Poet Talk: John Givins – Blowing Up Growing Up

Join us for the launch of local poet John Givins’ first book of poetry, Blowing Up Growing Up (2024, Askance Publishing), from which he’ll be reading selected poems.

John Givins was led to scribbling poetic thoughts while navigating the traumas of his wife’s cancer treatments. The collection has a mix of many subjects and observations: love and whimsy, neighbourhood perspectives, travel experiences and autobiographical memories of family and friends.

Copies of Blowing Up Growing Up will be available for purchase from the author.

About The Author

As a young boy, all through elementary and secondary school, John showed very little artistic promise.

At the age of 23, in the tropics of Kerala, India, at an Ashram called The World Academy of Wonder, he began pen and ink illustrations and acrylic surrealist paintings under the inspiration of the painters, Jean & Nicole Letschert.

He returned to Vancouver from India in 1976 to attend Langara College where he acquired a diploma in Fine Arts. He then attended ECCAD (Emily Carr) graduating in 1985 with a major in ceramics. On graduation, he was commissioned to execute many ceramic relief murals of sea life for a number of local and international restaurants, hotels and businesses.

For 10 years he taught pottery, hand building ceramics and mosaics in the Vancouver School Board night school program. His day job of restoration carpentry was also a satisfying occupation subsidizing his creative production.

On retirement, John enjoyed a new outlet to satisfy his love of wood and ceramics in carving bowls from uniquely shaped driftwood. More recently, spurred in part by his wife’s encounters with ill-health, John has found a creative outlet in writing poetry.

He shares his time between Vancouver and Bowen Island, British Columbia.

This is his first published poetry collection.