Fiona Tinwei Lam

I had a lot of fun visiting Amanda Low’s split grade 3-4 class and Marion Elizabeth Collins’ grade 6 class at Tecumseh Elementary School in East Vancouver on January 31! The visit was sponsored by the national Poet in School program run by the acclaimed non-profit organization, Poetry in Voice.

I was so impressed by the openness and enthusiasm of the teachers and students! This was my second time visiting Tecumseh. Last June, I gave a certificate of recognition to teacher Tilia Prior and her grade 7 class to thank them for all the poems that the students had submitted about Hogan’s Alley in Vancouver’s historic Black Strathcona to the City Poems Contest. Grade 7 student Sharon Pan won third place with her poem about Vie’s Chicken & Steak House.

(Note: The Vancouver School Board’s first Chinese Canadian teacher, Vivian Jung, was hired by Tecumseh in the 1940s. (Over half a century of racial segregation had prevented Asian Canadians, Blacks, and other visible minorities from various professions including teaching.) A lane is named after Jung in Vancouver’s West End, near the former “public” Crystal Pool (long gone) at Sunset Beach where she was famously barred from entry during a time of informal segregation in the city, prior to Asian Canadians finally getting vote in 1947 and 1949.)

For both classes, I read my poem “Z” (that was selected for TransLink’s Poetry in Transit program a few years ago), and handed out bookmarks based on the bus poster. It’s a light-hearted, accessible poem that employs metaphor, personification, alliteration, assonance, rhyme and half rhyme, and is meant to encourage and empower readers and writers of all ages to have fun with words.

With the split grade 3-4 class, we focused on concrete, visual or shaped poetry. I showed some of my plastic-themed poems shaped like a cup, bottle, and artificial/cut-out Christmas tree, as well as the short animated poetry video, “Plasticnic” (a wry commentary on the plastic used at picnics) that I made with talented ECUAD graduate, Tisha Deb Pillai. We looked at a few concrete poems by other poets, including ones shaped like a spider and a flowerpot too.

Fun with Concrete Poetry (Grade 3-4)

Next, I asked the students to think about a favourite thing—e.g. a creature, game, food, activity—and then try to create a picture using phrases or words associated with that thing. There was a fabulous array of word-pictures created related to a variety of topics: bunnies, cats, birthday cake, cherry blossoms, basketball, video games, TV, sleep, bubble gum, the city of Hamburg, and a stuffed toy duck, and much more! Here is a sampling of some of the students’ poems below:

After the other kids had gone outside for recess, one student with special needs stayed behind to proudly present his poem about his stuffed toy duck to his teacher, teaching assistant and me in front of the classroom! (Concrete poems seem to engage kids of all backgrounds. I had a similar experience last year with a split grade 5-6 class at David Lloyd George Elementary, where several students with learning challenges were inspired to create and present terrific pieces.)

With the grade 6 class, we looked at two of my poems and how I collaborated with animators and a filmmaker to turn them into poetry videos. “Merry” (made in collaboration with second year animation students Quinn Kelly and Lara Renaud) is about overconsumption, plastic pollution and the climate crisis, and “Utility Pole” (made in collaboration with Ontario videographer Mary McDonald) is about the 130 millions of trees logged to make telephone poles and the issue of deforestation. Students loved the slide of the beautiful lyric shaped poem by Luann Hiebert in the League of Canadian Poets’ anthology, Heartwood.

Collaborative Tree Poems and Poetry Videos (Grade 6)

Next, I asked the students to stand and to pretend to be trees by doing the tree pose in yoga, first rooting their feet, then balancing on one leg, then the other, trying to stand still and then to sway as if it were windy with their arms held up like branches. Energized, the students then paired up to read aloud excerpts of their recent class assignment where they pretended to interview trees. Each partner would listen and suggest a favourite line or two that would be written from the point of view of a tree on strips of paper. After my visit and their lunch break, the students continued to work in larger groups to assemble and order their lines into collaborative poems that you can see below:

They went even further and made terrific poetry videos based on their poems with the help of their teacher, paying attention to integrating sound, image and voice. These poetry videos can be found in an Update that is posted below!

UPDATE – Poetry Videos by Tecumseh students

Here are some of the videos that the students put together. Click on the images to go to Vimeo and then click the play icon to watch the videos.

