2021
September
What an inspiring and moving collaboration of music, visual arts and poetry brought together by Donna Guerin, creator of Global Lighthouse Studios. A coming-together to raise awareness and funds for a camp (specifically to provide resources to the school) in Kakuma, Kenya, which houses refugees from the Sudan area. I was happy to share a poem written for this event, A Child at Rest. Other speakers include organizer Donna and her son Jake; Amin Bolis, a representative from Kakuma; Australian composer and pianist, photographer and documentary filmmaker David Fedele; UN award-winning poet Brian Donnell James; writer and educator Sally Huggins Toner; visual artist and educator Manuel Herrera; visual artist and educator Dr. Jane R. Shore; pianist, educator and author Melissa Campesi, and poems read by students at the school in Kakuma. My thanks as well to Dr. Hiram Larew of Maryland, an award-winning poet, advocate, and leader in the Arts and Poetry community for putting forth my name to participate in this event.
August
I taught a workshop at this year's 10th Anniversary writers' conference, based on the integration of dream into poetic landscape.
https://www.whenwordscollide.org/
What an honour to be asked to participate in an international gathering of poets to raise awareness and funds for fellow poet Amit Dahiyabadshah, from New Delhi, India.
Following the reading, I was asked to submit a reading of my poet to the YouTube channel created by poet Indran Amirthanayagam.
July
Live online readings by the poets who contributed to Calgary Poet Laureate Natalie Meisner's pandemic project
This Might Help Listening Party
Friday, July 9 · 5:00 – 6:30pm
Outlying Voices III Launch
Poets who contributed to the Parkland Poets 2020 anthology, Outlying Voices III
will be reading in this launch on July 8, 2021
June
Words of Resilience: Inspiration Through Adversity
A Poet-Laureate Project
I was honoured to participate in this virtual and live event in beautiful Canmore, Alberta. I shared two poems, A Moment in Pandemic and Waiting.
The Pandemic has impacted us all in different ways and many of us coped by seeking meaning and comfort through personal expression. After the great success of our virtual exhibition, Stories of Resilience and in partnership with Canmore Poet Laureate Tim Murphy and local writer Britanny Burr, we have invited our community of local writers and poets, both professional and amateur, to express what the Pandemic has meant to them.
Calgary's Loft 112 presents
Cadavre Exquis
a project to coincide with the launch of the New Forum Magazine Issue #3
June 2021.
My contribution is the center panel.
In this endeavour, I joined forces with two Calgary-area writers and creative artists to create a triptych which will be framed and displayed at / through Loft 112 in the East Village.
"You have to systematically create confusion; it sets creativity free. Everything that is contradictory creates life."
- Salvador Dalí
Hosting an online launch of a haiku collection
Part of the Writers' Guild of Alberta 2021 online reading series, author Joanne Morcom reads from
Big Blue Sky: Haiku and Reflections, along with q&a from host Josephine LoRe
June 23, 7 pm
It was an honour to be asked to host this virtual launch, a first for me.
Haiku Canada 2021 Anthology and Annual Conference
I was glad to participate as a reader representing the Western Provinces in the 2021 Annual Haiku Canada Conference, and to have my haiku included in this year's anthology, Random Sampling.
Parkland Poets Anthology
This is a poetry group based out of Stony Plain, Alberta which I joined during pandemic.
My poem Mothers' Hands was included in the 2021 Anthology.
A drive to Stony Plain made it possible to bring these home, initiatives created for the Parkland Poets - Reading Series society, part of the 2020 Alberta Culture Days.
For the first project, poets were invited to respond poetically to photos taken by the Stony Plain Photographers Club. This photo was taken by Shirley Laibida.
The second was a series of poems that were showcased in Stony Plain, with a QR code link to the complete poem in writing, as well as a video of the poet reading .
I am so grateful for the opportunities to participate in these initiatives and am pleased to be serving the society as an associate board member this year!
