Welcome to the homepage of Zoë Landale

Thanks for visiting! I am a Canadian writer who divides my time between Pender Island, BC, and Vancouver, where I teach at Kwantlen Polytechnic University. Actually I work from Pender as well, as I often teach online writing courses.

My writing has won significant national and international awards in poetry, nonfiction and fiction. In it, you’ll find a great interest in form, and quite a bit to do with nature and spirituality—and by this I do not mean religion. Ronsdale Press said of my poetry, “Hers is the lyric ability to evoke the particular with such warmth and grace that one cannot help becoming aware of a spiritual dimension.”

In May 2009, my husband, Garnet Coburn, and I moved into a one room cottage on Pender Island that Garnet had designed and built. We lived there until November of that year when were were able to move into the main house that Garnet built for us.  This is our third summer here.  It’s been an exciting process; we have almost an acre of sunny clearing in the forest which backs onto a park. Landscape architect Robin Jones of Garden Art Gate Company in Victoria has helped me with the garden. A selection of photos detailing how construction is coming  could be found on my blog until recently. I updated the template and it wiped out all the pictures. I’m still trying to decide what to do about this.

I am a passionate gardener who for years had to content myself with a tiny walled space in Richmond, BC. When we bought our lot, I immediately began planning a real garden again. When I’m in the throes of thinking about planting–it goes in spurts–it will keep me awake at night, mentally going over the Hillier Gardener’s Guide to Trees and Shrubs.

Shortly after we moved in, a friend said, “Oh Garnet must be so happy to be finished building.” We laughed. Our project here will go on for years; there is so much to be done. But at least the siding is on the house, the tool shed, the studio, we have seventeen trees in and deer-fenced, and the grounds are tidy. We have new and delightful projects on the go. Last spring it was a kitchen garden.

 

 

This year I yanked all the weeds out of the twelve foot cliff in front of our property and planted it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On this website you’ll find information about my books and audio sections. The on craft section is added to on an irregular basis. If you have a question I could answer there, by all means ask.

Poke around. With any luck you’ll find writing or links which appeal to you and maybe even informs.

The photo on the header of the website is by Cathryn Lawrence, a friend for many years. We were in Iceland at the time.

Thanks to Christopher Bowers for help with the website–meaning he did all the hard parts!

I just deleted over 2,500 spam postings. Forgive me if there were a few comments from real people in there. Thanks, Christopher, for alerting me to the existence of Akismet. It’s spam-removing software that works like a treat.