71. Poets in Conversation

Join an exhilarating conversation about craft, language, and meaning as three renowned Canadian poets sit down for a wide-ranging conversation about the art of verse. Canisia Lubrin guided many memorable conversations as our 2025 Guest Curator; the Carol Shields Prize for Fiction-winning author returns with Bright Machine, a collection that addresses the myth of the developed world and its heirs and casualties. Griffin Poetry Prize-winning poet Eve Joseph takes things apart and builds them again from scratch, transforming the mundane into the mysterious, in Dismantling. Along with being a celebrated poet, Derek Beaulieu has 20 years of experience teaching creative writing; he offers a manifesto on thinking outside the box in Do It Wrong: How to Be a Poet In the Twenty-First Century. Hosted by Aislinn Hunter.

Presented in partnership with Vancouver Poetry House.

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Event Participants:

Derek Beaulieu

DEREK BEAULIEU is the author/editor of over twenty-five collections of poetry, prose, and criticism, including Silence: Lectures and Writings and Surface Tension. Beaulieu has served as Poet Laureate of both Calgary and Banff and is the Director of Literary Arts at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity.

Aislinn Hunter

AISLINN HUNTER is an award-winning novelist, poet, and educator, and the author of eight books including the novel The Certainties (Knopf 2020). She lives on the unceded lands of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh peoples.

Eve Joseph

EVE JOSEPH lives on the unceded traditional territories of the Lekwungen peoples. Her first books of poetry The Startled Heart and The Secret Signature of Things were nominated for the Dorothy Livesay Award. Her memoir, In the Slender Margin, won the Hubert Evans Nonfiction Prize. Her 2018 collection of poetry, Quarrels, was nominated for several prizes, and won the Griffin Poetry Prize.

Canisia Lubrin

CANISIA LUBRIN’s books include Voodoo Hypothesis, The Dyzgraphxst, and Code Noir, which won the 2025 Carol Shields Prize for Fiction and the Danuta Gleed Literary Award. Lubrin’s work has also been recognized with the Griffin Poetry Prize, the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, the OCM Bocas Prize for Poetry, the Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry, and others. She studied at York University and the University of Guelph, where she now coordinates the Creative Writing MFA in the School of English & Theatre Studies. Born in St. Lucia, Lubrin now lives in Whitby, Ontario, and is the poetry editor at McClelland & Stewart. She was the Guest Curator of the 2025 Vancouver Writers Fest.