Celebrating the depth and diversity of BC publishing
On Thursday, Sept. 14th at 6pm, join Massy Arts, Massy Books, Caitlin Press, Mother Tongue Publishing, and Raven Books in celebrating the work of Adrienne Fitzpatrick, Daniela Elza, and Ian Thomas.
Erosion encompasses the environmental impacts on home, as well as the emotional and spiritual. Erosion can be subtle, not even noticeable and then suddenly devastating. Inte/ruption disrupts the flow, alluding to the breaking apart of the narrative of home.
This project has been made possible by the Government of Canada. Ce projet a été rendu possible grâce au gouvernement du Canada.
Venue & Accessibility
The event will be hosted at the Massy Arts Gallery, at 23 East Pender Street in Chinatown, Vancouver.
Registration is free and required for entrance.
The gallery is wheelchair accessible and a gender-neutral washroom is on-site. Please refrain from wearing scents or heavy perfumes.
For more on accessibility including parking, seating, venue measurements and floor plan, and how to request ASL interpretation please visit: massyarts.com/accessibility
Covid Protocols: Masks keep our community safe and are mandatory (N95 masks are recommended as they offer the best protection). We ask if you are showing symptoms, that you stay home. Thank you kindly.
About the books:
Instructions for a Flood by Adrienne Fitzpatrick
In Instructions for a Flood: Reflections on Story, Geography and Connection, a spare, powerful book, Adrienne Fitzpatrick writes with eloquence and raw honesty about the land that defines her. Taking us to the rivers and lakes that are an integral part of her personal history, she shows us the power and metaphor of water – it’s lurking dangers, how it gives and takes life, what it carries when it floods, what it leaves behind. In stories about her formative years in the ‘rough beauty’ of central and northern BC, and later working with First Nations on the contentious issues of extractive industry, she reveals how humans – and water – have impacted these territories and their ancient cultures.
the broken boat by daniela elza
In her fourth book of poetry, daniela elza deftly builds a raft of questions to stay afloat amidst the breakage of things. The end of a twenty-year marriage mirrors subtler fragmentations in our world. How to survive this loss of meaning, this “wintering through”? The intricacies of light, nature, water, absences glint through grief to astonish and lift the heart into understanding again; transforming and coupling the deeper self with the soulful eros/ions of our world.
Green Islands by Ian Thomas
Written in the unceded territory of the Haíɫzaqv (Heiltsuk) First Nation, this collection of poems focuses on the landscapes and wildlife of BC’s Great Bear Rainforest. These poems explore the ecology of the coastal rainforest and how its living creatures, bears, wolves, whales, birds, and salmon, shape their world and are shaped by it. Green Islands celebrates the complexity, beauty, and mystery of the non-human world.
About the authors:
Adrienne Fitzpatrick grew up in the north and returned to complete her Masters in English at the University of Northern British Columbia; her creative thesis won the John Harris Prize for the best in Northern Fiction. Her fiction and poetry have appeared in Prairie Fire, CV2, subTerrain, The New Quarterly and Thimbleberry. Her art reviews have appeared in Border Crossings, C Magazine and Canadian Art and book reviews in the BC Review. She explores the phenomenological experience of place in her work and her first book, The Earth Remembers Everything is based on her experiences travelling to massacre sites in Europe, Asia, the Central Interior and Northwest Coast of BC; it was also short-listed for the 2014 George Ryga Award for Social Awareness in Literature. Instructions for a Flood, based on her experiences of living and working with Indigenous Nations in the Central Interior and Northwest of BC, is published in the Spring of 2023 by Caitlin Press.
Daniela Elza lived on three continents before immigrating to Canada in 1999. Her latest poetry collections are the broken boat (2020) and slow erosions (2020). In 2021, she became a founding member of the Place Mattering Matters Collective and has been actively involved in preserving the affordable housing in her community in Vancouver, located on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. She is also working on a manuscript on the topic.
Ian Thomas, born in Vancouver, is a biologist and poet with a lifelong passion for the ecosystems and wildlife of the BC coast. He currently works for the Ancient Forest Alliance, a non-profit that works to protect BC’s endangered old- growth forests. Green Islands is his first published book.