Prairie Poets Video Series

Join us over the next few months to see videos from poets living and working in Treaty 1 Territory. This project was completed with funding from the Winnipeg Foundation.

 

Marjorie Poor is a publications editor for Manitoba Education and Training, the editor of Prairie books NOW, and now a fiction editor at Prairie Fire. Her poetry has appeared in Prairie Fire and at Theatre by the River’s annual fundraiser, Wine & Words, and is forthcoming in the digital edition of Vallum and in the fall 2019 issue of Cv2. She lives in Winnipeg.

This video was filmed in Munson Park, which is a great place for a stroll!

Yelani Peiris is a Sri Lankan poet and content marketer based in Winnipeg, Canada. She holds a BA (Hons) in English from the University of Manitoba. You can find her work in CV2 Magazine’s 2S+QTBIPOC Issue.

This video was filmed in Kings Park.

Jen Still composes poems with physicality in the Red River Valley, Treaty 1 territory, Winnipeg. She is the author of several handmade chapbooks and three poetry books, Girlwood (Brick Books, 2011), Comma (Book*hug, 2017) and Saltations (Thistledown, 2005), a meditation on her matrilineal mixed Métis/European heritage. Her current project, an illuminated manuscript composed with pinholes, a light table, electric typewriter and carbon sheets, was projected inside The Star Factory Planetarium (University of Manitoba) and installed at The Gallery of Southwestern Manitoba and Aceart Inc.

Legs appeared as a video installation in collaboration with artists Christine Fellows and Chantel Mierau in late fall 2022.

Ella Taylor (she/they) is a community organizer living in Treaty 1 Territory with familial connections on Treaty 5 Territory. She is an honours Criminal Justice graduate at the University of Winnipeg and works in community development in the West End. She is a member of Justice4BlackLivesWinnipeg, a Black liberationist community organization, and is passionate about abolition, Black liberation, queer liberation, and plants. Their poetry has been featured in Sisi Mag TO and Contemporary Verse 2.

This video was filmed in Bonnycastle Park.

Azka Ahmed is a South Asian multidisciplinary artist and first-generation immigrant in Treaty 1 territory. Their practice explores concepts of healing, identity and diaspora and they are currently focusing on creating evocative lens-based artwork.

This video was filmed in the Leo Mol Sculpture Garden.

Chimwemwe Undi’s work has appeared in the pages of Arc Poetry Magazine, Brick, Border Crossings, Canadian Literature, Canthius, Prairie Fire, Room Magazine, and others, and on stages at the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word, Verses Festival of Words and the Edinburgh International Book Festival. Chim is an editor at CV2 Magazine, and proudly serves on the boards for Poetry In Voice/Les voix de la poésie and the Broadway Neighbourhood Centre.

She holds an MA in linguistics from York University, and practices law in her home province of Manitoba.

In 2020, Chim was named one of CBC Manitoba’s Future 40. In 2022, she received the John Hirsch Emerging Writer Award from the Manitoba Book Awards. Her debut full-length collection, Scientific Marvel, will be published by House of Anansi Press in 2024.

She is Winnipeg Poet Laureate for 2023 and 2024.