JAN CONN UPCOMING EVENTS
Jan Conn has written six books of poetry, most recently Jaguar Rain: the Margaret Mee poems, Brick Books, 2006. Born in Asbestos, Quebec, she received her Ph.D. in Genetics from the University of Toronto. She has lived in Guatemala, Venezuela, Florida, Vermont and Massachusetts, conducting research on insects that transmit pathogens. Currently she is a Research Scientist at the Wadsworth Center, Division of Infectious Diseases, New York State Department of Health in Albany NY. Jan is a member of both the League of Canadian Poets and the Writer's Union of Canada.
Jaguar Rain, focuses on the outstanding Amazonian botanical illustrator, naturalist and explorer, Margaret Mee.
Jan was the recipient of a travel grant from the University of Vermont (2000) and a Canada Council Senior Writing Grant (2001), both in conjunction with the Margaret Mee Project. Her book South of the Tudo Bem Cafe, 1990, was shortlisted for the Pat Lowther Award. A suite of her poems, Amazonia, won 2nd prize in the CBC literary awards for 2003. She was recently awarded the inaugural P.K. Page Founders' Award for Poetry (2007) from The Malahat Review. She has completed a new poetry manuscript, Botero's Beautiful Horses.
Her poetry has been featured in many anthologies. She was invited to read at the Ecological Society of America meeting in August, 2005, in Montreal. She recently was the subject of Bentley College's Literary Portraits project, a 22-minute video titled, "Surviving the Darker Blue Inside," a reference to one of her poems.
Jaguar Rain: The Margaret Mee Poems was published by Brick Books in 2006,
ISBN 13:978-1-894078-48-1. It was inspired by the journals, sketches and paintings
of Amazonian flowers and their habitats by the remarkable illustrator, naturalist
and explorer Margaret Mee (1909-1988).
"Conn's jungle-lush language recalls the Michael Ondaatje of Running in the Family but her deliberate diction also echoes Nova Scotia's own Elizabeth Bishop." - George Elliot Clarke, The Chronicle Herald, Halifax
"Here is the book ecocritics committed to interdisciplinary rigour have been waiting for, written by a poet who can "do" the science because she's also a scientist." - Travis Mason, the Goose 2.1, www.alecc.ca
"Jaguar Rain…is a sensual feast for the image-starved reader."
- Jenna Butler, www.poetryreviews.ca
 Amazonian Whites Dusk. Huge panicles of egrets blossom in the kapok trees. White-hot vats of Manaus liquid steel- no hope there for the everlasting gesture, no hope. Swallowing the alabaster petals. Pass me another lily, she says. To hell with gold, what I want are fake quartz teeth to tear your great big tender heart in two. Mr. Albino is 80 but rules the Rio Demini with manic cruelty. The sea is foaming in my little lake, bringing a fresh school of ivory dolphins. We're always interested in rewarding excellence, he said, approaching her with a cream-coloured rope. Cho-cho, you are mistaken-there are no white mammals here. From Jaguar Rain (Brick Books, 2006), Amazonian Whites first appeared in The Antigonish Review. |
Beauties
on Mad River: Selected and New Poems, 2000, ISBN 1-55065-140-4
by Jan Conn collects together fifteen years of poetry that has appeared
in three Signal Editions: The Fabulous Disguise of Ourselves
, South of the Tudo Bem Café (1990), and What Dante
Did With Loss (1994). This is poetry that, in the words of George
Elliot Clarke, "maps not so much the world as the soul."
"What Dante Did With Loss is beautiful both for its simplicity of expression and emotional complexity." - Rob McLennan
"South of the Tudo Bem Café radiates warmth and light." - George Elliot Clarke, BOOKS IN CANADA
"I am partial to Jan Conn's society and landscapes." - Joe Rosenblatt
Camille Claudel Bill in snake boots stalks the Green Swamp for the pitcher plants filled with mosquitoes and other small aquatic denizens which could, if one were starving, be eaten as snacks, raw. We laugh this off but Camille Claudel wouldn't have. Hiding in her apartment sculpting the brilliant images of her own mind falling into deeper water, no stars in sight, nothing to eat. We are served fried this and that, don't ask too many questions. The single channel on TV offers Liberace. Rodin heard Camille's voice thin as paper in the dark leaves, the Gates of Hell tarnished, but blazing, her passion. From Beauties on Mad River, Vehicule Press, 2000. |
Links to reviews of Beauties on Mad River:
Links to read recently published poems:
http://www.massreview.org/
Volume 43, Number 3: Autumn 2002 and Volume 41, Number 4: Winter 2001
What
Dante Did With Loss, 1994. ISBN 1-55065-052-1.This is Jan Conn's
fourth book of poems. Central to this powerful new collection is
a suite of poems charting the explosive emotions surrounding her
mother's suicide. Other poems range from meditations on South American
flora and fauna to postmodern encounters with immortality &
co.
The Fifth Inhabitant of Mexico For Jan Washburn Emmylou Harris' blues and Lyle Lovett's lyrics ricochet around my room like firecrackers at a funeral. Except that it's 4 AM and a red-eyes tree frog is going to leap off the wall into my fizzing grapefruit drink, maybe swim around awhile, maybe lip synch Lyle Lovett. After all, the frog is looking decidedly sexy in its green body suit, and me, well, I'm kind of lonely, a pushover for any amphibian, especially one speaking fluent Spanish from the rain forests of Costa Rica. In the background of Frida Kahlo's Four Inhabitants of Mexico, hidden in the adobe houses and church, in the damp shade, in the crevices, were Mexican frogs-green ones, poisonous ones, ones that fit into the stunning speckled mouth of an orchid, glass ones, ones with red toes… Hidden because they could see into the future (Frida painted this picture in 1938), the future where they would become one of the mysterious disappearing acts of the late twentieth century… Amphibians are the Crown of the Evolutionary Tree! If I ever get to heaven I'm not going in unless the frogs are there first. |
To find out more about Jan Conn and her publications, visit
http://www.brickbooks.ca.