Tag Archives: Una Bruhns

World Poetry Proudly Presents a Spring Festival, March 21.

World Poetry - Spring Festival

Under the direction of Una Bruhns and the able team of Jemma Downes, Jaz Gill, Selene Bertelsen  and Nasreen Pejvack, this wonderful celebration at the new Anvil Centre, 777 Columbia Street, New Westminster, BC  anvilcentre.com/ in New Westminster, B.C. Canada will present and amazing variety of poetry, music and dance. Display tables and a free raffle will also be there with artists and authors displaying their talents. Create a fat free lollipop poem! World Poetry have a table with space for your books also. Sharon Rowe will also have a book table and bring her special paper flowers.
http://www.amazon.com/Big-Bessie-Stories-Sharon-Rowe/dp/1926457005/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1416163528&sr=1-2&keywords=big+Bessie
A free event for you!

Poster by  the talented Nasreen Pejvack.

World Poetry Presents Author Anita Dennis from the US!

Ariadne’s Notes: The World Poetry Café Radio Show with hosts Ariadne Sawyer and Una Bhruns, welcomed the author : Anita Dennis with her fascinating account of life in Africa. Also on the show, an e-poem by Betty Patton for St Patrick’s Day and a call in from Dr.Paul Rowe about an upcoming conference. To hear this wonderful show: CLICK HERE!

9781490859552_COVER.indd

 Anita was a white college student in the 1960’s who fell in love with and married her professor, an African
American and the hereditary chief of a tribe in Liberia. 
For more than 10-years, Dennis and her husband traveled throughout Africa and experienced a side of life that most can only imagine.  Upon her husband’s passing, Dennis penned a memoir of their time together titled “Beyond Myself: The Farm Girl and the African Chief”. She published due to her desire to share her own racial and cultural experiences and create a dialogue that furthers understanding between races and cultures. 

Anita Dennis received her BA in sociology, with a minor in anthropology from the
University of Michigan-Flint in 1973. She was not only accepted into her husband’s
Mende tribe in 1972, but she lived in his village for a year in 1983–84 as a lay
missionary. She is the co-author of Slaves to Racism: An Unbroken Chain from America to Liberia, 2009.

To buy the book, go to Amazon.com or Barnes and Noble. Also check out her site with videos on the book.Website: http://www.anitakdennis.com/

“Beyond Myself: The Farm Girl and the African Chief”
By Anita Katherine Dennis
Price $22.95
SBN: 978-1-4908-5955-2 available at: Amazon, WestBow Press and Barnes and Noble online bookstores

Excerpt: Massambolahun, Upcountry Liberia, West Africa, summer, 1973
  It was 9 p.m. and pitch black.It was 9 p.m.  I was a 27-year-old, red-headed white
woman sitting in the chief’s chair at the front of an open meeting house.
My husband, Ben, was with grateful elders, so I was taking his place of
honor. In my lap was our 4-year-old son, Bengie, kept awake by the rapid fire
drumming and the roar of rain on the corrugated zinc roof. By the light
of kerosene lanterns, Gbandi dancers gyrated acrobatically up the center
aisle. Men and women on crowded wooden benches stared at me.

Review:
“I love your prose. It is only you that would narrate the intricacies of Gbandi
and Mende life and culture in such a fascinating manner. With your
commanding knowledge of your husband’s people, you weave together an
intriguing account of your lives together. Even readers who are not familiar
with Gbandi and Mende culture will have little problem in understanding
your story. I learned a lot about Dr. Dennis in your book about slavery and
racism, but I got a clearer knowledge of him from Beyond Myself.”

—Losay Lalugba, son of the late chief Lalugba of Vahun

World Poetry Proudly Presents Myna Wallin from Canada!

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Ariadne’s Notes, The World Poetry Café Radio Show with hosts Ariadne Sawyer and Una Bruhn  proudly presented the talented poet Myna Wallin in a special radio program Tuesday night , February 3rd. Also featured was a phone in  by tech Israel Mota, Creativity Rocks by Ariadne Sawyer and music by Rene Hugo Sánchez, Swan Walker and Ablaye Cissoko and Volker Goetze. To hear this “magical” show CLICK HERE!

Myna Wallin is a Toronto author and editor. She has had two books published, a collection of poetry, Thousand Profane Pieces (Tightrope Books, 2006), and a novel, Confessions of A Reluctant Cougar, (Tightrope Books, 2010). “Confessions” was long listed for the ReLit Award in 2010. Her poetry has won her two honourable mentions: in 2009 she received an Honourable Mention in the CV2 2-Day Best Poem Prize, and in 2010 she received an Honourable Mention in the Winston Collins/Descant Prize for Best Canadian Poem. Last winter a poem of hers hung at the Art Gallery of Ontario, along with two paintings of her, in an exhibit entitled, “Why Not Paintings of Poets?” This fall she had the honour of reading her poem about Gordon Lightfoot to Gordon Lightfoot. A piece of hers will appear among luminaries such as Leonard Cohen in a new collection, Where the Nights Are Twice as Long: Love Letters by Canadian Poets  (Goose Lane Editions, 2015). 

Her  books for sale can be found at www.mynawallin.com or www.tightropebooks.com or on Amazon.ca or amazon.com  She has 2 paperbacks (one is a collection of poems and one is a novel. The novel (Confessions of a Reluctant cougar, will soon be available as an eBook!! She can also be found by just typing her name into the google search engine. 

TROPHY POETS

They’re all the rage-

            blondes are out; thinkers are in

proclaimed in a Toronto Life cover story:

            spotted at important cocktail parties

a copy of Carson’s Men in the Off Hours

            poking out of knapsacks, talking Griffin & Trillium,

 

 vigorously debating the merits of sound

            poetry. Doctors, lawyers, take their trophy poets

to the South of France or cottages on Lake Rosseau. Seen

            getting out of SUV’s looking self-conscious, morally                               

conflicted. Fake boobs are out; they want a woman with big

            opinions, with Bohemian flair. Holt Renfrew ladies

 

are threatened, commenting poisonously on the “Sally Anne girls,”

            during a glycolic peel or paraffin treatment. These men

in suits, appetites wander. This is the new urban pairing.

            The men need some culture, some social relevance, a connection

to the arts beyond symphony tickets. For their part, the poets

            admire men who can escort them to Scaramouche or Canoe

 

withdrawing 50’s and 100’s, manicured hands dipping into Gucci

            leather. Yet, the new women feel strangely

objectified. A professional was overheard whispering, “My little

            poet laureate,” to his girlfriend, just published in Grain

Some of these bankers have poetic aspirations: when they bring        

a sonnet or haiku to the table the romance is dead.

 

Trophy poets are coming, there’s no stopping them. Cartier

            watches (they didn’t buy with royalties) peek out

from under their black Gap turtlenecks. They are so clever,

            these girls, if you stare into their pupils long enough

            it’s foreplay.

             Myna Wallin (C)