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
JunieDésil, 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
Award-winning poet, Cynthia Woodman Kerkham is the author of Good Holding Ground and with feathers and the co-editor of the anthology Poems from Planet Earth. Her latest collection, Water Quality, was a finalist for the DC Reid Poetry Prize. She lives in Victoria, BC.
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 three chapbooks and two poetry collections: Better Nature, which was longlisted for the 2018 Gerald Lampert Memorial Prize, and women and roosters. A former editor of The Capilano Review, she continues to serve on the magazine’s editorial board. Stewart holds a PhD in social and political thought, and teaches literature and writing at Capilano University. She lives with her kids in Vancouver, B.C., on unceded Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), xʷməθkʷəỷəm (Musqueam), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) 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 and now lives in Cowichan territory. He works at the Sobering Centre in Warmland house and co-parents four children. He’s published poetry in Event, Sweetwater, Worth More Standing and Island Writer.\
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
Wendy Donawa left her natal Victoria as a young woman to settle in Barbados. She attended the University of the West Indies, taught college literature and became a curator at the Barbados Museum. Decades later, she returned to Victoria to complete her Ph.D., taught literature for several years and turned her focus to her first love, poetry. Her poetry collection, Thin Air of the Knowable (Brick Books, 2017), was longlisted for the Raymond Souster Award and a finalist for the Gerald Lampert Award. Her second collection, Our Bodies’ Unanswered Questions (Frontenac House, 2021), launched with the Frontenac Quartet. The Time of Falling Apart is her third poetry collection. Her poems have been published in Arc Poetry Magazine, Prairie Fire, Freefall, The New Quarterly, The Literary Review of Canada, Room and others. She is a contributing editor with Arc Poetry Magazine and a board member with
Planet Earth Poetry reading series. She writes a monthly review, “Unpacking the Poem,” celebrating the diversity and creativity of BC poets. She and her wife live gratefully on the unceded territory of the lǝk’ʷǝŋǝŋ Lekwungen-speaking) Esquimalt and Songhees people, in Victoria, B.C.