Patrick Lane, editor

Award-winning poet Patrick Lane is editor of this remarkable new anthology of poetry featuring Canada’s most revered writers alongside emerging poets and brand new voices – all readers at the Mocambopo reading series in Victoria, BC. At the Pacific edge of the country, at the southern tip of Vancouver Island, Victoria, BC is home to one of Canada’s most vibrant literary communities. Every Friday evening for the past six years the Mocambo Cafe in downtown Victoria has hosted ‘open mike’ poetry followed by the presentation of a featured reader. In a crowded small room, an eclectic assortment of poetry enthusiasts from all walks of life, drop their weekday identities and release the poet within. Distinguished featured poets and writers of all description mingle in an atmosphere of intense concentration on and delight in the dancing word. Mocambo Nights serves Canadian poetry at its freshest and finest, a collection readers will want to sample again and again.

A portion of the proceeds of this anthology benefits the Mocambopo Prize for an emerging writer, won in December 2001 by Joelene Heathcote.

Patrick Lane, the editor of Mocambo Nights, is one of Canada’s most revered poets. He has received the Governor General’s Award and also the BC Book prize for poetry, along with numerous other distinctions. His most recent book is The Bare Plum of Winter Rain (Harbour).