Kerry Gilbert (left) and Virgina Danserau will launch their books of poetry Nov. 15 in Vernon. (submitted photos)

By Vernon Matters Staff

Vernon event

Local poets take part in double book launch focused on women

Nov 10, 2023 | 6:30 AM

Women are silenced, become violent or kind. Women vanish. Women cross oceans — to live and to die.

These are some of the themes of two new local books of poetry: Lady Bird by Kerry Gilbert, and I Know That Woman by Virginia Danserau.

(submitted image)

At a Valley Voices double book launch being held Nov. 15 at Bean Scene Café in Vernon, guests can hear Gilbert and Danserau’s poems of ordinary and extraordinary women rise from the page.

For her part, Gilbert didn’t set out to write about female pilot Amelia Earhart, who disappeared during a flight around the world in 1937. But the morning after reading a headline about Earhart’s remains turning up on a Pacific island, Gilbert penned Lady Bird’s first lines: “amelia, where did your bones go…”

Possible firearm involved

One person apprehended in connection with suspicious activity in Coldstream

19h ago

Fatal Collision, Highway Closed

One person dead in crash near Revelstoke

20h ago

Salaries

Vernon Council to discuss lesser pay increases

22h ago

Gilbert, an Okanagan College writing professor and the award-winning author of three other books of poetry — (kerplnk): a verse novel of development, Tight Wire and Little Red — says as she began digging and continued to feel urged to wake and write of Earhart’s untold stories, what she uncovered was both troubling and beautiful.

“I was surprised to learn how silenced Amelia was in her personal life and in her public life. She was adored and feared,” Gilbert said. “In the same way, I was surprised to find out that she wrote poetry and saddened to know that she kept it a secret by using the penname Emil Harte—another silencing. It was important to me that Amelia speak in this collection in her own voice, in her own words. My voice/my words are just a riff off hers. An ode.”

Lady Bird (Exile Editions) is truly ‘literary collage’: weaving scraps of Earhart’s letters and diary writing in full and in erasure poems with headlines and the startling images Gilbert unpacks in prose poems.

“I hope that readers hear Amelia’s voice (really hear it) and think about her story, like I did,” Gilbert said. “Conspiracy theories often become more about the person who writes them and less about the person the theory is about. I want Amelia to have her ‘aboutness’ back.”

Virginia Danserau drew her collection from poems she’d written over a 40-year span and noticed a theme: women. The poems were all spun from images and lines captured in a journal, where she wrote three pages every day.

“Some were scrapped but frequently I could pull out an image, a phrase or a line to expand on,” said Danserau, who has also written Undertow, a book of short stories, and helped lead the publishing of Smoke and Ash: Reflections on the 2021 Vernon BC Fires. She also helped manage Kalamalka Press for several years.

(submitted image)

Danserau is a self-declared ‘narrative poet,’ delving deeply into stories and weaving lyricism. Poems in I Know That Woman explore everything from the echoes of her Ukrainian grandmothers to the psychological impact of floods, fires and isolation.

“Many women have mentioned how refreshing it is to read a book written for them with subjects they experience but may not readily share,” Danserau said.

Both poets look forward to sharing their poetry on Wednesday, Nov. 15 at the Bean Scene Café in Vernon at 7 p.m.

Admission is by donation and books will be available for sale.