AFTER: Poems in Dialogue
A Canadian Anthology of Poetic Responses
Edited by Kyeren Regehr & Zoe Dickinson
Published by Caitlin Press

Join a Canada-wide poetic conversation!

We invite poets across Canada to contribute to AFTER: Poems in Dialogue, a national anthology celebrating the timeless tradition of poetic response. Just as poets have always been in conversation—across generations, cultures, and languages—this collection invites new work that responds to the voices shaping Canadian poetry today.

The anthology centers on the vibrant community of over 60 Canadian poets featured in Season 29 of Planet Earth Poetry, each with a new book of Canadian poetry.

• Two submission periods:
  Jan–May (NOW CLOSED) & June - Sept

• All submissions (from both periods) will be receive responses at the end of our process.

• Email: afteranthology@gmail.com

Submission Periods:

1. January 1 – May 31, 2025 (NOW CLOSED! Thank you to all who submitted!)
   For poems responding to poets featured between September and December 2024

2. June 15 – September 1, 2025
   For poems responding to poets featured between January and June 2025

Submission Guidelines:

• Eligibility: Open to all Canadian poets

• Submit: Up to six poems per submission period

• Response Mode: Poems may respond in any meaningful way—dialogue, homage, resonance, challenge, shared themes, or formal innovation.

• Each poem must clearly name the poet and poem it responds to AND the book the poem is from. Responses can be to ANY poem written by the poet in question, and are not limited to the specific poems/books the poet performed at PEP. Your six poems could respond to six different poets, or all respond to the same poet.

• Publication Status: Unpublished poems are preferred; previously published work will be considered with reprint permission

How to Submit:

• Attach: Word or PDF file(s) containing your poems. Please send one file for each poet to whom you are responding. For example, if you have two poems responding to John Smith, both would be saved in one file. If each of your six poems respond to different poets, you will send six files. If all six respond to the same poet, you will send one file.

• File name format: “Your Name - Name of Poet Being Responded To”

• Include in the email:

  • Full name

  • Mailing address

  • Phone number

  • Email address

  • Short third-person bio (20-30 words)

  • Titles of the poems, the books they’re from, and the poets they respond to

• Send to: afteranthology@gmail.com

• Subject line: “AFTER Submission – [Your Name]” You may send up to six poems within each submission period. All of the accompanying information MUST be in the email-letter. Thank you. :)

SUBMIT HERE

We are committed to equity in the arts!
We actively encourage submissions from poets who identify as Indigenous, Black, People of Colour, LGBTQ2S+, disabled, neurodivergent, and/or members of other historically underrepresented communities.

When selecting poetry for the anthology, our aim is to represent as many poets from Season 29 as possible, and to offer space to poets in the anthology as equitably as possible—all while adhering to the highest of literary standards.

We encourage all poets to send their work!
Whoever you are, you are welcome here.

MINI RESPONSE POEM WORKSHOPS

Join us for a series of FREE generative workshops tailored to writing response poems!

Each workshop will be a bite-sized 45 mins long and focus on a different approach to response poems.

We’ll look at examples, offer mini writing exercises to get you started, and even show you how to format attributions!

All workshops will be held at Russell Books Victoria right before our Friday evening events.
Please arrive ON TIME—we will begin immediately.

Donations of $5-10 to Planet Earth Poetry are welcome, but we are happy just to have you join in the workshop!

(Sign up for the open mic will begin AFTER the workshop is finished.)

FRIDAY NIGHT COMMUNITY OPEN MIC
(the longest running poetry open mic in Victoria—consistently making space for local poetry since 1995!)

We invite the community to read their “after” poems at our weekly open mic. When we read our work to a live audience we get immediate feedback via the audience, and as a result we can hone our work—we often hear it more clearly with an audience than when reading work aloud to ourselves.

Sign up for the open mic begins at around 7:00pm every Friday (unless otherwise specified on the homepage of this website or on our social media).
RUSSELL BOOKS: 747 Fort St #100, Victoria, BC V8W 3E9

MONTHLY AFTERNOON COMMUNITY OPEN MIC
We also host a monthly open mic at New Horizons in James Bay: sign up begins at 1:30pm (and it’s usually easier to get on the list for this one!) Please see our homepage for dates.
NEW HORIZONS: 234 Menzies Street, Victoria BC

Please take a moment to familiarize yourself with our open mic etiquette HERE

Zoe Dickinson

Zoe Dickinson’s poetry is rooted in British Columbia’s Pacific coastline, with a focus on local ecology and human relationships with nature. She is a manager at Russell Books, one of Canada’s largest used, antiquarian, and new bookstores. Between 2020-2023, she was the Artistic Director of Planet Earth Poetry Reading Series, where she continues to volunteer as a board member. Zoe has a B.A. in Classics and Liberal Arts from Concordia University, and an MLIS from Dalhousie.

She has published two award-winning chapbooks: Public Transit (Leaf Press, 2015) and intertidal: poems from the littoral zone (Raven Chapbooks, 2022). Her work has also appeared in anthologies including Worth More Standing: Poets and Activists Pay Homage to Trees (2022), and literary journals such as Existere, Prairie Fire, and Contemporary Verse 2. Her first full-length poetry collection is forthcoming from Guernica Editions in 2026.

zoedickinson.com

Kyeren Regehr

Kyeren Regehr’s collection Cult Life, was a finalist for the 2021 ReLit Awards and The Victoria Butler Book Prize; Disassembling A Dancer won the inaugural Raven Chapbooks contest, and has two earlier chapbooks. Her poetry has been published in dozens of literary periodicals and anthologies in Canada, Australia, and the USA, including The Literary Review of Canada, Canadian Literature, Best Canadian Poetry in English, and Best New Poets. Her work has been thrice longlisted for the CBC Poetry Awards.

Kyeren served on the editorial board of Canada's iconic literary periodical, The Malahat Review. She holds a BFA and MFA in Writing, taught in the Department of Writing at the University of Victoria, and has mentored poets through the Writer’s Union of Canada, the League of Canadian Poets.

Kyeren is the 5th Artistic Director of Planet Earth Poetry, and the 7th Poet Laureate of Victoria, BC.

kyerenregehr.ca