Poet Cynthia Woodman Kerkham

friday, march 7
Cynthia woodman kerkham

Award-winning poet Cynthia Woodman Kerkham hasn’t found a body of water she doesn’t like. Along with Water Quality, she is the author of Good Holding Ground and With Feathers. She also teaches and edits and was the co-author of the anthology Poems from Planet Earth - the planet, and reading series, for which she is eternally grateful. ,   

Poetic Appetizer
Excerpt from “Burnt pot, Riverbank, Indifferent Sky”

She taught me to swim in Shuswap Lake, auntie who asks me every week
where I’m calling from. Who says: I’m afraid I’ll forget who you are.
Her hands below my spine holding me in the lake, 
swirling loose limbs, making water friendly.

Poet Kegan McFadden

friday, march 7
kegan mcfadden

Kegan McFadden is a writer, curator, and visual artist. He has been an active contributor to the arts in Canada for two decades. Kegan's poems have appeared in GEIST, Poetry is Dead, LemonHound Review, FRONT Magazine, and Cv2, where, along with Clarise Foster, he co-edited The Poetics of Queer (2015). Originally from Treaty 1 Territory (Winnipeg), Kegan has been living within the traditional territories of the Lekwungen-speaking peoples since 2017, where he is the Executive Director of the Victoria Arts Council, and has contributed to various boards in a volunteer capacity, including Victoria Festival of Authors.

In a new collection of writing, Kegan McFadden reflects on the past year across three sections of texts and poems that blur memory, current events, aging, and art history. at sixes & sevens (a text and eight poems from my 42nd year) is McFadden’s most recent chapbook,  published in a limited edition by As We Try & Sleep Press (2024).

Poetic Appetizer
“Ain’t Nuthin’”
(found poem of top rated songs by Elvis Presley according to Billboard, upon learning that he died at the age of 42)

ALWAYS ON MY MIND FOR THE HEART MOODY
BLUE U.S. MALE BOSSA NOVA BABY WAY DOWN
GOOD LUCK CHARM MY BOY RETURN TO SENDER
SEPARATE WAYS IN THE GHETTO A LITTLE LESS
CONVERSATION FEVER IT’S MIDNIGHT STUCK ON
YOU IF I CAN DREAM SHE’S NOT YOU
STEAMROLLER BLUES KENTUCKY RAIN SUSPICIOUS
MINDS LITTLE SISTER TOO MUCH DON’T CRY
DADDY CRYING IN THE CHAPEL HARD HEADED
WOMAN GUITAR MAN HOUND DOG ONE NIGHT
MEMORIES BLUE SUEDE SHOES BURNING LOVE
LOVE ME TENDER ARE YOU LONESOME TONIGHT?
(LET ME BE YOUR) TEDDY BEAR HEARTBREAK
HOTEL CAN’T HELP FALLING IN LOVE DON’T BE
CRUEL IT’S NOW OR NEVER JAILHOUSE ROCK ALL
SHOOK UP THAT’S ALL RIGHT DON’T

Poet Bren Simmers

FRIDAY, march 14
bren simmers

Bren Simmers is the winner of the CBC Poetry Prize and The Malahat Review Long Poem Prize. Her latest poetry collection The Work (Gaspereau Press) was a finalist for the 2024 Governor General’s Literary Awards. She lives on Epekwitk/PEI.

The Work engages with the work of love and loss and the hope that we might somehow learn to carry our grief. Simmers writes of an accumulation of losses—the sudden death of her father, the descent of her mother into dementia, her sister-in-law’s terminal illness—and of the work of slowly making wholeness out of brokenness. Her writing reminds us that healing often comes through saying “Hello” and “Yes”; a realization that “all this noticing / was love.”

Poetic Appetizer
Excerpt from “Ice Fishing”

The last time I was in an airport I ran / from one empty terminal to the next /
looking for a time zone with my father / still in it.

Poet Emma Sloan

friday, march 14
emma stone

Emma Sloan is a poet, short fiction author, and journalist with works published across 300+ international digital and print publications—including, but not limited to, The Writer Magazine, The Vancouver Island Poetry Collective, Her Umbrella Magazine, Alopecia UK, and LandLocked Literary Journal. She is the author of “Foxglove” (Chapter House, 2022).

As a Writing and Publishing graduate of the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada, Emma works as a professional copywriter and content writer in a multitude of industries. Her creative writing orbits around the intersection between modern mythology and grief. Her chapbook Opheliac was named a runner-up in the Black River Chapbook Competition and is forthcoming with Black Lawrence Press in fall 2024.

