List of Works

 

Living Artfully: Reflections from the Far West Coast

Co-edited with Anita Sinner.

The extreme west coast is often characterized as the most "out there" edge of Canada and has become known internationally for artists residing in the region and giving it their own particular flavor. Living Artfully: Reflections from the Far West Coast offers unique perspectives and insights to the interrelationship of creativity and geography through intimate portrayals about the lives of artists. Writers, painters, carvers, and performers reflect on the private spaces of the arts - inner worlds and natural environments - and the public spaces for exhibiting, performing and sharing. Artists delve into their life journeys, the struggles and challenges as well as the joys and rewards of pursuing expression out here. Forty-two emerging and established artists have contributed to this collection, including award-winning First Nations playwright and poet Janet Rogers; painter, writer, and arts advocate Robert Amos; internationally noted artists Avis Rasmussen and Mark Hobson; renowned author Susan Musgrave; award-winning film maker Velcrow Ripper; and from the academy, dancer and educator Celeste Snowber, professor emeritus Bill Zuk and many more voices that shape what it means to live artfully on the far west coast.

My Nature

"... shining poetry. ... This collection is a fine fusion of nature and human nature." - George Elliot Clarke

"Lovely, touching, and powerful." - Bruce Cockburn

"For half the year, Christine Lowther lives on a floathouse in Clayoquot Sound. The other half, she lives on pavement or moves about, restless. Her poems come from the edges of polite society, of the ocean storm, where unexpected things happen, where changes occur; with a foot planted on each side she has become a keen observer, a wise voice." —Ursula Vaira, publisher.

"You have never read a more beautiful book of poems

about living in Clayoquot Sound."

—Josie Osborne

"With scientific precision, Lowther describes the natural world that she knows well...through the origami-like magic of words...(Her) nature is such that she cares."

—Kasia Jaronczyk, Room
 

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“… infused with all the activism and alterity of a punk-rock protest poet … a unique and confident voice … clear and uncompromising” —The Goose

   
This volume's poem "Good Company" can now be read on BC buses. Its poem "Eight storeys high 250 metres down" appears in Canada’s Raincoast at Risk: Art for an Oil-Free Coast.

"Christine Lowther is a previously published writer and a talented poet who explores the similarities of the Harry Potter books with the personal trauma of her own youth. The poems with this premise could have been a dark read but she avoids this in part by using the natural world that is all around her ... this force is the magic that is transformative both for her and Harry. She also has an understanding of the Potter books that is deep... This brings a certain weight of myth into the poems, myths that are carried into the everyday world where the characters become alive, lean close and whisper words of advice and caution. This book is a brave and accomplished achievement."  - reader review on Amazon page by marmont

"The Searing Similarities between Harry Potter's life and the author's are uncanny. She explores her own beginnings and his, facing horror and tragedy while treating us to humour and character study at the same time."  - reader review on Amazon page by knitgrl

"Perhaps this unpretentious and down-to-earth anthology could awaken a love of poetry in the Potter generation? Poetry is often a forgotten art, but the familiar subject matter of Half-Blood Poems may be refreshing for adults and children alike. ... 'Longbottom Leaf' and 'Neville, Unlikely Rebel' make me love the character even more than before. 'Longbottom Leaf', a snapshot of Neville's life as a professor, shows his modesty and unfailing kindness, and gives us Neville's side of the story from a fresh perspective. Half-Blood Poems is an enjoyable read, whether just for a couple of short poems, or for the whole cover-to-cover experience."  - from review by Hannah Griffiths on fansite The Time Turner

Also reviewed by Megan Barrow on Magical Managerie fansite, by Sheila Vieira on Potterish fansite, Brazil, and by Corentin Faniel on La Gazette du Sorcier's Blog de la Gazette, France. 

From the publisher, Zossima Press:

J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books are classics of modern fantasy literature which have moved millions of readers with themes that reach to the depths of human existence – the fact of death, the threat of evil, and the power of love and friendship. It is no wonder these epic themes attracted a poet like Christine Lowther. Harry Potter’s losses and struggles have an uncanny resemblance to episodes from her own life which she calls the twelve “Searing Similarities” (detailed in the book’s preface). But like Harry, Christine’s poetry can also soar above the tragic to discover the heroic and beautiful in such poems as “Neville, Unlikely Rebel,” “For Our Wide-Armed Mothers,” and “A Boy’s Hands.” There are seventy-one Half-Blood Poems divided into seven chapters that correspond with the seven book series. Fans of the wizarding world will experience again many of the emotions they felt reading the novels  – emotions presented most effectively through a poet’s words. 

