Poet bronwyn preece

friday may 1
bronwyn preece

bronwyn preece, dubbed the ‘backcountry poet’, holds a PhD in performance. she is the author of knee deep in high water : riding the Muskwa-Kechika, expedition poems (Caitlin Press, 2023); and with Simply Read Books Sea to Sky Alphabet (2023); Gulf Islands Alphabet (2012) and the forthcoming Canadian Rockies Alphabet (2026).

Written wearing muddy boots, in wet tents and with frozen fingers, bronwyn preece’s hiking beyond is a collection steeped in the messiness of being alive. With reverence for geology, ornithology, botany, history and all that resists easy categorization, preece captures the soundbites, questions and quiet revelations of solo, backcountry travel. From recovery from injury to the realities of living with a genetic disorder, hiking beyond explores what it means to hike and to belong.

Poet Renee Sarojini Saklikar

friday may 1
renee sarojini saklikar

Renee Sarojini Saklikar is the author of six books, including the award-winning Children of Air India and Listening to the Bees. Her essays and short fiction have appeared in literary magazines and anthologies, including Exile Editions, Chatelaine, The Capilano Review and Pulp Literature. She was Poet Laureate for the city of Surrey (2015-2018), co-founded Lunch Poems at Simon Fraser University, and teaches creative writing at Douglas College. Bramah’s Discovery is the third volume of her epic fantasy in verse series, THOT J BAP (The heart of This Journey Bears All Patterns). She lives in East Vancouver.

Poet Joanna Lilley

friday may 8
joanna lilley

Joanna Lilley’s fourth poetry collection, Three Pieces of Sea, is being published by Turnstone Press in spring 2026. Her previous collection, Endlings, won the Fred Kerner Book Award and her novel, Worry Stones, was longlisted for the Caledonia Novel Award. From the UK, Joanna has settled gratefully in Whitehorse, Yukon.

In a progression from life to loss, author Joanna Lilley explores the relationships between visual art, grief, sisterhood and the process of healing in her fourth poetry collection Three Pieces of Sea, published by Turnstone Press. A poetic portrait of the late artist Rebecca Lilley this ekphrastic, elegiac collection reflects a life lived and remembered through art. It is Lilley’s most personal work to da

Poet Ronna Bloom

friday may 8
ronna bloom

Ronna Bloom is is the author of eight books of poetry. Her poems have been broadcast on CBC, recorded by the Canadian National Institute for the Blind, and translated into Bangla and Chinese. She has collaborated with filmmakers, choreographers, health care professionals and architects. Her most recent book is In a Riptide (Brick Books), 2025.

The characters in Ronna Bloom’s new collection In a Riptide are tired, sick, old, fragile, baffled, worried, dying, dead, uncertain, snacking, happy, generous, preoccupied, horny, astonished, and sometimes free. Emily Dickinson and Bukowski show up in the same poem. The Buddha has a shower. And Sisyphus is released from his burdens. It’s the hospital meets the circus. Here, humour, darkness, and ecstasy mingle, and the chaos doesn’t stop. But there’s breath in these poems. There’s life.

Poet Tom Wayman

friday may 8
tom wayman

Tom Wayman was named a Vancouver Literary Landmark by the Vancouver Public Library in 2015, and in 2022 he received the province’s George Woodcock Award for literary lifetime achievement. His newest poetry collections are How Can You Live Here? (Frontenac House, 2024) and Out of the Ordinary (Harbour, 2025).

We live in extraordinary times so far this century—wars overseas, climate change, the unparalleled gap between the very rich and the rest of us, etc. But day-to-day, our lives inhabit the ordinary. The poems of Out of the Ordinary go deep into ordinary life to see the roots or wellhead of the extraordinary, finding family history inside a fir needle, a sense of personal limitations within a raindrop suspended from a twig, the working life in a nail.

Poet Laurie D. Graham

FRIDAY may 15
laurie d. Graham

Laurie D. Graham grew up east of amiskwacîwâskahikan (Edmonton, Alberta), and she now lives in Nogojiwanong (Peterborough, Ontario). Her first book, Rove, was shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. Her second and third books, Settler Education and Fast Commute, were both nominated for Ontario’s Trillium Award for Poetry. 

In Calling It Back to Me, Laurie D. Graham traces the story of her great-grandmothers’ lives before and after they left their homelands and settled on this continent, striving to understand how she came to be here and writing the act of colonization as it exists in her own family history. This collection reflects a family’s knowledge broken by global immigration and memory loss, both individual and collective. The result is a courageous reckoning with the legacy of leaving home.

Poet Stephanie Bolster

friday may 15
stephanie bolster

Stephanie Bolster recently published her fifth book and has won the Governor General’s, the Gerald Lampert, and the Bronwen Wallace Award, among others.  She grew up in Burnaby and teaches creative writing at Concordia University in Montreal. She is Editor of The Best Canadian Poetry 2008 and co-editor of Penned: Zoo Poems,

After Hurricane Katrina, the photographer Robert Polidori flew to New Orleans to document the devastation. In the wreckage he witnessed, and in her questions about what she saw in what he saw, Stephanie Bolster found the beginnings of a long poem. Those questions led to unexpected places; meanwhile, life kept pouring in. The ensuing book, Long Exposure, is a roaming, associative exploration of disasters and their ongoing aftermaths, sufferings large and small, and the vulnerability and value of our lives. 

Poet Misha Solomon

Friday May 22
misha solomon

friday may 22
ZOE DICKINSON

FRIDAY MAY 29

Join us at New Horizons in James Bay at 2pm, on Friday 29 May for poet Scott Jackshaw.

Scott Jackshaw is a poet, scholar, and editor based in Providence, Rhode Island. Their debut poetry collection is Stigmata (Talonbooks, 2025). They hold a PhD in English from Brown University and work as managing editor of differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies.

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 Scott Jackshaw

friday may
scott jackshaw

Scott Jackshaw is a poet, scholar, and editor based in Providence, Rhode Island. Their debut poetry collection is Stigmata (Talonbooks, 2025). They hold a PhD in English from Brown University and work as managing editor of differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies.

The poems in Stigmata are ruinous encounters between traumatic and historical memory. They transfigure the cult of the wound into a mystic frenzy of sex and grief. Drawing inspiration from a broad archive of texts and practices—apophatic theology, body horror, gardening, poststructuralism, and bad sex—Stigmata forms a counterhistory of the wound, an experiment in fractured memoir and misplaced anatomy that weaponizes the confessional mode, wrenching it from self-narration to approach a violence that breaks language and bodies apart.

Poet Kath Healing

Kath Healing Kath Healing (they/them) is a queer, trans, and disabled poet based in Victoria, British Columbia. They won the 2025 Victoria Writers’ Society Poetry Contest. Their work appears in The Malahat Review, PRISM international, The Fiddlehead, Grain, Contemporary Verse 2, Plenitude, Pulp Literature, and Augur.

Kath Healing writes across page and stage. Their work explores what survives the paperwork — the medical, the institutional, and the personal. Their poems trace the tension between documentation and lived experience, where language attempts to contain what the body refuses to resolve.