Hi Ursula,
Serendipity on receiving your email with Kelly's pics - as so often happens when you are on the 'dharma path' - doing the right thing & what you were born to do ... I was reading Kelly's little chapbook to prep for doing a blog write-up, & brought my coffee into the study to start work. And here are your pics of Kelly!
The more I read her work, & learn of her life, the more convinced I am that Kelly Rose has the potential to be "the next great Canuck People's Poet" - perhaps she already IS! Milton Acorn is smiling somewhere, perhaps raucously celebrating Kelly's arrival in his new suit of raven feathers. THESE BURNING STREETS announces a landmark in Canuck People's Poetry, as did Livesay's POEMS FOR PEOPLE and Acorn's MORE POEMS FOR PEOPLE.
It is amazing that a poet in her early twenties is writing with the depths & skills of a master poet in their seventies!
I was honoured that you asked me to read one of Kelly's poems at the launch Friday nite in Peterborough. To repeat what I said then, there are hundreds of young poets who have major talent, but only a handful who are occasionally incandescent. But Kelly Rose not only writes transcendent poetry, she lives it to the fullest, taking it to the streets and now to her jail cell. The MFA students, writing their precious pieces in creative writing classes, lack the heart of a Kelly Rose to make poetry live & burn & light up the streets in these dark times of Harperite neo-fascism.
Thank you & Don for raising such a poet : ) I believe there is much insight into Kelly's poetic development in your recounting of Kelly's year of home schooling at age 14, when she read voluminously and lived her young life vicariously with the greats of world literature. Al Purdy recounts a similar time in his teen years in his memoir/novel A SPLINTER IN THE HEART.
Thank you & your circle of friends & supporters for organizing such a comfortable & heartfelt book launch & reading. I have told friends it was one of the most enjoyable readings I have attended. It was a treat to meet Kelly's self-proclaimed 'gutter punk' friends - they provide much hope for Kanada's future, post this current Harperite miasma. And congratulations to you for anchoring an event which so obviously tugged at your heart for every second, thinking of Kelly Rose's circumstances.
I'll do all I can to promote Kelly Rose, her new book, and to raise support for obtaining her release asap.
peace & poetry power!
Chris ...
and Chase ... wfffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff! (a dog can't begin to imagine being stuck in a cell all day)
p.s. I'll prob. use this email in my posting - trust this is OK?
p.p.s. have never met Kelly - in the pics she's a real punk cutie - never hurts to be photogenic in these crazy media times
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Thanks, Doug : )
I'll add your email as support for 'Sweet Kelly Rose' on the blog. Unfort. she may not be FREE to attend PurdyFest next year - the Harpyites are making a real
example of her. Witch hunts are alive & currently on the move in Kanada : (
peace & poetry power!
Chris ... and Chase wffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff!
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2012-09-30, at 3:53 PM, Douglas Roy wrote:
Chris!
BRAVO!!! and thank you for forwarding this info on sista Kelly Rose! How about inviting her to be a feature reader next year?
Whenever I get discouraged with the Fat Cat Health Care Bureaucrats, I go and spend time with my young-brilliant-courageous- punk-activist-poet-humane-friends …and they renew me!
-RDR
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For paypal donations post:
we.love.our.leader@gmail.com
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info email on Kelly's launch
Friday , September 28, 2012 7:00pm until 9:00pm
Catalina Salon, Peterborough, ON Please come out to the book launch of Kelly Pflug-Back's first book of poetry published by Combustion Books. There will be drinks & snacks, readings from Kelly's book and live music by singer/songwriter Tara Williamson - http://music.cbc.ca/#/artists/Tara-Williamson, and singer/songwriter Jordan Page. From the Forward by Juliet Belmas: ... "Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings, and I know of no experience that has generated a wider range of emotion for me than the effective communication of revolutionary spirit through an amazing song or poem. In These Burning Streets, Kelly Rose Pflug-Back writes openly and tenderly about themes of hope and fear, exhilaration and humiliation, hatred for the enemy and love for fellow comrades in ten absolutely beautiful and visionary poems about a centuries-old war that has been slaughtering the earth, the feminine psyche, and the minds and bodies of oppressed people worldwide for generations. Her heroines show us their cuts, scrapes, and decomposing bodies barely left in pieces, limping, all bloodied but unbowed to speak to us from the dead on behalf of the living". All profits received by Combustion Books will be passed along to Kelly Rose Pflug-Back until she is free.
http://www.combustionbooks.org/products-page/poetry/these-burning-streets/ Links to Kelly's work: http://kellypflugback.wordpress.com/these-burning-streets/ Here are some awesome cover blurbs: “There is something so visual about these words I can almost taste them! Poems graceful on the page, and full of grace in flight.” Susan Musgrave, author of Origami Dove “From the deeply personal to the socio-political, Kelly Rose Pflug-Back’s voice in These Burning Streets resonates deeply within each of us. Arriving through shared chords of remembrance and tears, it touches those once beautiful, scarred places inside that we most always ignore, cover, hide.” Bruce Kauffman, poet, editor, radio show host of “Finding a Voice” on CFRC 101.9fm. “In this groundbreaking first collection, Kelly Pflug- Back has found a new way to use metaphor, audaciously collapsing the whole structure of what we believed was external and internal. Each poem is crammed with these new images that shock with recognition and drench the senses of the body.” Heather Spears, author and winner of the Governor-General’s Award in Poetry and the Pat Lowther Award “...at once a book of windows into fantastical places, an album of love songs for the small things we’ve all forgotten, and a celebratory political manifesto for worlds we’ve yet to imagine... a simply stunning first collection from a wise and talented emerging poet.” Leanne Simpson, author of Dancing on Our Turtle’s Back: Stories of Nishnaabeg Re-Creation, Resurgence and a New Emergence. “Pflug-Back is a poet who speaks the truthmore accurately, shouts the truth, just as Milton Acorn did in his best poems.” Chris Faiers, award winning author first ever recipient of the Milton Acorn People’s Poetry Award
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