The Poet Laureate, “the people’s poet,” is an honorary position with a two to three-year term. Serving as a champion for poetry, language and the arts, the Laureate creates a unique literary project and represents the City as Laureate during readings and public poetry events. Funded through a private endowment by philanthropist Dr. Yosef Wosk, OBC, the position was established in 2006 by the City of Vancouver in partnership with the Vancouver Public Library and The Vancouver Writers’ Festival.

Fiona Tinwei Lam’s City Poems Project has involved community outreach to encourage the generation of new poems and poetry videos to foster greater understanding about significant historical, cultural and ecological sites on the unceded traditional territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh peoples now known as the City of Vancouver. Her Legacy Project has involved four stages:

• Stage One: a Poetry Contest for youth and adults to write poems about historical, cultural or ecological sites within the city (January-June 2022)
• Stage Two: a Poetry Video Contest for selected post-secondary classes based on the prior year’s award-winning poems and a few other curated site-based poems (January-June 2023)
• Stage Three: development of a geolocated app in collaboration with UBC’s CEDaR team to enable the public to access audio-recordings of the site-based poems from Stages One and Two (2023-24)
• Stage Four: a writing retreat stage for the poet laureate to generate her own Vancouver-based poems (2023-2024)

The City Poems Project page has detailed information about each stage and links to the 27 finalists’ poems and the 33 of the post-secondary teams’ poetry videos.

Curious about what your city’s poet laureate has been up to lately? Read her blog, or refer to her Event Page for upcoming events.

Schools in the Vancouver school district may book a one-hour workshop with the Vancouver Poet Laureate through the Poet in Class program with Poetry in Voice, or through contacting Fiona directly. Information about the Poet Laureate position is also available through the Vancouver Public Library and the City of Vancouver (Cultural Services).