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2025 Henry Kreisel Memorial Lecture with David A. Robertson: Tickets Available Now!

We hope that you will join the Centre for Literatures in Canada for the 19th Annual Henry Kreisel Memorial Lecture. David A. Robertson, two-time Governor General's Literary Award-winning writer, will present the 2025 Kreisel Lecture, speaking on the topic Writing as Social Activism. 

Date: Wednesday, March 12, 2025
Time: Doors open at 6:30 PM, Lecture begins at 7:00 PM, Reception begins at 8:30 PM
Location: TIMMS CENTRE for the ARTS (87 Avenue and 112 Street), University of Alberta

This is a ticketed event. General admission tickets are $15.00. Tickets for students and CLC donors are $5.00.

When you purchase a ticket, you will have an opportunity to submit a question for a Q & A with David A. Robertson that will conclude the lecture portion of the event.

Following the lecture, there will be a reception with light refreshments and a book signing. Audreys Books will be on site with copies of Robertson's books and past Kreisel Lectures for sale.

About the lecture:

Writing as Social Activism

Writing stories imagines future readers,
and in so doing imagines a future influence by those stories.
- Margaret Atwood

The road to reconciliation is paved with Story. The phrase "Truth & Reconciliation" means the two are inextricably linked. While the definition and understanding of what reconciliation means and what it entails are up for discussion — at its most basic, albeit still complex form, it is the act of building community — truth means what really happened, and what is still happening, on Turtle Island. For too long, our stories, as Indigenous peoples, have been told by others. Only recently, within the last fifteen years, we have been able to reclaim our truth and share it with others through Story. This storytelling resurgence has created a revolutionary change that has ripped apart the fabric of what we thought this country was, and has stitched together a new understanding of Canada. Every form of writing — from blog posts to novels — is distinct, but shares the goal of knowledge transfer. Story ought, as well, to motivate the reader to utilize the knowledge they have been gifted with to take meaningful action so that we can do better than has been done in the past. This is the work of social change: understanding what has been so we can clearly understand what can be.

David A. Robertson is a two-time Governor General's Literary Award winner and has won the TD Canadian Children’s Literature Award and the Writer's Union of Canada Freedom to Read Award. He has received several other accolades for his work as a writer for children and adults, podcaster, public speaker, and social advocate. He was honoured with a Doctor of Letters by the University of Manitoba in 2023 for outstanding contributions to the arts and distinguished achievements. Robertson’s memoir All the Little Monsters: How I Learned to Live with Anxiety was published in 2025 by Harper Collins. He is a member of Norway House Cree Nation and lives in Winnipeg. For more information about his work, visit his website.

 

Juno Award-Winning Dub Poet Lillian Allen Visits the CLC!

In collaboration with Dr. Michael A. Bucknor, Canada Research Chair in Black Global Studies and Decolonial Practice, the CLC is hosting spoken word performer Lillian Allen, the current Poet Laureate of Toronto, for a visit to the University of Alberta.

Listen to and learn from Lillian's work by joining us for one or both of the following events:

Masterclass (Registration Required)

Date and Time: Wednesday, January 29, 2025, from 3:00-6:00 PM
Location: Additional details will be provided to successful registrants

Words in Motion: Language Dance Motion Meaning
Presenting your work to the public requires learning an additional set of skills than just writing! This workshop will engage poets and any kind of writers in exploring ways to bring their work alive and present it to a public. The workshop will provide opportunities for participants to develop their performance confidence, and to explore strategies and techniques for presenting a range of different works to an audience. Participants will gain tools to write for sound and the ear and understand how to cultivate emotive qualities of words and story. As writers, we will create at least one individually written piece, and possibly explore one collaboration, but do bring a piece of your older writing to try out some new techniques. Priority will be given to BIPOC emerging writers but we welcome others.

Registration for the Masterclass is now closed.

Reading, Conversation, Performance

Date and Time: Thursday, January 30, 2025, from 12:30-1:45 PM
Location: Henderson Hall (Rutherford Library South 1-17), University of Alberta

Hosted by Dr. Michael A. Bucknor, Lillian will perform and speak about some of her work (which you can read more about below). Light refreshments will be served. No registration is required for this event.

Jamaican Canadian Lillian Allen is an internationally renowned poet, professor, journalist and artistic creator. She has served as Board Member and Advisor to several arts-based agencies (Toronto Council for the Arts, Canada Council for the Arts, National Film Board of Canada, UNESCO etc). Allen is the author of eight books of poetry and ten recording albums. She has also worked in radio and television. She was the host of a CBC programme on "Poetry and the Spoken Word” and co-produced and hosted WordBeat, a 13-part series for CBC Radio One (2003-05). Her poem “Unnatural Causes” was made into a film by the National Film Board of Canada (1989) and she also co-produced and co-directed Blakk Wi Blakk (1994), a film focused on the dub poet Mutabaruka. She has received numerous awards for both her published volumes and sound recordings. These awards include two Juno Awards from the Canadian Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences for her albums Revolutionary Tea Party and Conditions Critical (1986 and 1988). She is widely regarded as the godmother of Canadian dub, rap and hip hop.

