Name: Urban Matters: Poetry in the City
Start: 2025-09-09T18:30:00-07:00
End: 2025-09-09T20:00:00-07:00
Location: Vancouver Public Library

Join authors Daniela Elza and Daniel Cowper for a launch, reading, and discussion on celebration of the life of a city and an interrogation of its cost on our well-being. This event will be moderated by Renee Sarojini Saklikar, Poet Laureate, City of Surrey (2015-2018) and author of poetry, non-fiction and epic fantasy in verse.
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Daniela Elza was longlisted for the 2024 CBC Poetry Prize for poems from her latest book SCAR/CITY (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2025). Her debut prose collection Is This an Illness or an Accident? (Caitlin Press, 2025) delves into the conflicts and contradictions of what it means to belong, to work, and to find home. Daniela is the recipient of the 2024 Colleen Thibaudeau Award for Outstanding Contribution to Poetry.
Daniel Cowper's poetry and critical writing has appeared in numerous publications in Canada, the US, Ireland, and the UK. His poems have been collected in The God of Doors (winner of the Frog Hollow Press Chapbook contest) and Grotesque Tenderness (MQUP, 2019). His latest work is Kingdom of the Clock, a novel in verse about urban life. He is a contributing editor with New Verse Review, and lives on Bowen Island.
Renee Sarojini Saklikar is the author of five books, including the award-winning Children of Air India and Listening to the Bees. Her essays and short fiction have appeared in literary magazines and anthologies, including Exile Editions, Chatelaine, The Capilano Review, and Pulp Literature. She was Poet Laureate for the City of Surrey (2015-2018), co-founded Lunch Poems at SFU, and teaches Creative Writing at Douglas College. Bramah’s Discovery is the third volume of her epic fantasy in verse series, THOTJBAP, forthcoming Spring 2026. She lives in East Vancouver.
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VPL is committed to making our programs accessible for all. If you have an access need that we have not addressed here, please email us at [email protected].
*Elevator access to level 8 is available with the main elevators on level 2.
*The theatre has three wheelchair accessible spaces in the front row on the right hand side.
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Please register. Registration is not required to attend, but it helps us anticipate attendance and send a reminder the day before the event, or any updates about this program.