Poetic Appetizer
Excerpt from “Girl Tongue”

no more breaking in the word sorry ‘til it’s tired, no more only rearing when tread on, no more gunshot-soft one-night stands, no more hoarding words like sharp things during a manic episode, no more repurposing your throat for vomiting, no more maybe he’s not guilty, he seemed like a nice kid, no more scraping your tongue bleeding-raw in the shower, no more faux smiles in the courtroom, no more no more no more no more no more girl tongue, pry it out with nail clippers, flush it down the toilet like your childhood fish, sprout a replacement that’s more cobra than garden snake.

friday, march 21

Join us at New Horizons in James Bay at 2pm, on Friday, March 21 for poet Ben Robinson, who is a poet, musician and librarian. His first book, The Book of Benjamin, an essay on naming, birth, and grief was published by Palimpsest Press in 2023. His poetry collection, As Is, was published by ARP Books in September 2024. He has only ever lived in Hamilton, Ontario.

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 Ben Robinson

FRIDAY, march 21
ben robinson

Ben Robinson is a poet, musician and librarian. His first book, The Book of Benjamin, an essay on naming, birth, and grief was published by Palimpsest Press in 2023. His poetry collection, As Is, was published by ARP Books in September 2024. He has only ever lived in Hamilton, Ontario.

Ben Robinson’s As Is is a study in place, the town of Hamilton Ontario, considering what it means to be connected to or attempt a connection to place as a settler. The poems search for alternative frames for defining a local identity: expanding the sense of time to include the prehistoric, the fossil record of mammoth and wapiti in the area, and expanding the sense of place to consider the treaty boundary as a possible framework for understanding the region.

Poetic Appetizer

The potholes are circled in fluorescent paint.
It’s one person’s job to circle
and another’s to fill. What could be 
more like this city than highlighting its flaws 
in bright orange.

Poet Tina Biello

FRIDAY, march 21
tina biello

Tina Biello, an actor, a poet and playwright is Italian by way of Lake Cowichan, BC. She is born to immigrant parents from Southern Italy. The Weight of Survival is her 4th collection of poems. She was the second Poet Laureate of Nanaimo from 2017-2020. Since then she has been collaborating with composers. Her next book will be poems infused with recipes from her homeland.

What happens when your voice, your food, your home is different? How do you know how to be queer when there is no language or place for it? In The Weight of Survival, Tina Biello chronicles this upbringing of otherness, of being shaped by two very different communities, of blending identities into one, and what is left behind in the process.

Poetic Appetizer

“Advice to the Poet”
from The Weight of Survival

Don’t bring an umbrella when it rains.
In fact, leave your jacket at home too.

Walk, march, dance and jump your way
through pot holes so deep
your new boots
are now sullied and drenched.

Get wet.

Find the path beside the creek,
listen for the salmon.
They are remembering their way home.

Poet Al Rempel

FRIDAY, march 28
al rempel

Al Rempel is a poet and teacher in Prince George, BC. His books of poetry are Sprocket, Undiscovered Country, This Isn't the Apocalypse We Hoped For, and Understories. His poems have also appeared in a variety of journals, anthologies, chapbooks, and video-poems. Rempel’s poems have also been translated into Spanish and Italian. He has also published three chapbooks: Deerness, Four Neat Holes and The Picket Fence Diaries. His poems have been published in The Malahat Review, GRAIN, CV2, Event, subTerrain, and in various anthologies, including Rocksalt, 4 Poets, & The Best Canadian Poems, 2011.

Sprocket is a series of breathless prose-poems of the poet’s childhood adventures spent roaming free in the idyllic setting of Arnold, BC. Each poem is a snapshot of one or two memories. From climbing up the mountain to finding the best way ‘to run full blast through a cornfield just before harvest,’ Rempel takes his readers through an age where, as long as you were home by suppertime, you could go almost anywhere on your bike. 

Poet Harold Rhenisch

FRIDAY, february 28 -
harold Rhenisch

Harold Rhenisch studied poetry at the University of Victoria and has been writing from rural Cascadia for 44 years. He has won two Malahat Long Poem Prizes and prizes in two CBC poetry competitions. His memoir The Wolves at Evelyn won the George Ryga Prize. The Salmon Shanties is his 33rd book. 

Poetic Appetizer

Excerpt from “Smohalla’s Shanty”

At a certain point, one asks for a sparrow pecking at a discarded apple 
on the floor of a sky moving past at great speed,

the hills above the mouth of the Pisquouse glowing in the late season light, 
revealing the hill within the hill, both of them seen at once, 

which is the body, not a house to sit yourself down in, not shelter but windows, 
and just enough concrete and planking to hold them in place when the wind flows,

bread, water, cheese, perhaps an apple, no books all day, 
and then stars, your whole head wide open, scoured clean, 

and now whooping cranes flying through, 
every wing beat calling a sound from their chests,

whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, all in unison, 
in a sky of milk, over blue water.