ALONE ON A WINDY RIDGE: April is National Poetry Month

Thursday, April 05, 2018

April is National Poetry Month

...and five days in I can say it has been extraordinary! There are so many wonderfully engaging celebrations happening across the country. As a way of celebrating, I ordered wildflower seeds from Blazing Star Wildflower Seed Company and I'll be giving these packs away during Poetry Month. On the front of the custom seed pack is a pic I took last year while standing among the wildflowers during my travels in Saskatchewan.

I gave many packs away over the past few days. Currently you can find a stack of these seeds at Traditions Handcraft Gallery in Regina. We stopped there yesterday to enjoy and add some beautiful work by Saskatchewan artists to my collection. Many thanks to Traditions Handcraft Gallery for all the help. I learned so much about the amazing work being created in this province.

On April 11, I will have the honour of reading with Lisa Bird-Wilson and Lynda Monahan at a Poetry Month Celebration at Government House. On April 28, I'll be attending the 25th Saskatchewan Book Awards Ceremony. I will be packing wildflower seeds!

Here's wishing you a beautiful month of poetry!

"This is a skilled poet having good fun, and inviting us all to join the party." - Shelley A. Leedahl, SaskBooks Reviews. Read more.

"Employing a variety of forms and the culvert stories — who knew? — of numerous people, she digs beneath the obvious roads to find out what keeps the water — the subconscious, the unconscious — flowing smoothly, discovering a variety of things about herself, notably the everyday masks we wear and the aging process we won’t always admit to." - Bill Robertson, The Star Phoenix. Read more.

"For Schmidt is indeed a poet. Readers can expect to encounter many visual and acoustic delights along the way, from internal rhymes to arresting images." - Trevor Cook, The Antigonish Review #196.

"In Grid..., Creighton's Brenda Schmidt turns a colder eye to the landscape than most other Canadian poets." - Jonathan Ball, Winnipeg Free Press. Read more.

"You can just feel the stones rattling off your undercarriage on this Grid." - Bill Robertson, The Star Phoenix. Read more.

"Like the Prairies, this is not a collection that gives itself away: the true beauty of this book lies in subtleties that may not be obvious at first glance." - Emily McGiffin, The Malahat Review. Read more.

"In Grid, moments are approached in their apparent stability only to be swept away in song rife with interruption and fresh stimuli, lending a new perspective. It is as though the familiar ground is an eye glancing back and the reflection only a nodal-point, open to opportunity and play." - Justin Dittrick, SPG Book Reviews. Read more.

"There is grit in these poems, so much that it seems unfair to think of them as nature poems; like the best nature writing, they undo our expectations of nature rather than uphold them." - Tanis MacDonald, Arc Poetry Magazine. Read more.

"In her fourth collection Grid, Schmidt’s wry humour transcends what we have watched heap up in Canada for more than a century—nature poems—balancing in canola fields between the beautiful lure of nature and our curious urge to separate ourselves from disappearing allotments of our own solace. We have wandered “off the grid” but fortunately Schmidt is an entertaining and insightful guide who can still find Li Po in a Dark-eyed Junco, if she has to." - Garry Thomas Morse, Jacket 2. Read more.

"These supple, witty, and incisive poems delineate our relationship to grids and systems both visible and invisible, natural and political." - Judges' citation, Saskatchewan Book Award for Poetry nomination. Jurors: Shawna Lemay, Barbara Nickel, Sharon Thesen.