Vancouver's 100 Thousand Poets for Change

September 29, 2012

2012-01-10T14:13:00.000-08:00

100,000 Poets for Change takes place again on September 29, 2012. We are starting to plan Vancouver events! Stay tuned.

Also, click here for the video of the event in 2011! We had a great time. More info on our cleanup is here.

100,000 Poets for Change in Vancouver - 2011

Final details for our cleanup at False Creek East

2011-09-17T23:01:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone,

Here are the last details for our False Creek East cleanup from 1:00 to about 2:15, Saturday, September 24th, near Science World.

We will have a tent, coffee, and snacks in the park area near the Science World beach. Look for us at the playground with the monkey bars. If you can be there a little before one, that'd be great. We will break up into groups of about five or so. We'll collect litter for an hour and then group back up at the tent.

To start, we will have a short speech by Fraser Riverkeeper and environmental lawyer Doug Chapman. Everyone must sign a waiver during this time.

Each group should have a leader who will fill out a card showing how much and what kind of debris is collected. I will submit this data to the Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup the following week.

I'd like to thank the city of Vancouver and a group of students from Farleigh Dickinson University, who will be helping to provide some vests, trash bags, and gloves as well as participating in the cleanup. We hope to provide one trash picker upper per each group for picking up any medical trash. Feel free to bring your own if you have it.

I'd also like to thank the 100,000 Poets for Change group for helping to clean up this beach. This historical, global event unites poets with an action of sustainability. We will later have a reading, led by "enpipe line" poet Christine Leclerc, at the Carnegie Centre on Main and Hastings. This event, from 3:30 - 5:00, is also sponsored by Word on the Street and Moon Willow Press. Word on the Street has Vancouver's annual book fair near the library on Georgia the next day (Sunday, the 25th). I encourage all you readers to come out that day too!

We seem to be getting a ton of signups for this restoration, and it's wonderful! Happy BC Rivers Day! You're all participating in something great.

Mary Woodbury, Fraser Riverkeeper

100 Thousand Poets for Change: Vancouver, BC

2011-08-17T14:25:00.000-07:00

Plant life image by Nancy Victoria Davis

Michael Rothenberg & Terri Carrion of Big Bridge are putting together a world-wide event on September 24, 2011, uniting 100 thousand poets to inspire and encourage people to change. This is sort of a sweeping statement, but the idea is to get people out of the house, get them to meet their neighbors in ever-growing times of alienation, and do something good at the local community level while celebrating the arts. There are already many cities world-wide planning their event; each of us has a unique opportunity to identify areas in our own city to address.

In Vancouver, we will involve poets and other community members in the local issues of healthy water ecosystems, preservation, and restoration. We will be cleaning up one of the dirtiest beaches in Vancouver and doing a poetry reading to raise awareness of the threats to the coast, the Great Bear Rainforest, and the Athabasca and other oil sands production areas in regards to tar sands, including the proposed Northern Gateway Pipeline project by Enbridge.

Updates:

Join us at our Event Page on Facebook.

The blog that Michael and I put together to report overall information for 100 Thousand Poets across the world: http://www.bigbridge.org/100thousandpoetsforchange.

Event schedule

2011-08-17T14:24:00.000-07:00

Vancouver’s 100,000 Poets for Change will inspire the community to work toward a healthy watershed and wild salmon forever, which have been vital to Vancouver’s cultural and environmental history for thousands of years.

Note: the enpipe line reading time has changed!

Poets and others will join Fraser Riverkeeper at from 1:00 - 2:30, September 24, on the shores of False Creek East, near Science World. As part of BC Rivers Day and the Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup, poets and other volunteers, including a group of students from Farleigh Dickinson University, will remove shoreline litter and debris from one of the dirtiest beaches in Canada. The Riverkeeper will talk about water quality issues that threaten human health and marine habitat in BC.

From 3:30 to 5:00, half a dozen enpipe line poets will join in on part of Vancouver’s large book fair’s (Word on the Street) festival at the Downtown East Side’s Carnegie Center, by offering readings from poems in Christine Leclerc's enpipe line project, a 1,173-km-long line of collaborative poetry, out of a resistance to Enbridge’s Northern Gateway Project proposal.

Enbridge’s pipelines would disrupt over 1,000 salmon streams and rivers in BC and introduce more oil tankers to the West Coast, and cause even more devastation to the Athabasca River and land done by current oil sands mining and production in Alberta.

This poetry reading will be commented on by Fraser Riverkeeper, in regards to the health of the watershed and how it will be affected if the pipeline proposal goes through, and by Moon Willow Press about the potential threats to the arboreal ecology surrounding the pipelines, including the Great Bear Rainforest.

All afternoon, at the Carnegie Center, poets are invited to participate in workshops, such as mutual collaboration on chapbooks, with Word on the Street. An open mic reading extends into the evening.

Organizers and sponsors

Mary Woodbury of Moon Willow Press is organizing this event with Rita Wong, Associate Professor at Emily Carr; Christine Leclerc, Vancouver author and head of the Enpipe Line Poetry Project; Fraser Riverkeeper; and Word on the Street Vancouver.

Vancouver’s 100,000 Poets for Change event is sponsored by Fraser Riverkeeper, Moon Willow Press, and Vancouver’s Word on the Street.

