UPCOMING EVENTS, FALL 2024:
Celebrating Rae’s new bilingual poetry book, Steady. Against the Absurd. Kinship at the Core / Sans relâche. Contre l’absurde. Corps et âmes
Launchings with readings by the author, Rae Marie and the translator Hélène Lépine!
on Thursday, August 29th, 5pm,
at Librairie LaLiberté, Ste-Foy, Québec, QC
Téléphone : 418 658-3640
info@librairielaliberte.com
www.librairielaliberte.com
and on Thursday September 12th, 6:30pm
at La librairie Bertrand, Vieux Port, Montréal, QC
elise@librairiebertrand.com
514-849-4533
This Fall the 40th anniversary edition of the Festival international de poésie de Trois-rivières includes Rae Marie reading on October, 11th, 12th, and 13th! along with other amazing poets!
Do join us! You are most welcome to this Festival running from October 4th through 13th. Ten days, 100 poets, five continents in the capital and heart of poetry: Trois rivières, Québec.
fiptr.com
Adding to the pleasures for my work are two invitations in November:
Featured reader at the long-lived and cherished poetry series TAP.
Friday, November 8th, 8pm
Maison de la littérature, Québec, QC
www.maisondelalittérature.qc.ca
Tremplin d'actualisation de poésie www.tapoesie.com
Wednesday, November 20th, guest of Sebastian Ibarra Gutiérrez and Victor H. Ramos for the Cercle Gabriel-García-Márquez interview and exchange. We’ll talk about my North-South life, a continental identity! Also at the Maison de la littérature, 7pm.
P.S. Keep your eyes open for news in spring 2025 for my Southwest Book Tour! Denver, Colorado. Taos, Santa Fe and Albuquerque NM. And more!
FESTIVAL PERFORMANCES 2022-2024
April, 2024 FESTIVAL Blue Metropolis - Montreal. Poetry voice performed for Jardins imaginaires, by Armelle Chitrit
May 2023. MOIS DE LA POÉSIE, Quebec.
L’Arbre à langues, Multi-lingual Poetry event at Nouaisons Cultural Center, and la Maison de la Littérature, Québec, QC
February, 2023. SAN MIGUEL Writers’ Conference and Literary Festival, Late Night Event, Café Murmullo, San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.
May 2022. MOIS DE LA POÉSIE. Québec.
Thé et poésie. At Crêperie Du côté de Chez Swann for La Maison de la Littérature
GROUP READINGS 2020-2024
In Person for:
LOGOS READINGS. Montreal May 2024
and Featured poet, December 2022
La REVUE POSSIBLES, Pour Une Autre Suite du Monde. Montreal, June 2023
The Trilingual Review HÉLIOS.
L’ADIEU. Montreal. June 2023. (The Good Bye Poem).
On Zoom and *YouTube
May 23 2024 Featured Reader. Fixed & Free Quarterly. New Mexico. May 23 2024
Thanks to the pandemic, I have been welcomed as a frequent open-mic reader at Fixed & Free and Poetry Playhouse events, both based in New Mexico.
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March, 2023. * PEN International Women Writers’ Committee’s Global Poetry Series: HEAR HER WORDS. (Sabers)
March 2023. Poetry Mesa and Wild Rising Press. Celebration of chapbook finalists and winner.
September 2021. *PEN International Women Writers Committee's Global Poetry series: Free the Word!: Poetry to Hold Us Together (What I Can Tell You)
August, 2021. * Centre des arts de Stanstead, Poetry Series. Rae Marie Taylor and Rachel McCrum
May 2021. Montreal Speak Up. Recto-Verso (bilingual) with Diane Regimbald and Paul Bélanger (Occupation Sacred/Préoccupation sacrée)
March 2021. *PEN International Women Writers Committee's Global Poetry series: Empowering Women’s Voices: Poems of Celebration, Solidarity, and Longing.
(Si je disais)
January 2021. * Vallum Magazine. Vol. 17:1 (What Is It)
December 2020. Mitra. Revue d’art et de littérature. Excerpts from Steady. Against the Absurd. Kinship at the Core. and a translation with Jean-Pierre Pelletier.
