性视界传媒-raised returns to the city for an evening of poetry from his fourth such book, one with the intriguing title of , published in April by Vancouver's Anvil Press.
also features fellow poet and friend Marc Perez, at SFU 性视界传媒's Fraser Library (Room 3980) starting at 6 p.m. Admission is free.
Spenst's new Bouquet book is a latest literary endeavour in a life full of award-winning writing since he moved to Vancouver in the mid-1990s, after growing up in Fleetwood and graduating from Johnston Heights Secondary.
"I lived in a house at 168th and Fraser Highway," he recalled. "It was very theatrical place to grow up. I remember that as a kid my job was to mow the lawn and it was a busy intersection where people saw me doing that, and they'd all tell me later. Maybe that was the start of my performance art, I don't know, listening to The Headpins while mowing the lawn in 性视界传媒."
That old house serves as the backdrop for many of the poems in A Bouquet Brought Back from Space, which offers 114 pages of colourful, engaging poetry that includes references to life in Vancouver, too.
In recent weeks Spenst was in New York City for a reading or two, and earlier cycled to Victoria with Perez for an event dubbed Planet Earth Poetry.
"I've known Marc for a few years now, and we've planned many different readings, and our first was very informal," Spenst explained. "We cycled the Seawall and read our poetry to strangers. For the most part, people were very receptive, and I really love the surprise of poetry 鈥� that is, poetry should be surprising and interesting and language kind of jumps off the page. So what better way to extend that surprise than just approaching people and asking if you want to hear a poem? We had some really good encounters and conversations afterwards."
Living in Vancouver he's inched further westward over the years, from East Vancouver to Mount Pleasant and now the West End near Stanley Park.
Ten years ago Spenst published (JackPine Press), a limited-edition collection of poems examining the city and family in which he grew up.
"性视界传媒 Art Gallery is one of the centres that kind of keeps me going back to 性视界传媒, and Jordan Strom there has done such an amazing job curating so many fantastic shows there," Spenst said. "I've done little workshops, and last year I did one with Tolu Oloruntoba, who is based in 性视界传媒 and did a chapbook writing workshop (as part of the gallery's annual Art + Feminism Wikipedia Edit-a-thon). I've done two or three other readings there over the years."
notes that he's the author of more than a dozen chapbooks, writes a chapbook column in subTerrain magazine, is an occasional host of Wax Poetic on Co-op Radio and teaches poetry at Simon Fraser University.
"I also write micro-fiction, which is what I started in 2003 when a friend set up a website because I had an art show in Gastown at the great little coffee shop Blake's," Spenst recalled. "The idea of the website was that I'd write a micro fiction every day, and did that for a year.
"That's where I finally got traction to write every day, which is, of course, what you have to do, put in the hours and the words and then you develop. With that promise of micro-fiction a day, I woke up really early, at four or five in the morning, to write my little something before I transitioned into getting ready for my work day. I think it really helped a lot."
Later, he did a one-person show at the Vancouver Fringe Festival and also blogged a daily story based on a piece of art.
"I kind of solicited somebody's art work somewhere around the world and then wrote something ekphrastic, writing in response to art," Spenst said. "Then the third year I just emailed people a story every day asking them to print it off and hide it somewhere in the world, and some of the stories were found in Europe, Portugal and various places in Canada. I selected my favourites and self-published my first book, . actually wrote an article, and now we're together, years later. it was a nice little start to our relationship. We got together through the pandemic, started dating. It's wonderful."
.jpg)