About this Event
浮萍 Duckweed gets it’s title from a Chinese proverb describing wanderers, a life with little or no roots. The poems in this collection evoke the process of wayfinding: orienting, choosing a path, navigating, and arrival. They act as signposts through landscapes of time and space as the poet works to locate herself in language, race, gender, place, culture, migration, and a collective and family history. These poems wander between English and Cantonese. They wander between the personal, the historical, the systemic; between Hong Kong and Alberta, between Edmonton’s and Vancouver’s Chinatowns; between the kitchens of mother, grandmother, and self. And in wandering, the poet arrives at her place among lost, or loose, ties to cultural identity and grandmother tongues. Evocative, tender, fiery and soft, space-and-time-travelling work.
For the Record is a book-length poem whose word count is set to the number of lives lost to COVID-19 in Alberta, the author's home province—which as of January 2026 sits at 7,113 people. Told in two parts, with each section recording real-time headlines, the book begins with the first COVID-related death of Cargill meat factory worker Hiep Bui. But the poem that cannot truly end does try to end with the hope embodied in the birth of Nisha Patel's first nephew, weaving the overlapping narratives of life in precarious, unprecedented times with the bracketing of political negligence, Formula 1 racing, and gig work as an artist.
First performed to the Edmonton City Council as part of Patel's tenure as Poet Laureate, the poem began at an enormous 615 words—since then it has grown as the number of lives lost to the pandemic continues to grow. Patel wants us to remember the ordinary days and the extraordinary grief, as well as the monumental potential for hope, care, and empathy in our communities that COVID-19 teaches us as we continue to live through the ongoing crisis borne of and from a mass pandemic.
Kathryn Gwun-Yeen Lennon 君妍 was born and raised in Edmonton/Amiskwacîwâskahikan, with mixed Hong-Kong Cantonese and Irish ancestry. Her poetry has been published in Canthius, Polyglot Magazine, Living Hyphen, the Globe and Mail, Ricepaper Magazine, and the Ethnic Aisle. Her work has been included in several anthologies including: Reimagining Fire: the Future of Energy (Durvile & UpRoute), Back Where I Came From (Book*hug Press), and Beyond Touch Sites (Laberinto Press). She is the co-founder and co-editor of Hungry Zine, a food-focused publication that centres voices missing in mainstream food media. She was a member of Edmonton’s 2012 Slam Poetry Team. Her collaborative poem-films have screened at the 2010 Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival and the 2018 Bozeman International Film Festival. Her work has been supported by the Edmonton Arts Council and the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity (Emerging Writers Residency 2023).
Nisha Patel (she/her) is a Poet Laureate Emeritus of the City of Edmonton and a Canadian Poetry Slam Champion. She is a disabled culture worker with a passion for local arts and is the author of two previous poetry collections, Coconut (NeWest Press) and A Fate Worse than Death (Arsenal Pulp Press). She lives in Edmonton, AB.
Event venue & nearby stays
Another Story Bookshop, 315 Roncesvalles Avenue, Toronto, Canada
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