Sessions & Dates
Stay in touch with our plans and check here for special events. If you want to see what we wrote about in a class, check “What did we do this week.” Dates below are all regular class times on Thursdays from 2pm-4pm at Carnegie Community Centre.
FALL 2017
Cara Lang and Curtis lead the first session September 14, 2017
Stay tuned for more details here.
Spring 2017
Course 18 – begins September 15, 2016
Course 17 – February 18, 2016 – June 9, 2016
We continue our food writing in Sustain and Nourish, our year-long project that began in Sept 2015.
Feb 18
Feb 25
March 3 – UBC Constitutional Law students and Prof Margot Young visit to write with us about food politics, laws and legislation.
March 10 – we travel to UBC Farm to tour the farm, visit the yurt and continue discussions with UBC law students. Rides for DTES members provided by Carnegie Community Centre in their bus. Sign up for seats is in the program office.
March 17
March 24
March 31 – Elee away, Anne Watson facilitating
April 7
April 14
April 21
April 28 – Elee away, Anne Watson facilitating
May 5 – Elee away, Anne Watson facilitating
May 12
May 19
May 26
June 2
June 9 Last day of class until Sep 2016
June 16, 2016 – no class but join us for the launch of The Menu at Lost + Found Café, 33 W.Hastings, 7-9pm.
Course 16 – September 17 – December 10, 2015
Sep 17, 2015 our first day of Sustain and Nourish, our project on food and food politics with Rachel Rose, Vancouver Poet Laureate.
Sep 24
Sep 27 – Sunday, our participation at WORD Vancouver Festival with a table where we sell books and meet writers
Oct 1
Oct 2 – visit with local chickens arranged by participant James Witwicki, 2pm. Contact thursdayseditor@telus.net for details
Oct 8
Oct 15
Oct 22
Oct 29 – students in Prof Lucas Crawford’s SFU Gender Studies Poetry course join us at Carnegie to write, in preparation for a joint event. We may be in the Carnegie Theatre due to space issues!
Nov 5
Nov 7 – Heart of the City Festival, Sat, 4:30-5:30pm in Carnegie Theatre. We share work from Sustain and Nourish!
Nov 12
Nov 19 – regular class AND evening event at SFU Harbour Centre with Lucas Crawford’s SFU Gender Studies Poetry students, who are cooking for us! 5-7pm in the common room of participant Karenza Wall’s building. Contact Elee for address.
Nov 26
Dec 3 – Elee away, Anne Watson facilitating
Dec 10 – LAST CLASS before winter break. Anne Watson facilitating
Feb 18, 2016 – Return! FIRST CLASS of year!
Feb 25
Mar 3
Mar 10
Mar 17
Mar 24
Mar 31 – Elee away, Anne Watson facilitating
Apr 7
Apr 14
Apr 21
Apr 28
May 5
May 12
May 19
June 2
June 9 LAST CLASS
SUMMER BREAK until Sep 2016
Course 15 -Feb 12, 2015-June 11, 2015
We begin 2015 on Feb 12, 2015 and are in session until June 11, 2015. We meet every Thursday from 2-4pm (unless otherwise noted below) at Carnegie Community Centre at Hastings and Main Street in Vancouver, BC. Special dates and deadlines appear below.
Feb 26, 2015 Author Kate Braid is our guest, speaking and reading to us from her book, A Well Mannered Storm, about pianist Glenn Gould. The first half of our class will be a conversation and writing mash-up with Kate and then for the second half we will move downstairs to the Carnegie Community Centre theatre to welcome her pal and collaborator Clyde Reed. Clyde is bringing his stand up bass and will experiment with improv as we read!
March 12, 2015 Author Katherine Swarthile is our guest, speaking and reading to us in class about her mother’s book Devil in Deerskins.
March 12, 2015 DEADLINE for text submissions for the Voice to Voice book.
- Email Elee or hand them to Elee or Molly! No excuses!
- Spread the word, please, so no one is surprised or left out.