Ten keen writers came out this past Thursday to the Oppenheimer Park Field House to participate in a monthly free public workshop run through the Poetry in the Parks program! It was a busy afternoon at the Field House with three concurrent workshops being held there! I loved the Lunar New Year and Valentine’s decorations that decorated the windows, creating a welcoming and cheerful space. A large jack rabbit (a local resident’s pet) even hopped around and beneath the tables!

This month, the writing theme was sustenance. As I chatted with local resident Carl about his Ontario sister’s love of poetry while they were growing up, I set up the room and arranged a display of fruit, vegetables, plus other food items and eating implements at the centre of the table to inspire the group. I distributed photocopies of some superb food-based poems by a diverse range of acclaimed poets such as Joy Harjo’s poem, “The World Ends Here” that reveals the symbolism of the kitchen table, Yusef Komunyakaa’s “Blackberries,” Lorna Crozier’s “Onions” (from her Sex Lives of Vegetables collection) and others which I read aloud at the start of the session to invoke these poets’ lyric vision and stimulate our own flow of words. A platter of frosted sugar cookies was kindly provided by staffer David for us to snack on.

We went around the table mentioning our favourite foods or dishes (e.g. oranges, Campbell’s mushroom soup, squash, mac and cheese, sushi, shish kebab, kibbeh, congee, roast beef dinner, chicken) which generated some terrific and evocative draft poems. For the second round, we went around the table to state our least favourite food (e.g. stinky durian, an inedible mush served at school, watery slimy Lebanese moussaka, mushrooms). This definitely inspired some vivid writing based on strong memories. We even managed to squeeze in a third round of writing!

Next month’s poetry workshop facilitator will be Vancouver’s wonderful past poet laureate, Evelyn Lau (March), followed by former Thursdays Collective Coordinator and present Vancouver Manuscript Intensive co-director, the warm and engaging Elee Kraljii Gardiner (April) in advance of the eagerly anticipated Downtown Eastside Writers Festival that will be held at the Carnegie Centre on May 25-27, 2023.

Thank you to Oppenheimer Field House coordinator Jennifer Taylor and Carnegie Centre coordinator Beverly Walker, as well as all Oppenheimer Park Field House staffers for their invaluable support and assistance over the past three sessions!

After a two year hiatus, the Dead Poets Reading Series has come back to life! Four members of the organizing committee kicked off the year with a reading at Massy Arts that featured presentations on Etel Adnan (1925 to 2021), Don Domanski (1950 -2020), Steven Heighton (1961 – 2022) and Phyllis Webb (1927-2021).

We had a full house of 50 attentive attendees who registered for the free public event. In the audience were poetry lovers of all ages, including past organizers Rob Taylor (and family) and Christopher Levenson. Massy Arts community engagement coordinator, Romila Barryman provided a wonderful land acknowledgement at the commencement of the event.

How did the series begin? North Vancouver poet and professor, David Zieroth initiated the series in 2007 as “The Night of the Dead Poets” at the former Upstart Crow Books on Lonsdale Avenue in North Vancouver. (I participated at the inaugural reading, presenting poems by Bronwen Wallace, alongside fellow readers David, Russell Thorton, Cathy Stonehouse and Harvey de Roo.)

If you look at DPRS’ history of past readings, you’ll see the enormous range of diverse poets that have heen covered since 2007, from antiquity to the recent past, from countries and cultures all over the world! Do check out the full origin story of the series on the Dead Poets Reading Series site.

Other notable poets in the local community have been on the organizing committee over the years including Christopher Levenson, Rob Taylor, Diane Tucker, Sandy Shreve, Kate Braid, Joanne Arnott, Jane Munro, Raoul Fernandes, Shazia Hafiz Ramji, Kevin Spenst and Isabella Wang. A huge, long-time fan of the series, I recently joined the organizing committee this past December. The venues for the series have also shifted from North Vancouver (Upstart Crow Books, The Contemporary Art Cafe) to downtown Vancouver (Project Space in Strathcona, the Central Branch of the Vancouver Public Library).

Massy Arts, the current venue for the bimonthly series, is located at 23 East Pender in Vancouver’s Strathcona neighbourhood. Not to be confused with Massy Bookstore on the east side of Main Street, Massy Arts is located in the former Ming Wo Hardware building opposite the Chinese Cultural Center and Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Gardens.

