Dive In | Poetry in Voice

Journey of the Magi

One of the three wise men who travelled to Bethlehem upon the birth of Jesus Christ describes his version of the story and the emotional upheaval he experiences from witnessing a miracle that shatters his previous beliefs and way of life.

I Carried My Father Across the Sea

An elegy, both surreal and heartfelt, that explores a son’s grief over his father’s death.

April 30, 2014

One spring day, dreading an afternoon appointment that will dredge up all kinds of terrible memories, the speaker of the poem focuses on the natural world around her.

susiya

Music binds and refreshes community

A Breakfast for Barbarians

Come sit at this mythical table where guests eat the world’s mysteries for breakfast.

The Fish

A dreamy poem diving into oceanic imagery, exploring time and change.

The Potato Harvest

This lonely poem is about so much more than a bare field.

400: Coming Home

You can’t help thinking about your life on a long stretch of highway.

I Lost My Talk

How can you speak your deepest truth in a language that doesn’t understand you?

An English Speaking Doctor Translates the Concerns of his Patient with Google/Un Docteur Anglophone Traduit Les Inquiétudes De Son Patient Avec Google

This bilingual poem expresses the limitations of understanding across languages when experiences become lost in translation.

Planet Earth

P.K. Page sings the praises of planet earth through extended metaphor and delightful constraint.

Fast Commute

Laurie Graham weathers an incongruous ice storm in this poem-excerpt that asks us to pause and understand that we are present here, “and with this understanding to start to hear.”

From Correspondences

Anne Michaels challenges us to find new maps to think about old experiences.

Fear of Snakes

The life of a snake and the memory of girlhood trauma are told in sinuously entwined language.

I Have Something to Tell You

In this surreal poem, a man made of cameras brings his unexpected concerns into sharper focus.

Salmon Courage

Deep bravery can emerge amid clashing familial hopes and truths. M. NourbeSe Philip shows us how.

But I’m No One

But I’m No one is a reflection on our tendency to fear death and the manifestation of this fear through uncanny beliefs.

Application Form

Identity is elusive. Maybe it doesn’t exist at all.

The Blue Guitar

In this glosa poem, P.K. Page strums out questions about being an artist and telling the truth.

Late Prayer

Erin Robinsong delivers a quiet and fierce prayer for life on Earth in an age of ecological destruction and oligarchical domination

A Stone Diary

A love poem to a stone takes on deeper, rockier meanings.

the knowing

Connie Fife cryptically combines land and body in this poem exploring connection to place and past.

These Poems, She Said

Can an argument be the foundation of a love poem? Robert Bringhurst certainly thinks so!

Two Words: A Wedding

bpNichol presents life as a river of ever-changing words and asks us to step in.

Blank Sonnet

Set in Halifax of the 1930s, this sensual, inebriated love poem plays with the sonnet form.

The Swimmer’s Moment

Will you choose to observe from the rim of the whirlpool, or its centre?

Guanahani, 11

This bracing ballad (re)considers the beauty and history of the Caribbean island where Christopher Columbus first landed.

Let the Ponies Out

In this poem, a dramatic monologue, the speaker implores their father to do something both real and more real in its imagining.

The Powwow at the End of the World

Sherman Alexie slams the environmental destruction of settler-colonialism as we travel on an upstream course towards the powwow at the end of the world.

Vancouver Lights

This wartime poem looks out at Vancouver’s nighttime skyline and contemplates humanity.

Autobiography of My Hungers

A poem that explores private desire and longing, and the pain of homophobia.

Weed Killer

Fiona Tinwei Lam moves from personal to universal and back to the personal in this chilling poem about the ecological destruction bequeathed from one generation to the next.

“Breathe dust…”

Nearly punctuation-free, this is a breathless journey through memories of a youth spent in rural Canada.

aubade for the BPD subreddit user who wrote can people with BPD love?

The stunningly cruel comments of an internet forum reverberate throughout a sleepless night

Last Visit

This poem invites you to discover the forms that outrage can take.

Tide

Both stark and tender, this poem is about Reena Virk, a BC teen of South Asian descent who was assaulted and murdered by her peers in 1997.

Application Form

Identity is elusive. Maybe it doesn’t exist at all.

The Blue Guitar

In this glosa poem, P.K. Page strums out questions about being an artist and telling the truth.

Thou Poem

A poet reveals the happiest and unhappiest parts of their poetry – in conversation with a poem.

I’ll Teach You Cree

By sharing with us the untranslatable aspects of Cree culture, Scofield immerses the reader with the sensorial experiences that deepen the bonds of community.