Ariadne’s Notes:  Two official World Poetry Cafe book launches! Adrienne Drobnies and Anita Lo!

The World Poetry Cafe Radio Show , CFRO 100.5 FM , 1-2 pm, PST  on July 25,  with co-host Anita Lo welcomed Adrienne Drobnies,  the featured poetess in a fascinating interview  with e-poets and translators from China; Yuanbing Zhang and from Bhutan, Ngawang Tenzin.  Adrienne read from her new book Salt and Ashes and kindly answered a question from a 14 year old girl from Africa, who wrote to say thank you for her advice.  She also mentioned that she may have met my dad in Costa Rica! Small world… 

**Thanks to the  World Poetry Cafe Radio Show team of Victor Schwartzman, Diego Bastinutti  and Sharon Rowe for helping to keep our show on the air for 21 years! Also, some unsolicited advice from Tommy2 our new kitten.

Click Below:

LISTEN TO THIS AMAZING SHOW HERE!

Adrienne Drobnies is a Canadian poet and scientist living in Vancouver. Her first book of poetry Salt and Ashes was released by Signature Editions in 2019. Adrienne is a graduate of the Simon Fraser University Writer’s Studio and received her doctorate in chemistry from the University of California Berkeley. Her origins are in Texas and California and she has spent most of her life in Toronto and Vancouver. Her poetry has appeared in Canadian literary magazines, including The Antigonish Review, Event, Riddle Fence, The Toronto Quarterly, and The Maynard, as well as The Cider Press Review and Sow’s Ear’s Review in the US, and Popshot Magazine in the UK. She is an editor of a collection of poetry in French, Poèmes sur Mesure, by her late husband Alain Fournier. Her poetry has received honourable mention in the Compton Poetry Prize and was shortlisted for the 2015 Vallum Award for poetry. Her long poem “Randonnées” won the Gwendolyn MacEwen Award for Best Suite of Poems by an Emerging Poet and was a finalist for the CBC literary award for poetry.

Ring Dance

It’s possible we once danced

by the light of the solstice moon,
runcible drunk, hunched over 

streetcar tracks to flatten a penny—
the only coin we had to offer 

against a thundering weight.
We don’t know whether passion 

will be renewed at the same address

where ceiling plaster sprinkled our hair 

like crumbly feta, garnish to the salt stink 

of pleasure.  Can we count on postal carriers

to negotiate a contract for delivery of nothing
but billets doux and arrangements 

for assignations at sea?  Will the local library 

lend us its volumes on love so thigh to thigh 

we can sit down again to read instructions 

for how to fill an empty vessel?
Will we flip to the page with the pop-up mast
and lash ourselves to it, each siren to the other?
However demented we become, the moon will 

shift its light all night on the water 

and twist itself into rings we bought 

for one flattened penny.

(C) Adrienne Drobnies. All rights reserved.