Our last event of 2026, on Sunday November 8th, is sure to be a good one! Here is the lineup:
- Carlie Blume reading Czesław Miłosz (1911-2004)
- Garth Martens reading P. K. Page (1916-2010)
- Preeti Kaur Dhaliwal reading Amrita Pritam (1919-2005)
- Jordan Redekop-Jones reading Mary Oliver (1935-2019)
It will take place as usual at Outsiders and Others #100 - 938 Howe Street, in Downtown Vancouver, and will start at 3pm sharp.
Reminder: This event is masks-required and there will be masks available at the door.
Readers Bios
Carlie Blume was born on the unceded and ancestral lands of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh (Vancouver). She is a 2017 graduate of Simon Fraser University’s The Writer’s Studio and the author of Gigglepuss (2022). Her poetry has been published in The Maynard, Loose Lips Magazine, Train: a poetry journal, among others. She currently lives on the traditional territory of the Saanich, Cowichan and Chemanius First Nations (Salt Spring Island, B.C) with her husband and two children.
Garth Martens is the author of Who Else in the Dark Headed There and Prologue for the Age of Consequence. For his first book, he was a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Poetry. He was also awarded the Bronwen Wallace Award in 2011. He is co-founder of Palabra Flamenco, a performance ensemble that joins flamenco dance and music with poetry and oral storytelling. He lives in Victoria. Find him on Instagram @garthmartens.
Preeti Kaur Dhaliwal (she/her) is a writer, facilitator, former lawyer and critical race feminist who lives on the unceded past, present and future territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations. Preeti has spent over two decades using arts-based methodologies to explore justice, healing, community-building and transformation, offering creative workshops across communities and institutions on Turtle Island. Her work asks how language, so often used to colonize, flatten and desensitize, might instead bring us back to ourselves, oneness and each other. Her writing tends to explore themes of touch, grief, race, power, prayer, love, sexuality and the everyday lives of diasporic Punjabi people. Preeti holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph, and her debut poetry collection I found a god who could is forthcoming with Brick Books (Spring 2027). Her poetry, fiction and nonfiction have been published in journals such as PRISM International, CV2, The Fiddlehead, Canadian Notes & Queries, The Humber Literary Review, The New Quarterly, Arc Poetry, ti-TCR, the ex-Puritan, Looseleaf, amongst many others. She is wildly grateful to have been the 2025 poet in residence at Upstart & Crow, is a two-time writer-in-residence at Voices of Our Nation, a Deer Lake alumna, and a Banff Centre alumna. Preeti truly believes stories change the world by altering our ways of seeing, feeling and being with one another and the planet, and is grateful for support from Canada Council for the Arts and BC Arts Council that allow her to do this work. Learn more: @write.with.preeti (IG) or www.preetidhaliwal.com.
Jordan Redekop-Jones is a mixed Indigenous/ Anglo Indian writer from Vancouver BC. She is the winner of several awards including the 2025 CBC Poetry Prize, the 2024 Austin Clarke prize in Literary Excellence for poetry and was a recipient of a 2024 Indigenous Voices Award in the unpublished poetry category. Her work has appeared in publications including Prism International, Arc Poetry, the Ex-Puritan, Rungh, SAD Mag and more. Her debut chapbook Hybridity as a Phantom Body was just recently published by Anstruther Press. She is a graduate of SFU’s the Writer’s Studio and is a current MA English Literature student at Simon Fraser University.
Dead Poets Bios
Czesław Miłosz (born June 30, 1911, Šetenia, Lithuania—died August 14th, 2004, Krakow, Poland) was a Polish American poet, novelist, translator, critic, and diplomat who received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1980. Milosz’s writing examines the impact of repressive regimes and systems such as national socialism and communism on the human spirit.
I chose this poet for his deft combination of simplicity, erudition and economy of language. His poems range from sweeping and grand to minimal and razor sharp. There is a gentle naturalism and humanity at the center of his work that pulls me into his words like no other poet of his era.
P.K. Page (1916-2010) was one of Canada’s most distinguished poets. Also known as a painter under the name P.K. Irwin, she was born in England, and grew up in Alberta and Manitoba before settling in Montreal. Her collection The Metal and the Flower won the Governor General’s Award in 1954. In 2001, by special resolution of the United Nations, her poem “Planet Earth” was read simultaneously in New York, the Antarctic, and the South Pacific to celebrate the International Year of Dialogue Among Civilizations. She was a Companion of the Order of Canada and lived much of her later life in Victoria, British Columbia.
Amrita Pritam (1919–2005) was one of the most celebrated Punjabi writers of the twentieth century. Born in Gujranwala, in present-day Pakistan, she began publishing as a teenager and went on to write more than a hundred books of poetry, fiction, essays, biography and memoir. Following Partition in 1947, she moved from Lahore, Pakistan to Delhi, India. Most Punjabi elders will recognize (and tear up) upon hearing her poem “Ajj Aakhaan Waris Shah Nu,” an elegy about Partition and its devastating toll on Punjab. A pioneering voice in Punjabi literature, Pritam wrote openly about love, sexuality, marriage and women’s freedom at a time when women’s perspectives were rarely given such space. Her novel Pinjar (1950), which explores violence against women, was adapted into a film in 2003. In 1956, she became the first woman to win the Sahitya Akademi Award for a work in Punjabi. In 2004, the year before her death, she received the Akademi’s Fellowship for lifetime achievement.
Mary Oliver (1935-2019) was a highly accomplished American poet known for winning both a National Book award (1992) and a Pulitzer Prize (1984). A majority of her work was inspired by the natural world, often centralizing on its consistent yet unrestrained nature.
