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Poetic License: Readings and Conversation

With Lisa Martin, André Alexis, katherena vermette, Billy-Ray Belcourt, and Sue Goyette

Saturday, November 8
7:00PM – 9:30PM (Doors open at 6:30PM)
Bus Stop Theatre (2203 Gottingen St, Halifax)
$15.00

Description

Short readings by Lisa Martin (A Story Can Be Told About Pain) and André Alexis (Other Worlds) set the stage for a wide-ranging conversation about poetry with katherena vermette (Procession) and Billy-Ray Belcourt (The Idea of an Entire Life), led by Sue Goyette (Future Howl).

Speakers

  • Lisa Martin is the author of two full-length collections of poems, One Crow Sorrow (Brindle & Glass, 2008) and Believing Is Not The Same As Being Saved (University of Alberta Press, 2017). Her work has won a National Magazine Award for Personal Journalism and the Stephan G. Stephansson Award for Poetry. Her second collection of poetry was a finalist for the City of Edmonton Book Prize in 2018. She is the author of Creative Writing In Post-Secondary Education: Practice, Pedagogy, And Research (Bloomsbury, 2025), a blend of memoir and scholarly review. A Story Can Be Told About Pain (NeWest Press, 2025) is her first novel. She is Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at MacEwan University.

  • André Alexis was born in Trinidad and grew up in Canada. He is the author of the Quincunx, comprised of five novels: Fifteen Dogs, winner of the Giller Prize, CBC Canada Reads, and the Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize; Days by Moonlight, winner of the Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize; Pastoral; The Hidden Keys; and Ring. His other books include Asylum, The Night Piece, Despair and Other Stories of Ottawa, and most recently Other Worlds, longlisted for the Toronto Book Award. He is the recipient of a Windham Campbell Prize.

  • katherena vermette (she/her/hers) is a Michif (Red River Métis) writer from Treaty 1 territory, the heart of the Métis Nation, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. In 2013, her first book, North End Love Songs (Muses’ Company) won the Governor General’s Literary Award for Poetry. Since then, her work has garnered awards and critical accolades across genres. Her novels The Break (House of Anansi) and The Strangers, The Circle (Hamish Hamilton) and most recently, real ones (Hamish Hamilton) have all been national best sellers and won multiple literary awards. Her work for children and young adults includes the picture book The Girl and The Wolf (Theytus) and graphic novel series A Girl Called Echo (Highwater). She also co-wrote and co-directed This River, winner of the 2017 Canadian Screen Award for Best Short Documentary. Her third book of poetry, procession (House of Anansi) will be out Sep 30/25. Born in Winnipeg, her Michif roots on her paternal side run deep in St. Boniface, St. Norbert and beyond. Her maternal side is Mennonite from the Altona and Rosenfeld area (Treaty 1). She holds a Master of Fine Arts from the University of British Columbia, and an honourary Doctor of Letters from the University of Manitoba. katherena lives with her family in a cranky old house within skipping distance of the temperamental Red River.

  • Billy-Ray Belcourt is from the Driftpile Cree Nation in northwest Alberta. He is an Associate Prof. in the School of Creative Writing at UBC. He is the author of six books, most recently Coexistence and The Idea of an Entire Life.

  • Sue Goyette lives in K'jipuktuk (Halifax) and has published several books of poems and a novel. Her latest collection is Future Howl, (Gaspereau Press, 2025). She is the editor of Resistance: Righteous Rage in the Age of #MeToo (University of Regina Press, 2021), The 2017 Griffin Poetry Prize Anthology (Anansi, 2017) and The Best Canadian Poetry in English 2013 (Tightrope Books, 2013). Her work has been translated into French, Spanish and German and has been featured in films, subways, buses, spray painted on a sidewalk and tattooed. Her work has been nominated for the 2014 Griffin Poetry Prize and the Governor General’s Award and has won several awards including the 2015 Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia Masterworks Arts Award for her collection, Ocean; J.M. Abraham Poetry Award; the ReLit Award; the Pat Lowther Award for Poetry; the Bliss Carman Poetry Award; the Earle Birney Award; and the CBC Literary Award for Poetry.