Poet John Rockford

friday, november 01
john rockford

John Rockford is a wordsmith, a practitioner of ritual arts, and a passionate lover of language. In addition to writing for his own enjoyment and for the pleasure of his muse, John teaches workshops on poetry, tarot and esoteric spirituality, and runs Leveret Press, a boutique publishing imprint and occult bookshop. 

Poetic Appetizer

Excerpt from the poem “Mandelbrot Set”

before my time to go, mind these fibres I wove 
when I climbed high, then dove into eternity’s tapestry, 
cracked open the ova of creativity’s masterpiece 
and sat at the feet of her majesty 

imagine me, a cosmic passenger in the god module 
modulating mindscapes with tryptamine gospels 
apostle of the impossible, servant in the complex 
of Mandelbrot sets and higher dimensional architects 

Poet Patrick Grace

friday, november 01
patrick grace

Patrick Grace is a queer writer from Vancouver, BC, where he works as managing editor of Plenitude Magazine. His poems have appeared in Best Canadian Poetry, EVENT, The Fiddlehead, The Malahat Review, Prairie Fire, and more. His debut poetry collection, Deviant, was recently published with University of Alberta Press.

Poetic Appetizer
Excerpt from “The Calling”

At first the world was body.
I didn’t question the gold
hardening its rivers inside me.

Boy on the phone for you, my sister cooed.
He asked to meet behind the pool
and I heard my name ripple in the wind.

Poet Julie Paul

FRIDAY, november 08
julie paul

Julie Paul has published five books of poetry and short fiction, including Whiny Baby (MQUP, 2024). She won the 2015 Victoria Book Prize, and her first poetry collection The Rules of the Kingdom was a finalist for both the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize and the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. 

Poetic Appetizer
excerpt from “The Blocked Writer Looks to the Garden”

The mock orange doesn’t mean to mock me, 
though I feel the sting of its thousand blooms. 

And what of it? All perfume, no fruit, 
and I love it anyway. 

When will I turn that grace upon myself?

Poet Tom Wayman

FRIDAY, november 08
tom wayman

Tom Wayman’s newest books are How Can You Live Here? (poems, 2024) and The Road to Appledore or How I Went Back to the Land Without Ever Having Lived There in the First Place (memoir, 2024). He received BC’s 2022 George Woodcock Award for Lifetime Achievement in the literary arts. 

Poetic Appetizer

“Return”

All the silent valley afternoon

fierce yellow larches

blaze amid the ridge’s evergreens 



At night gardens shiver

shrivel as the first frost settles

First flames consume



the furnace’s kindling

By dawn spikes of mist
stand
on the river’s slow surface


In the dark trucks have spread sand
over first rumors of
ice on the road

friday, november 15

Join us at New Horizons in James Bay at 2pm, October 25, for poet Ashley-Elizabeth Best.

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 Kim Trainor

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 15
KIM TRAINOR

Kim Trainor is the granddaughter of an Irish banjo player and a Polish faller who worked in logging camps around Port Alberni in the 1930s. Ledi was a finalist for the 2019 Raymond Souster Award. A blueprint for survival appeared with Guernica Editions in Spring 2024.

Poetic Appetizer

“Wildfire”

The wildfires have been burning some weeks now, and even here at noon, 
the light is sci-fi—burnt ochre, umber. The radio reports evacuations, but 
none near you where you’ve been working long days in the west Kettle 
and Similkameen while I have been carrying on without you. 
You call each night from a payphone in the Kootenays. I cup your flickering 
voice to my ear. Crickets, the zip of a tent, B minor sharps and blues, rasp
of white noise. You have become so thin. If I breathe too hard—
you are extinguished. Don’t leave me. Come closer in tympanum,
love; come deeper, cochlear, sheltered in my hearing.

