About this Event
Poetry Reading & Book Launch: Tim Lilburn and Jeremy Loveday
Join us at Munro’s Books for an evening of poetry with Tim Lilburn and Jeremy Loveday, featuring readings from their new collections, The Volcano’s High Held Snow Note and Maybe the Starling.
Wednesday, October 7, 2026
7:00–8:30 pm
Doors at 6:30 pm
Munro’s Books
1108 Government St, Victoria, BC
Free to attend
Presented by Munro’s Books, Write Bloody North, and McClelland & Stewart.
Tim Lilburn
Tim Lilburn lives in the Bowker Creek watershed in W̱SÁNEĆ territory on Vancouver Island. He is the author of twelve books of poetry, including Harmonia Mundi, The House of Charlemagne, and The Names. His poetry has received the Governor General’s Award, the Canadian Authors Association Award, the European Medal of Poetry and Art (the Homer Medal), the Saskatchewan Book of the Year Award and the Cheryl and Henry Kloppenburg Award for Literary Excellence, among other prizes. His poetry has been translated widely. Lilburn is also the author of three earlier essay collections, Living In The World As If It Were Home, Going Home, and The Larger Conversation: Contemplation and Place, and editor of two other influential books on poetics. A fourth essay collection, Numinous Seditions: Interiority and Climate Change, appeared from the University of Alberta Press in 2023. He has taught at the University of Victoria, the University of Saskatchewan, St. Peter’s College and Middlebury College, and worked with the dance company New Dance Horizons/Rouge-gorge as a writer and performer, collaborating with co-directors Edward Poitras and Robin Poitras.
The Volcano’s High Held Snow Note
From Governor General's Award-winning poet Tim Lilburn comes a stunning new collection of poetry about the natural world and our place in it.
The Volcano’s High Held Snow Note is a collection preoccupied with a small mountain called SṈAḴE (Snow Mountain) in the language of the W̱SÁNEĆ people on the Saanich Peninsula and the Gulf Islands. The time is the days of early Covid and the multiplying signs of violent climate alteration in burning northern forests. Elsewhere, an uncanny holy child wishes to swim through matter and find healing substances deep under the earth, Marguerite Porete has some ideas for how to deal with Master Reason in a crisis, and hummingbirds take in half-frozen sugar slush as anagogic liquid.
Jeremy Loveday
Jeremy Loveday is an award-winning poet, spoken word artist, and community builder based in Victoria, BC, on the traditional territory of the lək̓ʷəŋən People. As co-founder and longtime Artistic Director of the Victorious Voices youth poetry festival, Jeremy has helped hundreds of young poets find their first stage.
His work has appeared in publications such as CBC, National Observer, CV2, Funicular Magazine, Best Canadian Poetry 2023, and Claudia, a leading Brazilian magazine. Jeremy was the 2020 winner of the Zaccheus Jackson Nyce Memorial Award. After more than two decades of performing poetry, Maybe the Starling is his first full-length collection.
Maybe the Starling
Maybe the Starling, the debut full-length collection from award-winning poet and dynamic spoken word performer Jeremy Loveday, invites us to explore the intersections of crisis and care, grief and joy—a testament to poetry’s power to ignite change and nurture the human spirit.
In a world marked by inequity and climate crisis, Maybe the Starling is a poetic response to uncertainty, confronting urgent questions while offering both salve and spark. Rooted in a deep love for the land and an abiding wonder for nature’s abundance, these poems illuminate the ways we belong to each other and the world around us.
From mosh pits and Elvis impersonators to the quiet patience of growing food, these poems refuse to turn away from contradiction—they embrace it. Maybe the Starling offers both comfort and challenge, reminding us that poetry is a powerful call to wonder, to witness, and to action.
Event venue & nearby stays
Munro's Books, 1108 Government Street, Victoria, Canada
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