publishing poetry chapbooks
 


Monday's Poem
Photo by Andrew Gay

Barbara Pelman teaches English at a high school in Victoria, where she tells students (only half in jest) that they can't graduate until they love poetry. She is a native West Coaster, born in Vancouver, with short residencies in England, Toronto, and the Kootenays. Her first book of poetry, One Stone was published by Ekstasis Editions in 2005. Many of her poems are in Leaf Press chapbooks arising from the Glenairley retreats with Patrick Lane. She has also published four chapbooks, and co-hosts Mocambo Poetry Cafe. When not marking multitudinous papers, she plays flute (badly) and plans to learn tango.

Links:
Random Acts of Poetry
League of Canadian Poets




© Barbara Pelman

End of June

Last day.
The sun is hot
after weeks of cloud.

The papers
have slid off my desk,
are piled in baskets

in the classroom,
red circled and marked.
The hallways

mutter with a summer
longing. Locker doors
swing empty

the clocks tick
in syncopated rhythm:
elsewhere. Elsewhere.

Stretched emptiness
of garden and lounge chair,
eyes upon a book

and a hillside
of green: a long drink
of nothing, nothing to do.