Upcoming Events

Book Launch | Apr 17

Véhicule Press and Book Warehouse Main St invite you to the launch of Rhea Tregebov's new collection of poetry, TALKING TO STRANGERS.
Doors will open at 6:30 p.m. and the event will start at 7 p.m. Refreshments will be served. This event is free and open to all.

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TALKING TO STRANGERS is a book of bracing encounters. Throughout her four decades as poet, Rhea Tregebov has displayed an uncommon eye for the mysteries of ordinary life—moments where, as she writes, “[t]he simplest things / elude me.” This gift is brought to brilliant effect in her eighth book of poetry and most charged to date. In gorgeous arias of recollection and evocation, of elegy and heartbreak, Tregebov mourns, praises, prays, regrets, summons, celebrates, and bears witness with formidable artistry and tenderness (“You wouldn’t think the inanimate would get tired /but it does.”) Direct, never forced, keenly observant, and marked by scrupulous craft, these new poems unfold in beguiling, often breathtaking ways. They confirm Tregebov’s place among the most significant poets of her generation.

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Rhea Tregebov is the author of seven acclaimed books of poetry and two novels, The Knife Sharpener’s Bell and Rue des Rosiers. Her work has received the J. I. Segal Award, the Nancy Richler Memorial Prize for Fiction, the Malahat Review Long Poem Prize, the Pat Lowther Award, and the Prairie Schooner Readers’ Choice Award. Retired from teaching at UBC, she now holds the position of Associate Professor Emerita and is the former Chair of The Writers Union of Canada. She lives in Vancouver.

More information

Travel Group | April 18

Our extensive travel around Syria on the eve of the civil war.
with Joel Oger et Marie Louise Miginiac-Oger

In late June 2010, the “Société Française de Neurologie” organized a joint meeting with its Syrian equivalent. As I was an invited speaker, we took this meeting in Damascus as a springboard to embark on a 2 weeks extensive bus travel around the country. We did not realize that this was the last opportunity to see glorious ruins such as the city of Bosra, the city of Palmyra and the temple of Baâl before their near destruction. We finished our tour at the Kraâk des Chevaliers which was soon to become a military warehouse for the “rebels” with the expected results …. We have been told that the Christian villages (same language as Jesus Christ: Aramaic) where we ended our trip have been totally spared even though orthodox priests and nuns were displaced. This would not be the first time and up to now has always been temporary…hopefully it will be the same, this time around.

Format: Zoom
If you wish to receive the zoom link for the meeting and are not already on the EC Travel group list, please contact Paul Steinbok at psteinbok@cw.bc.ca.

A zoom link will be sent out before each meeting.

Groves of Academe | Apr 29

A Special Presentation with Fiona Farrell, Author of The Deck

The Groves of Academe reading group is delighted to be joined by this month’s author Fiona Farrell to discuss her new book. Fiona Farrell is one of New Zealand’s leading writers. Educated at the universities of Otago and Toronto, she has published volumes of poetry, collections of short stories, non-fiction works, and many novels. We are looking forward to engaging with this smart and talented individual, who has an affection for Canada rooted in her time as graduate student in Ontario in the early 1970s.

This event is open to all members. Please register below. 

About the Book

What is the point of inventing stories when reality eclipses imagination? A little way off in the future, during a time of plague and profound social collapse, a group of friends escapes to a house in the country where they entertain themselves by playing music, eating, drinking and telling stories about their lives. There are tales of thieves and pirates, deaths and a surprise birth, a freak wave and many other stories of misadventure resulting in unexpected felicity. The Deck borrows the motifs of Giovanni Boccaccio’s 14th-century masterpiece, The Decameron, in which another small group gathered to avoid contagion and passed the time telling stories. But what is the role of fiction, this novel asks, as civilisation falters?

About the Author 

 Fiona Farrell's first novel, The Skinny Louie Book, won the 1993 New Zealand Book Award for fiction. Other novels, poetry and non-fiction books have been shortlisted for the Montana and New Zealand Post Book Awards with four novels also nominated for the International Dublin IMPAC Award. In 2007 she received the Prime Minister’s Award for Fiction, and in 2012 was appointed an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to literature. The Broken Book, a book of essays relating to the Christchurch earthquakes, was shortlisted for the non-fiction award in the 2012 Book Awards and critically greeted as the ‘first major artwork’ to emerge from the event. The Villa at the Edge of the Empire was also shortlisted for this award in 2016. Her work, which The New Zealand Herald has praised for its ‘richness — of both theme and language’, has been published around the world, including in the US, France and the UK. Beryl Fletcher praised Farrell for having ‘. . . the rare ability of turning the mundane events of domestic life into profound human experiences. Her writing is poetic, moving and literary.’

When:  Monday April 29 at 4:00 pm
Where: Zoom

Register Here

Open to all Emeritus College Members. The Groves group will be meeting prior to the author joining the meeting for regular discussion. Please contact Graeme Wynn for more details please contact convenor, Graeme Wynn (wynn@geog.ubc.ca).