Russell Thornton will give a poetry reading on Friday, Feb. 25, at 8 p.m. at the Sunshine Coast Arts Centre in Sechelt.
Thornton is a North Vancouver poet with three books to his credit: The Fifth Window (Thistledown, 2000), A Tunisian Notebook (Seraphim, 2002) and House Built of Rain (Harbour, 2003). House Built of Rain was short-listed for the Dorothy Livesay Prize (B.C. Book Award) last year.
Thornton's poems inhabit a world hauntingly human and wholly material, a beautifully articulated realm of the awkward dance between spirit and matter. Boulders in a coastal creek seem to this poet to be the mute strongholds of human voices. A grandfather's set of keys opens a stoic optimism in his own life. Those of us at Tim Bowling's reading at the Arts Centre last year likely remember him reading a Thornton poem, The St. Alice, in homage to this remarkably talented emerging poet. Now we have a chance to hear Russell Thornton read his wonderful poems in person.
This reading is a presentation of the Literary Committee of the Sunshine Coast Arts Council, co-sponsored by the Sechelt Public Library with funding from the B.C. Public Library Services Branch through their "Writers In Libraries" program. Admission is free.
