Poets Phil Hall (left) and Steven Ross Smith

friday, january 10
phil hall and steven Ross smith

Phil Hall has published, since 1973, over twenty books of poetry and as many chapbooks. He has won the Governor General’s Literary Award, and Ontario’s Trillium Book Award. He has twice been nominated for the Griffin Poetry Prize. He has served as writer-in-residence at many Canadian institutions, most recently at the University of New Brunswick. He is also a valued editor, and lives near Perth, Ontario.  

Steven Ross Smith, Banff Poet Laureate, 2018-21, loves music and has published the multi-book poetic series fluttertongue; Books 1-7. His fourteenth book is Glimmer: Short Fictions, (Radiant Press, 2022.) Recent is The Green Rose, a collaboration with Phil Hall (above/ground press). Smith now lives and writes in Victoria, BC.

Their joint project The Green Rose is a playful poetic collaboration in couplets that began in Costa Rica as a coast-to-coast call and response and concluded on Vancouver Island in the winter of 2023. It features word-play, references cited or hidden, music notes, and daring and disorienting leaps. It appeared as a full-length chapbook from rob mclennan’s above/ground press in Ottawa in 2024. 

Poetic Appetizer

1. Selection from “Petal & Fracture”

Savour joy’s
arrival
when it comes

     red berries in the hedgerow

Poet Rob Manery

friday, january 17
Rob manery

Rob Manery lives in Vancouver, BC on the unceded and unsurrendered territory of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and the Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations, where he is the editor of Some, a print-only poetry magazine. He is the author of It’s Not As If It Hasn’t Been Said Before, and the chapbooks Richter-Rauzer Variations; Many, Not Any; and Elegies.

Influenced by John Cage and Jackson Mac Low, Robert Manery’s As They Say often fuses chance procedures with intentional composition that is attentive to the aural possibilities of language, cognizant of Zukofsky’s definition of poetry as having a “lower limit speech/upper limit music.” The poems in this book range from austere elegies to playful gestures towards narrative, alert to the ambiguities of language and form.

Poetic Appetizer
from “Equivocation”:

when we 
mingle 
together
knowing

nevertheless 
I know not

understanding 
within myself 
these other words

Poet Brian Day

FRIDAY, january 17
brian day

Brian Day is the author of five books of poetry, including The Daring of Paradise,  Azure, and his latest, The Making.  His work has been praised for its “luxurious sensuality,” its “sustained spiritual attention,” and its “cultural breadth and . . . verbal richness.”  Brian Day lives on Salt Spring.    

In his latest book-length poem, The Making, he retells the story of the universe through science and story, tracing the arc of the cosmos from its origin to the present. The Making is a story that illuminates our time of planetary crisis and imagines ways we might press forward.

Poetic Appetizer
excerpt from “Listening 1” , The Making

We court creation, invite its lines,
listen for language oracular, lyric,

and ours, for a path toward some conceivable coming.
Train our ears to the notes of a newly scored covenant;

lay the narrative that tracks us from never to now.
Stitch our history back to the shadow of its stories

that knowledge might again consort with image
and with a silken love of language.  Ease

as the cosmos to the slippers of poetry; recount
the making in its sweep within the temple of our ears.

community WRITING PRACTICE
WITH GUEST POET barbara tran:
January 18th @11AM PACIFIC TIME

Join us for Writing Practice on Zoom. Writing Practice is free to attend — please feel free to invite a friend and share these Zoom credentials with them. We’ll have exercises, discussion, and silent time to write together.

Barbara Tran writes poetry, short fiction, and screenplays. She authored the narration of Madame Pirate: Becoming a Legend, a short VR film nominated for Best VR Story at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival. Barbara’s debut poetry book, Precedented Parroting, is a finalist for the 2024 Governor General’s Literary Award. 

