Ariadne’s Notes: On April 20, 2017, 1PM on CFRO, 100.5 FM, the World Poetry Café welcomed the multitalented and powerful poetess, Dee Hobsbawn-Smith, retired chief and sustainable food advocate. Her words of advise and wisdom about food, cooking and poetry were absolutely empowering to all the listeners. She will be on tour in the coming months, including in B.C. For a list of her tour dates: www.deehobsbawnsmith.com
Thanks to the World Poetry café Team of Ariadne Sawyer, producer and host, Anita Aguirre Nieveras , super engineer, Victor Schwartzman special volunteer Sharon Rowe and volunteer Willow the dog. Music by Anthony Prosk (Gulf Island Suite) and Don Amero (CD, Refined)
A must hear show for the planet : CLICK HERE!
Photo by Shelley Banks.
dee hobsbawn-smith’s poetry, essays, fiction and journalism has appeared in newspapers, websites, magazines, anthologies and literary journals in Canada, the USA and Scotland, including Grain, Gastronomica: The Journal of Culture and Food, The Malahat Reiview, Prairie Fire, The Antigonish Review, Vallum, CV2, Freefall and others. In 2015-16, she served as the Saskatoon Public Library’s 35th Writer in Residence. A retired chef and ex-restaurateur, she lives west of Saskatoon and earned her MFA in Writing at the University of Saskatchewan. She has published seven books. Foodshed: An Edible Albert Alphabet (Touchwood, 2012) won three international awards for its unflinching examination of the politics and challenges of small-scale sustainable food production. Her first collection of poetry, Wildness Rushing In (Hagios, 2014) was a finalist for Book of the Year and Best Poetry Collection at the Saskatchewan Book Awards. It was followed by her first short fiction collection, What Can’t Be Undone (Thistledown, 2015.) At present, she is working on her debut novel, an essay collection, and new poetry. Most recently, she has contributed to the SK poetry anthology, Line Dance (Burton Books, 2016), edited by Gerald Hill, and was part of a contingent of Canadian poets who read at The Bowery Poetry Club in New York City. www.deehobsbawnsmith.com
Red cedar
thirty years of your brother’s life
hanging in a cedar-lined closet under the back stairs.
~ Judith Krause, “A History of Shirts” from Mongrel Love
The cedar chest came from Lebanon, a gift.
In one corner, tiny clothes
I sewed for my sons.
Childhood never wears out.
It travels with me, that time. Before
I came to poetry, I lived it –
swung high swoops on redwood swings,
small sons on lap, leaped
like a leopard over fire hydrants at their urging.
In the chest, purple fleece vests outgrown
before the seams could strain or fade,
jesters’ hats, laid aside when they outgrew magic.
I wear their vests and hats now on my morning walks,
wrap myself in my sons’ childhood,
red cedar days that never wear out.
Dee Hobsbawn-Smith (C) From her radio show published poems. All rights reserved by author.
