CBC Poetry Prize

The Pow-Wow grounds in the Esket meadows, waiting for another season of fancy dancing.
Catching a Snare Drum at the Fraser's Mouth
I came to earth on the grasslands, and it's only hours later that the wind that blows over my new house here on the east coast of Vancouver Island eases through the bluebunch wheatgrass there. My poem about the pow-wows of the Interior Grasslands has won second prize in the 2008 CBC Literary Awards, and will be published in the June issue of Enroute Magazine. Prizes were given out in Montreal on February 21. I first entered this contest in its first year, 29 years ago.



British Columbia culture is the creation of the confluence of first nations and European cultures. This poem celebrates that heritage, and brings it into confluence with the new cultures of multi-cultural Vancouver, as British Columbia strips down to her voice and sings in a jazz club in the city, with all the heartbreak and joy of the pow wows behind her and the new cultures of Mumbai and Hong Kong before her.



The Chilcotin River appears, with its salmon, in the heart of this poem. The poem opens at Redstone in the Chilcotin, and quickly moves here to Sugarcane,



where the horses of the Williams Lake Band run free below the pow-wow grounds. It was the 2006 Fathers' Day Pow Wow which brought me to this poem. From there, the poem moves downriver to the Coast. Here we see it in the Thompson Canyon,



above the railroad, the highway, an old village site, and a blood-red outcropping that the glaciers buried in gravel ten thousand years ago and which is slowly falling away. Sometimes it pays to stop the car and climb up a hill for the view.

Next, it's off to Marpole, at the mouth of the Fraser.



Thanks to Arthur C for this great pic.

And the rest is song.

Raven Creates People

rock rock rock rock rock rock rock rock rock rock rock
rock rock rock rock rock rock rock rock rock rock rock
rock rock rock rock rock rock rock rock rock rock rock
rock rock rock rock rock rock rock rock rock rock rock
rock rock rock rock rock rock rock rock rock rock rock
rock rock rock rock rock rock rock rock rock rock rock
rock rock rock rock rock rock rock rock rock rock rock
rock rock rock rock rock rock rock rock rock rock rock
rock rock rock rock rock rock rock rock rock rock rock
rock rock rock rock rock eye rock rock rock rock rock
rock rock rock rock rock rock rock rock rock rock rock
rock rock rock rock rock rock rock rock rock rock rock
rock rock rock rock rock rock rock rock rock rock rock
rock rock rock rock rock rock rock rock rock rock rock
rock rock rock rock rock rock rock rock rock rock rock
rock rock rock rock rock rock rock rock rock rock rock
rock rock rock rock rock rock rock rock rock rock rock
rock rock rock rock rock rock rock rock rock rock rock
rock rock rock rock rock rock rock rock rock rock rock
rock rock rock rock rock rock rock rock rock rock rock

I shared this new version of the old Haida creation story — the one in which Raven creates humankind on North Beach — with Grade 8 and 9 students in White Rock on Monday.

It looks like he's still watching from that beach, too! (Or is that out of the side of his head?)

Just say the whole poem out loud, and you can hear him telling you the whole story. Still laughing.

The Haida knew that laughter made for serious literature, and that a four dimensional world could be represented in two dimensional art.

My first poem on the coast!


The view from Tao Hill, Haida Gwaii.

Readings and Workshops in White Rock

Put your foot on the gas!

I will be in White Rock, B.C., on January 20 and 21, 2008, for a bit of mid-winter post-turkey and truffles celebration of writing. It is going to be a special pleasure to bring my poem Song for a Beached Whale at White Rock to town. She was beached there on the sand a few years back, and after she lay there, beached again, in my mind for a few years, she came out in this poem. A bit of the old testament, a lament for lost innocence, and a prayer for the voice, ah, I love this poem.

On Sunday, January 20, I will offer morning blue pencil sessions at the South Surrey/White Rock Community Arts Council Gallery. Editing doesn't have to be painful. Sometimes it's like this:



See, that's not so bad!

