Poetry in Transit has been a beloved and enduring program since 1996, a chance for transit bus riders in Vancouver and BC to enjoy the poetic voices from their province. Every year, we select ten BC-authored and Canadian-published poems to feature on bus cards throughout the region. You can view this year’s poems and poets below.
We had a chance to talk to this year’s poets about poetry and inspiration on transit, the influence of place on their creative practice, and the value of public art engagement programs.
The following responses have been edited for length and clarity.
Encountering a poem on the bus is like encountering this little piece of otherworldiness…it’s a continuation of a conversation I’ve already been having with myself.
Jen Currin
What does it mean for you to be a part of Poetry in Transit, to have your poem circulating on transit buses in Vancouver this year and in BC for the next few years?
Susan Alexander: I absolutely love the idea that someone will look up from her phone and read a poem—my poem or the other wonderful poems. It’s like a chance encounter that I am part of even when I am not present.
Jen Currin: I’m one of those people who wants to see poetry everywhere so I’m delighted that “A Shadow’s Cat” will be travelling on buses and trains for the next few years, for commuters to have something interesting to read rather than advertisements. This is the third time I’ve had a poem chosen to be part of Poetry in Transit (poems from The Sleep of Four Cities and School have also been featured) and each time it’s been an honour, honestly.
Junie Désil: It is a profound honour to be part of Poetry in Transit. The thought of my poem circulating on buses—encountered in the midst of someone’s commute or daily errands—feels both humbling and moving. Poetry is often tucked away in books or readings, but here it is in the everyday, meeting people where they are. To know my work might offer a pause, a point of reflection, or simply accompany someone through their day is deeply meaningful to me.
Renée Harper: After years spent in transit, riding buses, subways, and streetcars, it feels a bit surreal to know that my poem will be there with other folks in that liminal space between destinations. I often cherish my time in transit as a space where I can think and sometimes even write. A few of the poems in my collection Boundary Territory were written during my commute from Dufferin and St. Clair in Toronto to York University. There’s something inherently poetic about being in motion, suspended between places. Transit invites reflection, and for me, it sometimes invites poetry.
Joseph Kidney: I’m very grateful to be a part of Poetry in Transit, in part because it means that I am stepping forward more directly into the modern conflict between art and advertising. The director Werner Herzog talked about how we need a “real war against commercials” because they will kill our language. Even a lot of popular and awarded art is essentially advertising, or a co-conspirator in advertising’s destruction of language in the way that it really tries to fool you into limiting your emotional life down to one narrow enough to be manipulated by clichés of thinking and feeling. People can complain all they like about public art, some of which is justified, but I think we should appreciate how public art wrests public space away from advertisers. Does this thing [of art] mystify you? That is ok! You might see it continually change before your eyes as it changes you. At least it is not sentimentally predatory.
Natalie Lim: It means the absolute world. I take the bus almost every single day and it’s such a treat to have poetry built into my regular commute through this program. When I was thinking about this book launch and what I was hoping to accomplish, I genuinely wrote “Poetry in Transit” down as one of my goals—and here we are! It’s an honour to be featured alongside so many poets that I admire, and I can’t wait for the first day that I see my poem on a bus around town.
Christine Lowther: It means a lot. My family did not drive and I spent all my young life taking the bus to high school and then to college. I went everywhere on weekends by bus or Skytrain as well. Now that we have the climate emergency I love public transit all the more. How sublime to have poetry to read while riding! I love imagining riders reading my poem and imagining themselves in that moment, a swimmer in the ocean surprising (and being surprised by) an eagle.
Lauren Peat: Public transit is a huge part of my life, and I always look for the poems posted in city buses. I love that they invite slowness and contemplation into the unvarnished everyday; poetry shouldn’t be confined to literary events, libraries, or bookstores, and can also accompany our work commutes and trips to the grocery store. I’m delighted that my poem will soon do the same!
Poetry in Transit also challenges the idea of the writer as a solitary person scribbling away in seclusion, an archetype I’m keen to push against myself. Writing does require solitude, but a solitude that’s directed outward, I think, to a world that is communal and interdependent.
