Tag Archives: Anita Lo

World Poetry Celebrates the lovely Anita Lo!

Ariadne’s Notes: The World Poetry Cafe radio show on CFRO 100.5 FM welcomed Anita Lo in a special book launch where she also kindly acted as co-host and read the poem of Mr. Hongri Yuan , a well known folk poet from China in Mandarin as well as poems from her new book. A lovely, gracious lady who has a lot to offer.

LISTEN TO THE SHOW NOW!

Anita Lo’s lyric voice is informed by a lovely musicality. In these poems she considers kindness, community and connection through ideas of both the natural world and her neighborhood in Vancouver, Canada. It’s rare for a poet to write in two languages and here Lo displays sensitivity and a simple elegance in both.”

Elee Kraljii Gardiner, author of serpentine loop and Trauma Head.

“Anita loves poetry and is passionately fond of music. Poetry and music together are her two wings, which allow her to gracefully and tastefully float in a lovely blossoming garden of literary arts, rather like a diligent honeybee seeking to collect a diversity of nectar’s.

This book is the first jar of nectar collected by Anita, natural, fragrant and sweet. We anxiously look forward to the future appearance of even more remarkably rich publications.”

William Chan, President, The Chinese Canadian Writers’ Association

A poem by Anita:

A Fictional Girl

Perhaps you don’t know that forever

I have put you on the stage

you hide behind the banana trees

then you rise up over the trees

your elegant billowing dresses affront

I want my eyes to open wide

and never leave you,

not even for a second.

Perhaps you don’t know that forever

I have put you in my pictures

you carry a full basket of berries

as you walk along the river

singing with the birds

talking with the flowers

sweeping sweat from your forehead

talking to the flowers

sweeping sweat from your forehead

I want to walk beside you forever.

Perhaps you don’t know that forever

I have put you in my songs

please sing them for the banana trees

sing them for yourself

sing them for nature

and remember to sing them for me

their melodies help me catch you

perhaps you don’t know it

but you have become part of my life forever

Anita Lo (C) All rights reserved.

World Poetry Celebrates the talented Adrienne Drobnies !

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.