November 2020. * PEN International Women Writers Committee’s Day of the Dead Poetry Program, We Grieve and We Celebrate. (Love Song for What We Are Losing)
NEWS & EVENTS 2019 and 2020 during Covid 19
A note for the times: Gratefully, my life goes on in this strange Time of Corona, as one friend puts it. I want to wish you and your loved ones much wellness, energy, solace hope and safety for this difficult period.
Art is process… and sometimes web sites too! So I’m catching up with you here with photos and the highlights of enjoyable process, exhibits and performances in 2019 - which I had intended to be a quieter period - and winter 2020.
Early Winter 2019 I hunkered down on a long-term multi-disciplinary project (poetry performance-with-installation (initially foreseen for 2021, Covid19 willing) that I’d been needing time for. Part I of “Steady. Against the Absurd. Kinship at the Core" was born and in April 2019 at Casa del Popolo, the heart of Montreal Spoken Word, I performed a 20 minute excerpt accompanied by the wonderful jazz musician Pierre Tanguay. In September 2019 the same project allowed me to be artist-in-residence at Maine and Station in Parrsboro Nova Scotia, but with more of a focus on research for the installation.
The Fundy Geological Museum, the Carboniferous cliffs near Parrsboro, as well as Joggins Cliffs and Black Rock beach were all perfect – at low tide of course!! – for my intended study of fossils and documenting them for material for the installation that will create a timeless “place” for the poetry scenario’s performance in exhibit settings. On horseback with Bill Gilbert or on foot, the upending of the earth, fossilized raindrops and ripples, cyanobacteria fossils (the first bacteria on the earth), and a dragonfly fossil are all powerfully inspiring material! much of which I have brought home to my Montreal studio.
The colors of the Bay of Fundy and some of its seaweed found their way into the new painting, “A New Shore” exhibited in November, and 2020 began with a lovely event, Poetic Notions, joining painters and poets for a collaborative exhibit. Kathryn Kroo, painter colleague and I participated in the beautiful exhibit and poetry performance. Again, the Bay of Fundy motivated me, this time for a poem, “Tracing Time” which inspired Kathryn’s powerful piece, “Myriads of Stones.” Both exhibits took place with colleagues at the Centre d’art E.K. Voland in Montreal.
Earlier in September in Quebec City, the exhibit Patchwork brought together 50 of us with small works to celebrate Galerie Articho’s 5th anniversary. My first insect painting was shown there and I am still thoroughly enjoying making paintings of insects and their habitats for the exhibit Beasties and Marvels/Bestioles et Merveilles at the Olde Blacksmith Art Gallery in Stanstead, Quebec. Initially planned for July 2020, due to Covid 19, it will happen at a later date. See my Facebook page for updates later in the summer.
During the residency in Nova Scotia, in spite of Hurricane Dorian and being evacuated for a week (from cliffside cabin to apartment in town), the month at Main & Station was wonderfully rich! As well as being my “research sites”, the beaches of the Bay of Fundy offered themselves as perfect sites for two readings, the first on First Beach then on Partridge Island beach where the intention of finding kinship with the earth and each other was confirmed and nourished. I remain grateful to the residents of Parrsboro who walked with me for the performance! That time in town also gave unexpected possibility for interviews with two dedicated women whose work gives them insight into both violence, healing and kinship between men and women. I so appreciate their willingness to share their thoughts so relevant to my work on “Steady.”
Another significant moment in June 2019 was the trilingual event Three Lands, Four Voices, One Planet. It was a total pleasure producing the event with Veena Gokhale, journalist and writer. We invited Laure Morali poet and cinematographer, and Brian Campbell, musician, to join us. And Rita Mestokosho, Innu poet and elder graced us with her presence and an Innu song for the earth. Following our readings the public shared enriching insights and life experience related to our relationship with the earth.
Other activities of note, I learned to play the “loop” during a wonderful 2019 Soundtrack Workshop given by Moe Clark and Ian Ferrier! And shorter readings at Lapalabrava and LOGOS multi-lingual reading series where I am always happy to be invited to read. Series that, like others in Montreal, Quebec City and Santa Fe, gather and sustain the literary community.
Thanks to Wi-Fi, Skype and Zoom, the pandemic has not interfered with some of my poetry currently, now in spring 2020, being translated into French! I’m thrilled with this, a first!
