Host Karis Shearer is joined by curator Amy Thiessen and special guest-poets Nancy Holmes and Sharon Thesen. Together they talk about a November 1986 recording on which Sharon Thesen visits Warren Tallman's English 205 class on November 14th, 1986. The podcast features two archival clips: in the first, Tallman introduces Thesen to the class; in the second, Thesen reads "Chrysanthemum Perfume" from a manuscript she calls "The Landlord's Flowerbeds" on this recording but ultimately publishes as her book The Beginning of the Long Dash (Coach House Press, 1987). 

Bios:

Amy Thiessen is an Honours English student at UBCO where she is working on a digital edition of Sharon Thesen's poem "The Fire." She is a writer, an RA and project manager for the UBCO SpokenWeb project and an aspiring teacher.

Sharon Thesen is a poet, editor, and writer who was based in Vancouver before moving to the Okanagan, where she now lives in Lake Country   After receiving her MA degree from Simon Fraser University in 1975, she taught English and Creative Writing at Capilano College (now University) in North Vancouver, and joined UBC Okanagan’s ’s Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies as professor of Creative Writing in 2005.  She is the author of thirteen books, the most recent, The Receiver, Oyama Pink Shale, The Good Bacteria, and A Pair of Scissors.

Nancy Holmes has published five collections of poetry, most recently, The Flicker Tree: Okanagan Poems (Ronsdale Press, 2012), a collection of poems about the place, people, plants and animals of the Okanagan valley in the southern interior of British Columbia.  She is also the editor of Open Wide a Wilderness: Canadian Nature Poems (Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2009).

Links:

The SoundBox Collection: https://soundbox.ok.ubc.ca/ 

Inaugural Sharon Thesen Lecture (by John Lent): https://www.facebook.com/events/633541527437750/ 

Sharon Thesen's Pinecone Writing Workshops: https://www.sharonthesen.com/ 

Laisha Rosnau's Little Fortress: https://bookstore.wolsakandwynn.ca/products/little-fortress 

The Receiver: https://www.newstarbooks.com/book.php?book_id=1554201403