Here is a link to the YouTube video that features all of the photography & poetry pairings.
May
The Stroll of Poets Anthology
This is an Edmonton-based group which I joined during
pandemic, and my poem Wild Sky was included in the
2021 Anthology.
Poetry X Hunger has accepted my poem Enough for publication.
Poetry X Hunger was created by Dr. Hiram Larew of Maryland, and focuses on intentionally inspiring poetry that addresses the cause of, prevention and elimination of hunger.
The overall approach is to augment the traditionally cited, tragic hunger statistics with heartfelt, powerful poetry as an innovative way of reaching the public and public policy decision makers.
There is a link that enables you to hear each poet
reading their words.
THE INDIE YYC PRESENTS THE TWO BEAT!
May measures 31 Days and that means that, without waiting until June, you get to enjoy some beautiful words and some gorgeous notes, holding hands and walking through a field fresh and full. This next collaboration between Joseph Fernando and Josephine LoRe really brings the sweetness of springtime to your soundmaking devices with screens.
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Joseph Fernando is a classically-trained pianist and music teacher based in Calgary, Alberta. He has performed at open mics and classical music nights around the city and plays the accordion in local gypsy-punk/folk band Total Gadjos. He is also a professionally licensed engineer in Alberta and is currently completing his PhD in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Calgary.
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a pearl in this diamond world … Josephine LoRe’s poetry has been read on stage, published in literary journals and anthologies in ten countries, put to music, danced, integrated into visual art, interpreted through ASL and globally zoomed. She has two collections: Unity and the Calgary Herald bestseller, The Cowichan Series.
I collaborated with classical pianist Joseph Fernando, who chose to pair my poem I Find Myself (published this January by Tiny Seed Journal in the US) with a piece by the French composer Claude Debussy, La fille aux cheveux de lin(The Girl with the Flaxseed Hair).
Thrilled that my poem Inception was published in the May issue of Word City Literary Journal, the Mothering Issue.
As the editors of the upcoming book, The (M)othering Anthology, (Inanna Publications, Spring 2022) we were thrilled to be asked by Darcie Friesen Hossack to consider collaborating with her and the WCLJ editorial team on the topic of mothering.
And! Together, our hopes of featuring poetry and prose and visual art from around the world, from as many perspectives as possible have been surpassed. The issue encompasses a broad spectrum of the human experience as it relates to mothering or being mothered.
Thirty-six writers and artists have considered the act of mothering literally, figuratively, and metaphorically. Their work provokes thought about how mothering shapes and transforms our identity, how it makes and grows us. Each written and visual contribution shows us where mothering has taken its creator: to joy, to dark places, to ache, to freedom and its opposites, to confusion, to wonder, to grief, to hope.
Parkland Poets Feature Reader
Honoured to share my words at the Parkland Poets Reading Series
April
Parkland Poets is celebrating April, National Poetry Month, with a project entitled
Poem in Your Pocket.
I submitted I Find Myself, which was originally published in January 2021 in Tiny Seed Journal in the US, and which I recorded later with piano accompaniment for the Indie YYC Two-Beat.
Poetry in both visual and audio form will be available on the Parkland Poets website.
Heading 1
Also for Poetry Month, the Alexandra Writers Centre Society invited poets to submit spoken pieces.
Here is Starry Starry Night, inspired by the art of Vincent Van Gogh.
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Vallum Magazine in Montreal has published
dreams of the dead
in their issue 18:2
Invisiblity
Spring, 2020
It will be published in print and online also with an accompanying video version.
Virtual Launch: April 29, 2021
dreams of the dead
my grandmother is a hydrangea petals pressed close
she opens in blue splendour ...
GUSTS, the Canadian journal of tanka has included three of my tanka in the current issue:
A Poet Laureate Project presented by Calgary's Natalie Meisner
This Might Help is a collection of poetry both written and spoken, meant to offer hope as we struggle with the emotional and physical hardships of covid.