With origins in 1970s Jamaica, dub poetry is a type of performance poetry that is rooted in oral and music traditions from the Caribbean. Dub poets often talk about political and social change through their poetry. Lillian Allen is a well-known dub poet who, through poetry, challenges systemic social issues and political ideologies. Allen has talked about activism and feminism in her poetry. 

Allen’s seminal work in the dub poetry and the spoken word genres has made her a legend in the creative circles. She employs what M. Norbese Philip calls a “demotic tongue” that has distinguished her work as recognizing the politics of language use, and has ensured the wider circulation of her Jamaican mother tongue in Canada. The recent release of Make the World New: The Poetry of Lillian Allen (2021) and appointment as Poet Laureate of Toronto reinforce her enduring significance.  

For more information, visit Lillian Allen's website.

 

The CLC and Writer-in-Residence Host Mercedes Eng for a Reading + Conversation Event

Join the CLC and Writer-in-Residence Ryan Fitzpatrick on Tuesday, January 14, for a Reading and Conversation with poet Mercedes Eng! 

In conversation with 2024/25 Writer-in-Residence Ryan Fitzpatrick, Mercedes Eng will discuss and read from her most recent book, Cop City Swagger (Talonbooks, 2024). Cop City Swagger offers a poetic critique of police violence in Vancouver and elsewhere, asking how conceptions of safety and care run through the rhetoric and actions of policing. Cop City Swagger extends a socially-invested poetics that is grounded in the Downtown Eastside and Chinatown communities of Vancouver and that balances social investigation and political advocacy. Eng will discuss Cop City Swagger in the context of her ongoing work, her mixed-register approach to poetic form, and the ethics of writing about real people and communities.

No registration is required for this free event. Light refreshments will be served.

Date and Time: Tuesday, January 14, 2025, from 2:00-3:00 PM
Location: Henderson Hall (Rutherford Library South 1-17), University of Alberta

Mercedes Eng is a prairie-born poet of Chinese and settler descent living in Vancouver on the unceded lands of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, and səl̓ilwətaɁɬ. She is the author of my yt mama, Prison Industrial Complex Explodes (winner of the 2018 Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize) and Mercenary English. Her writing has appeared in Hustling Verse: An Anthology of Sex Workers’ Poetry, Jacket 2, The Asian American Literary Review, The Capilano Review, The Abolitionist, and r/ally (No One Is Illegal), Survaillance, and M’aidez (Press Release). Mercedes was recently the Ellen and Warren Tallman Writer-in-Residence and a Shadbolt Fellow at Simon Fraser University. She is an assistant professor at Emily Carr University of Art + Design, where she organizes the On Edge reading series.

 

A Book Launch Afternoon

On Thursday, November 28, join the Centre for Literatures in Canada for an afternoon of readings from recently published books.

We are hosting two double book launches in Henderson Hall (Rutherford Library South 1-17):

From 2:00-3:15 PM, Dorothy Thunder and Marilyn Dumont will read from and discuss their respective books This Land Is a Lullaby / cistomâwasowin ôma askiy and South Side of a Kinless River.

From 3:30-4:30 PM, Jaspreet Singh, with Dreams of the Epoch & the Rock, and Erina Harris, with Trading Beauty Secrets with the Dead, will read from and talk about their new poetry collections.

Books will be available for purchase, courtesy of Audreys Books. Light refreshements will be provided and the events are open to the public. Come to one or both!

 

Dorothy Thunder is a first-language speaker of nehiyawewin/Plains Cree from Little Pine First Nation in Saskatchewan, Canada, and is a Professor of Cree at the University of Alberta. Recognizing that her command of the language is uncommon among members of her generation, she shares it at every opportunity: in classrooms, on-line teaching, and at land-based camps. Dorothy serves as a major contributor to contemporary Cree language reclamation and revitalization. Her personal experiences and land-based language camps have given her unique insights into the role of language in relationship to the land. As a nehiyaw iskwew (Plains Cree woman), she holds strong her relationship to kikâwînaw askiy (mother earth) and the gifts that the land has to offer and the importance of looking after the land (wâhkohtowin) and her strong connection to nehiyaw kehte-ayak (Elders).

Marilyn Dumont teaches for the faculties of Arts and Native Studies at the University of Alberta and is proud of Métis family lines from her mother’s--Vaness/Dufresne--families and her father’s--Boudreau/Dumont--families. Her four collections of poetry have won provincial or national awards: A Really Good Brown Girl (1996); green girl dreams Mountains (2001); that tongued belonging (2007); and The Pemmican Eaters (2015). A fifth collection surrounding Indigenous history of Edmonton, called South Side of a Kinless River, was published by Brick Books in 2024.

