FRIDAY, january 9
Special 30th Anniversary Event:
Planet Earth Poetry's Stewards, Artistic Directors
& Presidents Past & Present 

HOST: Rhonda Ganz is a longtime Planet Earth Poetry adherent whose Frequent, small loads of laundry (Mother Tongue) won the Relit Award for Poetry. She reads crime fiction, fondles paper in old books, and needlefelts fancy hearts in the Victoria home she shares with a quiet man and two not-so-quiet cats.

Wendy Morton is the author of six books of poetry and a memoir entitled Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast, as well as being the first official Artistic Director of Planet Earth Poetry Reading Series—Wendy and Yvonne Blomer received permission from P.K. Page to name the series after her famous glosa, “Planet Earth.” Wendy worked extensively with Indigenous students on the Elder Project, and was a founder of Random Acts of Poetry.

In 2019, The Capital Regional District designated the non-monetary position of Poet Laureate of Juan de Fuca to Wendy. Wendy is a recipient Order of B.C., 2010 Spirit Bear Award, an honorary citizen of Victoria, and the honourary ambassador for the Federation of B.C. Writers.

Yvonne Blomer is the author of Death of Persephone: A Murder, a poetic noir mystery rooted in myth and the ongoing violence against women and girls. An excerpt won the Gwendolyn MacEwen Poetry Prize in 2021. She has edited five anthologies, including the celebrated eco-poetry triptych Refugium, Sweet Water, and Sublime, as well as Hologram: Homage to P.K. Page, and served as Arc Magazine’s poet-in-residence for 2022–23.

With an MA from the University of East Anglia, she teaches immersive poetry workshops online. Yvonne was the artistic director of Planet Earth Poetry from 2009-2015.

Daniel G. Scott has published six volumes of poetry including Travels with Athóma (Aeolus House) & Aftertime(Ekstasis Editions).  He has several chapbooks, published individual poems in collections & has numerous academic publications. Writing has saved his life more than once. Daniel was the third artistic director of Planet Earth Poetry from 2015-2020.

Leanne Boschman is

Poet Elee Kraljii Gardiner

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elee kraljii gardiner

Elee Kraljii Gardiner is the author of the poetry collections Trauma Head, serpentine loop, and Sometimes, Forest (forthcoming in 2026) as well as the anthologies Against Death: 35 Essays on Living and V6A: Writing from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. A frequent collaborator with choreographers, sound and visual artists, Elee directs Vancouver Manuscript Intensive. She is the poet laureate of Vancouver.

Trauma Head, winner of the Cogswell Award for Literary Excellence, investigates the experience of stroke, and serpentine loop, a finalist for the Souster Award, considers gender and physicality through the idea of ice. A frequent collaborator with choreographers, musicians, sound, and visual artists, Elee is currently collaborating with nature via a series of durational art installations that investigate the law of thermodynamics and cultural ideas regarding the passing of time. Newer poems are rooted in eco-poetics and reflect her developing theory of hylofeminism, a feminism of the forest.

Elee Kraljii Gardiner’s reading is sponsored by The Writers’ Union of Canada.

Poet Neil Surkan

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neil surkan

Neil Surkan is the author of two full-length poetry collections, Unbecoming and On High, and the chapbooks Die Workbook, Ruin, Their Queer Tenderness, and Super, Natural. A new collection, Empties, is forthcoming in 2026. He is the current Poet Laureate of Nanaimo, BC (2024-26). Website: neilsurkan.com

Unbecoming clings to hope while the world deteriorates and grows less hospitable from moment to moment. Interplaying tenderness with dogged perseverance, these poems tumble through vignettes of degraded landscapes, ebbing spiritual communities, faltering men, and precarious friendships. In the face of such despair, responsibility and optimism bolster one another - exuberance, amazement, and compassion persist despite the worsening of the wounded Earth.  The poems in Unbecoming face the horizon with wary eyes and refuse to turn away.

Poet Kyeren Regehr

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kyeren regehr

Kyeren Regehr is the author of Cult Life (finalist for ReLit Awards and The Victoria Butler Book Prize) and Disassembling A Dancer (winner of Raven Chapbooks), as well as two earlier chapbooks. Her poetry has been published in Canada, Australia, and the USA, and thrice-longlisted for the CBC Poetry Awards. She’s the artistic director of Planet Earth Poetry reading series, and is co-editing After: Poems in Dialogue with Zoe Dickinson, forthcoming with Caitlin Press. Kyeren is the 7th Poet Laureate of Victoria and hosts The Poet Laureate Podcast. Website: kyerenregehr.ca

Poet Janet Kvammen

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janet Kvammen

Janet Kvammen is a poet and mixed media artist with a passion for the abstract. President of the Royal City Literary Arts Society, she is the recipient of the 2023 Bernie Legge Artist of the Year award. Janet is the current Poet Laureate for the City of New Westminster, BC.

Poet Marilyn Bowering

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marilyn bowering

Marilyn Bowering’s poetry  has twice been short-listed for the Governor-General’s Award and received  many prizes named after women. Last year’s More Richly in Earth (MQUP), part memoir and part literary investigation, was a finalist for the Saltire and the Hubert Evans Prizes. She lives in Victoria BC. 

In Frayed Linens, Marilyn Bowering writes of the beauty and resilience within the darkness of the human journey. She is accompanied by ancestral and mythic figures, beloved poets, and the ghosts of her own life-story as the body and spirit — the frayed linens of the title—are worn and renewed over time. These are poems of witness, empathy and compassion, clear-eyed in their confrontation of failure and in the capacity of friendship, love and will, to retain redemptive power.  

Poet Michael V. Smith

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michael V. Smith

Michael V. Smith is a writer, performer, and filmmaker. Smith is the winner of numerous awards, including the inaugural Dayne Ogilvie Prize and the Director’s Prize at Cinema Diverse in Palm Springs. He is currently a UBCO Researcher of the Year. He lives in Kelowna, BC. 

Michael V. Smith’s poetic memoir Soundtrack is about growing up gay in the shadow of AIDS. Embodying an elusive part of queer history, these song and album-inspired poems capture the last three decades of the millennium and reveal how music has an uncanny ability to remind us not just where we were at a given moment in time but who we were.