- You are welcome to submit as many pieces of writing from September 2015 onward as you want. Texts ought to have something to do with music or transformation. Nothing allowed from OUTSIDE of our work together (no 10 yr old poems or pieces from another project.)
- If you have questions, send it to Elee or ask!
- Please give handwritten texts to Neil, Molly or Gilles if you need them typed.
- Please save your text as a word doc with a title with your name in it. For example: “EleeKG.Rain Music.doc”. Use 12pt font, Times New Roman. No colours, please.
- We will include a piece from everyone. We will include all the submissions we gave the composers in December. If you have many submissions you will decide with Elee how many is appropriate and which ones to include so we have room for everyone.
April 2, 2015 Voice to Voice Premiere at UBC’s School of Music! Details to follow. We are trying to arrange a bus for us from Carnegie.
April 16, 2015 Voice to Voice Downtown Premiere at St James Church. Details to come.
We need volunteers for publicity and helping organize these two concerts. Please talk to Elee or Molly.
April 26, 2015 Hullabaloo at Verses Festival, evening, York Theatre. Molly Ancel riffs for two minutes about Thursdays Writing Collective to drum up interest in our group reading two days later. We have free passes to the Verses Festival, a massive poetry festival in Vancouver. Contact Molly to get a pass and for info.
April 27, 2015 We need two readers from Thursdays Writing Collective to join Elee Kraljii Gardiner at “Honey, Hives, and Poetry in the City”at Vancouver Public Library, 7-8:30, Central Branch, Vancouver Public Library, 350 West Georgia Street, Vancouver, B.C.
“Honey, Hives, and Poetry in the City”: inspired by our City’s poet laureate, Rachel Rose, who will inaugurate our event with her poetry, this event will celebrate and investigate food and poetry as a means of cultural/social activism and community building.
The event will partner with Simon Fraser University’s Centre for Dialogue, as well as Hives for Humanity, and Thursdays Writing Collective from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, to celebrate and investigate food and poetry as a means of cultural and social activism and community building. The event will feature a collaborative reading by award winning scientist and author, Dr. Mark L. Winston, reading from his latest book, Bee Time: Lessons from the Hive, in conjunction with poet, Renee Sarojini Saklikar. We will also feature readings from author and poet Elee Kraljii Gardiner and two members of Thursdays Writing Collective.
There will be time for public response and activities as well as a brief presentation from Hives for Humanity ( http://hivesforhumanity.com/) who will present a display about bee-keeping in the city, and offer a honey tasting. Our event will be free and open to the public, and will take place at Vancouver’s main library, downtown Vancouver.
We need two authors from Thursdays who either have a text they wrote about food honey or bees OR are willing to read a poem from Nick Flynn from his poetry book Blind Huber, about social justice and beekeeping.
Contact Elee to put your name in as a potential reader. This is a paid gig. We may offer writers who DO NOT have a text becoming a song with the composers first dibs.
April 28, 2015 Thursdays Writing Collective is participating in Verses Literary Festival. Ten writers will share their poems at Havana Gallery at 8pm. More details to come!
If you want to be one of these ten authors and you can give a rock solid commitment to appearing and reading a piece from our sessions since September about music and/or transformation, send Elee a short 2-3 sentence bio.
A bio example:
Elee Kraljii Gardiner is a poet from Boston who has contributed to Megaphone. She has been a member of Thursdays Writing Collective for eight years and is interested in social justice.
Bios should begin with YOUR NAME and say something short about your writing practice. It doesn’t have to be fancy. Just no silly jokes, please!
If you have questions, ask Elee or Molly.
We may offer writers who DO NOT have a poem becoming a song first dibs.
May 14 NO CLASS
June 11, 2015 LAST CLASS
June 18, 2015
Potential Voice to Voice Book launch. Location and time to be decided. Volunteers will be needed!
Volunteer hours with Thursdays Writing Collective may count as Carnegie Community Centre hours redeemable for meal tickets. Ask Elee or Molly!
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