People’s Co-Op reading
January 07th, 2025
People’s Co-Op Books is hosting a reading event on Saturday, January 11, 2025, from 7:00 pm onwards. The event will feature readings by poets Stephen Collis, Elee Kraljii Gardiner, Catriona Strang, and a video reading by Rhoda Rosenfeld.
Stephen Collis’s (at right) latest poetry collection, The Middle (Talonbooks $18.95) continues his exploration of climate change through a poetic lens, reflecting on displacement and the movement of life in a warming world. As the central work in a trilogy, following A History of the Theories of Rain (Talonbooks, 2021), it examines shifting treelines and the human-plant relationship. Employing a “poetic commons” approach, the book disperses words like seeds, mirroring the movement of plants and animals on a rapidly heating planet. Written amid wildfires and atmospheric rivers, it offers a poignant meditation on ecological instability.
Elee Kraljii Gardiner. Sophia Hsin Photography
Elee Kraljii Gardiner’s latest book, Trauma Head (Anvil Press $18.00), a long-poem memoir, chronicles her experience of a mini-stroke and the subsequent discovery of a torn artery lining. Exploring themes of wellness, identity, and recovery, the work disrupts language and syntax to bridge the gap between appearance and experience. A Raymond Souster Award nominee and Fred Cogswell Award finalist, it was also shortlisted for the Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry.
Catriona Strang
Unfuckable Lardass (Talonbooks $16.95), Catriona Strang’s sixth poetry collection, confronts the patriarchy’s objectifying gaze by refracting an insult allegedly directed at German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Rooted in grief and rage yet tempered by love and hope, the work critiques the reductive framing of women while celebrating their complex histories. Drawing from diverse sources, including European witch trials, Marx, Darwin, music, profanity, and the author’s own experiences, the collection rejects objectification and embraces the richness of alternative possibilities.
*
EVENT DETAILS
Date: January 11, 2025
Time: 7:00 pm onwards
Location: People’s Co-Op Books, 1391 Commercial Drive, Vancouver, BC V5L 3X5
This is a FREE event open to the public.
Leave a Reply