Hazard, Home is set apart from traditional nature poetry by its decolonial lens which pays tribute to stolen lands as well as displaced people and cultures. This book, a tribute to both wonder and grief for Earth’s inhabitants and systems, has been included on several CBC Books reading lists, such as 13 Canadian books to read for Earth Day 2024. It also made the 49th Shelf's Most Anticipated: 2024 Spring Poetry List. With admiration for the land holders (trees) and inhabitants of the rainforest, wetlands and inlets of her home, former Tofino Poet Laureate Christine Lowther delves into the pressing issues of urbanization, climate change, and loss of biodiversity while expressing her deep concern for those feathered, furred, webbed, and rooted. Lowther’s words are both startling and reflective as she bears witness to the devastating impact of our presence on the natural world. Through her evocative writing, Lowther inspires us to celebrate the beauty of nature while recognizing the urgent need for change. Hazard, Home was reviewed in the Miramichi Reader, the British Columbia Review and on Marrow Reviews.
Caitlin Press, Qualicum Beach, BC. 2024
https://caitlinpress.com/Books/H/Hazard-Home
Worth More Growing
Youth Poets Pay Homage to Trees
A new generation of old-growth defenders and activist-poets, from kindergarten to grade twelve, express their love and respect for trees.
In Worth More Growing, youth, from kindergarten through grade twelve, share their love and respect for trees. Speaking to our changing climate, this new generation of old-growth defenders express their observations, anger, kinship, hope and sorrow. This unique anthology includes a wide range of voices—Indigenous, settler, immigrant, and even international youth. Worth More Growing is a necessary anthology highlighting the importance of nature to a generation that will experience the ongoing consequences of climate change.
“The wisdom of these young voices made me weep and gave me hope. It’s as if they all know the tree’s roots are their umbilical. With the destruction of a tree, their dreams are destroyed—in fact, this destroys all of us.”
—Louise B. Halfe, Canadian Parliamentary Poet Laureate
“It’s impossible to look at the miracle of a tree and not be deeply moved. It’s the same with the rich array of writing in Worth More Growing. If you seek out elemental shared creative communication, essential imaginative utterance, and poetry’s pure drop, you’ll find it throughout this quite wonderful anthology.”
—Russell Thornton, father, poet, author of Answer to Blue
“To attend to trees the way children attend to trees. That is the mission, the message, the meaning of this impressive collection of children’s poetry. These poems attest to the love that children have for trees: careful, imaginative, guileless. One child writes: whenever I get close to a tree/ my heart feels more lovely. Another admits: I love trees in a different way than people. Another warns: Before you cut me down/. . . let me tell you . . . /tree frogs cling to my bark. Read this book for the innocence and for the wisdom it contains.”
—Arleen Paré, author of Lake of Two Mountains
Poets, both settler and Indigenous, pay tribute to trees through reflections on the past, connections to the present, and calls for the protection of our future.
Kwantlen Polytechnic University's Professor Dale Tracy has adopted this anthology as a required
text for her ENGL 3356 Modern & Contemporary Poetry class for the autumn 2024
term.
Themes of connection, ecology, grief, and protection are explored through poems about trees and forests written by an impressive number of influential poets, several of whom have attended the recent Fairy Creek blockades and still others who defended old growth ecosystems in Clayoquot Sound 30 years ago.
Born Out of This is being taught at York University, Faculty of Environmental Studies, BES Program, ENVS 1800.06 Environmental Writing / Writing the Environment, by professor Cate Sandilands.
My Nature
"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.
This volume's poem "Good Company" appeared on BC buses. Its poem "Eight storeys high 250 metres down" appears in Canada’s Raincoast at Risk: Art for an Oil-Free Coast.
“[H]eartbreaking, necessary book. The first eyewitness account of the country’s greatest literary tragedy ...” —Quill & Quire
—The Islander/Victoria Times-Colonist
"An astonishing collection of heartbreaking force."
