Thank you to Derek Hanebury, host and MC of Electric Mermaid “live reads” for inviting me to be the feature reader on Wednesday, February 25, 2026 at 6 p.m. Pacific. If you’re in Port Alberni, B.C., Char’s Landing at 4815 Argyle Street is the place to go. Otherwise, you can Zoom in to hear the open mic readers that will begin the readings, followed by me reading poems, old and new. Here’s a link to the Char’s Landing website for the Zoom link. Look under “Events.”

The “hybrid” reading event will be recorded so if you can’t attend on the date, it will be on the Char’s Landing You Tube channel following the readings.

And how about writing some poems of your own?

Several years ago (more than twenty), I offered poetry circles called “Just Like Making Soup.” I figured that writing a poem is like following a well-loved recipe. There are guidelines to follow, to which we can add our own special additions, flavours, and surprises to make that soup or poem our own.

While you’re standing at the stove stirring the soup or sitting at the table writing the poem, you are in the moment while memories of having eaten that soup before, with loved ones, arrive like gifts on the page.

One of the “Just Like Making Soup” circles was at Eramosa Eden, a retreat centre on the Eramosa River in Rockwood, Ontario. In more recent years, I’ve been leading writing circles at Bethlehem Centre on Westwood Lake in Nanaimo, B.C. A new one in the works is “Bringing Poems to Life,” a one-day writing circle, on Saturday, March 21, World Poetry Day, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.. We’ll gather to celebrate and discover the many gifts of poetry.

“Bringing poems to life” is to craft new poems as inspired by a memory, an image, someone else’s poem. And the phrase can also mean bringing poems by others into our life so as to appreciate those illuminations of all aspects of life.

“I don’t know if I breathed the poem or the poem breathed me,” Natalie Goldberg writes in “How Poetry Saved My Life,” the opening essay in Top of My Lungs (The Overlook Press, 2002).

Reading French philosopher, Gaston Bachelard, helped me to define poetry for myself.

Poetry is the soul creating a ceremony out of an ordinary event.

Whether you are new to the practice or a seasoned poet, reading and writing poetry is a praise practice that can illuminate the sacred in the ordinary. Poems can contain small fictions, arrive as gifts, be surprisingly prescient at times, honour a person, place or event, and always serves as your own way of embracing the richness of life.

I invite you to join me on World Poetry Day, Saturday, March 21, 2026, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Bethlehem Centre in Nanaimo.
Here’s the link to a description and to register: Bethlehem Centre. 

I’ve been leading writing circles since 1997 as well as all-day circles and retreats. The writing circles offer a place for voices to be heard. We create a sacred container together with some guidelines so voices, stories and poems can be honoured.

At Bethlehem Centre, we’ll have an opportunity to walk the beautiful grounds for some further contemplation and enjoy some social time at a nourishing lunch prepared for us.

I look forward to these opportunities to share and to write poetry. I hope you can join me!