My poem La Quarantaine is part of this uplifting collection.
Poetry Month ...
interviewed on
CJSW Radio by host Nathan Taylor
April is National Poetry Month. ArtsLink is celebrating by have three Calgary poets on the show on April 5th.
Jeanne speaks to Laurie Ann Fuhr and Sholley Powell. They are regulars on the poetry scene in the city.
Then, Nathan Taylor speaks with Josephine LoRe about the forms of poetry called Haiku & Tanka. From influences & history to how the forms work with some classical and personal examples.
Negotiating Caponata
Freefall Literary Magazine published my first review of a collection of poetry,
Carla Scarano D'Antonio's debut full-length collection, Negotiating Caponata.
March
Monday, March 29
Honoured to be one of the feature readers at the
Haven at Home Reading Series, part of the Edmonton
Stroll of Poets
Thrilled to be invited to share my poetry in such fine company in this upcoming radio program in the company of so many accomplished poets.
Nowruz
a celebration of Canadian Poets
hosted by Ottawa Persian Radio
Sunday March 14, 2021
Cultivating Voices
Live Poetry online
Honouring Women's History Month
and the International Women's Day
Sunday, March 7, 2021
What an honour to be invited to be a feature reading and share my poems which honour the feminine, in its different manifestestations in my life.
The poems I shared:
Our Children
The Tea Set
The Roof
The Highway Traveller
Mary of the Terrace
I am Getting Ready to Memorize Mother
Wild Sky
Forget me Not
This incredible weekly online reading series created and curated by Sandy Yannone, with help from Elizabeth Ann, Don Krieger, and Kim Port Parsons.
For International Women's Day, there were five feature readers and eleven open mic readers from the United States, India, Canada, Ireland ...
My reading commences at around 50 minutes in.
February
Poetry in Union
Valentine's Day 2021
I was one of a group of poets from
The League of Canadian Poets who "met"
with folks from across Canada in Zoom
Break-out Rooms to compose personalized
love poems to celebrate a pandemic Valentine.
Whispers
I whisper in your ear
so you hear and do not hear
my rhythms fill the pauses
in your breath
my rhyme encircles you
like a villanelle ...
Constellate Literary Journal
in Birmingham, England
has published my poem Whispers
WordCity Monthly
has published
Love is in the Air
in their February edition
A Haiga Journey and
The Wanderer Brush
The publication of this double-anthology was postponed by covid, but my copy arrived in early 2021.
Ion Codrescu collected haiku from around the world, and graced each page with original artwork, haiga to match the haiku.
Ion asked each contributor to share a favourite haiku and reflect upon it. I chose to share haiku by the classic femail haikuist Chiyo-ni.
January
Love is in the air
and I say love with cheese...
gruyère and emmenthal
brie, parmeggiano
crocks for the oven, red and gray a bag of onions and bay leaves plucked from nanna's garden last summer ...
The anthology ′′The Wanderer Brus@h received a MENTION OF HONOR in the MERIT BOOK AWARDS international contest organized by the American Society of Haiku for the books published in 2020.
I find myself
On January 2, 2021, the US nature-based literary journal Tiny Seed Literary Magazine
published my poem I Find Myself. I love the image they chose to accompany my poem!
This poem was significant, as it was the first unprompted poem since the beginning of the pandemic that had nothing to do with pandemic.
I find solace and inspiration in Nature, and this poem captures that.
My thanks to Tiny Seed Journal for including it in their lovely literary journal.
Moonbathing,
a journal of women's tanka
published in the US included my tanka in the Fall/Winter collection.
Tanka is a 5-line
Japanese poetic form which predates haiku.
Covid Ghosts
published as part of the (M)othering Anthology's special project entitled Mothering Through Pandemic
the note with your tiny writing in the bowl on my dresser
the watercolour of a hand painting an orchid
the sweater I knit you two winters ago
you are here, everywhere, not here
covid ghosts us