City buses are a wonderful example of interdependence: people of all walks of life travelling together, toward different destinations, sharing space and making stops according to their individual needs. Poetry in Transit feels very much aligned with that vision.
Tom Wayman: I’m proud to have been part of the organization that launched Poetry in Transit. These first show-card presentations of poetry on the buses were a Vancouver Centennial project in 1986 of the Vancouver Industrial Writers’ Union, a work-writing circle I was an active member of. A poem of mine was among those featured, and since then as the Association of BC Book Publishers and various sponsors have taken up the project, poems of mine were on the buses from books published in 1999 and 2007.
Of course it’s a thrill to have one’s words travelling the highways and byways of the province. But the real honour is poetry’s—at a time when the audience for contemporary poetry is infinitesimal, the Poetry in Transit poems demonstrate to the travelling public that “poetry” is not one thing, any more than “music” is, and that people may have been hasty in dismissing, if not loathing, the art form. Thus, the Poetry in Transit initiative is, to me, a vote of confidence in the art I love and practise.
Calvin Wharton: When I first studied writing in Nelson, a fellow student decided to mimic the (probably apocryphal) notion that Bashō would hang his poems on slips of paper in various public places. This became my friend’s Hung Poems project, and I was happy to have some of my own work included. There was a distinct pleasure in imagining strangers unexpectedly discovering and reading my poem, along with those of others. Similarly, Poetry in Transit offers BC transit riders a rewarding surprise, even encourages people to look for the poems to enrich their time on transit.
In winter, when the valley cloud descends [over Nelson], it can feel almost oppressive, but there is also a sense of safety, as if the landscape is offering shelter from the wider world.
Renée Harper
As part of Poetry in Transit, we highlight the poets’ hometowns to spread awareness of local artists in different parts of BC. How does the place you live in play a role in your writing and creative process?
Susan Alexander (hometown: Bowen Island): Bowen Island has had a huge impact on my writing. I need to live close to the natural world and its rhythms. I cherish the loving and supportive community here on the island. I’ve lived here over 32 years and it is a privilege to know and to be known. Recently I read poems from Berberitzen at the Write on Bowen festival. Many of those poems are about my late husband Ross McDonald and it was special that many in the audience knew Ross.
Jen Currin (hometown: traditional territories of the Halq’eméylem-speaking peoples, including the Kwantlen, QayQayt, Musqueam and Kwikwetlem Nations, New Westminster.): Place is hugely important to me as a poet, and the poems in Trinity Street, from which “A Shadow’s Cat” was taken, take place in a variety of settings, including the Hastings Sunrise neighbourhood where I lived for many years (I lived on Trinity Street) and also here in New West where I currently live. Glimpses of Vancouver and New West appear throughout the book—the Sto:lo River, for example, is in several poems, and one poem is actually about riding the bus, “From Surrey to Commercial Drive.” Since I’m a transit rider, buses and trains show up quite a bit in my poetry, actually.
Junie Désil (hometown: Lasqueti Island on the Traditional Territories of the Homalco, Tla’amin, and Klahoose): I think that Lasqueti is starting to play a significant role in my creative process. I’m new to this community—I recently moved in 2022. Living off-grid on the Traditional Territories of the Homalco, Tla’amin, and Klahoose means being in constant dialogue with land, water, and community. The rhythms of island life—seasonal shifts, the ferry schedule, the intensity of storms—are becoming inseparable from how I think and write, though only a smart of that features in allostatic load, which I started writing in 2020/21. The third section of the collection was mostly written while on Lasqueti Island. Quite a bit did not make it into this collection; the remoteness also asks me to sit with silence, to pay attention to the smallest details, and to reflect on belonging and isolation, and so a lot of that writing is for me and not for public consumption. This is also to say that I love where I live and I also don’t want to inadvertently put this Island on blast more than it needs to. Overall, the experience of living here does allow me to have more breathing space to write, dream, and imagine.
