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John Barton, City of Victoria Poet Laureate from 2019 to 2022, returns to Calgary for the launch of his latest book of poetry, Compulsory Figures. John Barton will be joined by local authors, ryan fitzpatrick and Tonya Lailey to celebrate this exciting release. ABOUT THE BOOK:
Who are the people who mark our lives? Must we know them personally or is influence also exerted from the distant past, the grave, or even from the pages of a book? Devastated by the sudden death of one of his sisters in 2015, award-winning poet John Barton, over the decade since, felt moved to answer these and other questions for himself in Compulsory Figures, his thirteenth collection of poems. Born in the 1950s to parents who moved to Edmonton during the early years of the oil boom, Barton roots many of his poems in the prairie, foothills, mountain, and urban landscapes of his Alberta childhood—the land itself a formative influence—to ground his memories of his sister and of his parents, who divorced just as he was entering his twenties. Barton broadens his inquiry to wrestle with larger societal forces, including settler colonialism and the role his ancestors played in Ontario and the Canadian West after their arrival in the nineteenth century. As a gay man who came to a full acceptance of himself during the AIDS pandemic, he also explores the stigmatizing impact of homophobia and how the courage of figures like Christopher Isherwood, Frank O’Hara, Paul Monette, and Robert Mapplethorpe continues to provide him solace and strength. Lyrical and thought-provoking, Compulsory Figures plunges into the depths of history, grief, and the unshakable power of everyone and everything that shapes us.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
John Barton’s twelve previous collections of poetry include Lost Family: A Memoir, a nominee for the 2021 Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry. Coeditor of the landmark anthology, Seminal: Canada’s Gay Male Poets, he also wrote a book of essays, We Are Not Avatars: Essays, Memoirs, Manifestos and was the guest editor of Best Canadian Poetry 2023. His latest book, Compulsory Figures was named in CBC's list of Best Canadian Poetry of 2025. A three-time winner of the Archibald Lampman Award as well as a recipient of a National Magazine Award and a CBC Literary Award, he was made a lifetime member of the League of Canadian Poets in 2021. Born in Edmonton and raised in Calgary, he lives in Victoria, where he edited The Malahat Review from 2004 to 2018 and was the city’s fifth poet laureate from 2019 to 2022.
ABOUT THE CONVERSATION PARTNERS:
ryan fitzpatrick (he/they) is the author of five books of poetry, including the recent No Depression in Heaven (Talonbooks, 2025) and Sunny Ways (Invisible, 2023). A recent transplant back to Calgary, they are a former editor of filling Station magazine and helped start the Flywheel Reading Series. They were the 2024–2025 Writer-in-Residence in the University of Alberta’s Department of English and Film Studies.
Tonya Lailey writes poetry, essays, reviews and children’s fiction. Her principal genre is poetry. Her poems have appeared in Grain, Rattle, The Fiddlehead, Room, FreeFall, Arc Poetry and Mslexia Magazine among others. She has twice won ‘best poem’ in FreeFall’s Annual Prose and Poetry Competition (2022, 2024). Her poem, The Bottle Depot was shortlisted for Arc Poetry’s Poem of the Year in 2024. Her poem, Also, was a finalist in Mslexia Magazine’s Poetry Contest in 2024, judged by Jane Hirshfield. “Farm : Lot 23”, her first full-length poetry collection was published by Gaspereau Press in 2024.
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Event Venue
1302 4 St SW #100, Calgary, AB, Canada, Alberta T2R 0X8
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