Readings & Events

Lunch Poems

Reading with Rob Taylor

Celebrating Elise

A National Poetry Month reading to celebrate the work and life of Elise Partridge (1958-2015) on the tenth anniversary of her passing. A number of Elise’s friends will read poems by or about her, or poems she loved.

Stephanie Bolster, John Donlan, Mary Gomez Fonseca, Elee Kraljii Gardiner, Christopher Levenson, George McWhirter, Barbara Nickel, Bonnie Nish, Rachel Rose, Rob Taylor, and Fiona Tinwei-Lam will be reading. Elise’s and participating readers’ books available for purchase.

Thanks to the League of Canadian Poets and the Canada Council for the Arts for their support.

Doors at 6:30 pm, event starts at 7:00 pm; free to attend and all are welcome.

Strips and Remnants: A Short Poem Workshop with Vancouver’s Poet Laureate Elee Kraljii Gardiner

Using the idea of fragments (visual, sonic, or otherwise) this poetry workshop explores how small pieces become part of a whole.

We will experiment with physical materials on site, perhaps generating new materials in the form of sounds and word lists, and consider how assembling new patterns creates associative energy in the small poem.

This playful workshop is open to writers and non-writers of all experience levels who are curious about new methods of composition. Please bring pen and paper. Digital devices are welcome but not required. Participants will leave with short poems and with strategies for editing.

This is a free-by-donation event. To help us continue hosting workshops such as this one, the suggested donation is $10. RSVP here!

Mashed Poetics: “Fully Completely” by The Tragically Hip

A longtime friend to Verses, Mashed Poetics returns with a showcase that brings music and poetry together as we celebrate The Tragically Hip album “Fully Completely”!

Poets are invited to create work inspired by a song, artist, or album. Then, in true concert style, Mashed Poetics performs covers of the songs, sharing stage with the poets who share their creations.

Friday, April 18th, at Chill X Studio (2270 Manitoba St)

Doors: 8:00 PM  |  Show: 9:00 PM

$15 Advance  |  $20 at the door (no one turned away for lack of funds

Or buy a Verses Festival Pass here

Click Verses Festival of Words 2025 for more information and other event listings.

swim the poem/að synda ljóðið

a sonic poetry creation collaboration with Eduardo Abrantes and Elee Kraljii Gardiner

This literally “immersive” one hour experience invites participants into the pool to collectively voice a poem while moving through water.

Even If We Never Figure out What Happened

Join us for an afternoon of poetry and sound with Elee Kraljii Gardiner and Eduardo Abrantes supported by the Embassy of Canada.

Forlagið, Fiskislóð 39, Reykjavík, March 19, 2025, 16:00

The afternoon will feature a reading from Elee’s poetry collection Trauma Head and a representation of the collaborative project based on the text.

Eduardo Abrantes is a sound artist and artistic researcher based in Copenhagen. He works between sound art and performance often in collaboration weaving rhythms spaces movements and improvisation as opportunities for play.

Launch of SOME literary journal, issue 10

Launch of SOME with readings by Steve Collis, Catriona Strang, Elee Kraljii Gardiner and a video reading by Rhoda Rosenfeld

Pandora’s Collective Presents A Night for Giving

Please join us as poets and authors Kevin Spenst, A Bouquet Brought Back from Space (Anvil Press), Hymned Data (Pinhole Poetry 2023), Jane Shi, echolalia echolalia (Brick Books, 2024), Onjana Yawnghwe We Follow the River (Catlin Press, 2024) and Marc Perez, Dayo (Brick Books, 2024) and the forthcoming poetry chapbook, Domus (Anstruther Press, 2025), share readings from their newly released chapbooks. We are pleased to announce that Vancouver Poet Laureate Elee Kraljii Gardiner will open the evening off with a reading. Hosted by Lorraine White-Wilkinson.

Since 2006 Pandora’s Collective has run a fundraiser for the youth and their families in need from Musqueam over the holiday season.There is a list of children should you want to bring a new gift. There will be a donation box at the door. And please remember to support all these wonderful poets.

Donate:

If you cannot be at the event please consider sending a cash donation through Pandora’s

website https://www.pandorascollective.com/contact-us.html

or a gift by getting in touch with Bonnie Nish at blnish_pandoras@yahoo.ca

Tax receipts will be issued for donations over $20.

The Poets:

Kevin Spenst has authored sixteen chapbooks and four full-length books of poetry. He’s an organizer for the Dead Poets Reading Series, writes for subTerrain magazine, occasionally co-hosts Wax Poetic on Vancouver Co-op Radio, and teaches poetry at SFU’s The Writer’s Studio in Vancouver on unceded Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh territory

Jane Shi lives on the occupied, stolen, and unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and səlil̓ilw̓ətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) nations. She is the author of the chapbook Leaving Chang’e on Read (Rahila’s Ghost Press, 2022) and the winner of The Capilano Review’s 2022 In(ter)ventions in the Archive Contest. echolalia echolalia (Brick Books, 2024) is her debut poetry collection. She wants to live in a world where love is not a limited resource, land is not mined, hearts are not filched, and bodies are not violated.

Onjana Yawnghwe is the author of Fragments, Desire, and The Small Way, both nominated for the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. Her third book of poetry, We Follow the River, was published in Spring 2024 by Caitlin Press. More recently, a comic work, “Long Lost Lido” was published in the Fall issue of Geist Magazine. She lives in the traditional, ancestral, and unceded lands of the Kwikwetlem First Nation (Coquitlam), and works as a registered nurse.