Renée Harper (hometown: Nelson): Nelson seeps into my writing all the time. Living here feels like being in conversation with the landscape: the valleys are narrow, fjord-like over Kootenay Lake, and the mountains are always present. In winter, when the valley cloud descends, it can feel almost oppressive, but there is also a sense of safety, as if the landscape is offering shelter from the wider world. Besides the land, what keeps me here is the creative community. I feel lucky to be surrounded by writers, artists, and craftspeople who bring so much richness to daily life. Nelson, its landscape and community, keep my creative practice grounded and alive.
Joseph Kidney (hometown: Vancouver): I would say there are a few natural aspects of the area that continue to surge through my poems. Rain as the default weather, though contrasted by the drought and fire of California. As in the poem of mine that will be on the bus, the coast, where land gives way to sea or vice versa, as the central location, a sundered location. It’s also becoming more clear to me that growing up and living on the western edge of the North American continent, where the European dispossession by force and betrayal is more recent (meaning that its mythologizing has not had time to replace facts of violence with anecdotes of make-believe cooperation and so must actually reckon with violence), draws you more quickly to the worldview that sees civilization as an edifice built on top of a foundation of cruelty. Maybe that’s why our politics here are what they are. Believe it or not, I do cherish some of those frequently lamented aspects of the Greater Vancouver region: the normative gloominess of the skies, the unfriendliness among strangers, all of which is conducive to the kind of solitude that is good for reading and writing. Not much about my public education encouraged me to write poetry, but I will single out the extraordinary music department at New Westminster Secondary School which at least gave me access to people who showed how you could make an artform the most important thing in your life.
Natalie Lim (hometown: Vancouver): One of my favourite poems in the new collection is called “I Tour You Up East Hastings, From Nanaimo” and that poem is a love letter to the neighborhoods that have defined the past few years of my life. So much of poetry is about the art of paying attention, and there is no better place to do that than in our own neighborhoods—the places where we buy groceries and meet friends for coffee, where we spend the day-to-day of our lives. In fact, my chapbook arrhythmia contains a poem called “Rattle on Home,” which I wrote on the bus after being inspired by a sign reading “For your safety, please hold on.” The world around us is so alive with poetry if we choose to stop and notice it!
Christine Lowther (hometown: Tla-o-qui-aht territory (Tofino)): Yes, for the last 33 years I have lived in and around Tofino. Its unspoilt surroundings of mountains, inlets, beaches, trails and ancient temperate rainforest are almost all I write about. I record daily the birds and other wildlife I hear, see, or otherwise detect. Wild plants too. I can’t help writing about all of this, whether in prose or poetic form, or both! It is the Tlaoquiaht people who have guarded this incredible place against harm for centuries, and together with non-Indigenous blockaders, kept most of it safe from clear-cut logging.
Lauren Peat (hometown: Vancouver): Before moving to Vancouver four years ago I’d never lived so close to the ocean, which now exerts a gravitational pull on much of my writing. I’d also never spent so much time speaking with writers and artists about the challenges of living in an increasingly unaffordable city. Words like renoviction and gentrification are on almost everyone’s lips—I’ve recently begun working on a poem that explores this sense of shared precarity.
A couple of physical spaces have been integral to my writing practice, too. I spend a lot of time at the Central Branch of the Vancouver Public Library, and wrote this short essay about its influence on my work. And this summer I was fortunate to be selected by Poet Laureate Elee Kraljii Gardiner for a writing residency at the multidisciplinary creative space Enabling Arts. I’m really grateful for all the enlivening connections I made there.
Tom Wayman (hometown: Winlaw): Winlaw is an unincorporated area along Highway 6 about 60 km west of Nelson, amid the Selkirk Mountains of southeastern BC. The area extends on both sides of the Slocan River, and thus is part of the storied Slocan Valley which has seen miners, loggers, millworkers, the Doukhobor pacifists fleeing Russia, American war resisters fleeing the Vietnam War, back-to-the-landers, legal and illegal agriculture, and more recently, equity refugees—people selling homes in the Lower Mainland or southern Alberta and relocating to a remote rural setting which offers more beauty, and more peace of mind, than an urban existence. I detail my own experiences here since 1989, and how they’ve impacted my writing, in a 2024 memoir, The Road to Appledore or How I Went Back to the Land Without Ever Having Lived There in the First Place.
