Two poets come together to share their grief and resiliency in the face of loss, as well as their ability to move on because of love.

Location: Poetry Tent

Type: Reading, Poetry

Host: Renée Sarojini Saklikar, Bramah's Quest (Nightwood Editions)

Readers: Kayla Czaga, Midway (House of Anansi Press) | Cathy Stonehouse, Dream House: A Poem (Nightwood Editions)

Sponsored by the Canada Arts Council and the Writers Union of Canada

About The Host

Renée Sarojini Saklikar

Renée Sarojini Saklikar is the author of five books, including the award-winning Children of Air India and Listening to the Bees. Her poetry, essays and short fiction have appeared in many literary magazines and anthologies, including Exile Editions, Chatelaine, The Capilano Review, and Pulp Literature. Bramah’s Quest is the latest volume of her epic fantasy in verse, THOT J BAP, The Heart of This Journey Bears All Patterns. She was poet laureate for the City of Surrey 2015–2018 and volunteers for Event magazine, Meet the Presses collective, Surrey International Writers Conference and Poetry in Canada . Renée Sarojini teaches creative writing and editing at Kwantlen Polytechnic University and hosts Lunch Poems at SFU. Find out more https://thecanadaproject.wordpress.com/

About The Readers

Kayla Czaga

Kayla Czaga is the author of three poetry collections, most recently Midway (House of Anansi, 2024). Her work has been shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award for poetry and the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. Frequently anthologized in the Best Canadian Poetry in English series, her writing also appears in The Walrus, Grain, Event, The Fiddlehead, and elsewhere. She lives with her wife on the traditional territory of the Lekwungen people, the Songhees nd Esquimalt nations.

Cathy Stonehouse

Cathy Stonehouse (she/they) is a poet, writer, teacher and visual artist who migrated as a young adult from Thatcher’s England to Vancouver, BC—the unceded traditional territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Nations—where she still lives. The author of a novel, The Causes (Pedlar Press, 2019), a collection of short fiction, Something About the Animal (Biblioasis, 2011) and two previous collections of poetry, Grace Shiver (Inanna Publications, 2011) and The Words I Know (Press Gang, 1994), Stonehouse co-edited the groundbreaking anthology Double Lives: Writing and Motherhood (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2008), is a previous editor of EVENT magazine and currently teaches creative writing and interdisciplinary expressive arts at Kwantlen Polytechnic University.