Jaspreet Singh is the author of acclaimed poetry collections, non-fiction, novels, short stories, and a memoir. His books include the novels Chef and Helium, the story collection Seventeen Tomatoes, the poetry collection November, and the award-winning memoir My Mother, My Translator. More and more his work engages with deep time and the ecological crisis. His newest book, Dreams of the Epoch & the Rock, was published in Canada in November 2024 by NeWest Press.

Erina Harris is a Canadian writer, educator and mentor. Her first book, The Stag Head Spoke (Buckrider Books, 2014), was shortlisted for the Canadian Authors' Association Award for Poetry. A graduate and Fellow of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, her work has been published widely and in translation. She is the recipient of the Editor’s Choice Award (ARC Magazine), This Magazine Great Literary Hunt Prize, and short-listings/nominations for the Bronwen Wallace Memorial Award, the Air Canada Award, the Pushcart Prize, and the National Magazine Awards. She has received numerous grants, international residencies, and was honored to receive a Lieutenant Governor of Alberta Emerging Artist Award in 2024. For over a decade she curated the yearly Blue Betty's Bistro International Women's Day Reading Salon, a fundraising event for local women's shelters featuring innovative women writers. Erina teaches Creative Writing and Literature at the University of Alberta. www.erinaharris.com

 

Public Lecture with Dr. Ian MacLaren

Separating Fact from Painted Fiction: An Examination of Paul Kane's Problematic Representations of Indigenous Peoples in North America

Ian MacLaren, U of A Professor Emeritus (History and Classics & English and Film Studies), is launching his four-volume Paul Kane's Travels in Indigenous North America: Writing and Art, Life and Times (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2024).  

To celebrate this significant work of scholarship, Dr. MacLaren will give a public lecture on Paul Kane's Travels at the Art Gallery of Alberta (AGA), sponsored by the Centre for Literatures in Canada and the Bruce Peel Special Collections Library, and hosted by the AGA.

 

Une nouvelle lecture et conversation, avec Louise Dupré et Evelyne Gagnon

Écoutez cette lecture et conversation entre deux poètes francophones qui nous invitent à considérer les poèmes comme des « exercices de joie », de compassion, et d’empathie. This conversation – tout en français – reminds us that writers can do much more than hold mirrors up to humanity’s darkness; in the words of Louise Dupré, elles peuvent nous offrir « les ouvertures vers la lumière ».

Écoutez sur SoundCloud                    Regardez sur YouTube

Louise Dupré a publié une trentaine de titres qui lui ont valu de nombreux prix et distinctions, dont deux fois le Prix de poésie du Gouverneur général du Canada (2011 et 2017). Elle collabore régulièrement avec des artistes d’autres disciplines. Ses livres ont été traduits dans plusieurs langues et son recueil de poésie Plus haut que les flammes a fait l’objet d’un long métrage réalisé par Monique LeBlanc et produit par l’Office National du Film du Canada.

Professeure au Département d’études littéraires de l’Université du Québec à Montréal de 1988 à 2008, elle consacre maintenant son temps à l’écriture. Elle est membre de l’Académie des lettres du Québec, de la Société royale du Canada et du Parlement des écrivaines francophones. En 2014, elle a reçu l’Ordre du Canada « pour son apport à la littérature québécoise en tant que poète, romancière, dramaturge, essayiste et professeure ».

Poète et essayiste, Evelyne Gagnon est professeure de littérature à l’Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières. Spécialiste de la poésie, elle s’intéresse aussi aux formes de la mélancolie contemporaine et, notamment, à ses liens avec l’éco-anxiété et avec l’écoféminisme. Chercheuse affiliée au CLC, elle a fondé, en 2014, le Concours de poésie du Centre de littératures au Canada, ouvert chaque année depuis aux étudiants universitaires albertains. Ayant publié des études sur la poésie dans plusieurs ouvrages scientifiques au Canada, aux États-Unis et en France, Evelyne Gagnon a également reçu, en 2001, le Prix de poésie Clément-Marchand. Son recueil de poèmes, Incidents (et autres rumeurs du siècle), est paru aux Éditions du Noroît, à Montréal, en 2022.

 

Congratulations to the winners of the 2024 CLC Poetry Contest! / 

Félicitations aux gagnants du Concours de poésie du CLC 2024 !

 

The CLC--along with NAIT, MacEwan University, and Athabasca University--congratulate Justine Schultz, Acacia Kubanay, and Joseph Lam for their winning poems! 

Read the winning poems here and get to know a little bit about the poets.

Read The Gateway's interview with Justine where she talks about writing "Attic."

Thank you to this year's contest judges: Dr. Evelyne Gagnon (Athabasca), Dr. Michael O'Driscoll (University of Alberta), and Kelly Shepherd (NAIT).

Thank you to all the students who submitted poems this year, as well as to our contest partners: Athabasca University, MacEwan University, NAIT, Edmonton Poetry Festival, Athabasca University Press, NeWest Press, University of Alberta Press, and SpokenWeb.