In/Verse (November): A monthly poetry reading event on Zoom, hosted and curated by Vancouver poet Fiona Tinwei Lam.
IN ORDER TO ATTEND THIS EVENT, PLEASE register, and a link will be sent to you via email. Keep the email, and when it's time for the event, PLEASE CLICK ON THE ZOOM LINK THAT WAS EMAILED TO YOU. Looking forward to seeing you!
Susan Alexander is the author of two collections of poems, Nothing You Can Carry, 2020 and The Dance Floor Tilts, 2017, Thistledown Press. Her work received the 2019 Mitchell Prize for Faith and Poetry as well as the Vancouver Writers Fest and Short Grain awards. Writer Chelene Knight describes this new book as a “luxurious, melodic dance to the loudest sounds that come in the quietest of moments.” Susan’s poems have appeared in anthologies and literary magazines in Canada and the U.K., ridden Vancouver buses as part of Poetry in Transit and shown up in the woods around Whistler.
Shirley Graham’s most recent book, Shakespearean Blues, published by Mother Tongue Publishing in 2016, was a finalist for the Fred Cogswell poetry award. Her first two poetry books, What Someone Wanted and Book of Blue, were published by Black Moss Press in 2007 and 2013. Shirley studied writing and literature at U.C. Irvine, Brown University, the Sorbonne in Paris, and in private workshops with, among others, Galway Kinnell, Sharon Olds, Robert Haas and Mark Strand. She lives on Salt Spring Island with her husband, Peter Levitt, and son Tai.
Peter Levitt has published seventeen books, including poetry, prose, and translations from Chinese, Japanese and Spanish. His poetry books include Within Within, Bright Root, Dark Root and One Hundred Butterflies. In 1989 he received the first prestigious Lannan Foundation Award in Poetry. Peter has taught workshops in writing and creativity in Canada, the US, and abroad for more than forty years; a new edition of his Fingerpainting on the Moon: Writing and Creativity as a Path to Freedom is due out this autumn. A Zen teacher in the Soto lineage of Shunryu Suzuki Roshi, Peter and his family live on Salt Spring Island, BC, where he is the founder and guiding teacher of the Salt Spring Zen Circle.
Arleen Paré is a Victoria writer. She has six collections of poetry, two of which are cross-genre. She has been short-listed for the BC Dorothy Livesay BC Award for Poetry and has won a Golden Crown Award for Lesbian Poetry, the Victoria Butler Book Prize, a CBC Bookie Award, and a Governor Generals’ Award for Poetry for Lake of Two Mountains. Her latest poetry collection, Earle Street, was released by Talonbooks in Spring, 2020. She lives with her partner Victoria on the traditional territories of the WSÁNEĆ (Saanich), Lkwungen (Songhees), Wyomilth (Esquimalt) peoples of the Coast Salish Nation.
Host Fiona Tinwei Lam has authored three books of poetry, including most recently, Odes & Laments, as well as a children's book. Her work appears in more than 35 anthologies, including The Best Canadian Poetry (2010 and 2020 editions) and Forcefield: 77 Women Poets of BC. She edited The Bright Well: Contemporary Canadian Poems on Facing Cancer, and co-edited two nonfiction anthologies, Love Me True: Writers on the Ups, Downs, Ins & Outs of Marriage with Jane Silcott, and Double Lives: Writing and Motherhood with Cathy Stonehouse and Shannon Cowan. Her poetry videos have screened at festivals locally and internationally.She teaches at SFU Continuing Studies. fionalam.net
Register here, and an invite will be sent that includes a Zoom link. Please hold onto the invite to click on the Zoom link when it's time for the event!
*This event is subsidized by the Federation of British Columbia Writers. Donations are welcome here to help cover the costs of special events like this one so more can attend. Thank you for connecting with us!
