Next Reading: March 8th, 2026

 

It's already March! The next reading of the Dead Poets Reading Series this year will feature these fantastic poets:

Rhea Tregebov reading Anne Szumigalski (1922-1999)
George McWhirter reading José Emilio Pacheco (1939-2014)
Robin Susanto reading Sapardi Djoko Damano (1940–2020)
Mezi reading Classical poems by Arab women

Date/Time: March 8th, 3:00pm – 4:45pm

Location: Outsiders and Others (#100 – 938 Howe Street, Vancouver)

This is a masks-required event to keep things as safe as possible for everyone.

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Reader Bios

Rhea Tregebov is the author of eight collections of poetry, most recently Talking to Strangers, published by Véhicule Press in 2024. She is also the author of two novels and five children’s picture books. Tregebov served as Chair of the Writers’ Union of Canada from 2021 to 2023. Born in Saskatoon and raised in Winnipeg, she now lives in Vancouver, where she is Associate Professor Emerita at the School of Creative Writing at UBC.

George McWhirter’s Catalan Poems shared the 1972 Commonwealth Poetry Prize with Chinua Achebe’s Beware, Soul Brother. His poetry is anthologized in Seamus Heaney’s Soundings 72, (Blackstaff Press, Belfast), The Penguin Book of Canadian Verse and Irish Writing in the Twentieth Century (Cork University Press, David Pierce, editor). Most recent poetry publications are in Abridged (Derry, Northern Ireland), The Antigonish Review (Nova Scotia). Bristlecone (Denver, Colorado). The Incorrection (Oolichan Books) was shortlisted for the 2008 Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize; in 2024, he won The Griffin Poetry Prize for his translation of Homero Aridjis’ Self-Portrait in the Zone of Silence (New Directions, 2023). 

Robin Susanto was born in Indonesia. After many departures and arrivals he now lives in this Coast Salish territory a.k.a Vancouver, where he continues to immigrate homeward. By day he teaches statistics and translates legal documents. To make sure things really add up he writes poetry. His chapbook “Of Rain & Kisses,” will be published by Pinhole Poetry in April.

Mezi is a Vancouver-based poet, photographer, and Zen student. His work has been published in The Malahat Review, EVENT Magazine, filling Station, and Plenitude Magazine, among other journals. He is also the author of Medellín (2017), a chapbook of photopoetry for the benefit of refugees. Learn more at mezi.site.

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Dead Poets Bios

Anne Szumigalski, was born in London in 1922; she died in Saskatoon in 1999. She was raised in rural Hampshire, and served as an interpreter with the Red Cross during World War II, moving in 1951 to Canada. A translator, editor, playwright, teacher and poet, she was instrumental in founding the Saskatchewan Writers' Guild and the literary magazine Grain. She wrote or co-wrote 14 books, mostly poetry, including Woman Reading in a Bath (1974) and A Game of Angels (1980).

José Emilio Pacheco (1939–2014) was honoured by the most prestigious awards in Spanish Literature, culminating in the Cervantes and the Reina Sofa in 2009. He wrote wonderful poems on the sea, inspired by childhood summers in Veracruz with his grandparents; his schooldays and grown-up years in Mexico City may have turned into what Octavio called a “Dr. Pangloss in reverse”, so much of his verse lived in the worst of all possible worlds.

Sapardi Djoko Damono (1940-2020): poet, essayist, translator, and academic, widely known as the pioneer of lyrical poetry in Indonesia. The “Professor of Indonesian Poets” was loved by connoisseurs and everyday folks alike.

Classical Poems by Arab Women - (Mezi will read from this collection, highlighting a number of Arab women poets.)

From the link:

"Arab women poets have been writing since the earliest of times, yet for millennia, their diwans (collected poems) were kept in the shadows.

Spanning more than five thousand years, from the pre-Islamic to the Andalusian periods, Classical Poems by Arab Women presents rarely seen work by over sixty women writers who boldly refused to be silenced. From the sorrowful eulogies of Khansa to the gleeful scorn of Wallada bint al-Mustakfi, this collection offers a rich excursion into the vibrant, exclusively female worlds of pleasure, passion and pain, suppressed for centuries by religious and political bigotry.

With many poems shown here for the first time, this bespoke edition celebrates feminine wit and desire and pays homage to the significant contribution Arab women have made to the literary tradition."