Welcome This site has been neglected for some time and will now be gradually re-awakened. I retired from the University of Victoria July 1 2016. In September, 2015 I became Artistic Director of the Planet Earth Poetry reading series in Victoria BC. It is an honour to have been entrusted with this role. We have completed, our 22nd season of regular Friday night readings at Hillside Coffee & Tea and season 23 begins September 14 at Hillside Coffee & Tea.
A Call for Submissions Voicing Suicide: A poetry anthology
Suicide is difficult and complex. It can entangle us in unending loss, grief and sometimes guilt and anger. Suicide casts shadows over many lives, not only on those who have died, and those who have survived a suicide attempt but also over the friends, family and loved ones of those who die at their own hands. Yet suicide is often cloaked by silence, remaining unspeakable, as if words could never do justice to the unspeakable. Who can understand why a suicide happens? How did we know so little about the ones we loved who decided to kill themselves? What can be said that might explain or make sense when there seems to be no explanation, no sense to be had.
Poetry offers an opportunity to understand some of the difficult aspects of suicide. Poetry allows us to meet grief, give it voice; allows memory, and elegy. In poetry we can give voice to suicide and enter the difficult spaces of loss and sorrow.
We seek poems that are willing to be intimate, courageous and honest. We seek poetry that explores suicide with a generous and considered perspective, that acknowledges the larger social, political and cultural contexts of suicide as well as the personal experience of loss. What can poetry say to and of suicide to bring insight and compassion to a difficult conversation? What links poets to suicide? Writing and suicide? Why do some of us, writers included, desire death so strongly? What has happened to the cultural and moral views of suicide over the centuries? What do we think of suicide now?
Poets are invited to submit up to 3 poems (5 pages total maximum) of new work (not previously published) that explores perspectives on suicide.
Deadline for submissions: January 15, 2019
Please submit poems to voicingsuicide@gmail.com with the poems in a single attached file. In the body of the email include all contact information, email address and phone number, a brief bio and the title(s) of your poem(s). Please ensure each poem has your name on it in the header.
The anthology will be published by Ekstasis Editions. Volume Editor: Daniel G Scott
UPDATE: Ekstasis has released my latest collection - Random Excess. I did a first reading in Nanaimo on Saturday Sept 15, at the Harbourfront Branch 90 Commercial St, then September 21, read at Planet Earth Poetry at OPEN SPACE 510 Fort St. A had a reading in Cumberland at The Abbey on November 18. I am doing a series of readings in Alberta in January. On January 16, I will be at the Olive Tree reading series, 10351 82nd Ave., Edmonton, Alberta, January 17 at Mount Royal University in Calgary and January 18 at Red Deer College in Red Deer. I am hoping to read in Yellowknife on January 20 but my brother and I (he owns a coffee shop there - Birchwood Coffee Ko) are still scheming. I will read at Massy Books in Vancouver on April 17 and again in Vancouver July 25th with Twisted Poets
My publications: black onion was published by Goldfinch Press and launched in December, 2012. A few prints copies are still available directly from me. Please contact me via email. pepoetry2@gmail.com or dgscott@uvic.ca
The Girls' Dairy Project: Writing ourselves into being by Shannon McFerran and Daniel G. Scott is now available via the University of Victoria Bookstore print-on-demand service: http://www.uvicbookstore.ca/general/journals.php
and is also be available electronically via: http://hdl.handle.net/1828/4482
terrains was published by Ekstasis Editions in 2014 and is available from the publisher or me. This book is about inner and outer landscapes and journeys in them.
In 2015 I released a limited edition chapbook interrupted (Goldfinch Press) that is dedicated to Doreen Visser Kwak and explores two cancer journeys, mine and hers. It is also available from me.
Ekstasis Editions released my latest collection of poems gnarled love (2016) about love in all its complexity, challenges and beauty touching on friendships, lovers, families and life long relationships.
There is also a chapbook entitled Street Signs (Goldfinch Press). It isa departure for me and a little more lighthearted fun inspired by a moment of reading a street sign while cycling and thinking that sign was a comment on life.
