Kim Goldberg is an award-winning poet, journalist and author of six books. She has supported herself from her writing for more than thirty years from her home in Nanaimo, BC. Her latest book is RED ZONE, a photo-illustrated poem diary of Nanaimo’s homeless population. Her previous collection is Ride Backwards on Dragon: a poet’s journey through Liuhebafa.
Kim’s issue-oriented writings on politics, environment and social justice have appeared in more than 2,000 articles published in Macleans, Canadian Geographic, Vancouver Sun, Georgia Straight, The Progressive, BBC Wildlife and many other periodicals in North America and abroad. She has written extensively on deforestation, Native rights, US nuclear submarines at Nanoose Bay, and the 1990 car-bombing of forest activist Judi Bari.
Her poems, fiction and graffiti-based art have appeared in dozens of literary magazines and anthologies around the world including The Capilano Review (Canada), Geist (Canada), Istanbul Literary Review (Turkey), The Arabesques Review (Algeria), Voices Israel (Israel), Stony Thursday Book (Ireland), Neon Highway (England), Cimarron Review (USA), Post Road (USA) and elsewhere.
View her full list of publications here.
In 2007, after a life-long career as an investigative journalist and nonfiction author, Kim released her first book of poetry, Ride Backwards On Dragon. In it, she maps her own tumultuous journey through eight years of writerly silence, Taoist mysticism and the secrets of internal alchemy using the 66-move structure of Liuhebafa – an ancient Chinese martial art she has studied since 1997. The book was a finalist for Canada’s Gerald Lampert Memorial Award for poetry.
She followed that up in 2009 with RED ZONE, her graffiti-strewn verse map of homelessness in Nanaimo. RED ZONE was so successful that it went into a second printing after just seven weeks and has now been taught as a literature course text at Vancouver Island University and elsewhere. Reviewers have compared the work to the writings of Allen Ginsberg, Marge Piercy and John Steinbeck.
Born and raised in Oregon, with a Biology degree from University of Oregon, Kim came to Canada with her family during the Vietnam War years. She has lived in Nanaimo ever since. She is an avid birdwatcher, hiker and field naturalist who has spent decades exploring the mossy nooks, crannies, back roads and deer trails of Vancouver Island, which led to her fourth book: Where to See Wildlife on Vancouver Island.
In 2008, Kim began creating Poem Galleries in vacant downtown storefronts, papering derelict windows with poems by local poets. She participates annually in Random Acts of Poetry – a nationwide literacy initiative in which poets spend a week reading poems to strangers and giving away free books. 
Kim has organized coffeehouses and other Nanaimo events for Poets Against War and for Writers Against the War. She is a frequent performer at Wordstorm and other spoken word events on Vancouver Island. Kim also co-hosts an “Urban Poetry Café” on Nanaimo’s Radio CHLY, reading poems from Guantánamo detainees, the Cuban Five, Iraqi and Palestinian poets and other marginalized voices. Under her publishing imprint of Pig Squash Press, she creates hand-built book-art objects from tree bark, tarpaper, candy wrappers and whatever else she finds lying around downtown Nanaimo.
KIM’S BOOKS:
Poetry:
- Red Zone. (2009, Pig Squash Press)
- Ride Backwards on Dragon: a poet’s journey through Liuhebafa. (2007, Leaf Press; re-issued 2011, Pig Squash Press)
Nonfiction:
- Where to See Wildlife on Vancouver Island. (1997, Harbour Publishing)
- Vox Populi: Getting Your Ethnic Group on Community TV. (1993, New Star Books)
- Submarine Dead Ahead! Waging Peace in America’s Nuclear Colony. (1991, Harbour Publishing)
- The Barefoot Channel: Community Television as a Tool for Social Change. (1990, New Star Books)
More information on Kim Goldberg from these websites:
rob mclennan’s 12 or 20 questions
Contact Kim at: goldberg@ncf.ca
Ride Backwards on Dragon 
Dearest, I am from The Netherlands and learning the moves of LHBF.
I am looking for information behind the meaning of the 66 moves.
Can Anybody advise on a source on internet or learning book?
Hi Marteen. My book Ride Backwards on Dragon contains 66 poems – one for each LHBF move. At the end of the book, I have about 25 pages explaining the meaning of the 66 moves in terms of Taoist internal alchemy. I sell the book for $19 (Cdn) + $10 to ship overseas, if you are interested. I don’t know of other sources decoding the meaning of the 66 moves, but there may be other sources available.
Good for you for learning Liuhebafa! It’s a beautiful and powerful martial art.
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