Thank so much to all those who submitted poems to the City Poems Contest! Judges Rachel Rose, David Ly and Bonnie Nish have carefully considered the eligible poetry submissions over the past few weeks, and compiled their shortlists. Like me, they were very impressed by the range and scope of the poems submitted! Below is the shortlist of the poems in alphabetical order by authors’ last names.

The first, second and third place winners in each category will be announced at an Awards Ceremony on Saturday, June 11th in the Alice MacKay Room downstairs at the Vancouver Public Library, Central Branch, 2:30-4 pm, with doors opening at 2 pm. (Shortlisted authors have been contacted by email. All those who submitted eligible poems will receive a short note from me later in June.)

YOUTH CATEGORY

Patricia Chen, “Lost in Chinatown”

Katie Evans, “Revival”

Isabel Hernandes-Cheng, “Lotus Flower”

Debbie Li, “Lightless Fireflies”

Ya Xin Lu, “BBQ Meat Shops”

Nazifa Nawal, “Khupkhahpay’ay*: A Found Poem”

Sharon Pan, “Home at Vie’s”  

Crystal Peng, “In Google Maps, I explore Chinatown for the First Time”

Alice Stanciu, “The Town Where Time Stops”

Adrian Yue, “ending credits for an ending of chinatown”

EMERGING POETS CATEGORY

Christina Barber, “Victory Square Lament” 

Sandra Bruneau, “Alma”

Harper Campbell, “Near Commercial”

Jeremy Chu, “Entertainment”

James Kim, “An Existence That We Can Call Home”

Vivian (Xiao Wen) Li, “The Garden, Echoes I”

Vivian (Xiao Wen) Li, “The Garden, Echoes II”

Angela May, “single mother on hastings”

Theresa Rogers, “the stone artist”

Donna Seto, “Contrasts”

ESTABLISHED POETS CATEGORY

Susan Alexander, “Seńákw”

Kelsey Andrews, “To the Otter Who Snuck into the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Garden and Ate the Koi”

Julie Emerson, “Stanley Park Fir”

Evelyn Lau, “Atmospheric River”

Barbara Pelman, “Congregation Beth Israel”

Leslie Timmins, “The Modest Contribution of Babies to the Protest at the Member of Parliament’s Office”

Diane Tucker, “Fat Vancouver Snow”

Thanks to the Vancouver Writers Festival’s wonderful Writers in the Classroom program, I had a chance to visit Magee Secondary last Wednesday, accompanied by VWF’s Senior Education and Development Coordinator, Leena Desai.

Each of the twenty-six grade eleven students in Helen Kuk’s classroom used an ordinary object as a writing prompt. It was very cool to hear about the variety of objects that served as a lens or portal into their writing–a toy soldier, a candle, a toothbrush, a lucky red envelope (usually distributed to kids at Chinese New Year), a hoodie, a cell phone, a calligraphy brush, a cookie cutter, a shell, and more. A very creative group! Helen has told me about all the talent in the classroom too. I am really looking forward to reading the work generated by the classroom exercise!

I was honoured to be invited to visit Stephanie Leechik-Belonio’s terrific grade 11 class at my alma mater, Eric Hamber Secondary, on May 3 through the wonderful Writers in the Classroom Program organized by the Vancouver Writers’ Festival!

I was delighted and impressed by the draft poems that some of the students shared with me that were generated by the in-class writing exercise. (She’ll be forwarding me some more poems to comment on soon too!)

Stephanie prepared the class in advance by showing a couple of my poetry videos made in collaboration with recent animation graduates of Emily Carr University of Art & Design (“Omelet” and “Plasticnic“). I described my journey as a writer and the position of poet laureate, and read a few poems. I also talked about the revision process, establishing a sustainable writing practice, doing public readings and publishing your work. At the end of the session, there were lots of excellent questions during the Q & A. It was a lively exchange!

