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Local musician and poet laureate emeritus Lauren Best launched her new poetry book Just Leaves with a performance at the Owen Sound Library on Saturday, June 17.

To celebrate the release, her first full-length collection of poems, Best performed poetry with accompaniment by ambient music duo Lakewater. 

Lakewater (Andy Elliott and Dave Chevalier) and Best are both also on the bill at Electric Eclectics in August, performing music at the music and arts festival in Meaford. The book launch event was a special one-time collaboration, layering the band’s dreamy instrumental soundscapes with Best’s captivating performance poetry.

Paperback and ebook editions of Just Leaves are already available for purchase online. Best started writing the poems in 2018 with the intention of traditionally publishing. After finishing editing the collection, she decided to self-publish print, digital and audiobook editions.

This isn’t her first time leading a creative vision: she self-produced her debut album in 2011, which has since been heard on radio coast to coast.

Best remotely collaborated on the book design with Toronto-based graphic designer and film editor Sam Blake, who also grew up in Owen Sound. The empowered hands-on approach Best has taken to self-publish the project extends to the use of her own landscape photography on the front cover. A luminous photo of the author on the shores of Georgian Bay is featured on the back cover, along with a glowing quote from current Owen Sound Poet Laureate Richard-Yves Sitoski.

Best has recently facilitated poetry workshops with local elementary school students, as a member of the League of Canadian Poets through the Poets in the Schools program. Not only inspiring students with her performance poetry and story as a self-published author, she also guided the groups in experiential activities to collaboratively learn, explore, and create together. She takes an approach to interdisciplinary facilitation that develops creative writing, music, and performance skills. Best is still booking Just Leaves poetry performances/readings, author talks, and workshops.

Lauren Best was Owen Sound’s Poet Laureate 2017-2019, with a tenure focused on children. She founded Best Practice Arts in 2017 to help people unlock their creativity and learn music more effectively and intuitively through coaching, workshops, and community partnerships. She created the Infinite Improvisation Podcast with Seattle-based saxophonist and author Steve Treseler, which has reached listeners around the world since launching in 2022. Best’s poetry is published in several anthologies, including alongside other Poets Laureate Emeritus in the City of Windsor’s South Shore Collections series, A Manor of Words: Poetry at the Manor 10th Anniversary Anthology (Black Moss Press, 2022).

Lauren Best continues to offer voice coaching online, perform music and poetry, and creatively collaborate. She is currently working on an Ontario Arts Council selected Literary Works for Performance erasure poetry project, using her great-grandmother’s parenting handbook as source text for creating new erasure poetry with sound art. She lives in Owen Sound with her family.

All the information you need to have a book (or books!) of your own is here

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source: press release, Lauren Best

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