Marc Perez

Born and raised in Manila, Marc Perez lives with his wife and two children in Sunset. He is the author of Dayo (Brick Books, 2024) and a forthcoming chapbook (Anstruther Press, 2025). His work has appeared in literary magazines, including Event, The Fiddlehead, Vallum, among others, and received support from the BC Arts Council and Canada Council for the Arts. He is a writer in residence at Deer Lake Artist Residency in April 2025.

Elee Kraljii Gardiner is the author of two books of poetry, Trauma Head and serpentine loop, and editor of the anthologies Against Death: 35 Essays on Living and V6A: Writing from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. A frequent collaborator, Elee is currently collaborating with nature via a series of durational installations that investigate the law of thermodynamics and cultural ideas regarding the passing of time. Originally from Boston, Elee directs Vancouver Manuscript Intensive, a program pairing authors with mentors. In January 2025 she becomes the poet laureate for the City of Vancouver for three years. eleekg.com

If you would like to donate a new item here is the list of items needed. We do not have information on all the children’s sizes at this time. New toys and games are always appreciated and socks are always needed.

Boy age 12, Size mens M

Boy age 10, Size boys L

Boy age 6, Size boys 10

Boy age 11, Size mens L

Girl age 10, Size Ladies M

Girl age 10, Size Ladies M/L

Boy age 7, Size Y 10/12

Girl age 3, Size Children 5/6

Boy age 9, Size boys 12/14

Boy age 6, Size boys 7-8

Boy age 16, Size L/M

Girl age 16, Size Ladies L

Mom, Size xxi

Mom Size L

Dad, XL

Girl age 16, Size Ladies XL

3 New Born

A special thank you to the Mountain View Cemetery and Ryan McLeod for the use of this space.

Contact: blnish@pandorascollective.com

Blending Genres Panel 71, Vancouver Writers Fest

Each of these authors combine the unexpected—either writing in many genres across works, or blending multiple genres in one book. The result, in every case, is a work as fascinating for its form as for its story. We delve into these kaleidoscopic offerings before a ceremony for the VMI Betsy Warland Between Genres Award. Alison McCreesh’s Degrees of Separation and Sarah Leavitt’s Something, Not Nothing both defy expectations of what a graphic novel can be, and the depths of creativity and poignancy they exude. Canisia Lubrin’s Code Noir is a masterpiece of 59 braided fictions that speak to the colonial empire and those who transcend it. Michael Turner’s Playlist blends poetry, memoir, and music journalism to consider a writing life immersed in music. Discover new horizons in writing and celebrate craft with these talents. Moderated by Elee Kraljii Gardiner.

At the end of the panel Steve Collis and Betsy Warland will announce the winner of the 2024 VMI Betsy Warland Between Genres Award.

Off the Shelf—A SOUNDSCAPE + READING LABORATORY

Elee Kraljii Gardiner and Chris Turnbull read from their ongoing ecollaboration, LINEN, written into and through multiple outdoor habitats in BC and Ontario. LINEN considers disintegration, types of markings, and tended abandon/ment, such as clothing or forensic tracings left or found in forests. For this evening of investigation into environments, poems are loosened from the page’s verso-recto, as if footsteps, and are surrounded with sound.

Composer Giorgio Magnanensi will diffuse an improvisational soundscape made of field recordings gathered in part from the Tuwanek Spring Forest on the Sunshine Coast, a place under threat of clearcutting. Using eight resonators built from discarded piles of wood: Red Cedar, Yellow Cedar, Pacific Maple and Sitka Spruce (also called tone wood) Giorgio will amplify sound in multiple directions allowing the listener to be within the soundscape itself.

Chris Turnbull is the author of cipher (Beautiful Outlaw Press 2024), [ untitled ] in own (CUE Books), and Continua (Chaudiere Books/Invisible). Her chapbooks include x/° (Gap Riot), notes from recently (Trainwreck Press), and, in collaboration with Portuguese text artist Bruno Neiva, Undertones (Low Frequency Press). Recent writing has been published in SOME, Imminent and Touch the Donkey. Other work can be found in print, online, and within landscapes. She curates a footpress, rout/e, whereby poetry can be found on trails (www.etuor.wordpress.com).

Elee Kraljii Gardiner is an author, editor, and creative mentor living in Vancouver, Canada. She is the author of two poetry books, Trauma Head, winner of the Cogswell Award for Literary Excellence, and serpentine loop, nominated for the Souster Award. She is editor of the anthologies Against Death: 35 Essays on Living and V6A: Writing from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. A frequent collaborator with choreographers, musicians, and visual artists, Elee is currently collaborating with nature via a series of durational art installations that investigate the law of thermodynamics and cultural ideas regarding the passing of time. eleekg.com

Giorgio Magnanensi is a sound artist, composer and conductor. His diverse artistic practice includes electroacoustic improvisation, circuit bending, instrument making and video art. He is artistic director of Vancouver New Music, Laboratorio Arts Society and lecturer at the School of Music of The Vancouver Community College. https://giorgiomagnanensi.com/

Located in the Ink

A joint art exhibit of visual work by Elee Kraljii Gardiner and Gary Barwin, WATCHER, with Inside Outside Chinatown  by Isabella Wang. More info here.

And join us for the mid-show reception on November 23 2:00 pm – 4:00 pm PST. RSVP HERE

We are grateful for the generous and skilled support of Printmaker Studio in making the WATCHER prints!

Book Launch: I feel that way too by jaz papadopoulas and Signal Infinities by Melanie Siebert

I’ll be hosting the double book launch of jaz papadopoulas’ I FEEL THAT WAY TOO from Nightwood Editions and Melanie Siebert’s SIGNAL INFINITIES from McClelland & Stewart on Thursday Sep 12 at Cross and Crows in Vancouver. Readings, conversation, general hijinx!