Writing Vancouver is a bi-weekly section that highlights local talent in the literary arts. Over the coming weeks, Spacing Vancouver readers will be treated to a selected number of poems, stories and essays from the recently released V6A: Writing from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.
We invite our readers to submit their own pieces for publication. We look forward to helping spread the word!
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Poem#1
ALBERT FLETT
I was almost young then,
and half insane,
damaged beyond my years.
I found her sleeping on my floor,
I had a bed,
and invited her in.
It didn’t take long,
we fell in love in a graveyard,
drinking with the dead.
We lived together,
it didn’t take long,
we almost destroyed ourselves,
our pleasure became our pain,
smiling through our madness,
watching through pinned eyes.
No regrets for what we did,
only regrets for what we missed.
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Albert Flett was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba and raised in Vancouver, BC. His first childhood memories are of living with his father in an SRO in the DTES. Albert still lives in East Vancouver and writes and plays music in a local punk band, Ovary Action.
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V6A: Writing from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside is a record of this community’s self-determination via the poems, stories, essays and experimental writing of 32 authors, who have all been members of the DTES community in some way, at some point in their lives.
Published by Arsenal Pulp Press, the contributors feature in the book are: John Barry, Elisabeth Buchanan, Wayde Compton, Henry Doyle, Daggar Earnshaw, Albert Flett, Patrick Foley, Angela Gallant, Gary Geddes, Anne Hopkinson, Jonina Kirton, Don Larson, Gisele LeMire, Robyn Livingstone, Stephen Lytton, Don Macdonald, Muriel Marjorie, My Name is Scot, Lora McElhinney, James McLean, Brenda Prince, Antonette Rea, Rachel Rose, Sen Yi, Irit Shimrat, Kevin Spenst, Loren Stewart, Madeleine Thien, Michael Turner, Phoenix Winter, Cathleen With, Elaine Woo and Daniel Zomparelli.
V6A is for sale at People’s Coop Bookstore, Little Sister’s, Chapters/Indigo, SFU Bookstore Downtown, Hager Books and online at amazon.ca also as an ebook and available internationally as of September 2012. Partial proceeds benefit Thursdays Writing Collective.