—George Elliott Clarke
Writing the West Coast: In Love with Place
Co-edited with Anita Sinner. Ronsdale Press, Vancouver. 2008
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.
“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
Collections in which Christine has work:
Sweet Water
Poems for the Watersheds
Edited by Yvonne Blomer
Sweet Water: Poems for the Watersheds gathers the voices of poets from across Canada, the US and the UK who write of water. Bottled, clouded, held in rain, in river, estuary and lake, sweet water is the planet’s life force and the poets here examine it from every angle – the pitcher plant, the beaver and the American Bull Frog, rain, clouds, smog, the many ducks and the salmon and the last lake sturgeon. Poets take us to the rivers they live along – and grieve daily – the Peace River Canyon, Chilcotin, Taylor River, the Humber River, Millstone River, the Fraser River, and more.
In Canada, the watershed runs into the Pacific, Arctic, Hudson Bay and the Atlantic. This water houses the aquatic ecosystems that feed and nurture not only the people, industries and animals on land but also drains into the world’s oceans. It is part of the hydrologic cycle that begins with water evaporation to become groundwater that seeps into rivers, streams, lakes and oceans. It is the water we bathe in, drink, and with which we grow our food. As it becomes more and more poisoned from industrial corporations, mining and the many, too many humans on our planet, it also becomes more and more endangered. We are paying attention. We are aware of the watershed moment that we inhabit in the twenty-first century. We know that change must come.
Contributors include Kate Braid, Gary Barwin, Katherena Vermette, Arleen Paré, John Pass, Ariel Gordon, Brian Brett, Rita Wong, Fred Wah, Trevor Carolan, John Terpstra, Russell Thornton, Zoë Landale, Christine Lowther, Elena Johnson, Elee Kraljii Gardiner, Daniela Elza, Rhonda Ganz, Geoffrey Nilson, Pamela Porter, Barbara Pelman, Kelly Shepherd, Rob Taylor, Zachariah Wells, Bren Simmers, and more.
Refugium
Poems for the Pacific
Edited by Yvonne Blomer
While in the world of politics there are still climate change deniers, the poets watch the warming seas, the dying birds slicked in oil, the whales, the jellies, the sea otters and the octopus. They stand, as close to the shore as possible, watch the slow turning tide. In this collection of poems from the coast of B.C., California, Washington State, to Alaska and as far away as Auckland, New Zealand and as far back as early 19th century Japan these poems explore our connection to the Pacific, what we know and don’t know, how we’ve already changed the shore and the sea and what we fear losing.
Poets in this anthology include John Barton, Brian Brett, Bruce Cockburn, Lorna Crozier, Brenda Hillman, Gary Geddes, Steven Heighton, Patrick Lane, Arleen Paré, Melanie Siebert, Anne Simpson, Rob Taylor, Patricia Young, Jan Zwicky and many more.
In Refugium, editor Yvonne Blomer explores her deep concern with our sixth extinction and how stoic humans are continuing to wreak damage on the planet and her oceans.
Locations of Grief: An Emotional Geography
Rising Tides
Reflections for Climate Changing Times
Edited by Catriona Sandilands
Ice melt; sea level rise; catastrophic weather; flooding; drought; fire; infestation; species extinction and adaptation; water shortage and contamination; intensified social inequity, migration and cultural collapse. These are but some of the changes that are not only predicted for climate changing futures, but already part of our lives in Canada. Although these transformations are global and dramatic, they are also experienced locally and particularly by people who are struggling to understand the impacts of climate change on their daily lives.
Rising Tides is a collection of short fiction, creative non-fiction, memoir and poetry addressing the past, present and future of climate change. Bringing stories about climate change—both catastrophic and subtle—closer to home, this new anthology inspires reflection, understanding, conversation and action. With more than forty purposefully written pieces, Rising Tides emphasizes the need for intimate stories and thoughtful attention, and also for a view of climate justice that is grounded in ongoing histories of colonialism and other forms of environmental and social devastation.These stories parallel the critical issues facing the planet, and imagine equitable responses for all Canadians, moving beyond denial and apocalypse and toward shared meaning and action.