Writing the West Coast

In Love with Place

Co-edited by myself and Anita Sinner. 

"With its collective, eco-consciousness coupled with contributions from First Nations writers, Writing the West Coast is a coherent anthology that reverberates with a sense of history and pride."  -BC Bookworld

The beautiful cover painting of Tofino's 800-year-old "Eik" Cedar is by artist and author Joanna Streetly. This collection of over thirty essays by both well-known and emerging writers explores what it means to “be at home” on Canada’s west coast. Here the rainforest and the wild, stormy shoreline dominate one’s sense of identity, a humbling perspective shared in memoirs by individuals who come to see themselves as part of a larger ecological community.

Alexandra Morton followed  orcas to the Broughton Archipelago and now fights to protect wild salmon from the impact of fish farms. Grandmother-activist Betty Krawczyk describes living in a remote A-frame under mountains that have been clearcut, and how this led her to join the blockades. Valerie Langer tells us of a tsunami warning, one that is both literal and metaphorical. Brian Brett reflects on possible futures for Clayoquot Sound, thinking back to the wild times he spent there in the sixties.

Writing the West Coast includes a number of brightly satiric commentators like Briony Penn, who compares sex in the city to love in the temperate rainforest, Andrew Struthers, who recalls squatting in a home-made pyramid in the bush, and Susan Musgrave, who writes with affection and humour about the “excluded” Haida Gwaii. Young First Nation writers Eli Enns and Nadine Crookes provide their perspective of deep rootedness in place. And there are many more contributors, all of whom are engaged in finding purpose along with a sense of belonging that is uniquely west coast. My own chapter is called "Facing the Mountain".

“Here is an intimate look into life on the farthest West Coast of Canada among those, who in their various ways, are filled with passion for its waterways, its forests, its wildlife, even its weather. I found Writing the West Coast fascinating.”
— Sharon Butala

“... [A]n evocative collection of stories that demands an intellectual, emotional, social and spiritual awareness of the environment in which we live.”
— Canadian Literature

“A marvelous collection of 33 essays by top writers covering the full spectrum of the delights of the Canadian West Coast.”
— Lower Island News

Walk Myself Home

An Anthology to End Violence Against Women

edited by Andrea Routley

Shortlisted: Monday Magazine's M Award for Best Non-Fiction (2011)
Favourably reviewed in Prairie Fire and endorsed by Bitch magazine!

There is an epidemic of violence against women in Canada and the world. For many women physical and sexual assault, or the threat of such violence, is a daily reality. Walk Myself Home is an anthology of poetry, fiction, nonfiction and oral interviews on the subject of violence against women including contributions by Kate Braid, Yasuko Thanh and Susan Musgrave. My poem "Lighten Up" appears.
“The poetry in this collection should not be missed.” –Bitchmedia website

My piece in this collection is about participating in a logging blockade.

RISKING FOR CHANGE
Stories of Ordinary People
Compiled & Edited by Kate Penner

This anthology explores of issue of acting out of conscience: the common light among those who seek peace, and social and environmental justice. The stories and poems we present here step physically, emotionally, spiritually and structurally across critical boundaries to speak out of moral conviction....

 

New Power was my first book of poems.

“[H]eartbreaking, necessary book. The first eyewitness account of the country’s greatest literary tragedy . . .” —Quill & Quire
 

“[B]rave, sad and eloquent”
—The Islander/Victoria Times-Colonist

"Lowther’s first book, New Power, is an
astonishing collection of heartbreaking force."
—George Elliott Clarke

  “To be invited to enter her intimate life, to share the truth of her personal experiences, to see the details of a young activist’s day by day struggles and delights is no small privilege. Christine takes us into the forest, into the magic and the songs of resistance and the moment by moment journey of those who care enough to live their hope. Here is a brave young writer pointing in a direction of sanity.”

—Joy Kogawa

Wild Moments

In this anthology edited by Michael Engelhard, I have a chapter called "A Cure for Despair".

"Wild Moments presents some of the best and most innovative nonfiction writing in an environmental context, and it will be of interest to all readers with a passion and concern for the natural world."