Dual Book Launch

Link to Tickets: Eventbrite

On Thursday, April 11th at 6pm, join Massy Arts, Massy Books, Anstruther Press and Palimpsest Press in celebrating the dual launches of Ghost Work by Robert Colman and Rig Veda by Christina Shah, with host David Ly.

This project has been made possible by the Government of Canada. Ce projet a été rendu possible grâce au gouvernement du Canada.

Venue & Accessibility

The event will be hosted at the Massy Arts Gallery, at 23 East Pender Street in Chinatown, Vancouver. We are located in the former MING WO building.

Registration is free and required for entrance.

The gallery is wheelchair accessible and a gender-neutral washroom is on-site.

Please refrain from wearing scents or heavy perfumes.

For more on accessibility including parking, seating, venue measurements and floor plan, and how to request ASL interpretation please visit: massyarts.com/accessibility

Covid Protocols: Masks keep our community safe and are mandatory (N95 masks are recommended as they offer the best protection). We ask if you are showing symptoms, that you stay home. Thank you kindly.

About the books:

GHOST WORK (Palimpsest Press, 2024) How do we redefine the self when memory begins to deteriorate? This question is at the heart of Ghost Work, a suite of poems that explores a son’s gradual loss of his father from dementia. In compassionate, well-crafted pantoums, triolets, ghazals, and sonnets, Rob Colman probes family connection, digging into the liminal space memory preserves between our natural and built environments. Ghost Work is at once a tribute to a lost family member, and a testament to the fragility of the human condition.

RIG VEDA (Anstruther Press, 2023)

rig veda is a collection of industrial work poetry written from the perspective of a woman traveller with no map. Action-packed with mechanics, salespeople, unruly bar patrons, the dying, corporate theatrics, breakdowns (both mechanical and nervous), obsolescence, fear and loathing– and all of the intimate beauty and decay of the built environment.

About the authors:

Robert Colman is a Newmarket, Ont.-based poet, critic, and editor. He is the author of four poetry collections, including Ghost Work and Democratically Applied Machine, both from Palimpsest Press.

Christina Shah lives in Vancouver and works in heavy industry, where she drinks from the firehose of knowledge. Her poetry has appeared in numerous Canadian literary journals, including The Fiddlehead, Vallum, Arc, Grain, PRISM international, EVENT, The Malahat Review, The Antigonish Review and elsewhere. Her poem, ‘they canned a good man today’, was shortlisted for The Fiddlehead’s 2021 Ralph Gustafson Poetry Prize. Her poem, ‘interior bar, 1986’, was selected for Best Canadian Poetry 2023. She is one-fifth of the Harbour Centre 5 poetry collective, whose chapbook, Brine, was released in 2022. Her first videopoem, ‘rig veda’ (in collaboration with videographer Mark Mushet), was translated into Spanish and screened at the 2023 Cinemística festival in Granada, Spain, and the 2023 Versi Di Luce festival in Modica, Sicily. rig veda, her first solo chapbook (Anstruther Press), was released in 2023. She has some strong opinions on soft pretzels.

About the host:

David Ly is the author of Mythical Man (2020) and Dream of Me as Water (2022), both published under the Anstruther Books imprint of Palimpsest Press, and short-listed for the 2021 and 2023 ReLit Poetry Awards, respectively. He is also co-editor (with Daniel Zomparelli) of Queer Little Nightmares: An Anthology of Monstrous Fiction and Poetry (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2022).