Poetry@Red Tree will end your summer in style by featuring poet Joanna Lilley on Monday Sept. 4 at 7 p.m. An open mic will happen for the second half of the evening at Red Tree Specialty Coffee at 2546 Rosewall Cr. in Tin Town in Courtenay.
Joanna Lilley is the author of the poetry collection, If There Were Roads (Turnstone Press), and the poetry collection, The Fleece Era (Brick Books), which was nominated for the Fred Cogswell Award for excellence. Lilley is also the author of the short story collection, The Birthday Books (Hagios Press).
Lilley has been published and given readings all across Canada as well as in the U.S England and Scotland. In Canada, her work has appeared in journals including The Malahat Review, The New Quarterly, Grain, The Fiddlehead and The Antigonish Review.
Her awards include first prize in the Vancouver International Writers’ Festival Poetry Contest, joint first prize in the Baked Poetry Contest, first prize in the Authors on Eighth Creative Non-Fiction Contest, first prize in the Lothian Life Poetry Competition and first prize in the Worldwise Regional Creative Writing Competition.
Lilley has received four Advanced Artist Awards from the Government of Yukon to support her work, as well as a grant from the Emerging Northern Writers and Artists Fund, support from the Cultural Industries Training Fund and two Touring Artist Fund awards.
She is a graduate of the MLitt in Creative Writing at the Universities of Strathclyde and Glasgow, and has a postgraduate certificate from the Humber School for Writers. Born in the UK, she emigrated to Canada in 2006 and settled in Whitehorse, Yukon. Find Joanna online at joannalilley.com.
Recent featured poets at Poetry@Red Tree have included Matt Rader, bill bissett, Cornelia Hoogland and John Donlan . Upcoming featured poets include Leyla Josephine from Glasgow in November and Ed Varney and friends reading from T.S Eliot’s Four Quartets in October.
Tickets for the upcoming 5th Annual Cascadia Poetry Festival will also be on sale as well as memberships in Cascadia Poetics Lab Society. The festival will be Sept 8th-9th in Cumberland and will feature eight headliner poets including Matt Rader, Jan Zwicky, Stephen Collis, Sarah de Leeuw and others. There will also be a poetry workshop, small press fair, a panel on the intersection of Cascadia Poetics and bioregionalism and after parties. Another interesting feature will be a Living Room reading where interested poets will be able to read a poem to the larger gathering and receive feedback. More information is online at http://cascadiapoeticslab.ca/ and tickets are also available at Brown Paper Tickets at http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/3054895
You will be able to enjoy the poetry along with a hot or cold drink and a treat. Bring a poem (or three), a friend (or two), or just come along on an artist’s date with yourself and meet those folks like you, that like to be stirred by words and the music they make.
Arrive at around 6:45 p.m. to sign up for the open mic.