On Tuesday, May 17, Norma Charles (author of YA novels Chasing a Star and The Girl in the Backseat will be reading at Pierre Trudeau Elementary School in Vancouver, BC. She’ll be speaking to grades 6 & 7 students from 1:45 – 2:45.
The Girl in the Backseat is a finalist in this year’s Red Cedar Book Awards.
On Wednesday, May 11, Norma Charles (author of YA novels Chasing a Star and The Girl in the Backseat will be reading at two Richmond, BC, schools. She’ll be giving two talks at Woodward Elementary to grades 6 & 7 students (9:30 – 10:30; 10:40 – 11:30).
Then she’s off to DeBeck Elementary for two talks for grades 5 – 7 students (1:15 – 2:00; 2:10 – 3:00).
The Girl in the Backseat is a finalist in this year’s Red Cedar Book Awards.
On Thursday, May 5, Norma Charles (author of YA novels Chasing a Star and The Girl in the Backseat at Surrey Public Library’s Semiahmoo Branch from 10:00 – 11:00 and at the Strawberry Hill Branch from 1:15 – 2:15.
The Girl in the Backseat is a finalist in this year’s Red Cedar Book Awards.
On Thursday, April 28, author Norma Charles will be reading from and speaking about her YA novel The Girl in the Backseat at the North Vancouver Public Library. The Girl in the Backseat is a finalist in this year’s Red Cedar Book Awards. This reading will take place at the Lynn Valley Main Branch from 1:30 – 2:30, and is aimed at grades 6 & 7.
21
Spring has come back again. The earth
is a child who knows many poems by heart . . .
For the long, hard work of learning
she now receives the prize.
Her teacher was strict. But we loved the white
in the old man’s beard. Now if we ask her
what the green and the blue are called,
she always gets the answer right.
The earth is joyful, on holiday, having fun
with the children. You’ll be caught,
happy earth, by the happiest one.
Everything that her teacher taught,
everything printed in roots and long
and difficult stems, she recites in a song!
***
This sonnet comes from the collection Rilke’s Late Poetry: Duino Elegies, The Sonnets to Orpheus & Selected Last Poems, translated (and with an Introduction and Commentary) by Graham Good, published by Ronsdale Press in 2005. The third print run of this book is currently underway.
To buy Rilke’s Late Poetry:
This title is no longer available.
Pamela Porter reads from her poetry collection Cathedral at Christie Pits, Toronto, on a chilly late-March day. Courtesy of Black Coffee Poet. Cathedral has been shortlisted for the 2011 Pat Lowther Memorial Award.
Luanda Street Children
Night in the shadow of the cathedral
gutted back in the seventies, the week
the Portuguese left Angola.
We ride in the bed of the truck
with a pot of porridge so weighty,
it took two to raise it there. There’s Rob
and me, and Rowan the Irishman
who knows all the kids, and Abell,
a local, driving. When we turn a corner, still
a block from the cathedral, children chase us;
Rowan calls, Cuidate, cuidate, waves
off those trying to climb into the truck.
They speak a kind of Spanish
with sshhh added, have come
out of nowhere, everywhere. No one
wants them; they keep quiet, invisible,
sleep curled in the spaces between high-rises,
dodge falling bags of feces, hunt trash heaps
for empty tins of coffee
or baby formula, or cardboard
they can roll into a cone.
Standing in the bed of the truck, I burn
my skin with porridge, dip a cup,
pour it fast toward the hands reaching out
with cardboard or tin. Rowan
keeps them in order. Sometimes I pour twice
into one cardboard cone — two are sharing.
Rob hands bread to hands, pours water,
often straight into their mouths.
Then we slam the lid on the pot
and rock in the bed of the truck to another station.
Seven times a night we do this.
Since the international presence arrived,
the girls don’t line up much. They make money
standing under any working streetlight.
Next night we’re back in the truck.
In the shadow of the burned-out cathedral,
the children’s eyes shine, a hundred little moons.
Sshhh, they say. I stoop and pour,
stoop and pour for all
who have been thrown away
in the world.
This poem was selected for our poem of the week in honour of the announcement that Cathedral is a finalist for this year’s Pat Lowther Award for best book of poetry by a Canadian woman published in 2010.
From Cathedral by Pamela Porter, published by Ronsdale Press in autumn 2010
To buy Cathedral:
On 23 April 2011, Jean Rae Baxter, author of The Way Lies North and Broken Trail, will be signing books at Indigo Books & Music, 1783 Stone Church Rd. East, Stoney Creek, Ontario. The event will run from 1:00 to 3:00 p.m.
On Thursday, April 28, Norma Charles, author of Chasing a Star, The Girl in the Backseat, and the forthcoming Run Marco Run, will be reading at the North Vancouver City Library at 120 West 14th Street, North Vancouver, BC.
