Name: 3-Poet Book Launch
Start: 2025-11-02T14:00:00-05:00
End: 2025-11-02T16:00:00-05:00
Location: 2220 McGill College Avenue, Montreal, QC, Canada, Quebec H3A3P9

𝐋𝐢𝐛𝐫𝐚𝐢𝐫𝐢𝐞 𝐏𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐠𝐫𝐚𝐩𝐡𝐞 𝐁𝐨𝐨𝐤𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐞 presents a 𝟑-𝐏𝐨𝐞𝐭 𝐁𝐨𝐨𝐤 𝐋𝐚𝐮𝐧𝐜𝐡 Book featuring 𝐆𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐢𝐚𝐧 𝐒𝐳𝐞, 𝐒𝐭𝐞𝐩𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐢𝐞 𝐁𝐨𝐥𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫, & 𝐑𝐨𝐧𝐧𝐚 𝐁𝐥𝐨𝐨𝐦.
Join us as poets 𝐆𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐢𝐚𝐧 𝐒𝐳𝐞 (𝑨𝒏 𝑶𝒓𝒂𝒏𝒈𝒆, 𝑨 𝑺𝒚𝒍𝒍𝒂𝒃𝒍𝒆), 𝐒𝐭𝐞𝐩𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐢𝐞 𝐁𝐨𝐥𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫 (𝑳𝒐𝒏𝒈 𝑬𝒙𝒑𝒐𝒔𝒖𝒓𝒆), & 𝐑𝐨𝐧𝐧𝐚 𝐁𝐥𝐨𝐨𝐦 (𝑰𝒏 𝒂 𝑹𝒊𝒑𝒕𝒊𝒅𝒆) read from, discuss, and sign their respective works., and discusses her latest book of poetry,
Admission is free.
Refreshments will be served.
𝐀𝐁𝐎𝐔𝐓 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐁𝐎𝐎𝐊𝐒:
The latest book by Gillian Sze, author of the Pat Lowther Memorial Award–winning book 𝑸𝒖𝒊𝒆𝒕 𝑵𝒊𝒈𝒉𝒕 𝑻𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒌.
This prosimetrical work is a meditation on motherhood, language, and art. The central speaker witnesses the earliest utterances of her child and launches into a poetic inquiry of words themselves, asking, How to measure one’s mouth by its words? The speaker seeks an answer amidst the language that surrounds her — words misspoken, mispronounced, remembered, unwritten — and, in doing so, struggles with signification and significance.
Each prose poem in the five-part collection darts between the many meanings of “fit” — as in “a sudden burst of emotion” or “to be the right size and shape,” and the archaic “fytte” (a section of a poem). A text becomes an open mouth, a square day of a calendar, or a bare fragment of a narrative. The final section of the book is an intimate and ekphrastic engagement with the work of Danish painter Vilhelm Hammershøi. Drawn to Hammershøi’s paintings of the empty rooms of his apartment, the speaker recognizes a familiar space of art’s insistence.
𝑨𝒏 𝑶𝒓𝒂𝒏𝒈𝒆, 𝑨 𝑺𝒚𝒍𝒍𝒂𝒃𝒍𝒆 details a period of maternal and artistic transformation.
After Hurricane Katrina, the photographer Robert Polidori flew to New Orleans to document the devastation. In the wreckage he witnessed, and in her questions about what she saw in what he saw, Stephanie Bolster found the beginnings of a long poem. Those questions led to unexpected places; meanwhile, life kept pouring in. The ensuing book, Long Exposure, is Bolster’s fifth, a roaming, associative exploration of disasters and their ongoing aftermaths, sufferings large and small, and the vulnerability and value of our own lives. Incremental, unsettling, Long Exposure rushes to and through us.
The characters in Ronna Bloom's new collection In a Riptide are tired, sick, old, fragile, baffled, worried, dying, dead, uncertain, snacking, happy, generous, preoccupied, horny, astonished, and sometimes free. Emily Dickinson and Bukowski show up in the same poem. The Buddha has a shower. And Sisyphus is released from his burdens. It's the hospital meets the circus. Here, humour, darkness, and ecstasy mingle, and the chaos doesn't stop. But there's breath in these poems. There’s life.
𝐀𝐁𝐎𝐔𝐓 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐀𝐔𝐓𝐇𝐎𝐑𝐒:
Gillian Sze is the author of multiple poetry books and picture books. Her book of poems and essays, 𝑸𝒖𝒊𝒆𝒕 𝑵𝒊𝒈𝒉𝒕 𝑻𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒌, received the Pat Lowther Memorial Award. She lives in Montreal, QC, where she teaches creative writing and literature at Concordia University.
Stephanie Bolster has published four books of poetry, the most recent of which, A Page from the Wonders of Life on Earth, appeared with Brick Books in 2011 and was a finalist for the Pat Lowther Award. Her first book, White Stone: The Alice Poems (Véhicule Press, 1998) won the Governor General’s and the Gerald Lampert Awards, and her second, Two Bowls of Milk (McClelland & Stewart, 1999), won the Archibald Lampman Award and was a finalist for the Trillium Award. Her work has been translated into French (Pierre Blanche: poèmes d’Alice, Les Éditions du Noroît, 2007), Spanish, German, and Serbo-Croatian. She edited The Best Canadian Poetry in English 2008 (Tightrope), the inaugural volume in that ongoing series; and co-edited Penned: Zoo Poems (Signal/Véhicule, 2009). Born in Vancouver, she grew up in Burnaby, BC, now lives in Pointe-Claire, Québec on the Mohawk (Kanien’kehá:ka) territory of Skaniatará:ti, and has taught creative writing at Concordia University in Montréal since 2000.
Ronna Bloom is a Toronto-based poet and educator and the author of seven books of poetry. Her work has been broadcast on CBC, recorded by the Canadian National Institute for the Blind, and translated into Bangla and Chinese. Ronna is also someone who puts poetry to work in the world; she has led many initiatives to bring poetry into health care settings, specifically developing the first Poet-in-Residence program at Mount Sinai Hospital/Sinai Health. Ronna’s most recent book is A Possible Trust: The Poetry of Ronna Bloom, selected with an introduction by Phil Hall (Wilfrid Laurier University Press, September 2023). www.ronnabloom.com