This heritage building was built in 1913 by one of the first known Chinese Canadian architects, W. H. Chow, in the characteristic “Chinatown architectural style,” featuring four stories, a recessed balcony, and metal cornice. Ming Wo Hardware, one of the longest operating local businesses in Chinatown, had a store here from 1917 until 2020. (Ming Wo Hardware still exists, with stores elsewhere in the city.)

Writing and reading poetry are wonderful ways to start the new year! This past Thursday, DTES writers came out for a Poetry in the Parks workshop at Oppenheimer Park Field House. We had fourteen participants in total (plus some intermittent writing from Field House staffer Rui, who was up and down serving tea and coffee and getting extra chairs and an extra table when more people arrived).

This session was focused on how visual art can provide profound inspiration for writing. At the beginning of the workshop, I passed around a few books of ekphrastic poems (poems inspired by art) as examples, including the recently launched Quarandreams, a collection launched this past fall that was curated and edited by CBC videographer, Maggie MacPherson, who had asked to respond to her gorgeously surreal photographic art during the height of the pandemic. (Two participants attending the workshop, Phoenix Winter and Gilles Cyrenne, had poems published in the book!)

I also set out art postcards that I’d collected over the years on the table, featuring a few of Georgia O’Keeffe’s abstract flowers, Hokusai’s famous woodblock print (Great Wave off Kanagawa), Van Gogh’s iconic Starry Night, an autumnal forest scene painted by Tom Thomson, as well as more surrealist pieces. Besides Starry Night and the White Rose, other favourites included an image of fox trapped on broken-up ice sheets (from a David Suzuki Christmas card I received), a lithograph of a crow, and a man flying with birds. Participants could also choose to write about any of the paintings and drawings by neighbourhood residents that were pinned on the walls.

I handed out photocopies of a few notable examples of ekphrastic poems by Wislawa Szymborska (Brueghel’s Two Monkeys), William Carlos Williams (Fall of Icarus), and Anne Sexton (Starry Night), and read out a poem (by US poet, Sharon Hashimoto) as well, just to get the creative juices really flowing in terms of form and metaphor.

Twenty minutes before the workshop formally started, the first participant arrived, sat down, asked for a pen and paper, and started writing without pause, without any prompts or prompting, filling two full pages with tiny script. He might have set the stage for everyone else! During the two rounds of art-based writing, the larger group of participants wrote with incredible concentration and focus.

For the first round, each participant chose an image, noted down sensory associations, and then built a poem around those associations. The second round was similar. Everyone was given space to share their work, and almost everyone did.

And the writing was amazing—powerful, vivid and evocative! The art cards definitely served as a portal into the subconscious, into memory, into story, and much more. The creative energy and imagery, the metaphors and symbols, the leaps and turns rose from each person’s page. In wrapping up the workshop, I talked about how each piece of art contains a trace of the artist’s spirit, which can provide a pathway for writers to connect to own creative spirits, as well as the artist’s.

Thanks to all the participants and to staffers Rui and David who helped set up the tables and chairs, made and served coffee and tea, and even brought us a tray of foil-wrapped Christmas chocolates, to Jennifer for giving us the space and making the photocopies and ensuring we had a flipchart, markers and pens, and to Beverly from the Carnegie Centre who came by early to say hello. See you all at my third and last session at the Oppenheimer Field House on Thursday, February 2, 1-3 pm! (Other poet- facilitators will take the baton in the months ahead!)

It was exciting to see the poetry videos produced by students enrolled in SFU Surrey’s IAT 344 Moving Images course this term! Several student teams made poetry videos based on a selection of shortlisted adult poems from stage one of the City Poems Contest held earlier this year. (This term served as a trial run before the upcoming launch of the contest’s second stage, which focuses on poetry videos produced by pre-selected public post-secondary classes.)

Most teams worked on the shortlisted site-based poems through the fall, while others worked on different projects. I visited the class early in the term to introduce poetry videos. A few weeks later, guest curator and noted video poet Tom Konyves gave students a tour of his exhibit, Poets with a Video Camera: Videopoetry 1980-2020 at the Surrey Art Gallery.

Tom was also one of the two judges awarding prizes to the student teams at a reception and screening held at the end of term. Given the course requirements, the student teams doing poetry videos (which had to be under 5 minutes in length) also had to film short documentaries where they interviewed the poets. These interviews with the poets often provided fascinating insights into the history and significance of the sites on which the poems were based.