In the afternoon, I will present a writing workshop, that I call Getting Unstuck Without Coming Undone

I mean, what with the fog one day and the stars that night, this is no time of the year for getting stuck in the back eddy of a plot. To get us all out of that, I've designed this workshop, to get us into the new year with style.

So, if writer’s block is peering at you from your breadbox, like this:


July 1, 2007, Spences Bridge, B.C.

or if you have a character that has taken over and left your story behind, or if you can’t find the turning point to get your plot moving again, or have a poem that just won’t end, or can’t get an opening paragraph that will grab your publisher by the collar, or are writing a non-fiction piece that threatens to run away into fiction, well, nothing new there, is it. It's just any other day in a writer's world. I've been facing these ghouls down for 35 years, and have created a toolbox of techniques to get past them, and even to use their difficulties to drive my writing forward into new (well, I hope so!) directions.

So, bring a piece of your writing, or several pieces – or work on one of my many hand-outs, or on a piece you write in class. By the end of the day, I'll have passed along a good number of my own writing tools. By the time the day is over, you'll have a path to follow, and a good walking stick, too.

For more information or to register for the workshop or editing sessions, call 604-536-8333.

Hey, there's more!



I'll also be reading from my work at the Community Arts Council Gallery on Monday, January 21st. This event begins at 7 pm and is free of charge. Expect to hear my whale sing, selections from Return to Open Water, my selected poems, and from The Wolves at Evelyn, which won the 2007 George Ryga Award for Social Awareness in BC Literature.


Thanksgiving Sunday, 2007, Penticton, B.C.

I look forward to seeing you there.

Can a Story Change?

According to traditional stories, in the dreamtime a grizzly bear tried to jump across the water from the mainland to Vancouver Island. It almost made it, too, but, unfortunately, landed just on the edge of the water, which instantly turned it to stone. This is that rock. It's in Campbell River, a 30 minute walk from my house, and right across Discovery Passage from Quadra Island.

But look what's happened to it! I walked there last week to take pictures of the graffiti, because I think graffiti is the art of our time: so many people just wanting to write their names, to get some kind of permanence. I mean, how honest!

Since the tide was low, I walked around to the water side of the rock, to see what was painted there. When I saw this eye, I just had to take a picture of it, but it was only when I put my own eye to the camera lens that I saw the salmon, instantly take shape from the rock. When I lifted the camera away from my eye, the salmon vanished; it needed the camera to flatten the depth of the rock, like looking at a constellation deep in the night sky.

Well, that's the news from here in Campbell River. I'm making notes to write a book about the dreamtime. Up in the Interior of British Columbia it happened along the rivers. These megalithic rocks, beasts turned to stone, line the Fraser and the Thompson Rivers, and the salmon that fight their way into the grasslands to spawn must swim past them all. Here, the dreamtime took place under the sea, and in the tidal zone.

That's where the dreams are. That's where civilization started here. And art.

If you have any stories about the undersea world, I'd love to hear.

Happy New Year!

Return to Open Water

Brand new today, here it is, just come in the door ten minutes ago, the best of twenty-nine years of poetry. These are the poems that I have read over and over again across the country, all put in one beautiful new book, just in time for my move to Vancouver Island and the sea. Included as well are a selection of new poems that beg to be read out loud.


Return to Open Water: New and Selected Poems

In one of the boxes that makes the maze of my new study is my scanner, so, yes, what you see is a copy of the proof of the cover, not the cover itself.


I raise a toast!



