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Book of Blue
Date: February 27, 7 PM
Location: Salt Spring Library
Event: Book launch for Shirley Graham's Book of Blue
Not everyone writes at a desk. Shirley Graham writes her poems while riding the ferry to and from her work as a psychologist with BC Child and Youth Mental Health in Victoria. Her commute begins at 5 a.m. and she takes the 7 p.m. boat back after handling her caseload of sixty children and families. "In the winter it's dark and insular, which helps me to focus,"; she says. "And in the summer it's open and beautiful, and I'm reminded of why we live in the islands.";
Graham's imagery in Book of Blue (Black Moss 2014)-to be launched at a joint reading with her husband and fellow poet Peter Levitt-reflects the impact of the painters and Japanese novelists whose work has informed and inspired her writing for forty years. Her poems also resonate with her thirty years of Zen practice that kindles "an aware but powerful restraint."; For Graham, this is the plumb line, as she calls it, that allows a depth of feeling to emerge from the unseen world of nature and human beings.
Book of Blue is Graham's second publication to incorporate that colour into its title. A chapbook, Blue Notes, was published by Mother Tongue Books shortly after Graham moved to Salt Spring Island. She doesn't find anything but delight in this repetition. As poet Robert Hilles has noted with regard to this collection, "blue is not just a colour, but a way of seeing"; and fellow islander Brian Brett has dubbed it "a blue diamond of a collection.";
Location: Salt Spring Library
Event: Book launch for Shirley Graham's Book of Blue
Not everyone writes at a desk. Shirley Graham writes her poems while riding the ferry to and from her work as a psychologist with BC Child and Youth Mental Health in Victoria. Her commute begins at 5 a.m. and she takes the 7 p.m. boat back after handling her caseload of sixty children and families. "In the winter it's dark and insular, which helps me to focus,"; she says. "And in the summer it's open and beautiful, and I'm reminded of why we live in the islands.";
Graham's imagery in Book of Blue (Black Moss 2014)-to be launched at a joint reading with her husband and fellow poet Peter Levitt-reflects the impact of the painters and Japanese novelists whose work has informed and inspired her writing for forty years. Her poems also resonate with her thirty years of Zen practice that kindles "an aware but powerful restraint."; For Graham, this is the plumb line, as she calls it, that allows a depth of feeling to emerge from the unseen world of nature and human beings.
Book of Blue is Graham's second publication to incorporate that colour into its title. A chapbook, Blue Notes, was published by Mother Tongue Books shortly after Graham moved to Salt Spring Island. She doesn't find anything but delight in this repetition. As poet Robert Hilles has noted with regard to this collection, "blue is not just a colour, but a way of seeing"; and fellow islander Brian Brett has dubbed it "a blue diamond of a collection.";
Submitted on February 11, 2014 in By David.
