Poetry by the River: Environmental Stewardship through the Arts
June 5, 2025 § Leave a comment
I’m excited to share that I’ll be reading at “Poetry by the River: Environmental Stewardship through the Arts” on Friday, June 20th, in London, Ontario. It’s a collaboration of Antler River Poetry, Antler River Rally, and London Bicycle Café (all of my favourite things–poetry, rivers, bicycles !!). We’ll start with a river cleanup at the Forks of Deshkan Ziibi/the Thames and then skip over to the London Bicycle Café for poetry and music from former London poet laureate Tom Cull, musician Shawn Durant, and myself. If you’re the area, I hope you can join !
Announcement from Antler River Poetry:
We’re thrilled to announce POETRY BY THE RIVER, a special event cultivating environmental stewardship through the arts in #ldnont on Friday June 20th with our partners @antlerriverrally & @ldnontbikecafe!
PART 1: From 4:00-5:30pm, join us for a river cleanup at the Forks of Deshkan Ziibi/the Thames.
PART 2: From 6:30-8:00pm, join us at London Bicycle Cafe for a multimedia eco-arts extravaganza featuring poetry from @thomaswaltercull and keynote speaker @whatarepoetsfor as well as music from @shawn_durant!
Free to attend; come for one event, or come for both! All details are in the poster. Books available for purchase through @littlewrenbooks.
Much gratitude to @londonartscouncil @cityoflondonont@ontarioartscouncil @canada.council for generously making this event possible!
Planet Earth Poetry, 15 November!
November 11, 2024 § Leave a comment
I’m reading at Planet Earth Poetry this Friday 15 November 15, in Victoria, at Russell Books, with fellow poet Ashley-Elizabeth Best! I hope you can join 🙂 either in person or by Zoom — links below. I was also delighted to participate in an interview with PEP, with Anna Cavouras. Open mic!!! I’ll be reading from my latest book, A blueprint for survival (Guernica Editions, 2024).
747 FORT STREET IN VICTORIA
Doors open at 7:00pm, event starts at 7:30 and sign up for the open mic in person between 7:00–7:20.
Unless otherwise noted, in person events will be livestreamed HERE (Meeting ID: 494 660 4447 /Passcode: 2129)
**please note, livestream begins at approx. 8:00–8:15pm with featured readings**
First performance of Ledi for the Assembly exhibit, New Media Gallery, New Westminster
October 23, 2021 § Leave a comment
First performance of Ledi (Book*hug 2018) as response to Assembly exhibit, New Media Gallery, New Westminster. Here, we are inside the Zimoun tower, a construct of cardboard boxes and cotton balls, drumming. Pt.1, “Wrenched from the cold earth,” was performed inside Zimoun. As Herodotus described the burial practices of the Scythians, we exited the grave/kurgan, circling the tower, and moved onward into the dark of the Tan archival exhibit. 
Rehearsal for Assembly response performance of Ledi at the New Media Gallery, New Westminster
October 6, 2021 § Leave a comment
Rehearsing for response performances at the New Media Gallery, New Westminster: response to “Assembly,” featuring the work of Elizabeth Price, Fiona Tan, and Zimoun. Working here on tech in the Tan installation.
First gig at New Media Gallery — Performance of Ledi
September 13, 2021 § Leave a comment
This is the first of possibly 3 performances of my poetry-film assemblage of Ledi (Book*hug 2018) with fiddle/composer Hazel Fairbairn. Our performance is a response to the Assembly exhibit at the New Media Gallery, New Westminster, featuring Fiona Tan, Zimoun, and Turner-prize-winning artist Elizabeth Bishop: “A collection, a set of instructions, an archive, a regime, a system. This is the Assembly. We recognize the power of an assembly that works, moves and thinks together, with apparent order and regularity. There is a potent force in the impressions and sounds of order; be they utopian or dystopian.
We have an innate desire to control a world in chaos. The will to order is considered one of the essential forces driving human behaviour, leading to such things as laws and institutional systems, rational and scientific thought, educational systems, political and public health orders….war. Art itself can be understood as a desire to order; in the development of systems, rules and organizations. At the same time creative thought can be a powerful force with the ability to break down ordering systems And when the assembly breaks down what follows? Out of the chaos new orders are swiftly born. ” (New Media Gallery). Two more performances possibly to be scheduled on the 22nd and 23rd.
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SFU Lunch Poems: David Ly + Kim Trainor
June 10, 2021 § Leave a comment
I’ll be a featured reader along with David Ly at this month’s SFU Lunch Poems: 16 June 2021 @ 12pm. Click here to register for this live, online reading! Hope you can join 🙂
David Ly is the author of the poetry collection Mythical Man(Anstruther Books, 2020) and the chapbook Stubble Burn (Anstruther Press, 2018). His poetry has appeared in PRISM international, Arc Poetry Magazine, The /temz/ Review, carte blanche, and elsewhere. He is the Poetry Editor of This Magazine and sits on the Editorial Collective of Anstruther Press. In 2020, CBC named David on their annual Writers to Watch list.
Kim Trainor is the granddaughter of an Irish banjo player and a Polish faller who worked in logging camps around Port Alberni in the 1930s. Ledi was a finalist for the 2019 Raymond Souster Award. Bluegrass will appear with Icehouse Press (Gooselane Editions) in 2022. Her poetry films, created with the musician Hazel Fairbairn, have screened at the ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival 2020 and the 9th International Film Festival in Athens, Greece in 2021. She teaches in the English department at Douglas College and lives in Vancouver, unceded homelands of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Skwxwú7mesh, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations.
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