Josephine LoRe
poet, writer and photographer
... a pearl in this diamond world
I respectfully and humbly acknowledge that I live and create on land traditionally inhabited and traversed for centuries by the Piikani, Siksika, Kainai, Tsuut'ina and Nakota peoples, their antecedents and their descendants. I am grateful to the peoples who first brought language and poetry to this land, and engage to embody their values and sense of oneness with the Earth.
Her childhood dream was to become a writer.
Her first publication, at age 12, was in the Toronto Gladstone Library collection. Josephine LoRe went on to win the Norma Epstein Prize for Creative Writing in her third year at University College (UofT) for her first collection of poetry.
Josephine 's poems are rooted in and inspired by nature and family, and contain lyricism and depth. Her writing oftentimes reveals an underlying universality and echoes with truth.
Carmel, California, 2015
Josephine has published two collections, the cross-genre Unity which integrates her photographs, poetry and prose, and The Cowichan Series, a Calgary Herald bestseller which includes her photographs and poetry created in the Cowichan Valley on Vancouver Island. She has also written a short story, Cornflower, which was published by Loft 112 in 2019.
Josephine enjoys collaborating with artists and writers, and her poetry has been read on stage and in international Zoom rooms, put to music, danced, and integrated into paintings & visual art. She writes in English, French and Italian, has created poetic translations, and several of her poems have been translated into Farsi.
Individual pieces have been published in literary journals and anthologies on four continents, fifteen countries and in four languages. Publications in Canada include Vallum, Freefall Magazine, and The Prairie Journal. In the US, Tiny Seed Journal, and the Fixed and Free anthologies; in England, the Constellate Literary Journal; Ireland, The Same Page anthology; Germany, The Wild Word; Japan, various haiku publications, and India, France, Wales, Italy, and China, Australia and New Zealand, where she presented in the Haiku conference, and an upcoming publication in Nepal. Her poem “The Tea Set” was shortlisted for the 2019 Room Poetry Prize, and one of her poems was recently selected by Feed the Children to appear in an upcoming global Public Service Announcement, in English and in translation.
Josephine has extended poetic connections around the globe and is active in numerous poetic societies in Canada and abroad. She has taken classes with esteemed writers, mentored evolving writers, been involved in editing for the Parkland Poets’ “Poem in Your Pocket” project as well as their yearly anthologies. She is a member of The League of Canadian Poets, Haiku Canada, the Writers' Guild of Alberta, the Alexandra Writers' Center Society, Parkland Poets, the Stroll of Poets, and Cultivating Voices Online Live Poetry.
She was invited to judge the poetry competition for the 2021 Wine Country Writers’ Festival and served on the editorial board for the US anthology PoetryXHunger. She has taught classes in creative writing through the Alexandra Writers’ Center Society, When Words Collide and the Wine Country Writers' Festival. She will be presenting a workshop on Ekphrastic Poetry at this year's People's Poetry Festival in April, and has been invited to work with high school students on a poetry unit to celebrate International Poetry Month.
excerpt from 'Minus the Killing'
published in the 2020
Pandemic Poems Anthology
...
I discover I like the dark
walking in the rain
the song of the birds in the morning
All their voices
the questions of the robin
The bossy crow
the tapping and flicker
on the side of my house
My favourite time is dusk
when the sky mutates
from cornflower to periwinkle
And robins again ask
The same questions
I keep my bedroom windows open
for news of the birds
Barbecue sauce the burning of wood
...
