Join Books BC and Read Local BC in celebrating 30 years of Poetry in Transit, the beloved and enduring poetry campaign that has brought poetry to bus riders across BC since 1996. Every year since, this community engagement project has featured ten BC poets on TransLink and BC Transit buses. Join us to hear poets featured over the years reading poetry, and sharing how Poetry in Transit has enriched and inspired their creativity and artistry. Join us early at the preceding event to hear this year’s poets!
The Poetry in Transit project is a collaboration between Books BC, TransLink, and BC Transit. This project is made possible due to the support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund, Canada Council for the Arts, Creative BC, and the City of Vancouver.
Location: Poetry Tent, UBC Robson Square
Type: Readings + Discussion/Q&A
Presented by: Word Vancouver & Read Local BC
Sponsored by: Word Vancouver · Books BC · Read Local BC · TransLink · BC Transit
Host: Rob Taylor
Readers: Junie Désil, Fiona Tinwei Lam, and Natalie Lim
About The Host
Rob Taylor
Rob Taylor is the author of five poetry collections, including Weather and The News, and the editor of the anthologies What the Poets Are Doing: Canadian Poets in Conversation and Best Canadian Poetry 2019. He teaches creative writing at the University of the Fraser Valley, where he also runs the Fraser Valley Writers Festival, and lives with his family in Port Moody, BC, on the unceded territories of the kʷikʷəƛ̓əm (Kwikwetlem) and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) peoples.
About The Readers
Junie Désil
Junie Désil is of Haitian ancestry, born of immigrant parents on the traditional territories of the Kanien’kehá:ka on the island known as Tiohtià:ke (Montréal), and raised in Treaty 1 Territory (Winnipeg). Junie has performed at various literary events and festivals. Her work has appeared in Room Magazine, PRISM International, The Capilano Review and CV2. A UBC alumnus, a participant in Simon Fraser University’s Writer’s Studio, and current Uvic MFA student, Junie’s debut book of poetry eat salt | gaze at the ocean (Talon Books, 2020) was short-listed for the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. Her second collection allostatic load (Talon Books) came out April, 2025. Junie mentors poets at SFU's Writers' Studio and also teaches in SFU's Leadership Essentials Certificate program.
Fiona Tinwei Lam
Fiona Tinwei Lam has authored three poetry collections and a children’s book. Her work appears in over 45 anthologies, including Best Canadian Poetry (2010 and 2020) and Best Canadian Essays 2024. She has collaborated on award-winning poetry videos that have screened at festivals internationally and teaches at SFU Continuing Studies. In 2022, she was served as Vancouver’s sixth poet laureate for three years. Her new collection of creative nonfiction essays, Playing by Heart, will be coming out with Caitlin Press in 2027.
Natalie Lim
Natalie Lim (she/her) is a Chinese-Canadian poet living on the unceded, traditional territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Peoples (Vancouver, BC). She is the author of a full-length book of poetry, Elegy for Opportunity (Wolsak & Wynn, 2025) and a chapbook, arrhythmia (Rahila's Ghost Press, 2022). Winner of the CBC Poetry Prize and Room Magazine’s Emerging Writer Award, her work has been published in Arc Poetry Magazine, Best Canadian Poetry and elsewhere.
