News from the Feminist Caucus, by Anne Burke

We welcome new members who share the goals and objectives of The Feminist Caucus. If you will be attending the agm in Toronto, June 7-9, please join us for the panel on Friday at 2 p.m.-3 p.m. and the brief Business Meeting (to plan 2014) & Reading at 3 p.m.-4 pm; and, on Saturday, the Open Reading at 4:15 p.m. -5:15 p.m., when we will be launching Poetry & The Disordered Mind , edited by Lynda Monahan, with readers Penn Kemp and Janet Vickers. This month, we also feature a brand-new review by Susan McCaslin of Doyali Farah Islam’s Yūsuf and the Lotus Flower (Ottawa: BuschekBooks, 2011); in addition to Previews of Untying the Apron Strings, Daughters Remember Mothers of the 1950s (Toronto: Guernica Books ) AND Force Field - 77 Women Poets of British Columbia , edited by Susan Musgrave (Salt Spring Island B.C.: Mother Tongue Press).

Schedule: Friday, June 7, 2013

The Feminist Caucus Panel 2013 is at 2 pm Note: Immediately following the Panel, at 3 pm, there will be a brief business meeting to plan next year's program. Come and join us! Then we have an open reading , all welcome, until 4 pm.

Schedule: Saturday, June 8, 2013 , there is the Fem Caucus Open Reading (all welcome) at 4:15 pm.

We will be launching Poetry & the Disordered Mind . Janet Vickers and Penn Kemp contributors, will be two of the readers. Winners of the Pat Lowther Memorial Award will be announced during a special ceremony at the annual LCP Poetry Fest and Conference to be held at the Courtyard by Marriott Hotel in downtown Toronto on June 8, 2013.

Help us launch Poetry & The Disordered Mind with Penn Kemp , Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal winner and Janet Vickers whose poems have appeared in various Canadian and UK anthologies, literary journals such as The Antigonish Review, Grain and Sub-Terrai n, and online in nthposition . In 2002 her poem, "You Were There", won the poetry category of the third annual Vancouver International Writers (& Readers) Festival Short Story and Poetry Contest. You Were There is the title of her first chapbook published in 2006. Her second chapbook Arcana was published in 2008.

Introduction to the Panel & the Panelists: July 7, 2013 FRIDAY:

2:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m. Feminist Caucus Panel: “fe(males): dialogues, exchanges & conversations”. Women Poets and Their Male Poet Mentors who supported our womanhood, Feminist Poetics, and writing; about how they have been helped in their writing careers. Panelists: Jenna Butler, Louise Carson, Jennifer Footman, and Candice James.

Jenna Butler was born in Norwich, England in 1980. She is the author of three trade books of poetry, Seldom Seen Road (NeWest Press, 2013), Wells (University of Alberta Press, 2012), and Aphelion (NeWest Press, 2010), in addition to ten short collections with small presses in Canada, the United States, and Europe. Butler teaches Literature and Creative Writing at Grant MacEwan University in Edmonton during the school year. In the summer, she and her husband live with three resident moose and a den of coyotes on a small organic farm in Alberta’s north country. Latest books: Seldom Seen Road (NeWest Press, 2013) and Wells (University of Alberta Press, 2012)

Louise Carson lives in a bungalow surrounded by gardens (thus fulfilling one of her life's ambitions) with her daughter (another ambition fulfilled), two cats and one dog. She teaches piano and singing part-time while honing her skills as a writer. Most recently poems have been published in Cahoots, Montreal Serai, Carousel and Event , and in the chapbook Beautiful Women , Lipstick Press. Her work recently appeared in Vallum, Geist, subTerrain , Prairie Fire, CV2 and on line at Sunday@6. Her books include Rope (Broken Rules Press, 2011) and Mermaid Road (BRP, 2013). She lives near Montreal, Quebec.

Jennifer Footman : Originally from India, she spent most of her life in Edinburgh and is a graduate of that university, coming to Canada in 79. Her poetry and fiction have been in most Canadian literary magazines and many US and UK ones. She has four collections of poetry, has won several competitions including the Canadian Authors Okanagan Award, the Envoi poetry award, the LNN short fiction award and the Alumnus\Scotia McLeod Award.

She is active in editing and has created many anthologies for various organizations. She has also has been involved in community writing projects for many years, including local outreach programmes. She has been both Brampton Artist of the year and Mississauga Artist of the year. She also teaches teach part-time and gives workshops and readings.

Candice James is Poet Laureate for New Westminster B.C. She has poems in many International Anthologies, magazines and newspapers: Corvus; Angie's Diary; The Loop; Royal City Record, Downtown BIA; Black Rainbow Poetry; Newsleader; Darker Poetically; The Prairie Journal ; Dystennium ; etc. etc.... and has led online forums for Writers Etc. and facilitated and led many workshops. Her poetry has appeared many times in the monthly magazine "Arts and Entertainment Hollywood".

3:00 – 4:00 p.m. Feminist Caucus Business Meeting: Brainstorming for 2014 & OPEN Reading (all welcome)

(MORE BIOS FOLLOW THIS REVIEW)

"Salient Rose: the Mystical Peerings of Doyali Farah Islam", a review of Doyali Farah Islam’s Y ūsuf and the Lotus Flower (Ottawa: BuschekBooks, 2011), by Susan McCaslin.

Doyali Farah Islam’s debut volume of mystical poems, Yūsuf and the Lotus Flower , is an intimate conversation between the poet and the divine which we not only have the privilege to overhear but to actively engage. Writing out of a mystical poetics is not an easy task, since spiritual poetry can all too easily default to the abstract, vague and misty. Islam’s concrete, embodied, evocative work avoids these pitfalls by being firmly grounded in the everyday. Deftly and gently, the poems take the listener to the edge of the unspeakable through language that includes the silences behind and within words. While writing these poems, Islam meditated and recited the Koran daily. Because the poems are deeply rooted in her own sacred oral tradition, the musicality and tonal shifts lift the reader past theology and systems of belief into more spacious places.

Islam melds Islamic, Bangladeshi, and Canadian cultures. Her parents are from Bangladesh, but she grew up in Toronto, and later spent four years in London, England. Currently, she is pursing a double major in English and Equity Studies at the University of Toronto. She was the first-place winner of Contemporary Verse 2’ s 35th Anniversary Contest, and her poems have appeared in Grain (38.2) and other literary magazines.

What Islam calls her “inter-spiritual” approach comes naturally to her as a practicing Muslim who simultaneously does Kundalini yoga. Together these diverse practices are complementary and nourish her poetry. You could say that Islam’s contemplative life and her poetry (which is also a spiritual practice) form a seamless whole. She explores the commonalities of diverse paths without reducing them to a common denominator. The book’s exquisite cover, which the poet herself designed, is a visual statement about the union of Islamic “surrender” (which is what the word “Islam” means) and what the east has called “enlightenment” or awakening. The amber, turquoise, red and sky-blue panel on the left is taken from a painting called Yūsuf Entertains at Court Before His Marriage by the fifteenth-century Persian mystic, artist, and poet Jami. In the painting, the Islamic messenger Y ūsuf (Joseph in Judeo-Christian tradition) kneels on his prayer mat in a meditative posture, wearing a white turban from which a stick-like vertical rod points unerringly to unitive being, or what could be called non-dual awareness. The contrasting but complementary midnight-black panel on the right contains an image of the mysterious golden lotus of the east, symbolic of the delicate manifestation of beauty and peace that floats up from the depths of the chaotic, formless dark. The mystical traditions, with their experiential rather than dogmatic base, allow the poet to open to an inclusive field of unknowing or mystery. In the volume itself, Islam counterpoints the story of Y ūsuf with the rising of the golden lotus from the fertile void.

