When all else fails, poetry fills in our uncertainties with memorable language, helping us find the words needed to both confront systems of oppression and adapt to the unknowns that are always pressing in. And then, of course, in our busy lives, there’s also the effort of joy in small places. In this poetry panel, we will hear three poets reading work that shows us how the mechanics of poetry surprise (“Form is the act of blossoming in unlikely vessels,” writes Marc Perez), challenge (“I hope that there’s a sense of ‘We can be better than this.’ ‘How can we be better than this?’” Nathalie Lim says in an interview with Pancouver), and help us adapt (Tāriq Malik writes “in response to the world in flux around him and of his place in its shadows.”) Please join us for a reading and discussion with these three fabulous poets!
Location: Poetry Tent, UBC Robson Square
Host: Kevin Spenst
Readers: Marc Perez, Dayo (Brick Books) | Natalie Lim, Elegy for Opportunity, (Wolsak & Wynn) | Tāriq Malik, Blood of Stone (Caitlin Press)
About The Host
Kevin Spenst
A poet, teacher, and reviewer, Kevin Spenst (he/him) has published four full-length poetry collections, most recently A Bouquet Brought Back from Space (Anvil Press, 2024) and 17 chapbooks, most recently Windowful (Anstruther Press, 2025). He is one of the organizers of the Dead Poets Reading Series, has a chapbook review column for subTerrain magazine, occasionally co-hosts Wax Poetic on Vancouver Co-op Radio, and is one of the poetry ambassadors for Vancouver’s newest poet laureate Elee Kraljii Gardiner. He is the 2025 Poetry Mentor at The Writer’s Studio at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver on unceded xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish) and səl̓ilw̓ətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) territory where he cohabitates with the one and only Cheryl Rossi.
About The Readers
Marc Perez
Marc Perez is the author of the chapbook, Domus (Anstruther Press, 2025). His debut collection, Dayo (Brick Books, 2024), received the 2025 Gerald Lampert Award. His work has appeared in The Fiddlehead, EVENT, CV2, PRISM International, and Vallum, among others.
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.
Tāriq Malik
Pakistani-born Vancouver-based DesiPOC author Tāriq Malik has worked across poetry, fiction, non-fiction, and visual arts for the past four decades to distill immersive and original narratives. As a marginalized creator, he writes intensely in response to the world in flux around him and his place in its shadows. He claims to have come reluctantly late to these shores, having to first survive three wars, two migrations, and two decades of slaving in the Kuwaiti desert before landing here. He has authored a collection of short stories, Rainsongs of Kotli, TSAR publications, 2004; a novel, Chanting Denied Shores, Bayeux Arts, 2010; and poetry published under Unmooring the Komagata Maru, UBC Press, 2019. His recent poetry publications by Caitlin Press include Exit Wounds, 2022, and Blood of Stone, 2024. His writing has appeared or will appear in Salzburg Poetry Review #43, The Puritan, The Polyglot Magazine, Rice Paper, TWUC’s Write Magazine, The Aleph Review, and Verbal Art (July 2019), among others. He has been the Writer-in-Residence at the Historic Joy Kogawa House (July 2023). He is the current Writer-in-Residence at The Polyglot Magazine, and the Canadian Editor of the online Haiku magazine Espacio Luna Alfanje.
