On our annual Jane’s Walk through Mount Pleasant, we’ll be looking and listening with the assistance (and insistence!) of poetry. While the bulk of the walk will take us through several art galleries, poetry will be read by some of Vancouver’s most engaging poets who will explore art on and off the page in the broadest sense possible. How much is a poem like a piece of art? What is the relationship between visual art and literary arts? How can poetry help us observe our world more closely? Join us to hear poetry and the many types of connections it fosters.
Starting Place: “THIS Gallery” (back alley entrance, 108 E Broadway), 1pm.
Walk leader KEVIN SPENST will be wearing a “Make Money With Poetry” t-shirt
Ending Location: Dude Chillin’ Park (where the dude rests)
Duration: 120 mins
Accessibility: Busy sidewalks, Breaks offered along the way, Family-friendly, Bicycles welcome, Pet-friendly
Kevin Spent (organizer) is keen to connect with neighbours and strangers, a chatty way of being which often fuels his writing. He’s the author of four full-length books of poetry and 19 small books of poetry (chapbooks!) An assortment of my lyric essays, interviews with neighbours, and personal accounts from others make up Stanley Park Manor: a Collective History, out with Anvil Press in 2026. This will be his fifth year leading a poetry-themed Jane’s Walk.
Elee Kraljii Gardiner is the author of three poetry collections, most recently sometimes, forest from Talonbooks as well as editor of two anthologies. A frequent collaborator, she works across disciplines and administers the Warland Award for hybrid literature. She also directs Vancouver Manuscript Intensive and is the seventh poet laureate of Vancouver.
Laura Farina is the author of two books of poetry, This Woman Alphabetical and Some Talk of Being Human, as well as the picture book This is the Path the Wolf Took. Her third poetry collection, Behold!, is forthcoming from Coach House Books. Laura is the recipient of the Archibald Lampman Award, and has been long-listed for both the Relit Award and the CBC Poetry Prize. She’s very temporarily the associate director of the Writer’s Studio at SFU.
Alyssa Sy de Jesus is an avid indoor-hiker who is very grateful to be walking with fellow lovers of art and words. A museum-worker by day, she is also a poet of in search of the worded-artefacts of her family’s five-generation settlement in the Philippines from China, and eventual migration to Canada. Her work has been featured in: Chinatown Stories, Living Hyphen, Ginger and Smoke, Liars of Orpheus, and the Jade Music Festival. She was co-editor of de-comp Journal’s “Translate Me Not” issue. She is a proud graduate of the SFU Writers Studio.
Lauren Peat is a writer, lyricist, and translator from French. Her debut poetry chapbook, Future Tense, was published by Baseline Press in 2024, and her lyric prose has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her writing appears in local city buses and international magazines, and her many collaborations with composers are featured in the repertoires of acclaimed vocal ensembles across Turtle Island. In 2025, she served as Poet-in-Residence of Enabling Arts, a multidisciplinary creative space in the Downtown Eastside. Beyond the page, she co-organizes the Dead Poets Reading Series and facilitates low-barrier creative writing workshops throughout the city. She lives in Vancouver on the traditional, unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations. Learn more at laurenpeatwrites.com.
Hope Lauterbach is a Zambian Canadian writer and poet, founder of the Unbound Reading Series and graduate of The Writer’s Studio at SFU. Hope’s work has been commissioned for the Fraser Valley Literary Festival, and appears in Contemporary Verse 2, emerge 21 and Pearls. Hope currently resides in that place between sleep and awake.
RC Weslowski is a spoken word poet and storyteller, a clown performer, a playwright, workshop facilitator, event MC and a professional voice over artist. RC has performed at poetry and spoken word festivals around North America and Europe doing featuring presentations and leading performance/writing workshops.
Visit the Jane’s Walk site here for all details.
All welcome. Free. No registration needed.
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