Books BC and Read Local BC present the launch of this year’s Poetry In Transit campaign at Word Vancouver. Now celebrating its 30th year, this beloved community engagement project displays the work of ten BC poets on public transit vehicles throughout the province. Join us to hear a selection of the featured 2026-27 poets read from their work, followed by a short discussion and Q&A in which you can engage with the poets over your love of the written verse!
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: Poetry, Reading
Sponsored by: Word Vancouver · Books BC · Read Local BC · TransLink · BC Transit
Host: Junie Désil
Readers: Cynthia Woodman Kerkham | Eve Joseph | Fenn Stewart | Jónína Kirton | Murray Mann | Renée Sarojini Saklikar | Russell Thornton | Wendy Donawa
About The Host
Junie Désil
Junie Désil, born to Haitian immigrant parents in Montréal and raised in Winnipeg, has devoted over two decades to empowering communities made marginalized. An accomplished poet, her debut collection, eat salt | gaze at the ocean (2020), was a finalist for the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize and explores themes of Black sovereignty and the Haitian diaspora. Currently residing on the Traditional Territories of the Homalco, Tla’amin, and Klahoose, Junie mentors emerging writers at Simon Fraser University’s The Writer’s Studio. Beyond her professional life, Junie enjoys writing, coaching, consulting, and raising goats.
About The Readers
Cynthia Woodman Kerkham
Cynthia Woodman Kerkham has published two poetry collections, one chapbook and one co-edited anthology, "Poems from Planet Earth". She’s been a finalist for the CBC Poetry Prize and has won the John Lent Poetry/Prose Award, the Malahat Review’s Open Season Award, and the FBCW Poetry Prize. He latest book, "Water Quality", was nominated for the 2025 DC Reid Poetry Prize.
Eve Joseph
Eve Joseph lives and works on the unceded traditional territories of the Lekwungen peoples. Her first two books of poetry The Startled Heart and The Secret Signature of Things were both nominated for the Dorothy Livesay Award. She was awarded the P.K. Page Founder’s Award for poetry in 2010. Her nonfiction has been shortlisted for the CBC Literary Awards and won in the “Gold” category of the Western Magazine Awards. The first edition of In the Slender Margin, published by HarperCollins in 2014, won the Hubert Evans Nonfiction Prize and was named one of the Top 100 Books of the Year by the Globe and Mail. Her most recent book of poetry Quarrels (Anvil, 2018) was nominated for the Dorothy Livesay Prize, The ReLit Award, and won the 2019 Griffin Poetry Prize.
Fenn Stewart
Fenn Stewart is the author of two poetry collections: women & roosters (2025), and Better Nature (2017). Fenn is a former editor of The Capilano Review; she holds a PhD in social & political thought, and teaches literature, writing, and research at Capilano University. She lives on unceded Skwxwú7mesh, xʷməθkʷəỷəm, and səlilwətaɬ territories.
Jónína Kirton
Jónína Kirton, an Icelandic and Red River Métis poet, was born in Portage la Prairie, Manitoba, Treaty 1, the Traditional Lands of the Anishinaabe, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota, and Dene peoples and the homeland of the Métis. One of the co-founders of Indigenous Brilliance, she currently lives in New Westminster BC, the stolen land of the Hul’qumi’num speaking peoples. Jónína graduated from the SFU Writer's Studio in 2007 and since that time has published four books with Talonbooks. She was sixty-one when she received the 2016 Vancouver’s Mayor’s Arts Award for an Emerging Artist in the Literary Arts category. Her second collection of poetry, An Honest Woman, was a finalist in the 2018 Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize.
Murray Mann
Murray Mann (he/him) grew up in the traditional territories of Nadleh Whut'en in the central interior of BC and now lives on Cowichan territory. He has four children, a masters degree in philosophy, and has recently completed his second marathon. He has worked at Warmland House Shelter for over ten years. Murray has published poems in ISLAND WRITER, SWEETWATER (ed. Blomer), THE SKY IS FALLING (ed. Martindale), WORTH MORE STANDING (ed. Lowther) and EVENT 2022 and SUBLIME: POEMS FOR VANISHING ICE (ed. Blomer). His poem HOW I KEPT MY PACE WITH THE MOUNTAINS was selected as honorable mention for VALLUM MAGAZINE'S poetry contest 2023. His Chapbook IN THE LAND OF CHESLATTA was a finalist in the 2025 Raven Chapbook contest. Huy ch q'u
Renée Sarojini Saklikar
Renée Sarojini Saklikar is the author of five books, including the award-winning children of air india (2013) and Listening to the Bees (2018). Her essays and short fiction have appeared in literary magazines and anthologies, including Exile Editions, Chatelaine, The Capilano Review, and Pulp Literature. She was Poet Laureate for the City of Surrey (2015–2018), co-founded Lunch Poems at SFU and teaches Creative Writing at Douglas College. Bramah’s Discovery is the third volume of her epic fantasy in verse series, THOT J BAP, which includes Bramah and the Beggar Boy (2021) and Bramah's Quest (2023). She lives in East Vancouver, BC.
Russell Thornton
Russell Thornton is a Canadian poet known for his intense, visceral, and lyrical explorations of life, death, and human experience. He is the author of nine previously published collections, two of which have been shortlisted for major awards: Birds, Metals, Stones & Rain (2013) for the Governor General’s Award and The Hundred Lives (2014) for the Griffin Poetry Prize. His other titles are The Fifth Window (2000), A Tunisian Notebook (2002), House Built of Rain (2003), The Human Shore (2006), The Broken Face (2018), Answer to Blue (2021), and The White Light of Tomorrow (2023). Thornton’s poetry has been included in many anthologies, among them the Best Canadian Poetry series (2012 and 2019), and has been selected several times for BC’s Poetry in Transit; it has also appeared in translation in anthologies and literary journals in Greece, Romania, Israel, and Ukraine. Thornton resides in North Vancouver, B.C., a place whose natural environment significantly influences his work.
Wendy Donawa
Raised on Vancouver Island, Wendy Donawa then spent 36 years in Barbados, where she raised her family, studied at the University of the West Indies, and found vocation as a college instructor and museum curator. Now returned to her birthplace, her heart and mind focus on poetry.
The West Coast's salty air and the Caribben's easterly trade winds make equal claim on her spirit. Her poems appear widely in Canadian journals, anthologies and chapbooks. Her first poetry collection, "Thin Air of the Knowable" (Brick Books), was long-listed for the Raymond Souster Award and a finalist for the Gerald Lampert Award. Her second book, "Our Bodies' Unanswered Questions" (Frontenac), was one of the 2021 Frontenac Quartet. "The Time of Falling Apart" (Harbour Publishing),is her third collection, of which Russell Thornton writes "...a rich artistic document, a work that gathers up the years of an individual life, with its sorrows and triumphs, challenges and changes, reassembling it in the magical unity of poetry."