Contributors to the anthology include established writers, climate change experts from different backgrounds and front-line activists: Carleigh Baker, Stephen Collis, Ashlee Cunsolo, Ann Eriksson, Rosemary Georgeson, Hiromi Goto, Laurie D. Graham, David Huebert, Sonnet L’Abbé, Timothy Leduc, Christine Lowther, Kyo Maclear, Emily McGiffin, Deborah McGregor, Philip Kevin Paul, Richard Pickard, Holly Schofield, Betsy Warland, Evelyn White, Rita Wong and many more.
The Summer Book edited by Mona Fertig
Focusing on the joys of summer, The Summer Book features new creative non-fiction by twenty-four exceptional and award-winning British Columbian writers: warm and wonderful tales, meditations on nature, memories, humour and seasonal anticipations. The Summer Book– a refreshing collection readers can relax and dip into, anytime of year. A small positive treasure in this complex crazy century.
Contributions by Luanne Armstrong, Kate Braid, Brian Brett, Anne Cameron, Trevor Carolan, Claudia Cornwall, Daniela Elza, Carla Funk, Jane Hamilton, Eve Jospeh, Des Kennedy, Theresa Kishkan, Chelene Knight, Fiona Lam, Grant Lawrence, J.J. Lee, Sarah De Leeuw, Peter Levitt, Christine Lowther, Pearl Luke, Susan McCaslin, Briony Penn, D.C. Reid, and Harold Rhenisch. Drawings by Gary Sim, Peter Haase, and Briony Penn.
CANADIAN GINGER An Anthology of Poetry & Prose by and about REDHEADS
Edited by Kim Clark and Dawn Marie Kresan
From strawberry blonde to carrot-top to deep auburn, the work in Canadian Ginger explores the meaning, myths, and stereotypes of being a ginger. Red hair is considered a genetic mutation, with only 2% of the world’s population born with it. Historically, prized as slaves or burned at the stake, the uniqueness of redheads made them both seductress and scapegoat. In the twentieth-century red hair is more desirable and less rare, due to hair dyes and henna treatments, but the labels “unpredictable” and “hot-tempered” remain. This unconventional and fun anthology brings together poems, short stories, essays, and drama excerpts from writers across Canada to tell the comical, powerful, tender, sexy, and sometimes tragic tales about their ginger tresses.
• Margaret Atwood • Aidan Chafe • Carolyn Clink • Anita Dolman • David Fraser • Maureen Foss • Kim Goldberg • Heather Haley • Carla Hartsfield • Tracy Hamon • Penn Kemp • Kateri Lanthier • Joanne Levy • Winona Linn • Christine Lowther • Bruce Meyer • Rebecca Pǎpucaru • Charlie Petch • Rachael Preston • Heather Spears • Diane Tucker • Jordan Watkins • Lizzie Violet • Darryl Whetter • Jennifer Zilm
Where the Nights Are Twice as Long: Love Letters of Canadian Poets
edited by David Eso and Jeanette Lynes.
In the Company of Animals: Stories of Extraordinary Encounters
Animals fascinate us. Whether we view them as friends, workmates, symbols, totems, or food, animals matter to us, and we want to tell their stories.
In this collection, thirty-seven writers from across Canada tell thought-provoking stories of extraordinary encounters with a variety of animals—from rats and salamanders to wolves and bears. From tributes to a favourite cat or dog to tales of a chance encounter with a moose or a cougar, these stories are sure to entertain and enlighten. The writers are people who spend time in the company of animals, paying close attention to them and their natures, and the lessons they can teach us.
