Words North will take place from September 27-30th, 2018 and will offer over 15 different presentations and workshops. Along with the festival will be the Words North Art Exhibit. Visual artists from across the region are invited to create work inspired by the poems of our feature writers – Helen Knott, Jeanette Lynes, and Clea Roberts. The exhibit will open Thursday September 27, 2018 at the Kiwanis Performing Arts Centre as part of the opening event of Words North. For registration forms, criteria and all festival details visit Words North Website or email dkane@pris.ca.

KEY DATES TO REMEMBER:

REGISTRATION DEADLINE: Monday September 7, 2018

DELIVERY OF ARTWORK DEADLINE: Monday September 17, 2018

OPENING OF ART EXHIBIT: Thursday September 27, 2018
(Kiwanis Performing Arts Centre, Dawson Creek)

Helen Knott
So maybe the house collapsed, maybe the tree fell down
Maybe the cycle is stuck on repeat and the dog ran away
But maybe things had to fall apart
So you could build something new
Cause no one rebuilds the foundation if it doesn’t come unglued
Maybe the endings are beginnings
And you are right where you are meant to be
So take some power, some light and love
And grow something
Remember
They tried to bury us and did not know we were seeds

Jeanette Lynes
Alone with Walton’s The Compleat Angler
(from Bedlam Cowslip: The John Clare Poems, Wolsak & Wynn, 2015)
Paper! But now too trouble-tethered
to scribble one stanza. Waited for a southern
wind just as Walton advised, still
nothing. The angle wrong.
Words are trout in night-time, deep-pooled,
hearing but biting not.
The finest canker flies, stone flies or moor flies
fail to lure them to the surface.
Trout seek lusty lives
far from my perusing pencil. And I
an honest poet, incomplete, swarmed
by silent blue. I do not ask so very much—
Only to send forth a rallying cry—
A fish! A fish
A poem! A poem!

Clea Roberts
How We Wake Somewhere Different
(from Auguries, Brick Books, 2017)
There is nothing lighter than the touch
That awakens. Morning brought a child

To my bedside. Fingertips touching my cheek—
I did not ask for this blessing.

Is it love or bright dust
That we breathe? It will take the shape

Of anything, furring it with light.