Calvin Wharton (hometown: North Vancouver): Where I live in North Vancouver can be seen as a transition between city and mountain woodlands. Lots of trees and it’s not unusual to see deer or a bear in the streets here. And many birds (e.g. herons, hummingbirds, four species of woodpecker, and others are familiar residents of this neighbourhood). I can’t help being affected by the environment I spend my days in, consequently many of these tangible elements come into my writing. I feel fortunate to live somewhere that suits my temperament and informs my attitude toward poetry.
Words can make a minute stretch long, or collapse it into a pinprick. It’s a special kind of alchemy… I remember feeling as if the rest of the bus had melted away, and I almost missed my stop.
Lauren Peat
Do you have any stories of spotting a poem on the bus and how it might have affected your day or inspired your own writing journey?
Susan Alexander: I remember years ago I was catching the bus to Horseshoe Bay and looking up and reading a poem. It must have been one of the first years of Poetry in Transit. I don’t remember the poem or the author (it was before I started writing poetry seriously); I just remember the stillness of the image—was it a spider on a web?—and how it stopped time.
Jen Currin: I know a lot of poets in the Vancouver area and so I often recognize the poets featured in Poetry in Transit. I recall moving seats one time to read a Fiona Tinwei Lam poem I spied from a distance. Encountering a poem on the bus is like encountering this little piece of otherworldiness—poetry is so different from the kinds of writing we’re used to seeing on transit walls. I often read and write poetry on the bus or Skytrain, so when I look up and see a poem floating above the windows, it’s a continuation of a conversation I’ve already been having with myself.
Junie Désil: Yes! When I first moved to Vancouver from Montréal—it was the fall of 1999—I remember riding the number 3 bus and coming across a poem by Wayde Compton. It was from his collection 49th Parallel Psalm, and I think the poem was called “MC.” I can still recall reading it and thinking, how cool is that, to have poetry on transit?
In that moment, I remember imagining how neat it would be to one day see one of my poems on a bus. At the time, though, I wasn’t even writing seriously. I hadn’t yet met Wayde, and I would never have dreamed that (A) I’d come to know him and benefit from such a generous and ongoing mentorship—one that has shaped my entire writing journey—and (B) that my own poems would eventually appear on transit, not just once, but from each of my collections. And lastly, reading poetry on the bus is one of my favourite things. I get to encounter new and familiar poets and it’s always neat to watch other people reading them (though with cell phones, poems might be vying for attention!)
Joseph Kidney: I actually have quite a vivid memory of being on the bus in 2011 and seeing a Poetry in Transit card featuring nine lines by the poet Inge Israel from her book Beckett Soundings. It was an excerpt from a longer poem called “Incoherent State”. The poem is a thought experiment of sorts, I imagine drawn from [Samuel] Beckett or inspired by something of his. It is about the consolation of order. It is about being stuck down in a well. There is a “heaven-sent ladder” but you cannot reach it. Merely counting the rungs, however, “could save your sanity.” At that stage in my life I read little poetry, let alone philosophy, and probably had not read Beckett. And there it all was on a bus! It was like the sudden appearance of a rare bird and the image of that poem stayed with me for years.
Christine Lowther: I know I would have many stories of poem-spotting on transit if I lived in a larger urban centre. I do remember how great it felt to have a poem on buses about fifteen years ago. This is partly why it’s so thrilling for me again now. I’m truly glad for this initiative.
Lauren Peat: I have a vivid memory of encountering Ellie Sawatzy’s poem “Overnights at the Hospital” while riding the 99. (As an aside, I have this theory that each Vancouver bus route each has its own personality, and that the 99 is extroverted, loud, a fast talker. If you know, you know.) Amid much Saturday night revelry, I was taken in by the poem’s gentle, methodical beginning, and startled by its final turn, both thrilling and devastating. I remember feeling as if the rest of the bus had melted away, and I almost missed my stop.
