Meet the 2026 Citizen Poets

Gilles Cyrenne and Rise-Up

Gilles Cyrenne has self-published a book of poetry, Emerge, and with help from Vancouver Manuscript Intensive, has a manuscript of poetry with short memoir pieces, Next Year Country, looking for a publisher. Gilles regularly publishes articles about housing issues and poetry in the Carnegie Newsletter and in Megaphone Magazine. He coordinates the DTES Writers Collective and is also a founding member and organizer of the DTES Writers Festival.

Rise-Up is a neighbourhood third space with Caribbean and African roots.

Gillian Der and SFU’s Belzberg Library

Gillian Der ??? is a mixed race settler who is descendant from Head Tax Payers and CPR builders. Her writing confronts environmental disability, eco-grief, and embodied experiences with landscape. In addition to writing, Gillian is a community organizer, a practicing artist, and wildfire geographer.

SFU’s Belzberg Library is a library, programming, exhibition and study space.

Jong Yun Won and Museum of Vancouver

Jong Yun Won is a Korean-Canadian recreational basketball player currently living and writing on the stolen and occupied lands of the Musqueam, Tsleil-Waututh and Squamish nations. He has poetry published or forthcoming in SAD, Yolk, Bat City Review, among others.

Museum of Vancouver is the largest civic museum in Canada and the oldest museum in Vancouver

Kasumi and Kotoha and Malaspina Printmakers

Kasumi and Kotoha: mother daughter creative team

Kasumi is a writer with a fascination for linguistics and the languages of Latin America, often explores the mental reflection in her poems and loves songwriting. She previously launched a series of challenges where she transformed sets of three crowdsourced keywords into poems. Additionally, her work is also deeply influenced by her passion for culinary arts and herbalism. Kasumi and Kotoha are also publisher editors, and their painting works have been to Quebec, Ottawa, and Asunción.

A versatile creator, Kotoha flourishes as a poet, picture-book author, novelist, and playwright, while also serving as a creative partner to Kasumi. Drawing inspiration from Kotoha’s travels and daily life, she achieved the remarkable feat of traversing Canada by rail from coast to coast and north to south, a journey she regards as a prestigious badge of honor in her creative career. Now, she returns with joy to the embrace of the Rockies, eager to transform the spirit of this city, where mountains meet the sea, into works of art filled with warmth.

Malaspina Printmakers is an artist-run non-profit working space.

Pari Mokradi and Outsiders and Others

Pari Mokradi (he/they) is a self-taught artist and writer exploring memory, mythology, and in-between identities. Through poetry, they investigate how language and collective care can reimagine our relationships to place and power.

Outsiders and Others is a non profit art gallery showing works by self taught and non traditional artists.

Zac Alfson and St. Andrew’s-Wesley United Church

Zac Alfson is a queer artist whose work explores belonging, visibility, and the coded language of contemporary society. Working across public engagement, text-based installation, and participatory storytelling, he creates projects that examine how people recognize themselves and one another within civic and domestic spaces. Based between Vancouver and Orlando, he creates work that invites audiences to reconsider the social systems and visual cues that shape everyday life.

St. Andrew’s-Wesley United Church is an open-hearted, open-minded, inclusive church.

Zoé Kruchten and Enabling Arts

Zoé Kruchten (she/her) is a multidisciplinary procrastinator!  Outside of her artistic quests in writing and music, she is a researcher, advocate & bicycle mechanic. As a settler to Canada by way of France, Zoé writes primarily about belonging, identity, place, capitalism, technology, repair/maintenance, grief and becoming an adult. In this mini-residency she plans to give birth to her artist-ego, ZOZOSK.

Enabling Arts is a multidisciplinary arts space focused on wellness through the arts.