Ravine, Mouse, a Bird’s Beak
to
Bateman Foundation Gallery of Nature 470 Belleville Street, Victoria, British Columbia V8V 1W9
Yvonne Blomer, the Poet Laureate for the City of Victoria, BC,and Artistic Director emeritus of the Planet Earth Poetry reading series is launching a new exhibit in collaboration with Robert Bateman titled Ravine, Mouse, a Bird’s Beak.
Visual art and poetry have a long history of contemplating the natural world and its ecology. When these two art forms come together, a conversation happens between what is painted, what is observed and the resulting ideas, images and emotions. This distillation of language inspired by art is called ekphrastic poetry and allows the poet to inhabit, question, confront and speak to the art and its maker. Yvonne will respond to Robert Bateman’s paintings through a series of original poems displayed in unique ways, including audio recording. “Throughout my tenure as the City of Victoria’s Poet Laureate my focus has been on the natural world, with a particular focus on the Pacific Ocean partly because of increased tanker traffic, warming seas and rising toxins, and my deep concern for orcas and other wildlife living within and along the shores of the Pacific” explains Blomer. “Reading and living with Robert’s paintings and sketches, as well as his memoir, has been a profound experience for me that has resulted in fifteen poems that not only express my concern for the natural world, but also, through Bateman’s pieces, has allowed me to reflect on other parts of my life and experiences.”
“Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen.”–Leonardo da Vinci
Writer, critic, teacher and poet, Yvonne Blomer was born in Zimbabwe, and came to Canada when she was two years old. With her husband she has taught in Japan, cycled through Southeast Asia, and lived in the UK, where she completed a Masters in Creative Writing with Distinction at The University of East Anglia. Her recent memoir is Sugar Ride: Cycling from Hanoi to Kuala Lumpur (Palimpsest Press, 2017) and poems As if a Raven (Palimpsest Press, 2014). Yvonne is proudly serving as the Poet Laureate for the City of Victoria, BC, and edited Refugium: Poems for the Pacific (Caitlin Press, 2017) as part of her legacy project. In 2017 Yvonne’s chap book Elegies for Earth won the Leaf Press Overleaf chap book contest.
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