Please join the Zoom Room directly HERE
Meeting ID: 494 660 4447 Passcode: 2129
*Note this is a Zoom-only event.

friday, JanuarY 24

Join us at New Horizons in James Bay at 2pm, January 24th, for poet Faith Arkorful.

Doors at 1:30pm, with sign-up for open mic.

New Horizons Centre is at 234 Menzies St. in James Bay (street parking only). Please note that unlike our evening readings, the afternoon readings will not be livestreamed or recorded.

Poet Nina Mosall

FRIDAY, JANUARY 24
NINA MOSALL

Nina Mosall, who was born to Iranian refugees, is a poet and public librarian currently based in Victoria. When she's not writing, singing to babies or helping people login to their email accounts, Nina enjoys exploring the island with her dog and reading on beaches.

Bebakhshid is her debut collection. It revolves around intimate identity intersections of being Persian, an immigrant, and a woman. Mosall touches everyday banalities as well as challenges, exploring familial relationships, as well as chosen social environments. Her work is social commentary on the treatment and experience of Middle Easterners, as well as the romantic and mundane experiences of the everyday. Bebakhshid transverses intimate accounts, storylines, and snippets, weaving narrative poetry throughout, to foreground the importance of community and relationships.

Poetic Appetizer

When the towers fell
I could not understand them
Am I terror?

Poet Faith Arkorful

FRIDAY, January 24
faith arkorful

Faith Arkorful is a writer of Grenadian and Ghanaian descent. Her work has appeared in GUTS Magazine, Peach Mag, PRISM International, Hobart Pulp, and Canthius Magazine, amongst other places. In 2019 she was a semi-finalist in the 92Y Discovery Poetry Contest and shortlisted for the CBC Poetry Prize. Faith was born in Toronto, where she still resides. 

Hauntings form the canopy of her book The Seventh Town of Ghosts. These titular towns, centred in yesterdays, tomorrows, and the ongoing, lead to a special kind of singing: songs to the reader who wrestles with existence, the unsure peace within family, and the often-tense interdependence of life. Here, discernment is ever-present, guided by Faith Arkorful’s insights on not only the ravages of the state and the police upon the Black family and life at large, but also on a kaleidoscope of connections—sisterhood, daughterhood, kinship, solitude, death, romance—and how tenderness, chosen and repeated, can shield against life’s blows. 

Poet Marita Dachsel

FRIDAY, january 31
Marita dachsel

Marita Dachsel is the author of the poetry books There Are Not Enough Sad Songs, Glossolalia, All Things Said & Done, and the play Initiation Trilogy. Her essays have appeared in many anthologies. Most recently, she co-edited Sharp Notions: Essays from the Stitching Life with Nancy Lee.

Her book There Are Not Enough Sad Songs explores parenthood, love, and the grief of losing those both close and distant. Authentic and controlled, full of complexity and disorder, these poems offer release despite their painful twists and topics. Readers across generations will find kindship in Dachsel’s grief-fuelled and vulnerable words. 

Poet Trisia Eddy Woods

FRIDAY, January 31

Trisia Eddy Woods (she/her) is the author of A Road Map for Finding Wild Horses. A former editor for Red Nettle Press, Trisia’s writing has appeared in a variety of literary journals and chapbooks across North America. She and her family, both human and nonhuman, reside in Treaty 6 territory.

A Road Map for Finding Wild Horses is written as a response to the intersections of human, animal, and land that occur while exploring the Alberta foothills as a woman alone. The horses offer a reflection on our relationship with nature, particularly now as we witness the impending effects of a climate crisis. We are reminded of the ways in which opening ourselves up to listening, whether to others or to ourselves, makes us tenderly aware of both beauty and loss.

Poetic Appetizer

Deforestation is a leading cause of soil erosion

A.  Imagine you were severed
at the stalk, left to shrivel 
in the sun, while your roots
desperately
tried to soak up the last
remnants of rainwater
that had fallen
several weeks before.

Q.  What kind of poem would you write?