The Best Canadian Poetry
Dionne Brand, Canisia Lubrin, Shazia Hafiz Ramji, Christopher Tubbs
Moderator: Anita Lahey
Event Number: 69
The Best Canadian Poetry
Dionne Brand, Canisia Lubrin, Shazia Hafiz Ramji, Christopher Tubbs
Saturday, October 20
2:00pm - 3:30pm
Waterfront Theatre
1412 Cartwright St, Vancouver
In 2018, the Best Canadian Poetry series marks the start of its second decade, each anthology featuring the top 50 poems by Canadians published in print and online journals in a given year. This year’s edition, guest-edited by Hoa Nguyen, includes Dionne Brand, Canisia Lubrin, Shazia Hafiz Ramji and Christopher Tubbs, who, alongside series editor Anita Lahey, will discuss the ongoing evolution of Canadian poetry. In particular, this diverse combination of established and emerging writers will discuss how they use poetry to engage with the pressing issues of the world—and why verse can be such a uniquely precise art form for engagement in a radically different way. Poets and poetry lovers alike will revel in this afternoon of creative play.
Anita Lahey is a poet, journalist and essayist. She’s the author of two Véhicule Press poetry collections and The Mystery Shopping Cart: Essays on Poetry and Culture (Palimpsest, 2013).
Event Participants:
Ontario
Dionne Brand is the winner of the Griffin Poetry Prize, the Governor General’s Literary Award, the Trillium Book Award, the Pat Lowther Memorial Award, the Toronto Book Award, and the Harbourfront Festival Prize for her contribution to the world of books and writing. Brand was Toronto’s Poet Laureate from 2009 to 2012. In 2017, she was inducted into the Order of Canada. This year she releases both a new novel, Theory, and a genre-bending poetry collection, The Blue Clerk.
Ontario
Canisia Lubrin is writer, teacher, critic and editor. She holds an MFA from the University of Guelph, is advisor to Open Book, Poet in residence at Poetry in Voice and co-host of Pivot Reading Series in Toronto. Her debut Voodoo Hypothesis was a finalist for the Gerald Lampert, Pat Lowther and Raymond Souster awards and named a CBC Best Book of the Year. She lives in Whitby.
British Columbia
Shazia Hafiz Ramji‘s first book, Port of Being, received the Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry. She was a finalist for the National Magazine Awards and the Alberta Magazine Awards, and her poetry and fiction are forthcoming in Best Canadian Poetry 2018 and The Humber Literary Review, respectively. Her criticism has appeared in venues such as Canadian Literature and Quill & Quire. She is an editor for Metatron Press.
@Shazia_R
Vancouver
Christopher Tubbs, like his mother, is a member of the Mississaugas of the New Credit First Nation. He is moved by the hardships that his family has endured on the reserve and in the residential school system. Their experiences inspire nearly all of his work. Some of his works have previously appeared in The Capilano Review. He lives in New Westminster, BC.
@TheDailyStoic
