Jan Zwicky

One extraordinary evening of writers paired and aligned yet distinct and singular is followed by one possibly even more extraordinary. In having Robert Bringhurst and Jan Zwicky over here for this first visit from the British Columbia islands north and west of here, we will only be able to scratch the ... (more)surface, in one mere evening, of distinguished, award-winning bodies of work that include poetry, essay, myth, translation, philosophy, typography, and more. With both writers, we are talking re-arranging the mental furniture. You see, you imagine differently after reading these books. With Robert Bringhurst, it is the US publication of two recent essay collections—The Tree of Meaning: Language, Mind and Ecology and Everywhere Being is Dancing: Twenty Pieces of Thinking (both from Counterpoint Press) that helps occasion this long-anticipated visit. These two books, along with recent works such as the essay The Solid Form of Language and A Story as Sharp as a Knife: The Classical Haida Mythtellers and Their World, have stirred, informed, provoked, and engaged readers at a deep level as few other writing today. No less an honor to have here tonight is poet-philosopher-musician Jan Zwicky. A professor of philosophy at the University of Victoria, she has received Canada's prestigious Governor General's Award for her poetry collection, Songs for Relinquishing the Earth, and been a Governor General's Award finalist for another book of poetry, Robinson's Crossing, and her most recent philosophic work, the beautiful (in all ways) Wisdom & Metaphor (Gaspereau Press). Her most recent book of poems is Thirty-seven Small Songs & Thirteen Silences (Gaspereau). A pleasure and honor it will be to have Robert Bringhurst and Jan Zwicky here—individually and collectively—this evening, one not to be missed.