Catherine Chandler's Poetry Blog

Wednesday, March 26, 2014

My Fellow Readers


Librairie Drawn & Quarterly




On Friday, April 4, 2014, I'll be reading from my newly-released full-length collection of poetry, Glad and Sorry Seasons (Biblioasis Press) at the 2014 Signal Editions Gala celebrating April - Poetry Month.

Time:  7 p.m.
Place: Librairie Drawn & Quarterly Bookstore
Address:  211 Bernard Street, Montreal

My fellow readers are, indeed, four fellows:

Edward Carson

Jason Guriel

Richard Greene

Jim Johnstone 

Hope to see you there!




Good News for Biblioasis !

The publisher of my new book, Glad and Sorry Seasons, has been nominated for a Libris Award.

Read about it HERE.

Best wishes!

Tuesday, March 25, 2014

Glad and Sorry Seasons







Yesterday I received a box containing my new full-length collection of poems, Glad and Sorry Seasons (Biblioasis Press, Windsor, Ontario). It was a bittersweet moment. Most of the poems were inspired by sorry, rather than glad, seasons.

As I held the book in my hands and opened it to the dedication page, I felt an overwhelming sadness that my late father, to whom the book is dedicated, was not with me to share the moment. He passed away one week after my daughter was released from the hospital where she spent seven weeks fighting for her life after a ruptured cerebral aneurysm in the summer of 2012.

No matter where I read in the upcoming weeks and months, I will always begin my presentation by reciting the poem 'Intervals' in honor of the wonderful father, teacher, friend and mathematician that he was.









If anyone would like a signed copy, please email me at:  cathy.chandler@mcgill.ca for the details.




Thursday, March 20, 2014

TES Australia

'" Pesadilla" [Nightmare] by Mauricio García Vega




I just discovered, by Googling, that the YouTube SpokenVerse reading of my poem "Oneironaut" is now on the TES (Times Educational Supplement) Australia website HERE.

"Oneironaut" is a sonnet written in tetrameter with a rhyme scheme abbacddceffegg and deals with nightmares and lucid dreaming.

It's the lead-off poem in my first full-length collection, Lines of Flight (Able Muse Press, 2011).

"Oneironaut" was first published by the UK print journal Orbis (Issue # 144, 2009) and garnered an Honorable Mention in the journal's Readers' Award.


Friday, March 14, 2014

Thanking the Muses

Sarcophagus known as the "Muses Sarcophagus", representing the nine Muses and their attributes. Marble, first half of the 2nd century AD, found by the Via Ostiense. |MR 880 (Ma 475) |Department of Greek, Etruscan and Roman Antiquities, Denon  (Wiki image is in the public domain)



I'm happy to say that I've completed a draft of my next poetry book, a manuscript consisting of  fifty-four poems, divided into four sections, each based on a phrase from King David's Psalms.

There's even one section of "light" poems such as parodies, epigrams, and a physics-based riddle.

This will be my most personal book to date, with poems inspired by the deaths of my mother and father (July 2011 and August 2012, respectively), my daughter's near death from a ruptured cerebral aneurysm in June-July 2012, and the euthanasia of my beloved dog, in October 2012.

Themes include suicide, the Catholic Church abuse scandal, Sandy Hook, OCD, war, a nod to Pablo Neruda, and of course faith, hope and love.

Two translations, one from French (Émile Nelligan) and one from Spanish (María Eugenia Vaz Ferreira) also make their début in this MS.

Forms include blank verse, lyric and narrative sonnets, heroic couplets, Sapphics, heterometrical sestets, cinquains, quatrains, ottava rima, villanelle, ovillejo, elegy, Fibonacci, ballad, haiku, modified cento. Some free verse as well. ;-)

Will be polishing for submission to prospective publishers in the fall, God willing.