Here's what Ronsdale Press has to say about the whole affair:

Return to Open Water: Poems New & Selected
By Harold Rhenisch

To Harold Rhenisch, poetry is a wisdom path equal to Zen, or a pilgrimage on the holy road from Seville to Minsk. Here is a breadth of musicality ranging from solo piano improvisations to jazz quartets, klezmer music, music hall, and even operatic arias. In this spirited celebration of the creative spirit, Rhenisch presents a vision of the world that places Canada, and poetry, at the crossroads of world culture. Included are a hymn for whales, a love poem for herring, black-comic stagings of Shakespeare, tongue-in-cheek deconstructions and celebrations of philosophy and literature, laments for the missteps of history, enraged political blasts, and deep ecological lyrics. Mozart enters riding the bulls into the Williams Lake Stampede, and a rhinestoned Jesus sings Elvis lyrics on a car hoist at Canadian Tire. In Return to Open Water this award-winning poet, critic, and cultural critic fuses American, British and European verse traditions into a poetics able to reimagine literature and history and return them to us in illuminated form. Long-praised for his innovative creative nonfiction and his mastery of the long poem form, in this volume Rhenisch presents the roots of that intelligence and its furthest extensions. This "New & Selected" presents the best poems — comical, elegiac, satiric and lyrical — from the twelve volumes of verse of one of Canada's best, most original, and most mercurial poets.

"Everything past and present composts in this rich collection of poetry which feeds the roots of the trees Harold Rhenisch persuades into a cathedral shape. This book, a temple with a sweet grass floor, raised voices, echoes, soaring spires and the blessing of rain, is the organic church of poetry." — Linda Rogers

Since 1982 Harold Rhenisch has published twelve books of poetry, a book of essays, a novel and four books of creative nonfiction. He holds degrees in Creative Writing from the University of Victoria and the University of British Columbia, and has won the Petch Prize, the Arc Poem of the Year Award, the Confederation Poets' Prize, the Critic’s Desk Award, and twice the Malahat Review's Long Poem Prize. With Ronsdale he published Out of the Interior (0-921870-42-6), Taking the Breath Away (0-921870-55-8) and Free Will (978-1-55380-013-2). Born on an apple orchard in the Similkameen Valley, he now makes his home in Campbell River, BC.

And here are the specs:

Ronsdale Press, 2007
ISBN-10: 1-55380-049-4
ISBN-13: 978-1-55380-049-1

6 x 9 150 pp
trade paper

$21.95 CDN
$19.95 US

Cheers!

Robin Skelton

Good news!

A half hour ago a Canpar truck drove up, after making the week-long haul from Toronto. Looking very refreshed for such a long journey, and so much roadside coffee, may I add, the driver handed me a package. Very cool and collected, I signed, but then I raced inside, tore into the cardboard like a kid with an ice cream cake, and there it was, at last, after so many years of living with these poems, Robin Skelton's In This Poem I Am.



Dundurn Press, ISBN: 978-1-55002-769-3

This is the volume of selected poems that James Gurley and I made as our gift to the Malahat Review celebrations for its 40th anniversary, and the 10th anniversary of Robin's passing. It took years. These are, I think, the best poems of one of our best poets.

We're launching the book on Robin's birthday, too. Let's plan to see each other there, for this important event. Robin always loved a party.

Friday, October 12, 2007, at 7:30 pm
Art Gallery of Greater Victoria
1040 Moss Street, Victoria
(250-384-4101)
Regular Gallery admission applies: $12 for adults, $10 for seniors and students

What a happy day!

The Big Move

Now the wind, that flows off the Pacific, crests the Coast Mountains, and drops into the grasslands like a breath from a spirit stone, has spoken to me first. I've gone west. I've moved to the heart of a salmon, as it lies in cool water drinking the rain. I'm talking with raven again.


For the moment, I'm living in a sea of cardboard, while I build a new set of bookshelves above the garage. I'm still on the edge of a continent, but now I'm close to Victoria, and to Vancouver. It feels great to be here.

Give me a call. Drop me a line. Let me know how it's going with you.

Harold Rhenisch
795 Oxford Place
Campbell River, B.C.
V9W 7Y7
250-923-3453
The email is the same: rhenisch@telus.net

Talk to you soon, eh.