In the Company of Animals features stories from well-known Canadian authors including Farley Mowat, Richard Wagamese, David Weale, Linda Johns, Anny Scoones, and David Adams Richards, Jacqueline Windh and many others. Christine's chapter is about a certain harbour seal ...
Canada’s Raincoast at Risk: Art for an Oil-Free Coast
Foreword: David Suzuki; Afterword: Wade Davis; overall slavemaster: Mark Hobson. The 160-page book is now in its second printing and highlights the art pieces, most of which are originals, from 50 incredible Canadian and Indigenous artists like Robert Bateman, Robert Davidson, Craig Benson, Carol Evans, Lissa Calvert and Roy Henry Vickers. The art is featured with writings, including Christine's poem "Eight Storeys High 250 Metres Down". All works are grouped into one of nine chapters that cover the region, the people, sea birds, land mammals, marine mammals, forests, estuaries, salmon, and the underwater marine life of Canada’s raincoast, including the Queen Charlotte Basin and the Great Bear Rainforest. A gorgeous coffee-table hardcover published by the Raincoast Conservation Foundation - buying one helps the cause.
Force Field – 77 Women Poets of BC
Edited by Susan Musgrave
Published by Mother Tongue Publishing, Salt Spring Island BC
77 POETS:
Maleea Acker, Joanne Arnott, Elizabeth Bachinsky, Jacqueline Baldwin, Michelle Barker, Rhonda Batchelor, Yvonne Blomer, Leanne Boschman, Fran Bourassa, Marilyn Bowering, Kate Braid, Connie Braun, Margo Button, Anne Cameron, Marlene Cookshaw, Judith Copithorne, Susan Cormier, Lorna Crozier, Jen Currin, Daniela Elza, Cathy Ford, Carla Funk, Maxine Gadd, Rhonda Ganz, Elee Kraljii Gardiner, Heidi Garnett, Lakshmi Gill, Kim Goldberg, Alisa Gordaneer, Heidi Greco, Heather Haley, Diana Hartog, Diana Hayes, Joelene Heathcote, Karen Hofmann, Leah Horlick, Aislinn Hunter, Gillian Jerome, Elena E. Johnson, Eve Joseph, Donna Kane, Sonnet L’Abbe, Larissa Lai, Fiona Tinwei Lam, Zoe Landale, Evelyn Lau, Julia Leggett, Angela Long, Christine Lowther, Sandra Lynn Lynxleg, Rhona McAdam, Susan McCaslin, Hannah Main-van der Kamp, Daphne Marlatt, Jessica Michalofsky, Jane Munro, Catherine Owen, Shauna Paull, Miranda Pearson, Meredith Quartermain, Rebekah Rempel, Linda Rogers, Rachel Rose, Laisha Rosnau, Renee Sarojini Saklikar, Sandy Shreve, Melanie Siebert, Susan Stenson, Cathy Stonehouse, Sharon Thesen, Ursula Vaira, Betsy Warland, Gillian Wigmore, Rita Wong, Onjana Yawnghwe, Patricia Young, Jan Zwicky.
Make It True: Poetry from Cascadia
Edited by Paul Nelson
with George Stanley, Barry McKinnon and Nadine Maestas
Make It True is a collection from poets writing from Cascadia, the bioregion lying west of the continental divide and spanning from Mt. Logan in Canada to the north and Cape Mendocino in California to the south. An attempt to deepen the sense of place. A call to inhabit it as if our lives and livelihoods depended on it. An attempt to resuscitate the poetry culture from the trance cast by the pop/consumer/industry-generated culture—an anti-culture which, as Edward Abbey understood, serves to consume everything, including the biosphere: "Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell."
Walk Myself Home
Favourably reviewed in Prairie Fire and endorsed by Bitch magazine!
“The poetry in this collection should not be missed.” –Bitchmedia website
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 presented here step physically, emotionally, spiritually and structurally across critical boundaries to speak out of moral conviction....
Stories of Ordinary People
Compiled & Edited by Kate Penner