Bill Arnott’s Beat
Vancouver author, poet, songwriter Bill Arnott is the national bestselling author of Gone Viking: A Travel Saga (WIBA Book Awards Finalist and ABF International Book Awards Finalist). His work is published in literary journals and anthologies in Canada, the US, UK, Europe, Asia and Australia and his column Bill Arnott’s Beat is a feature at New Reader Magazine, Canadian Authors Association, The Miramichi Reader, Federation of BC Writers, and League of Canadian Poets. Bill’s been awarded for prose, poetry, songwriting and performed at hundreds of events internationally. He’s a Director on numerous Boards, Writer-in-Residence, creator of Bill’s Artist Showcase, and for his eight year Gone Viking trek has been awarded a Fellowship at London’s Royal Geographical Society. @billarnott_aps | https://billarnottaps.wordpress.com/
Bill Arnott’s Beat: Editors and Publishing
[dropcap]I[/dropcap] fired two editors before I even began. One was hurt. The other relieved. The former sent me a gushing email as though we’d broken up after years of union, shared offspring and pets rather than the brief intro we’d had over coffee. The latter wished me well in a way that made it clear …
Bill Arnott’s Beat: Bonnie Nish, Real Life Pandora
[dropcap]A[/dropcap] tenth birthday’s no big deal. Sure, you hit double digits, but it’s not like when you become a teenager or hit those high, round decades people lie about. Unless, of course, you’re a poetry group that convenes in a gallery. Then it’s a very big deal. Pandora’s Collective is one of those, a remarkable …
Bill Arnott’s Beat: Gray Lightfoot – Working Man, Author, and Proper Poet
[dropcap]A [/dropcap]few of us were visiting over beers on an English seaside patio. One of the group seated at the picnic-style table was Renaissance man Gray Lightfoot – successful author and poet – a bus driver the rest of the week. I referenced Lightfoot being a bus driver-slash-poet. The others sniggered, thinking I just called …
Bill Arnott’s Beat: Dementia, Depression, and Other Feel-Good Stories
I have a friend (acquaintance, really) – Gunnar Thor Gunnarsson. Best name EVER, I thought. Until I met Lorenz von Fersen. Now THAT’S a name. The kind of name I’d choose for myself, assuming Max Power’s already been taken. Turns out Lorenz’s excellent moniker fits. He’s an excellent man doing excellent work. And has done …
Bill Arnott’s Beat: An Emerita in New West
I was meeting with powerhouse writer, publisher, Laureate Emerita Candice James in the literary city of New Westminster, BC’s former capital. Silver Bow Press is the company she runs, having taken over a four-title-a-year publisher and grown production to twenty new books a year – novels and poetry. Next year she anticipates bringing thirty select books to print. The list of submissions is extensive, the majority of it exceptional work from established authors.
Bill Arnott’s Beat – National Poetry Month
April is National Poetry Month. This year’s theme, A World of Poetry. A world of poetry. This, I understand. Being witness to stomped-verse haka in Waitangi, the lyrical thrum of Outback didgeridoo, breathy sax in a wet London underpass, red slashed characters on a mud wall in Hebei, tanka blurred through joss smoke in Kyoto, rantings of a street poet in Times Square, the guttural slur of a Greenlandic hymn, and a master’s spoken-word reverberating on old timber, sibilant sea hissing through cracked glass
Bill Arnott’s Beat: World Poetry
I was making my way across town. Town being Vancouver, BC. We have to say that as there’s another one, a perfectly pleasant American one, its pleasantness being its proximity to Vancouver, BC. I was to be the guest on World Poetry Café, an unassuming FM radio program with a shockingly large listenership – one-hundred-thirty-three countries, at last count.
Bill Arnott’s Beat: How Many Clowns Can You Fit in a Radio Booth?
RC Weslowski is a clown. No, seriously. I’d never met a real clown before. Sure, class clowns, but they rarely got to hit their creative stride, shows invariably cut short by a trip to the principal’s office, the stage-left yank of a shepherd’s hook wielded by some humour-quashing teacher – you know the type – …
Bill Arnott’s Beat: Independents’ Day
Independent bookstores shouldn’t exist. Brick-and-mortar bibliophile havens are retail models waiting to be business school case studies, “Why These Can’t Work.” TV narcissi could bleat indefinitely as to why they’d never invest in such ventures. But they do exist. And despite every reason why they shouldn’t, they thrive.
Bill Arnott’s Beat: Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside Writers’ Collective
A clink and scrape of flatware on plates. Lips smack. A bronchial cough. Huge potted fichus stoop at the ceiling, the look of good-natured green giants. I have a fifty-cent cup of coffee, which is not a Curtis Jackson reference. That’s the price of coffee at the Carnegie Centre in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside (DTES), for those of us who belong.
Bill Arnott’s Beat – A Literary Rooftop Garden
Join Bill Arnott as we explore western Canada’s creative lit scene from the ground up, bedrock-solid yet perpetually in motion. Like our imminent coastal quake, my epicentre is BC’s southwest. For now.
