Readings & Events

Free Verse: a reading at WORD

Free Verse seeks to bring the voices of incarcerated writers to the Vancouver community through a public presentation of their writing in an effort to expand the literary community, build empathy, and leverage the power of storytelling to instigate change. Work is from writers in Mission Medium (men) and Fraser Valley (women) Institutions. Free Verse is a project of Pandora’s Collective. Supported by the City of Vancouver’s Communities and Artists Shifting Culture (CASC) and UBC PRE Fund.

Location: Room C440, UBC Robson Square

Sponsored by: Pandora’s Collective, The City of Vancouver and UBC Library

Moderator: Kaile Shilling

Readers: Johnny Trinh | Sophea Heang | Elee Kraljii Gardiner

8east’s 3rd Thursday improvised music series

8east’s 3rd Thursday improvised music series presents:

Elee Kraljii Gardiner – poet
Aysha Dulong – electronics
Cindy Kao – violin
Johanna Hauser – clarinets
Torsten Müller – bass

By donation $20/10/free

The 8EAST social space for new culture is a project of the NOW Society, located on the Territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm, Skwxwú7mesh and səlil̓wətaʔɬ Peoples, in Chinatown, in the DTES, in Vancouver. We are committed to making 8EAST a safe(r), welcoming and more accessible space.

Details here.

Tiny Desk Concert–Vancouver Public Library Edition

Vancouver Public Library’s Tiny Desk Concert is a live music and literary performance where artists play music or share verse in a small, intimate setting. It emphasizes the authenticity of music and storytelling rather than grandiose production values.

Join us for VPL’s first TDC featuring Chris Bose, the 2025 Indigenous Storyteller in Residence, The City of Vancouver’s Poet Laureate for 2025-2027, Elee Kraljii Gardiner, and special musical guest, Graham How with How Sound.

If it’s a nice day, we’ll be out in the rooftop garden space just outside the Yosef Wosk Poets’ Corner on Level 9!

Details and info here.

DTES Writers Festival

Join us for the DTES Writers Festival opening event, Thursday, May 22: 1-2:30pm in the Carnegie Community Centre Theatre at 401 Main St (at Hastings) in Vancouver. Everyone welcome! Elder in Residence, Les Nelson will offer a welcome, Vancouver’s Poet Laureate Elee will do a short reading, as will DTES Writers Collective leader, author and reporter Gilles Cyrenne. paula luther (Typewriter Tales) will read from last year’s collective story. Come mingle with fellow poets, authors, and storytellers (and eat cake)!

Program guides available from Carnegie Community Centre. Info also available on Instagram.

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