Map of 100 Thousand Poet Cities

2011-08-11T20:15:00.000-07:00

View Poets 2 in a larger map

Readers

2011-07-19T16:58:00.000-07:00

Poetry Readers on September 24, 2011
Time: 3:30 - 5:00
Place: Carnegie Center at Main & Hastings (classroom number TBA)
Sponsor: Word on the Street, Vancouver

Stephen Collis

Stephen Collis is the author of four books of poetry, the most recent of which, On the Material (Talon Books 2010), was the recipient of the 2011 Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. Forthcoming books include several parts of the on-going poetic documentary of revolution, “The Barricades Project,” and a philosophical exploration of the concept of “change.” He teaches poetry and poetics at Simon Fraser University, where he is a 2011/12 Shadbolt Fellow.

Stephen will be reading "Take Oil and Hum" (http://enpipeline.org/?p=1012) from the enpipe line.

Alex Leslie

Alex Leslie's collection of short stories People Who Disappear will be published by Freehand in April 2012. Her chapbook of microfictions 20 Objects For The New World is available from Nomados. Website: alexleslie.wordpress.com.

Alex will be reading "Project:" (http://enpipeline.org/?p=254) from the enpipe line.

Garry Thomas Morse

Garry Thomas Morse is the author of Transversals for Orpheus, Streams, Death in Vancouver, After Jack, and Discovery Passages. In 2008, he received the City of Vancouver Mayor’s Arts Award for Emerging Artist. His new book Discovery Passages is the first collection of poetry about the Kwakwaka’wakw (Kwakiutl) First Nations.

Garry will be reading excerpts from "The Chaos! Quincunx".

Wil George

Wil George is from the Tsleil Waututh Nation (Burrard Indian Band) in North Vancouver, BC, Canada. He is a Salish Poet and Contemporary Storyteller. Wil's poetry is published in various anthologies and literary magazines including In Our Own Voices Learning and Teaching Toward Decolonisation (Larkuma), and TRANSPORTERS Contemporary Salish Art (Art Gallery of Greater Victoria). He has published a number of chapbook collections, including Raven Pomes (2008), Raven Flight (2006, 2009), and Mountain Bedded Rock (2009).

Rita Wong

Rita Wong is the author of three books of poetry: sybil unrest (co-written with Larissa Lai, Line Books, 2008), forage (Nightwood 2007), and monkeypuzzle (Press Gang 1998). forage was selected for CBC’s Canada Reads Poetry in 2011. Wong has received the Asian Canadian Writers Workshop Emerging Writer Award and the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. She teaches at Emily Carr University of Art and Design, where she has developed a humanities course focused on water, with the support of a fellowship from the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society. She is currently researching the poetics of water. In June 2011, she went on a Healing Walk through the Alberta Tar Sands (described online at Vancouver Media Coop).

Elaine Woo

Elaine Woo is a poet, comics-artist, lyricist, and non-fiction writer. She has written about issues such as breaking racial and gender stereotypes, political philosophy, the environment and spirituality in many genres including an interview with Michael Nicholl Yahgulanaas, Gene Luen Yang and Chloe Chan. Her work has appeared in Gusts: Contemporary Tanka, Ascent Aspirations, Ricepaper, Asian Cha.com, enpipeline.org, and West Coast Line. She was the keynote reader at a children's literature conference at the University of British Columbia, reader at the Poetry Tent, Word on the Street Festival, Vancouver, and collaborator with composer Adam Hill in the keynote presentation at the 2011 Vancouver International Song Institute's "Playing with Fire Concert." Forthcoming work will appear in the anthology Vancouver V6A, a mural in Vancouver; Whispers Project and enpipeline's anthology.

Elaine will be reading "Seal at Maplewood Mud Flats" (http://enpipeline.org/?p=185) and "Heron at Lonsdale Quay" (http://enpipeline.org/?p=128) from the enpipe line.

Stay tuned for more

100,000 Thousand Poets for Change - video

2011-07-13T19:55:00.001-07:00

False Creek East Cleanup

2011-04-06T14:22:00.000-07:00

After having talked about the 100 Thousand Poets for Change with our director at Fraser Riverkeeper, and having just gotten the notice for the sign-up for our annual beach restoration from the Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup, we've decided to go ahead and work with the big poet/arts gathering at least for part of the event and do a beach cleanup in the afternoon from about 1:00 - 2:30 on September 24th. This beach cleanup is our 4th annual cleanup, which always happens during the week of BC Rivers Day.

We've asked to be the site coordinator for False Creek East near Science World. Why this particular beach? Well, Doug Chapman, our Riverkeeper, has done testing in the area and found the river sediment to contain not only elevated, but over BC's own law's limits, for PAHs, PCBs, and heavy metals, which are dangerous to people and the marine environment. He calls the water in False Creek some of the dirtiest water in Canada, if not the world. This, incidentally, is the same area where the Olympic Village was built that housed athletes and visitors during the 2010 Winter Olympics. There had been a greening of the area, which worked well on land, but nobody bothered with the water! The beach itself is a rocky terrain, and the Great Canadian Shoreline site noted that many medical/personal hygiene items are found in the area. (Yes, we provide gloves, and volunteers must sign waivers.) This beach needs us to clean it up. I thought it would be a great way to start the event, around 1:00. It's also advisable to bring water in a filled water container.

A group of students from Farleigh Dickinson University will be joining us, so look for their big tent over near the children's park/monkey bars near Science World. Paid parking is nearby, or you can get off the skytrain at Main St. and walk toward the inlet.

After lunch are other activities at the Carnegie Center at the corner of Hastings and Main, Vancouver.