Dear Friends &: Hopeton (Hope) Anderson, Wayde Compton, Samantha Marie Nock

Description:

Produced in partnership with The Capilano Review, Dear Friends & is a monthly series showcasing the work of local and touring Canadian writers. Taking place on the first Thursday of each month, readings are hosted in the Grand Luxe Hall and made available to virtual audiences by livestream.

The series’ name draws inspiration from the salutations and sign-offs used by Roy Kiyooka in Transcanada Letters (1975), a collection which details the comings and goings of his literary sociality across Canada, the network of people and relations that enfold his writing, and the longings of his “Heart’s Geography” to be near the ones he loved. Kiyooka was an important figure for both Western Front and The Capilano Review, and this series invites his spirit of kinship, connection, and conviviality into the reading space.

The sixth and final event of the season included readings by Hopeton (Hope) Anderson, Wayde Compton, and Samantha Marie Nock, who are all featured in the Fall 2023 issue of The Capilano Review titled "Anti-Monuments." Nock opened the evening with work drawn from her debut poetry collection A Family of Dreamers (2023). Compton then read from his narrative poem titled “The Objects,” which is loosely based on the Greek epic poem The Argonautica written by Apollonius Rhodius in the third century BC. To close the event, Anderson presented a selection of unpublished poems dedicated to his family, and work drawn from his manuscript “Grace of Centuries.” Dear Friends & marked Anderson’s return to Western Front after his first reading in the Grand Luxe Hall in the 1970s. 

The readings unfolded against a projected image by resident artist Christian Vistan, who was invited to inhabit the peripheral spaces of Dear Friends & through a series of conceptual graphics, backgrounds, interventions, and ephemera reflecting on themes of friendship and correspondence through art. For their final response, Vistan circled back to the motif of the ampersand that punctuates the series’ title by presenting paintings that return to the raw material of “the line”—a building block that is common to both painting and poetry. 

The evening was hosted by Deanna Fong, literary editor of The Capilano Review.

Presented with support from Kootenay School of Writing.