With the opening poem “thrust,” the speaker wastes no time in drawing us to into the beginnings of the journey. Though intellect is included, it is clear we are being invited into the secrets of the innermost core—the heart. The language is erotic, suggesting the power of the divine Eros or love-yearning that fires the cosmos and draws all things into unity. We are situated at the very keyhole to another way of seeing:

thrust, a tiny key into rusted heart-lock.

dig and twist. (9)

The imperative mood and active voice of the verbs “dig” and “twist” forewarn that this journey into the heart-space will not evade pain and suffering. So the subsequent poems steadily unfold how turmoil and loss, when accepted and integrated in one’s life, can contribute to the full flowering of the lotus self. The “I” voice expresses a sense of needful disturbance:

I have fallen through something, gouged a hole in a stable dam, punctured murals of pastel skies and watercolour’d sea.

I peer through, without my eyes. now where am I? (9)

Where indeed is this place of eyeless peering? And what is it? Our fellow-pilgrim and guide wastes no time in claiming mystic ground—the opening to what the east has called “third-eye” vision. Yet as Islam suggests in a note, this “seeing without eyes” is equally a process of translation, not merely a translation from one set of linguistic symbols into another, but also “the act by which the inclinations, longings, and dances of the soul are converted into word-symbols” (Islam’s note, 76). So peering into the invisible requires the evocation/ invocation of “sensory experience to locate [her] observations in space and time” (Islam, 76). If the business of the mystic is to open to a state of oneness or interconnection with all things, it is the role of the mystical poet to embody hints of this process in language. Islam creates pauses and lacunae in the poems, line breaks and blank spaces on the page that allow the words to point beyond themselves.

This short ghazal-like triplet, for instance, following upon several longer narrative poems, rises like an oasis at the end of section 6 on Sacrifice. We pause for breath and are breathed:

borrowed breath

I am borrowed breath. if you too are borrowed, we meet in the home of our breather. (59)

Just as language circles its grounding silences, the book is structurally crafted in a way that suggests a kind of circling around the Ka‘ba or sacred centre in Mecca. Yet the titles of the book’s seven interconnected subsections are more directly linked to Islam’s yogic practice. In another note she explains that, retrospectively, as she was organizing the book, she noticed that each section revisited the chronology of Yogi Bhajan’s list of Seven Steps to Happiness: commitment, character, dignity, divinity, grace, the power to sacrifice, and happiness (Reflections, 76) Although these stages on the spiritual journey serve as provisional markers, the sections themselves are fluid. Their images and themes overlap and intertwine. For instance, in the section on Grace, she revisits the theme of Commitment of section one through the sense that we are all deeply and irrevocably connected and thus committed to one another. Mystical peering recurs:

I have been who you are. inside your sadness, thousands of times.

peering into your eyes, I see myself. (39)

In fact, the act of peering into the face, the mirror of the other, reveals again and again that the other is indeed the beloved self, and that all selves are part of the great Oneness. Here the spirituality of the poems implicitly engage the political, for acts of injustice or hatred, the demonizing of the other, damage both the collective and our innermost selves. Essentially, Islam is writing an inter-spiritual peace poetry for the 21 st century that begins with the transformation of the self and may just translate to the transformation of the public realm. In a recent interview, Islam talks about the relation between the spiritual and the political:

Both my editing process and my book of poetry show that even if writers do not call openly for social justice, their writing can be informed by a desire to transform society. Furthermore, even if artists do not want to or cannot call openly for socio-political change, they can wield language to rupture, in a non-violent way, dominant discourses and to (re-)imagine or even (re)create society. What is present in one’s poetry/writing/art is as important as what is absent. It’s up to the reader and/or listener to notice or puzzle out the absences; and all absence is presence. 1 ______

1 Online interview: http://blackcoffeepoet.com/2012/01/11/interview-with-doyali-farah-islam/

MORE ON OUR PANELISTS FOLLOWS On Friday , June 7, at 2 pm in Toronto, join us for the upcoming 2013 Fem Caucus Panel. The title is: "fe(males): dialogues, exchanges & conversations" . The topic is: Women Poets and Their Male Poet Mentors who supported our womanhood, Feminist Poetics, and writing; about how they have been helped in their writing careers. This can mean influences on our writing or however the panelists choose to respond. Each poet will speak for ten 10 minutes and be published in the Living Archives Series.

