Poetry Reading at EB Festival – Profile of Joanne Light

One of the exciting events that will take place at the Elizabeth Bishop Festival on 8 August 2015 will be a morning poetry reading with Joanne Light, Chad Norman, Andrew Daniel Patterson and Libby Schofield. This profile is of writer Joanne Light. 
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Joanne Light is a Nova Scotian writer, most recently of “In and Out of the Box/Stories of Teaching and Travelling”; Suzie, an Orphan Orangutan/A Very Sad and a Little Bit Happy Story; and Nomos: Shaping the Land/Physis: that Shapes Us. She has attended The Banff Centre literary arts program in the Advanced Writing Seminar and the Wired Writing Studio (in 2008 and 2010). She has published in Newfoundland Quarterly, Arc Poetry Magazine, Grain, Pierian Spring, Pottersfield Portfolio among others, and has performed in Saint John, Fredericton, northern Saskatchewan, Toronto at The Art Bar, Montreal at Idle No More Poetry, and in Halifax at the Lilah Kemp Reading Series.Joanne was a regular artist in residence at Elizabeth Bishop House Artist Retreat.

After Judy McFarlane heard Joanne read, she wrote: “Recently, I attended the Wired Writing program at the Banff Centre. Every few days, we had a reading night. We heard many wonderful pieces, but for me, one of the real highlights was hearing Joanne Light read/perform her poems. From the moment she announced the title, her  poems grabbed my attention, held it throughout, made me laugh, cry, moved me more than I thought possible. Her work is insightful, honest, funny, and, in my opinion, brilliant.”