Context would be helpful for this post with a photo of me in a radio studio, which I found as an orphan while rearranging my site.
This was taken when I spoke on our local Regina CJTR community radio about my writing, my new book Exile on a Grid Road.
We also spoke about the value of the writing retreats that I have attended over the years.
Thanks to host Jeanne Alexander from the books program for inviting me!
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I’m delighted to announce that my poetry collection, Exile on a Grid Road, is slated for publication by Thistledown Press on October 15, 2015!
My collection is part of Thistledown’s 12th New Leaf Series — Canada’s most well-established first-book program with a focus on Saskatchewan authors.
For more info on book launch and tour dates, check my site or Twitter feed (@ShelleyBanks) or follow Thistledown’s Facebook or Twitter feed (@ReadThistledown).
The full list for this year’s New Leaf series:
You can order any or all of these online.
Happy reading!
What a treat! At the Poetry Month reading at Government House on Wednesday, Saskatchewan Poet Laureate Judith Krause read one of my poems!
Judy also very graciously told the audience about… Surprise! My forthcoming poetry collection, Exile on a Grid Road, to be published by Thistledown Press in Fall 2015!
What a treat, indeed! (And the readings by Judith Krause, Bruce Rice and dee Hobsbawn-Smith were wonderful! Good luck to all at the Saskatchewan Book Awards next Saturday.)
More on my book to come…
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Across the harbour from Dublin, there is a beach with my name. The Shelley Banks, or Shellybanks.
I hadn’t realized I was a landform — or that I was perhaps named for one, so I’ll accept it as a coincidence of history and geography that we found this in Ireland, my great-grandparents’ homeland.
“I am a rock,” sings Paul Simon.
I am a beach.
We visited on a rainy October day, when the tide was high and Kittwakes and red-billed Oyster Catchers clustered on thin strips of sand, feathers fluffed and bodies turned against the wind.
The deadline to apply for the Sage Hill Writing Experience summer session is getting closer—March 23, 2015. This is a great program, which this summer will feature classes by Canadian writers Steven Heighton, Alissa York, Miriam Toews, Denise Chong, Wayson Choy, Merilyn Simonds and Wayne Grady.
And, for any poets who want to work with Don McKay at Sage Hill this spring, that deadline is March 6, 2015. Friday. This week.
The Sage Hill Writing Experience offers small classes with time to write and network. Past instructors include Lawrence Hill (The Book of Negroes), who visited Saskatchewan last fall a for Sage Hill fundraiser. (A few of my photos from that event appear below.)
This year, the program is moving to Cedar Lodge on Blackstrap Lake near Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. For details on how to apply, see the Sage Hill Writing website.
I’m home after a long weekend at a Facilitated Writing Retreat in Muenster, Saskatchewan.
Organized by the Saskatchewan Writers’ Guild, this retreat is for emerging writers and features a Writer-in-Residence to provide insights and editorial guidance. (This fall, the WiR was Reg Silvester; last fall, Kelley Jo Burke; next fall, who knows? The call for applications for the SWG WiR will go out in Summer 2015, and I’m sure someone great will again be chosen.)
Six years ago, while wandering through the underground shopping and business concourses of Montreal, I stumbled across the Berlin Wall.
I hadn’t realized a section of the Berlin Wall had been given to Montreal, or that it had been set up in its Centre de Commerce Mondial.
But there it was — one side grey with crude markings, the other bright with 1960s student graffitti, an eerie reminder of the divided city, one ignored (that day, at least) by the stream of underground shoppers and stockbrokers rushing by.
Well, this is exciting — for me, if perhaps for few others…
My website can now be reached through either ShelleyBanks.ca (the host site) or ShelleyBanks.com (the site with the at-least-for-now redirect).
My name, by either domain.
And one day soon, I shall write about my name…
Till then, here’s a shot of Shelley, at Shelley.
B.C., that is.
(And yes, that’s me. And yes, that’s is a real railway whistlestop sign, somewhere east of Prince George, somewhere west of my mountain birthplace.)
All the way from Vancouver — over the Rocky Mountain and across the Prairies — a glory shone in front of our plane.
And when we approached for landing at the Regina International Airport, that glory turned sunset pink and gold.
I’d seen the same phenomenon on the way West, when the glory hovered below the propellers of the plane during the approach and descent into the Calgary Airport.
But this, my January landing in Regina, was magical. The glory was a circular sunset rainbow along the horizon — so beautiful, I wasn’t even sure if it was real… But I had the pictures. And it was a rare, sunset glory.
Just a reminder that if you’re here looking for posts about book launches or other literary events in Regina, Saskatchewan, those are housed on my LatitudeDrifts blog.
If you’d like to use or download a photograph that’s featured there, send me a note. (And if it’s of you, I’ll be especially happy to share.)
Happy reading!
