Eve Joseph Reads at Poets on Campus

Eve Joseph is the next reader in Vancouver Island University’s Poets on Campus series. Joseph will read at 4 pm in the Library Writing Centre (fourth floor of the library, building 305) at the Nanaimo campus on Monday, Oct. 20.

“I've heard Eve Joseph read several times and have been struck by the power and wisdom of her poetry,” said Marilyn Bowering, Creative Writing instructor and coordinator for the event. “Her work as a social worker, and for years in a hospice, has made her impatient with the trivial-- her words deal with the essential elements of human experience-- they are raw, intimate and moving-- and very, very good.”

Joseph’s writing career began about 12 years ago, after many years of not writing. “My marriage had ended, my work was ending, I was at a new place in my life – I started to read and to write and it was a godsend to me,” she said.

“Eve has the gift of being able to talk about the most difficult things, and to give them shape and form that enlarge the listener's understanding,” said Bowering.

Joseph has been published in a wide number of Canadian and American journals and anthologies. Her book “The Startled Heart” was nominated for the Dorothy Livesay Award in the 2005 B.C. Book Awards.

When she started “The Startled Heart”, Joseph had been working at a hospice for 23 years. “Working with the dying was, in many ways, similar to writing poetry. Both explore the unknown and both insist that one be present in the world. The first book came directly out of that experience, exploring what it had been like to work with death for so long,” she said.

The poems are written as ghazals, an ancient Persian form of poetry, which Joseph said allowed her to touch on the subject without the full weight of the sorrow. “I didn’t have to think about what to write – it was a matter of form finding content, matching the two of them,” she said.  

Joseph has been asked how one moves from writing about death so intimately to writing about anything else. “There’s always a presence of the dead,” she said, although her latest collection of poetry, “The Secret Signature of Things” moves away from death. The title of the book, due out in spring 2010, is a reference to epiphany in James Joyce’s Ulysses.

“Often poets and writers work at epiphany - that momentary revelation and then it’s gone. That’s what moves us,” said Joseph. “We can look beyond the names we give things to the names they give themselves and maybe that’s the best we can do.”

“Poetry is important because it's the way I know the world. It is how I feel most alive.”

The event is sponsored by The Writers' Union of Canada and the Canada Council with additional funding provided by the Faculty Association, the Dean of Arts and Humanities and the Department of Creative Writing.  The Poets on Campus series is open to the public; admission is by donation. For more information and directions to the event, visit viu.ca/poetsoncampus.