Plasticine Poetry James Deahl, Barry Dempster, Lesley McAllister, Ruth Roach Pierson and Dane Swan plus an open mic. 6 pm. Free.

Tuesday, August 31 , 7:00 pm . . . ST. JOHN'S
The Ship Pub
265 Duckworth Street

Sunday, September 12-Saturday, September 18 . . . BANFF
Writing With Style
The Banff Centre for the Arts

Barry Dempster, whose new poetry collection, Blue Wherever, has just been released, will be reading and giving workshops at the Banff Centre.

Monday, September 20 , 2:00 pm . . . RED DEER
Sunworks
4924 Ross Street

"In the new world, we wake up/to a bone ark bobbing on the blue whereever," Dempster writes in the title poem of this new collection, his twelfth book of poetry. He connects the intensity of loving someone with the visceral vividness of being alive, as though waking from a beautiful dream and finding the world sparkling. Granted, there is still loss and loneliness, even awols of hope, but the particulars of the outside world remain spectacular despite their ordinariness. Blue Wherever returns us to being in the moment with an intensity and beguilement often reserved for romantic love, and from the various perspectives of observer and creator.

Signature Edition, $14.95