Happily as well, magazine publications are going ahead, albeit with launchings on-line: Montreal Serai, arts magazine has just published my essay “The Root of It” in their issue 33, Climate Change and the Commons. Both Vallum magazine and Kola, A Black Literary magazine are publishing poems in English.
And I offered a video for the multi-lingual on-line reading for 2020 spring’s World Festival of Poetry for Peace. The French publication, Possibles has welcomed both the original and the French version of my poem ‘Occupation Sacred’ for their Fall issue.
On a personal note, before the virus took over our lives, I was able to enjoy precious time with family in the States: New York City with my nephew’s family, a very special Denver visit with family and two childhood friends, and then Sonoma County with my sister Annie and family. Three weeks of spring that gave me time to hang out and savor daily life with family as well as to continue writing.
NEWS & EVENTS 2018
From Sand and Stars, my solo exhibit of painting and sculpture came to fruition! Opening on April 26th at the Centre d’art E.K. Voland, it was accompanied by my spoken word show Songs of Solidarity/Chants d'amitié en mouvance in its Montreal version. Pierre Nepveu, one of Quebec’s leading authors, gave a generous introduction getting the evening off to a wonderful start. Throughout my performance, the intuitive, ingenious musicians Pierre Tanguay, with unusual percussion objects, and Diane Labrosse, on the sampler, created the perfectly nuanced music to accompany my voice, story and poems. And the wonderfully receptive audience - without whom there's no show! - was totally with us from start to finish. It was the hoped for celebratory event for my work’s return to Montreal! Gracias à todos! Thank you to all who were there in the flesh or in spirit! The two paintings here were the theme paintings for my two geographies, New Mexico and Quebec. We owe marvelous photos of the event to Araceli Olmos. Rebecca Crumbacher from Santa Fe crossed the miles and recorded the show (If you’d like a recording of it or other shows, write us through the Contact page).
Since then, I’ve been quietly working on a new project, participating in a few Bookstore readings. My last reading of the year was with the wonderful LOGOS Readings series on the anniversary of the UN Declaration of Human Rights.
On the publishing front I'm very pleased that my poem Survivante will appear in the well-respected Quebec journal POSSIBLES, and early April an excerpt of my personal essay Chère Gabrielle appears in the new and very interesting ART/ICULATION magazine. The fine internet review Françoise Stéréo published my poems, The Half of it and October last Fall. There seem to be more and more readers for poetry in spite of the loss of many bookstores!
Thanks for visiting the site! Do come back, I look forward to sharing more news with you!
NEWS & EVENTS 2017
The most recent news is, I moved back to Montreal in July. As I arrived, I was happy to find my bilingual poem Si je disais/What Can I say? published in Montreal's Spanish-speaking publication The Apostles Review #19. Since then I have enjoyed reading with this warm and lively literary community.
From the beginning it has been a busy and fulfilling year, bringing together my different cultures and the worlds of teaching, visual art and Spoken Word performance.
Having initiated the first courses on Native Literature while still teaching in Montreal years ago, it was a real pleasure in February to be invited to give a lecture on Native American and First Nations literature for the Cercle Gabriel-Garcia-Marquez at Quebec City's Gabrielle Roy Library. Happily the evening was very well-attended and many among the audience discovered Native writers like Josephine Bacon (Innu), and Scott Momaday (Kiowa) for the first time! It's always an honor and a joy supporting Native culture through the literature.
March found me reconnecting with my visual art! Something I've been promising myself the last few years. My sculptures here, some ceramic, some bronze, are from the show Sculpter la matière at the contemporary Galérie Articho in Québec City.
And then came April, and the fruit of several years of friendship and writing and performing for my loyal Quebec City community. By way of thanks, I celebrated with a bilingual good-bye show at the Fou-Bar. Entitled Chant d'amitiés en mouvance (Song of Friendship and Survival) where I was again accompanied by the marvelous musicians Michel and Pierre Côté. You can find a few videos from the show, produced by Isabelle Moisan, in my YouTube playlist. Please do enjoy them!
And on the net, the exceedingly fine on-line magazine Françoise Stereo published a special poetry issue where my poem, « Vive la différence! Vif la difference! » was published both in video form and in the magazine. Do look them up. You can find that video in my YouTube playlist as well.
