Our Poets
Barbara Adler has been a CBC PGI Poetry Laureate (2007), a CBC Poetry Face Off Winner (Vancouver, 2007), and a Canadian Team Slam Champion (2005). She is a founding member of the 2007 Canadian Folk Music Award-nominated band, The Fugitives. She has performed for thousands of youth as a 6-time member of the Reach Out Psychosis tour, and has presented hundreds of workshops to all levels of learners. Barbara is a mentor for the Vancouver East Cultural Center’s IGNITE Spoken Word Intensive, and has worked extensively with Literacy BC to bring poetry to communities across British Columbia. Her new work finds her mashing together her words with the 120-button piano accordion.
Francis Arevalo is the 2009 Vancouver youth slam champion, as well as a graduate from the East Van Cultural Centre's IGNITE! Spoken Word Intensive, founder of the "Speak!" talent showcase, and a member of the touring spoken word Candelabra Collective. His writing career spans from napkins to journals, as he continues to explore Vancouver's spoken word community.
Tessa Bourguignon is a billingual writer and member of the 2010 Youth Poetry Slam Team. She has been moved between the Vancouver and New York performance poetry scenes. She was also a founding member of Saltspring island's G.I.S.S. theatre program, and has led theatre classes. Tessa is in the process of earning her degree in travel journalism.
Chrystalene Buhler wrote her first poem at the age of eleven. It was stunning. Then she lost it. In an effort to recapture the genius of her youth, she has been a Vancouver Poetry Slam team member, an editor, an expert sonnet writer, a Word Play coordinator, and a stumbly clown. She also likes ridiculous cooking projects, and has recently acquired a freezer.
Jillian Christmas is the 2011 BeDRoCC slam grand champ. Born and raised in Markham, Ontario she currently lives in Vancouver, BC. She is an enthusiastic collector of wayward hearts, warm hugs and random celestial-experiences; spinning them all into stanzas that sound so sweet on her tongue that they drip from her lips like honey.
Zaccheus Jackson is a three-time VanSlam team member, two-time Vancouver Individual Slam champ, 2007 GrandSlam Champ and three year Word Play veteran. He has an obsession w/ Heniz Ketchup, never touches dimes, and his gritty, rapid-fire, real-life stories will leave you counting syllables in your sleep.
Erin Kirsh is a member of the 2011 Youth Slam Poetry Team. Formerly an actor (until she met too many actors), she has been in a number of productions. Unable to shake her inner performer, she is still prone to outbursts of drama, whimsy, and word tornados. Bring an umbrella.
Mo Lawrence is the 2011 Vancouver Youth Slam Champion. He has been a featured performer at venues such as the Vancouver East Cultural Centre, the Rio Theatre, Café Deux Soleils, and at numerous other festivals and events across British Columbia. In grade 12, he founded a spoken word club at his high school and led a team of poets to the 2011 Hullabaloo High School Slam Championships. He is currently studying Philosophy and English at the University of British Columbia.
Sonya Littlejohn discovered Spoken Word after attending the 2008 Canadian Festival of Spoken Word in Calgary, Alberta and joined the Black Dot Roots and Culture Collective shortly after that. Most of her poetry is concerned with the social conscience and love. She is a single mother trying to change the world.
Sean McGarragle is a performance poet, former Van Slam poetry team member, and Story Slam champion. He has read/performed from Halifax to Victoria in festivals, series and in classrooms. Sean has been the key note speaker at the Surrey Young Author’s Conference, one of the featured readers at the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word, The Saskatchewan Writer’s Festival and is the slammaster (lead organizer) for the Vancouver Poetry Slam.
Brendan McLeod has been the Vancouver and Canadian SLAM poetry champion and is a member of The Fugitives. His first novel, 'The Convictions of Leonard McKinley' was nominated for the RE:Lit Fiction Award. He once had a dog with no fur that everyone referred to as a 'chihuahua with a mullet'. He likes words for reasons such as that.
Johnny MacRae is a two-time Vancouver Poetry Slam team member, runner-up at the 2009 Van Slam Indies Playoffs and the 2010 Van Slam Grand Champion. He's also the only poet to have ever won a slam in Banff. He has been described as a scraggly bear riding a circus bike. He is a Canadian Improv Champion. He loves cats, Dr. Seuss, toothy and toothless grins, and sharing his passion for poetry.
Chris Masson is an actor, poet, and educator. Performance is his thing. He is passionate about coaching poets on how to make their work leap from the page to the stage. He is known for his high energy and hilarious yet sneakily thought-provoking spoken word, and for his one-man poetry-theatre play "Pathos, Punchlines & Painkillers".
Julie Peters is a spoken word poet, yoga teacher, and the host of AudioText, a radio show on Canadian writing on CITR 101.9FM in Vancouver. She has a Master's degree in Canadian poetry from McGill, and loves obscure Canadian poets more than you will ever know. She also likes blue cheese, a good handshake, and really, really big hugs. Check out her website at www.jcpeters.ca.
Kelsey Savage is a member of the 2009 Vancouver Youth Slam team, a graduate of the Cultch’s IGNITE! Spoken Word Intensive, and is one sixth of the insanely brilliant Candelabra Collective poetry group.
She taught herself to beatbox by mimicking others, a process accompanied by months of awkward sounds. She also has a laugh that can shatter glass. She thinks poetry is actually a hybrid of a ninja and an acrobatic pigeon.
Kyle Shaughnessy will probably make you a little uncomfortable for several reasons- but you’ll be glad that he did. Always eager to put himself in the line of fire- Kyle has performed on stage, television and radio as an out transgender artist, Buddhist and social worker for over six years. He’s done his thing in venues and events across Canada including the 2006 CBC Poetry Face-Off, OutTV, countless other LGTBQ Pride events and was a member of Vancouver’s winning slam team at the 2005 Canadian Festival of Spoken Word.
Scruffmouth is a PrOphETIC SCRIbBlEr of the highest order. His devours WordSoundPower as Food For Thought. His poetry has been published in We Have A Voice: An Anthology of African & Caribbean Student Writing; Blood Ink: A University of Alberta Literary Journal; as well as self-published chapbooks The Seventh Sense (2008) & Choose Your Revolution (2008 w/Van Poetry Slam). He is the open mind behind the BLACK DOT Roots & Culture Collective, which came into being out of a necessity to create, facilitate, and celebrate the Black Experience at home and abroad. Scruff is tuff & serious, but he is also cute & cuddly like a black panther cub with an afro.
RC Weslowski is a clown mouth full of x-ray visions trying to get at the heart of things. RC has travelled parts of Europe setting his words adrift including England, France, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands. His work has been anthologized and published in magazines such as One Cool Word. His words have waltzed across theatre stages in Canada and the U.S. A surrealist heart beats hard and large inside of him and in 2008 RC Weslowski was named the male Poet of Honour at the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word. RC likes to have fun and make friends.
Chris Gilpin is a two-time Vancouver Poetry Slam Team member, the 2008 Haiku Deathmatch Champion, winner of the Vancouver 2009 CBC Poetry Face-off, and finalist in the 2010 Write Bloody manuscript competition. Poetry makes him feel like he's driving a clown car filled with all his friends.