Jenna Butler is an Alberta-based poet, editor, teacher, and publisher. Her work has appeared in literary magazines, journals and anthologies across Canada, and her poetry has received the Canadian Authors Association Exporting Alberta Award and has been shortlisted for the Bridport Prize and the International Salt Prizes (UK). She is the editor of more than thirty collections of poetry, in Canada and England, and is the founding editor of Rubicon Press.

Education

PhD Creative and Critical Writing (University of East Anglia, 2011) MA Distinction, Creative Writing: Poetry (University of East Anglia, 2006) BEd Distinction, Secondary Education (University of Alberta, 2004) BA English/Drama (University of Alberta, 2002)

Book Publications: Trade

Seldom Seen Road (NeWest Press, 2013) Wells (University of Alberta Press, 2012) Aphelion (NeWest Press, 2010)

Jenna Butler was born in Norwich, England in 1980, but has spent most of her life on the prairies of Western Canada. The varied landscapes of the prairies and mountains -- their intense harshness and incredible richness -- feature prominently in her poetry and fiction. Her work has garnered a number of awards, including the Canadian Authors Association Exporting Alberta Award and the James Patrick Folinsbee Prize, and has been featured by the CBC for National Poetry Month. Abroad, Butler's poetry has been shortlisted for both the Bridport Prize and the International Salt Prize for Best Individual Poem (UK). Her poetry has appeared in literary journals, magazines, and anthologies around the world, and she is the author of ten short collections of poetry. Her trade titles are Aphelion (NeWest Press, 2010), Wells (University of Alberta Press, 2012), and Seldom Seen Road (NeWest Press, 2013).

Louise Carson Louise Carson has been published in many Canadian magazines : Event, subTerrain, Cahoots, Montreal Serai, Poetry-Quebec, FreeFall, Our Times, CV2, Other Voices, The Nashwaak Review, Vallum, The Montreal Review, Geist, Jones Av., poetsagainstwar.ca , and Prairie Fire . Her book Rope: A Tale told in Prose and Verse was published by Broken Rules Press in 2011. Her next book Mermaid Road will be published in 2013.

Poems have also appeared in nine chapbooks and one anthology. Louise is a member of the Greenwood Poets, the Quebec Writers' Federation, and the League of Canadian Poets. She regularly reads in the Montreal area and has also read in Toronto, Ottawa and Saskatoon. A graduate of Concordia University, Louise teaches piano and singing.

Candice James

Candice James is the Poet Laureate of The City Of New Westminster, Secretary/Treasurer of The Royal City Literary Arts Society, a member of The League Of Canadian Poets, creator of Poetic Justice creator of Poetry In The Park, Past President of the Federation of British Columbia Writers. Past President of Slam Central Spoken Word Society and Past Director of SpoCan Canadian Festival of Spoken Word.

She is the Author of 4 poetry books, “A SPLIT IN THE WATER” - Fiddlehead Poetry Books 1979; “INNER HEART – A Journey” - Silver Bow Publishing 2010; “BRIDGES AND CLOUDS” – Silver Bow Publishing 2011, and her latest book is, “MIDNIGHT EMBERS, A Book of Sonnets” – (Libros Libertad Publishing 2012) which is nominated for the “Griffin Award For Excellence In Poetry” Prize 2013 .

Candice has been featured on radio, television and keynote speaker at many events. She has been a panelist at the prestigious Word On The Street Event panel “Orature and Storytelling”, and also a panelist at the Black Dot Roots Cultural Collective Festival panel “From The Page To The Stage”. She has judged the Jessamy Stursberg Canadian Youth Poetry Award and the F.G. Bressani International Award for Poetry

Her poetry, articles, short stories and reviews have appeared internationally in a variety of anthologies, magazines, e-zines and newspapers. She has edited and proofread manuscripts and done layout design for Silver Bow Publishing for many years and has ghost-written three biographies. She has led online forums for WRITERS ETC. in Los Angeles, CA and has facilitated many workshops in Form Poetry, Vision And Verse, and Constructive Creativity. She has reviewed books and written prefaces for international writers in the United Kingdom, India, United Arab Emirates. Australia, and the U.S.A Candice also organizes National Poetry month for the League of Canadian Poets annually.

