Thursday March 21, 8:00 pm
McNally Robinson Grant Park in the Travel Alcove

* Please note new start time *

Free event. All are welcome.
Cake and refreshments to follow.

Contemporary Verse 2 and Prairie Fire magazine are proud once again to join forces to celebrate UNESCO’s World Poetry Day with a reading by three fine poets.

This year’s featured guest is Edmonton poet Alice Major, author of the acclaimed collection, Welcome to the Anthropocene (University of Alberta Press). Alice will be joined by two excellent local poets, Lori Cayer and Marjorie Poor. Following the readings, Major will be joined in conversation by Winnipeg International Writers Festival director Charlene Diehl. Audience members are invited to stay after the readings to chat with the poets and eat delicious cake.

Alice Major has published eleven collections of poetry and a collection of essays on poetry and science. Her work has received numerous awards, including the Pat Lowther Prize and a National Magazine Award Gold Medal. She served as the first poet laureate for her home city of Edmonton and received the 2017 Lieutenant Governor of Alberta Distinguished Artist Award.

Lori Cayer is the author of four poetry collections, Dopamine Blunder, Attenuations of Force, and Stealing Mercury. Her most recent book, Mrs Romanov (The Porcupine’s Quill) is a work of historical poetry based on the life and times of the last Tsarina of Russia whose reign, with her husband Emperor Nicholas II, ended with the beginning of Bolshevism. A winner of the John Hirsch Award for Most Promising Manitoba Writer and of the Eileen McTavish Sykes Award for Best First Book, she is a former co-editor for CV2 and co-founder of the Lansdowne Prize for Poetry. She lives in Winnipeg.

Marjorie Poor is an editor and writer who lives and reads (and lives to read) in Winnipeg. By day, she edits educational materials for the provincial government, and, on the side, she is the editor of Prairie Books NOW. Her reviews and poetry have appeared in Prairie Fire and Zygote.