{"id":1655,"date":"2021-09-16T13:11:57","date_gmt":"2021-09-16T20:11:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wordpress.kpu.ca\/arts\/?p=1655"},"modified":"2021-09-16T15:16:56","modified_gmt":"2021-09-16T22:16:56","slug":"looking-toward-the-sky","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.kpu.ca\/arts\/2021\/09\/16\/looking-toward-the-sky\/","title":{"rendered":"Looking toward the Sky"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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“Everyone has their own personal sky that they visualize depending on their experience and lived geography.”<\/p>Billeh Nickerson, Creative Writing Department<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Billeh Nickerson<\/a> joined the Creative Writing Department<\/a> in 2006 where he teaches Introduction to Creative Writing and upper-year courses on nonfiction, poetry, popular culture as well as on the business of writing. He is currently serving as co-chair of the department. Billeh is the author of six books including Artificial Cherry<\/em>, which was nominated for the City of Vancouver Book Award, and the always delightful McPoems<\/em>.  Billeh has served as editor for the literary journals Event<\/em> and PRISM international<\/em>, and as co-editor for the anthology Seminal: The Anthology of Canada\u2019s Gay Male Poets<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Billeh\u2019s most recent book of poetry, Duct-Taped Roses<\/a><\/em>, was published this past spring by Book*Hug Press.  Reviewers have praised Duct-Taped Roses <\/em>for its \u201chonesty about nearly every aspect of day-to-day life\u201d (The Miramichi Reader<\/a>). As Heidi Greco writes in The Miramichi Reader<\/a><\/em>, \u201cThe imagination of Billeh Nickerson is a force to behold \u2013 that and his attention to the details of memory, especially as exhibited in the long poem to the town where he grew up, Langley, BC.\u201d  Another reviewer observes, readers will be drawn to \u201cNickerson\u2019s sometimes diaristic, often vulnerable, always incisive eye as he admits to his unsureness in love, mainly because of past sorrows that \u2026 seemingly fill an ocean\u201d (Plentitude Magazine<\/a>). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Billeh will be reading from and discussing his latest book, Duct-Taped Roses<\/a><\/em>, at an online event hosted by the Creative Writing Department<\/a> on Tuesday, September 21 from 4:00 \u2013 5:20 PM<\/strong>.\u00a0 All are welcome to join! Please contact Ann Linn (anne.linn@kpu.ca<\/a>) for a secure Zoom link to the event.\u00a0<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
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Billeh Nickerson under the bright late-evening sky in Yellowknife, NWT for the Northwords Festival, 2014.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
Congratulations on the recent publication of your book of poetry Duct-Taped Roses<\/a>.  Would you tell us a bit about the book and what it was like to send it out into the world in the middle of a pandemic?<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019ve been describing the book as \u201cThe Good, the Bad, the Ugly and the Snuggly\u201d of life. This collection has a little bit of everything\u2014from meditations on 1970s and 80s Langley and sea turtles to humorous takes on gay sub-culture and thoughts on food (in)security. There are, unfortunately for me, numerous elegies. I suppose the collection is about resilience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n