Websites: http://saddlestone.shawwebspace.ca http://candicejames.shawwebspace.ca

Selected Publications A Split In The Water ( Fiddlehead Poetry Books, 1979 ) ISBN: 0-920110-59-2 pages 100. Inner Heart, A Journey ( Silver Bow Publishing, 2010 ) 978-0-9868097-0-5 pages 100 Bridges And Clouds ( Silver Bow Publishing, 2011 ) 978-0-9868097-8-1 pages 106 Midnight Embers, A Book of Sonnets (Libros Libertad Publishing 2012 ) 978-1-926763-22-4 pages 118

Candice James, Box 5, 720 Sixth St., New Westminster, BC V3L 3C5 Phone: 778-322-1131 E-mail: [email protected] Website: http://candicejames.shawwebspace.ca Link: http://saddlestone.shawwebspace.ca Link: http://www.youtube.com/user/saddlestone11

Jennifer Footman

Jennifer Footman is originally from India but spent most of her early life in Scotland. She has been in Brampton, Ontario since 1979. She has a BDS from the University of Edinburgh and LRAM from the Royal Academy of Music in Speech and Drama. She spends half her time in Dylan Thomas country near Port Eynon, writing and teaching, and half in Brampton. She is very involved in her community in Brampton, and is active in bringing poetry to the city.

Awards

People's Political Poem Contest, finalist, 1998. Brampton Arts Award, 1996. The Mississauga Arts Person of the Year Award, 1995. The Brampton Arts Person of the Year Award, 1994. Mississauga Arts Person of the Year award 1994. Canadian Authors' Short Fiction Competition, finalist, 1993. Okanagan Award for Short Fiction, fall 1991. CBC 89, Children's fiction section, 1989.

Selected Publications Through a Stained Glass Window (Envoy Press. UK, 1990) Gathering Fuel in Vacant Lots (HMS Press Canada, 1992) ISBN: 0-919957-82-X St.Valentine's Day . (Broken Jaw Press, 1995) ISBN: 0-921411-45-6 Metropolitan . (Bald Eagle Press, 1997). Mix Six. (Mekler and Deahl, 1996).

Selected Anthologies Two Prose Poems in the Party Train. (New River Press, 1995). The Invisible Accordion . (Broken Jaw Press, 1996). Uncivilizing. (Insomniac Press, 1998). Mix Six (Mekler And Deahl, 1996) ISBN: 1-896367-2 Uncivilizing (Insomniac Press, 1997 )

Books in Print Footman, Jennifer Through a Stained Glass Window (Envoy Press. UK, 1990) Gathering Fuel in Vacant Lots (HMS Press Canada, 1992) ISBN: 0-919957-82-X St.Valentine's Day. (Broken Jaw Press, 1995) ISBN: 0-921411-45-6, $13.95 Mix Six. (Mekler and Deahl, 1996). ISBN: 1-896367-06-2. Metropolitan (Bald Eagle Press, 1997) ISBN: 0-9696228-4-8.

Jennifer Footman Box7 Cheltenham Caledon, ON L7C 3L7 4262 [email protected] http://www.library.utoronto.ca/canpoetry/footman/index.htm

Poet in the School (Brampton) phone: 905 838 4262 Fax: 905 838 4263 email: [email protected]

Jennifer Footman is a poet, editor, fiction writer and journalist. She is an associate of the London Academy of Music and Drama and has taught speech and drama for several years. She is from India but spent most of her life in Edinburgh and graduated from that university. Brampton has been her home for fourteen years. She has had two books of poetry published, Through a Stained Glass Window , and Gathering Fuel in Vacant Lots. She has also been in many Canadian, UK and US magazines and anthologies; Grain, Descant, New Quarterly, and Arc , are just a few. She has led poetry workshops in community groups and has given readings in schools, libraries, and community centres.