Poet Ashley-Elizabeth Best

Friday, november 15
ashley-elizabeth best

A-E Best is a disabled poet and essayist from Kingston, Ontario. Her work can be found in The Capilano Review, New Welsh Review, CV2, Ambit Magazine, Mslexia, and Chatelaine. Her work was longlisted for the 2021 CBC Poetry Prize. Her second collection, Bad Weather Mammals, is now available from ECW Press. She’s currently the Editorial Coordinator for Arc Poetry Magazine and a Marketing Assistant for Brick Books.

Poetic Appetizer
from “I Am Becoming a House”

Bronwen suggested the body
is the limit we must learn to love.

I’m not one to love my limits:
I’m practising being an empty house.

Poet Yvonne Blomer

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 22
yvonne blomer

Yvonne Blomer’s sixth book is Death of Persephone: A Murder, a mystery in poems based on the Persephone myth. Previous books include The Last Show on Earth, which explores grief, love and climate change. She is an award-winning poet and nonfiction writer and lives on the territories of the Lək̓ʷəŋən (Lekwungen) speaking people.


Poetic Appetizer
from Death of Persephone

Case Notes: D.I. Boca No. 1/36

Time after time they’re called: from beat’s patrol
to drive-time response: the siren’s call to order.
Chaos drawn toward death, a spider
to a corner. He seizes back control (tries to)
through evidence, hard-lined questions, asked.
Tonight, rain, the roads washed. Everlasting
damp. Beauty slaughtered. Another young woman:
brunette, blonde, redhead, shoe missing, night rain-
soaked, a stale cigarette. Cuts on her palms,
bruised neck: had she some foreknowledge? (had he?)
Time and the body’s slipping; a clock winding
down. Dragged and bedraggled, skin cut,
torn, bruised. Later: the autopsy will show
what eyes won’t see. Fury. Distance between.

Poet Tonya Lailey

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 22
tonya lailey

Tonya Lailey (she/her) spent her childhood on a farm in Niagara-on-the-Lake. She started a winery there in 2000 with her family. Certified as a sommelier, she worked in the wine trade until 2020. In 2022, she earned an MFA in creative writing from the University of British Columbia. 

Poetic Appetizer
from “Cultivars”

…In the cellar draped with roots, summer/
rings in sealed jars.

Listen.

There’s a song in scionwood we’re forbidden to sing. 

Poet Shane Book

friday, november 29
SHANE BOOK

Shane Book is a poet, filmmaker and professor in the Department of Writing at the University of Victoria. His most recent collection, Congotronic, won the Archibald Lampman Award and K.M. Hunter Award, and was a finalist for the Canadian Authors Association Award, Ottawa Book Award and Griffin Prize. His films have screened at more than fifty film festivals around the world and on television. In 2024, he was a visiting professor at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. His new poetry collection, All Black Everything, drops next year.

Poetic Appetizer
from All Black Everything

“Tuesday”

A question hangs in the air like a hoped-for fear,
sunlit steeples balance in the purring snow, 
and you frequently feel the same deficit sitting or standing
in line for tickets, a cataract assessment, the river’s spray misting the balcony.
One thing leads to another torn from the ultimate fighting ring tone music. 
You can pretend not to eat light
in the palapa where such things are done
but the more the day progresses the less things will become.
The far-off bus chugs along, silently. No wet fur smell
escaping through the cinderblock roof hole—
we lie down with the morning removed from our bags of rain.

Poet Xiao Yue Shan

friday, november 29
xiao yue shan

Xiao Yue Shan is a poet, writer, translator, and editor. She was born in China and now lives on Vancouver Island. then telling be the antidote won the Tupelo Press Berkshire Prize and was published in 2024. How Often I Have Chosen Love won the Frontier Poetry Chapbook Prize and was published in 2019. 

Poetic Appetizer
from ““on the last day of the heisei era”

the era lifts from the black vault of the universe
like an island, like a bird staying its course, like a brush
that begs itself from the ink left to the page.
only something like belief holds itself to time, the only
object we trust more for its reflection
than its substance. its formlessness enacting a life
into everything. the patterns we call music,
the yellow sands we call seconds,
the moon’s stretched leather instrument
playing across the skies.