Open Word: Readings and Ideas

Artist: John Pass

Date: Wednesday February 27, 7:30 p.m. at Open Space, Thursday February 28, 1 p.m. at UVic

Open Space and the Department of Writing, University of Victoria presented readings and discussion with John Pass. Pass was the second reader in Open Word: Readings and Ideas, the literary series launched earlier this month to capacity crowds at Open Space and the University of Victoria. The series featured on-stage discussions with Canada’s top fiction and non-fiction writers, Open Word offered intelligent, spontaneous and culturally pivotal evenings.

Pass’s book Stumbling in the Bloom traces beauty’s entanglement in life and art, in the garden and in wilderness. This collection includes a singularly moving Canadian journey towards and away from the “ground zero” of the 9/11.

Following his reading, Pass was interviewed on stage by local philosopher and poet Tim Lilburn. Their conversation surprised and challenged as the two discussed the limits of wilderness, the claim of uncertainty and accident on our lives, the philosophy of acceptance, and Pass’s poetics. Pass gave a second public reading Thursday, February 28 at the University of Victoria, HSD A264 at 1:00 pm.

Open Word welcomed Vancouver fiction writer Annabel Lyon, who was to be reviving the novella in March. Poet Karen Solie, whose first poetry collection Short Haul Engine was nominated for the prestigious Griffin Poetry Prize, read in April.