Book Launch & Open Mic with Richard Stevenson & Yvonne Blomer

Join Wordstorm for our first in-person event of 2023 as we welcome Richard Stevenson and Yvonne Blomer launching their latest works of poetry.  There will also be room for you to share your own work at the open mic.

Sign-up for the open mic will be just prior to the start of the event. 5 minute time limit for open mic presenters.

Richard Stevenson will be debuting two of his most recent poety collections, Eye to Eye with My Octopi and Bature!

A poetic travel journal, Bature! is a mix of haiku, senryu, tanka, kyoka, zappai and various Japanese imagist sequences. It records a journey undertaken by the author and his family in a Volkswagen, c 1980, from northeastern Nigeria down to Lagos in the southwest and up the coast of West Africa through Benin and Togo.

In Eye to Eye with My Octopi, "Stevenson hits the entertainment buttons from all sides. These poems  are simply for most all ages. He really makes poetry fun again. The  poems liken to those of Lewis Carroll or 

Shel Silverstein. The poems  are whimsical, but there’s a flurry of heart and introspection with a  dash of satirical thrown in to each one, too." - from a review by LB Sedlacek

Heidi Greco in the Miramichi Reader has this to say about Yvonne Blomer's most recent book, The Last Show on Earth, "... it’s clear that Blomer has established herself as a poet who cares deeply about the environment. ... She often takes inspiration from  another artist whose work is enmeshed with care for the environment,  painter Robert Bateman. Just as his images are often shrouded in  mysterious fog, the elements he portrays—whether bear or bird or lichen  on a rocky outcrop—are rendered in an immaculately sharp and realistic  style."