantic Centre for the Arts, and is a three-time recipient of the Yukon Government Advanced Artist Award. Her work has been nominated for a National Magazine Award and her poem, “When We Begin to Grow Old,” won the After Al Purdy Poetry Contest. Clea is the former co-organizer of the Whitehorse Poetry Festival.

Synopsis: Here Is Where We Disembark



In Here Is Where We Disembark, Yukon author Clea Roberts eloquently confronts our preconceptions about the Canadian North, and invites the reader on an exquisite tour through wilderness, small town life, and history, in two parts. In the first section, Roberts deftly navigates a vast and shifting landscape throughout a cycle of seasons. The winter moon’s second-hand light pools in the tracks of tree squirrels; soft spring mud kisses the heels of galoshes while redpolls take to the wind; the mythical summer solstice sky tap dances and back flips overhead. Yet, she notes that this environment is also marked with the manufactured—the saw blade falsetto of ice lanterns on the lake, the thick stutter of j-brakes on the highway—and masterfully meditates on the complex web of relationships between humans and the natural world. In the second section, Roberts casts her gaze back to the Klondike Gold Rush of 1896 – 1899 and uses a variety of unusual personas, including a wolf, a woodcutter, and a resident ghost to creatively re-imagine and re-frame this frenetic race for fortune.

Here Is Where We Disembark is a beautifully crafted, ecologically conscious debut collection of poems that ignites the senses and then lingers, like woodsmoke, long after the final page is turned.

Susan McCaslin

Susan McCaslin is a poet, educator, scholar, workshop facilitator, and author of fourteen volumes of poetry, including her most recent, Lifting the Stone (Seraphim Editions, 2007). She has edited two anthologies of poetry Poetry and Spiritual Practice and A Matter of Spirit and is on the editorial board of Event: the Douglas College Review. Susan lives in Fort Langley, British Columbia. After twenty-three years as a professor of English and Creative Writing at Douglas College in New Westminster, B.C., Susan is now a full-time writer, giving poetry workshops, talks, and readings. She has a new volume of poetry called Demeter Goes Skydiving forthcoming from the University of Alberta Press in the spring of 2011.
Web Site


Elizabeth Rhett Woods

Elizabeth Rhett Woods’ professional writing debut was “A Way of Loving”, broadcast on CBC Radio’s Introducing in 1968. Her 90-minute verse drama, Maya was featured on CBC Radio’s Tuesday Night, in 1974), and a verse vignette, “Life and Death Along The Gorge”, was on Out Front, in 2000.

Her first novel, The Yellow Volkswagen, was published by Simon & Schuster, Canada, in 1971, followed by The Amateur (PaperJacks, 1980), Double Entry Death (serialized in the short-lived tabloid, The Victoria Literary Times, 2004), and Beyond the Pale, about temptation and consequences (Ekstasis Editions, 2006).

After a chapbook, Gone, was published by Ladysmith Press in 1971, her first book-length collection, Men, was published by Fiddlehead Poetry Books, in 1979, followed by Bird Salad (Moonstone Press, 1990), Family Fictions (Wolsak& Wynn, 2002), The Absinthe of Desire (Ekstasis Editions, 2004), and 1970: A Novel Poem (Ekstasis Editions, 2007). Woman Walking: Selected Poems, was published by Ekstasis Editions in 2009.
Web Site

WordStorm will now be held on MONDAY's at 6:30 PM. (Readings start as usual at 7:00 PM.)

If you have any questions about this WordStorm or others, please don't hesitate to contact Mary Ann Moore at flyingm@interlog.com

To reserve a seat for the evening, email Mary Ann Moore.

Cindy Shantz & David Fraser and the WordStorm Committee
Scroll Down to see who is coming to Nanaimo's WordStorm Stage in future months

Open Mic Winners May 2009): Ben Laurie (First), Kimberley Thiessen (Second), Winona Baker (Third)

Featured Performer, Susan Stenson (May 2009)

Reservations can be made via email to WordStorm! So far the trend has been for each WordStorm to almost reach capacity by reservations alone. If you can't reserve, come early and take your chances at the door. Reserved seating will take place before 6:30. Walk-in seats will be available after 6:30. Music starts at 6:30 and the program begins at 7:00.

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WordStorm is an on-going reading series that focuses on all types of the spoken word: poetry, short fiction, storytelling, improv, music, song. There are two components of WordStorm - a prearranged reading series, and an excitingly competitive spoken word competition. (Reserve a ticket and ask to be an open mike reader or sign up at the door.) The readings will always be a mix of genres, and the sign-up for WordStorm will be in categories - poetry and prose. The key elements will be quality writing and entertainment. Material read must be the reader's own work, and be read without props or instruments. Three judges will be chosen from the audience for each WordStorm, and audience participation is encouraged. The sign-up for WordStorm Open Mike can be in advance, by email, and also between 6:30 and 7:00 at the door. Admission is $5.00 at the door. The money collected will go entirely to prize winners and towards mimimal operating costs. The Acme Food Co. has a capacity of about 50 people, so don't be disappointed, reserve ahead through by email, or take your chances at the door. All reservations must be picked up before 6:30 or they will become void, and spaces will be given out on a first come, first served basis. No refunds. You can reserve with payment for future events at the reservation table on any night of WordStorm. Come out to just listen and be entertained, or sign up to be part of the entertainment. Everyone is welcome!

From its beginning WordStorm has played to packed houses with a full slate of readers-some coming from as far away as Seattle, Vancouver, Victoria, Courtenay, Comox, Bowen Island, Saltspring Island, Qualicum Beach, Duncan, Ladysmith, Prince Rupert (via Shawnigan Lake), Protection Island, Gabriola Island, Port Alberni, Ucluelet, Lasqueti Island, Saskatoon, Errington, Yellow Point, Sooke, P.E.I., Penticton, and Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia.

Pam Galloway March 2010	Pamela Lynn on Drums
John Lent at the Nanaimo Centre Stage, October 2009	Richard Arnold at the Mermaid's Mug

Come on out to WordStorm and set the writing/performing world of Vancouver Island on FIRE!

Everyone is welcome to get involved and participate.

Future Featured Readers/Performers

 

October 25th, 2010
Dennis Reid
Barbara Pelman

Lightning Reader: Book Launch - Britgiette Roick
Lightning Reader - Roneen Marcoux

November 29th, 2010
Daniela Elza
Peter Morin

Kim Clark
Shannon Rayne

Lightning Reader: Book Launch - Joan Donaldson-Yarmey

January 31st, 2011
Kevin Roberts
Joe Rosenblatt

February 28th, 2011
Katia Grubisic
Heather Haley

March 28th, 2011
Betsy Struthers
Chris Levinson
Chris Levinson Workshop Sunday March 27th

April 25th, 2011
WordStorm Society of the Arts AGM and Themed Readings - "Down on the Farm"
10 Open Mike Readers TBA
Featured Reader: Anny Scoones
Web Site

May 30, 2011
Sandy Shreve
Margaret Thompson
Bren Simmers

September 26, 2011
Lorna Crozier
Linda Crosfield


More Readers to be invited in the future.

October 31st, 2011

November 28th, 2011

Open Mike Sign-up
(Guidelines: You have three minutes to read one piece. It is all in good fun, so bring out your new or old stuff and try it out on our audience. You must sign-up before the program begins or you will not be on the sheet.)

Prizes for first, second and third-place winners will be awarded based on:

quality of content

inspiration and/or entertainment value

delivery.

Our esteemed panel of judges will be chosen at random from the audience.

We are always looking for local talent to read/perform as lightning readers for 5 minutes maximum, unless are featuring a recent publication of a book.

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