Intellectual, versatile, and brilliant: these three writers’ works are perfect examples of how poetry can expand our consciousness. Victoria Adukwei Bulley makes her thrilling debut in North America. Bernadine Evaristo praised Quiet as “perfectly embody[ing] the political through the personal.” Patrick Friesen has published more than a dozen books of poetry. Reckoning is one long poem in search of itself. Poet and professor Joanne Leow’s debut, seas move away, seeks answers to the question of what is lost in intensive urban development and the journey across continents. And Matthew James Weigel’s debut Whitemud Walking has won multiple awards for its original, transcendent Indigenous resistance historiography through poetry. Moderated by Molly Cross-Blanchard.

Presented in collaboration with Poetry in Voice.

Event Participants:

Victoria Adukwei Bulley

VICTORIA ADUKWEI BULLEY is a poet, a writer, and an artist. An alumna of the Barbican Young Poets and recipient of an Eric Gregory Award, she has held residencies in the United States and Brazil, and in London at the Victoria and Albert Museum. She is the recipient of a Techne scholarship for doctoral research at Royal Holloway, University of London.

Molly Cross-Blanchard

MOLLY CROSS-BLANCHARD is a white and Métis writer and editor born on Treaty 3 territory (Fort Frances, ON), raised on Treaty 6 territory (Prince Albert, SK), and living on the unceded territory of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples (Vancouver, BC). She currently teaches Creative Writing at Kwantlen Polytechnic University.

Patrick Friesen

PATRICK FRIESEN has published more than a dozen books of poetry, a book of essays, stage and radio plays, and has co-translated, with Per Brask, five books of Danish poetry. Most recently he has released the collaborative CD, Buson’s Bell, with Niko Friesen, and Outlasting the Weather: Selected & New Poems, 1994-2020.

Joanne Leow

JOANNE LEOW grew up in Singapore and lives as an uninvited guest on the unceded territories of the Coast Salish peoples, including the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw (Squamish), səlilwətaɬ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh), xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) and Kwikwetlem First Nations. She is an Associate Professor at Simon Fraser University. Her creative work and research lie at the intersections of the environmental humanities, transnational and diasporic cultural production, intimacies, autotheory, and decoloniality. Her writing has been published in Brick, Catapult, Evergreen Review, The Goose, Isle, The Kindling, The Town Crier, and Ricepaper Magazine. Seas Move Away is her debut collection of poetry.

Matthew James Weigel

MATTHEW JAMES WEIGEL is a Dene and Métis writer and artist whose debut poetry collection Whitemud Walking was a finalist for the 2022 Dayne Ogilvie Prize and won the Gerald Lampert Award, and was shortlisted for the Raymond Souster Award, from the League of Canadian Poets.