When I attended Hamber from grade 8 to grade 12 decades ago, the lockers were painted orange and yellow, but everything else was the same–the office, the showcases in the main foyer, the names of top students in athletics, citizenship, academics. (I wasn’t a star in anything, by the way–just a geeky, nerdy, socially awkward introvert who wrote a lot of morbid and angsty poems.) I’m pretty sure I had a class or two in Room 209 too (probably French with Mr. Herring.) A new earthquake-proof building is being built where the track used to be, so this current building probably won’t be around too long. The demographics of the student body and faculty appear to be quite different too than when I was there.

Thanks to Leena Desai, the Senior Education and Development Coordinator at the Vancouver Writers’ Festival, for facilitating the visit and for taking photos! I’m looking forward to visiting Magee next week.

My Earth Day piece for The Tyee, “Connecting to Planet Earth Through Poetry” has just been posted which may whet your appetite for some recent environmentally themed poems and anthologies published locally. Of course, there are many poets who have committed themselves to writing environmentally themed poems over the past decades! Wish I could have included them all.

In his book, Where is the Fiction About Climate Change? Amitav Ghosh stated, “Why does climate change cast a much smaller shadow on literature than it does on the world? Is it perhaps too wild a stream to be navigated in the accustomed barques of narration? But the truth, as is now widely acknowledged, is that we have entered a time when the wild has become the norm: if certain literary forms are unable to negotiate these waters, then they will have failed – and their failures will have to be counted as an aspect of the broader imaginative and cultural failure that lies at the heart of the climate crisis.”

This may or may not be true about fiction, but climate change has played a huge part in poetry. Think of two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning American poet, W. S. Merwin, his poetry and his lifelong work to reclaim a deforested former pineapple plantation on Maui that turned it into a lush biodiverse conservancy. There’s a fabulous documentary about Merwin’s life and work, Even Though The Whole World is Burning which I highly recommend. (He reads a few poems in a short fundraising teaser about the making of the film as well.)

I hope you enjoy the poems, recordings and books mentioned in my Tyee piece. And just in case you have room for one more poem, here’s a link to a poem written and read by Rita Wong, “Holders” from her book, undercurrent (Nightwood, 2015) which was recorded for Poetry London that you can watch here. Happy Earth Day, everyone!

I was thrilled to hear that No Shelter by Henry Doyle, a Downtown Eastside writer, was shortlisted this year for the Dorothy Livesay BC Book Prize for Poetry! Joe/Henry (his actual name is Joe and Henry is his penname) has a unforgettable and vivid way of depicting characters and telling memorable stories. Brian Kaufman at Anvil Press had faith in Joe/Henry’s work and did a terrific job arranging for the cover design (Derek Von Essen) with illustrations by Richard Tetrault. Crows and alleys have featured prominently in Joe/Henry’s work.

I edited the manuscript and coached Joe/Henry to write several new poems to supplement those from his past chapbooks, including poems about his childhood in foster care, his time in prison and as a boxer, his work at an Ontario junkyard and most importantly, his work as a janitor at the historic public men’s washroom at Main & Hastings.

During the pandemic, we often generated and edited poems by phone. Joe/Henry would either type out or dictate lines (when his laptop wasn’t working, which was often) of a poem to me. I would email him back with what he’d dictated along with suggested spacing and line breaks. He’d read the version aloud so I could make further edits and adjustments, or I’d ask further questions to deepen the piece or elicit further images. Then he’d read the next version aloud for another round of edits. Poem by poem, the manuscript came together.

I’m so proud of Joe/Henry and honoured that I was one of many writers and teachers who have been part of his journey, including Elee, Brad Cran (Vancouver’s second poet laureate) who advised Joe/Henry to turn his journal entries into poems (advice he never forgot), Kevin Spenst, Betsy Warland, Anne Hopkinson, and Joan Flood locally, as well as Patrick Holloway and Annabel Buckley, his writing teachers in Ottawa. You can hear Joe/Henry read a short poem from No Shelter here: