Poetry Panel Chapbooks

Location: Room C420

Type: Panel, Poetry

Moderator: Kevin Spenst, Hymned Data (Pinhole Poetry)

Readers: Kurt Trzcinski, Tonewood (Red Tower Bookworks) | Salena Wiener, bodies like gardens (Cactus Press) | Christina Shah, Rig Veda (Anstruther Press)

About The Moderator

Kevin Spenst

Kevin Spenst is the author of sixteen chapbooks and three full-length books of poetry plus his newest collection A Bouquet Brought Back from Space (Anvil Press, 2024). 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 teaches poetry 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

Kurt Trzcinski

Kurt Trzcinski is an ecologist who has studied many ecosystems around the world. He thrives at the edge of poetry and science, and hopes that together they can create new visions of how we relate to the world. Tonewood (Red Tower Bookworks, 2023) is a short collection of poems gathered from the author's journeys and work as a field biologist. Each poem is an invitation to pause, connect, and rewild.

Salena Wiener

Salena Wiener is a poet and PhD student in English Literature at Simon Fraser University. Her research focuses on British Romantic women’s writing, book history and manuscript culture, and the sexual and labour politics of women’s fair copy work. Her poetry has been featured in Honey & Lime Lit Magazine, Graphite Publications, Peculiars Magazine, Cauldron Anthology, and elsewhere, and her poetry reviews appear in the Montreal Review of Books. She is the author of the chapbook bodies like gardens (Cactus Press 2023).

Christina Shah

Christina Shah lives in Vancouver and works in heavy industry, where she drinks from the firehose of knowledge. Her poetry has appeared numerous Canadian literary journals, including The Fiddlehead, Vallum, Arc, Grain, PRISM international, EVENT, The Malahat Review, The Antigonish Review and elsewhere. Her poem, ‘they canned a good man today’, was shortlisted for The Fiddlehead’s 2021 Ralph Gustafson Poetry Prize. Her poem, ‘interior bar, 1986’, was selected for Best Canadian Poetry 2023. She is one-fifth of the Harbour Centre 5 poetry collective, whose chapbook, Brine, was released in 2022. Her first videopoem, ‘rig veda’ (in collaboration with videographer Mark Mushet), was translated into Spanish and screened at the 2023 Cinemística festival in Granada, Spain, the 2023 Versi Di Luce festival in Modica, Sicily, and REELPoetry 2024 in Houston. rig veda, her first solo chapbook (Anstruther Press), was released in 2023. She has some strong opinions on soft pretzels.