Grade Levels: 5 - OAC

Fees: standard

Classroom Approach: Her approach is a mixture of the purely practical and the entertaining. It is not important that students know her work. She will read from her own work and from the works of major poets - old and new - from all lands. For a large group she can give a lecture on a particular aspect of poetry, combining this with a reading. For individual classes she usually reads, then follows with a workshop. She aims to help the student find the poems inside him/herself and to appreciate the poem being read. She can run a workshop where each student's work is discussed; she can lead a class where exercises are done to free the poem inside the student; or she can read her own poems and discuss technique, structure, and form. She enjoys working with those students who are not interested in poetry as well as those who have a positive feeling about it. Her main aim in a class is to help students to become open to poetry and to help them find the poetry which is out there for them.

Untying the Apron Strings, Daughters Remember Mothers of the 1950s edited by Lorri Neilsen Glenn (Guernica Editions spring 2013)

Lorri discusses how the collection of poetry and prose unties the stereotype and reveals how the women of the 1950s came together, striking a chord with so many women of her generation. What did the women of this time period face? Who were they and what do we remember of them? “When they did have time to think, they might have wondered what they could have done. And many of the stories in the book do tell this story.” To listen to the full interview, click here .

Force Field – 77 Women Poets of BC Edited by Susan Musgrave (Mother Tongue Press Salt Spring Island, B.C.) The first anthology of women poets of British Columbia in thirty-four years. April 2013 | Poetry | $32.95 400 pages

77 POETS:

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, Heather Haley, Diana Hartog, Diana Hayes, Joelene Heathcote, Karen Hofmann, Leah Horlick, Aislinn Hunter, Gillian Jerome, Elena E. Johnson, Eve Joseph, Donna Kane, Sonnet L’Abbe, Larissa Lai, Fiona Tinwei Lam, Zoe Landale, Evelyn Lau, Julia Leggett, Angela Long, Christine Lowther, Sandra Lynn 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, Renee Sarojini Saklikar, Sandy Shreve, Melanie Siebert, Susan Stenson, Cathy Stonehouse, Sharon Thesen, Ursula Vaira, Betsy Warland, Gillian Wigmore, Rita Wong, Onjana Yawnghwe, Patricia Young, Jan Zwicky. Susan Musgrave’s most recent collection of poetry is Origami Dove (McClelland & Stewart, 2011), shortlisted for the 2011 Governor General’s Literary Award for Poetry. A new novel, Given (McClelland & Stewart) was released in 2012. Recent prizes include the BC Civil Liberties Association Liberty Award for Art and the Spirit Bear Award, a tribute recognizing the significance of a vital and enduring contribution to the poetry of the Pacific Northwest. She lives on Haida Gwaii where she owns and manages Copper Beech Guest House. Susan teaches in the University of British Columbia’s optional-residency MFA program in Creative Writing.

UNTYING THE APRON: Daughters Remember Mothers of the 1950s Official Vancouver Launch Frontiers FREE EVENT A Journal of Women Studies Guisela Latorre and Join Guernica Editions for the official Vancouver launch of Judy Tzu-Chun Wu, Editors UNTYING THE APRON: Daughters For over thirty years Frontiers has Remember Mothers of the 1950s explored the diversity of women’s edited by Lorri Neilsen Glenn. lives as shaped by such factors as

There will be readings by Kate Braid, race, ethnicity, class, sexual Shauna Butterwick, Clarissa P. orientation, Green, Zoe Landale, Marsha and place. Multicultural Lederman, Daphne Marlatt, Jane and interdisciplinary, Munro, Sheila Norgate. Frontiers

Hope to see you there! presents a broad mix of scholarly work, personal essays, and the arts Refreshments will be served. offered in accessible language. The For more information on the book: http://bit.ly/YJcuth journal prides itself on publishing articles that bridge disciplines and that appeal to both academic and non-academic audiences.

Legacy A Journal of American Women Writers Jennifer S. Tuttle, Nicole Tonkovich, and Theresa Strouth Gaul, Editors Legacy is the official journal of the Society for the Study of American Women Writers and is the only journal to focus specifically on American women’s writings from the seventeenth through the mid-twentieth century. Each issue covers a wide range of topics, including examinations of the works of individual authors; genre studies; analysis of race, ethnicity, gender, class, and sexualities in women’s literature; and cultural issues pertinent to women’s lives and literary works. The journal also publishes profiles of lesser-known or rediscovered authors, reprints of primary works in all genres, and book reviews