For me, this is one of poetry’s most exciting gifts—that it invites a different relationship with time. Poetry might be language at its most flexible, and so when we move through a poem, carrying with us all our associations, memories, and physical sensations, our experience (which always occurs in time) can feel flexible, too. Words can make a minute stretch long, or collapse it into a pinprick. It’s a special kind of alchemy.
Tom Wayman: The Poetry in Transit poem from my 1999 collection The Colours of the Forest was a humorous sonnet (well, it was 14 lines long) called “I’m Sorry My Paper is Late, But” and consisted of various ridiculous excuses I’d heard from my students when I was teaching English and writing at Kwantlen College. One day a student said to me, “I saw your poem on the bus.” His tone was anything but approving. We all like to think of ourselves as the hero or heroine of our own movie, and clearly this person was irked to see students like himself as, instead, a source of fun.
When people see themselves and their experiences reflected in art in public spaces, it affirms that their experiences are valuable, important and shared.
Junie Désil
What are your thoughts on the value of public engagement initiatives to get people in BC (and elsewhere) aware of and interested in the arts and local artists? What more could be done that you don’t see yet?
Susan Alexander: I think public art is so important for our mental health—literary, visual, music, dance. We are all artists before we are anything else, [before] our careers, our relationships. It is a human need to engage creatively in life. The poem on the bus can give a person that feeling of connection, like someone shared a secret sorrow with them or opened the curtains and let in a little light.
Junie Désil: Public engagement initiatives like Poetry in Transit are vital. They remind us that art belongs in our shared spaces, not only in galleries or academic institutions. They also create access points for people who may not otherwise seek out poetry or visual art.
What I would love to see more of is sustained support for artists in smaller or more remote communities, as well as initiatives that reflect the full breadth of voices in this province. When people see themselves and their experiences reflected in art in public spaces, it affirms that their experiences are valuable, important and shared.
Renée Harper: Living in Nelson and working in the arts has shown me how a strong creative community can nurture both artists and audiences. Programs like local art walks, community exhibitions, workshops, student-run publications like the Black Bear Review and local literary festivals, such as the Elephant Mountain Literary Festival, make art accessible and visible while celebrating the talent right in our backyard.
Online platforms can help small-town artists reach wider audiences, linking the special energy of our diverse small communities with people across BC and beyond.
Joseph Kidney: I think it’s important to detach the arts from the marketplace. Otherwise, bad art prevails or none at all. I think the arts have a quasi-religious power and we should fund artists the way some countries used to and still do fund a state church. It’s a matter of spiritual upkeep. Government programs, from whatever level, that support artists not only help create those moments of discovery and conversion for people who are being underserved by the commercial cultural landscape they find themselves in, but they also help artists secure the means to live and the freedom to avoid having to produce the kind of art that sells, which is almost always an art that reassures and condescends and re-hashes old potatoes. So the more of those initiatives the better. I would like to see more bronze statues of BC writers astride miscellaneous livestock. I would like someone to bribe Quinn Hughes, a self-avowed reader, to post pictures of himself on Instagram reading BC writers such as myself. And I think Nardwuar should interview Fred Wah.
Natalie Lim: I think that a lot of people—myself included!—grew up thinking that poetry was opaque and intractable, only for people who “got it” or who were smart enough to decipher its code. But the more I have encountered poetry throughout my life, the more I’ve realized that there is not just one kind of poetry. Poetry can be complex and multifaceted and written in iambic pentameter, but it can also be plainspoken and full of memes and funny and fun. I love the Poetry in Transit program because it exposes people to a variety of different styles and genres of poetry in an accessible way. I think public engagement programs like this are especially valuable because they remind us that art is meant to be part of our everyday lives, not separate from it. I think humans were meant to read poetry while riding the bus and see beautiful murals while walking down the street and hear music at the park on the way home from work. In this vein, I would love to see more multimedia works—poetry that responds to art, or music that responds to poetry… The possibilities are endless!
Christine Lowther: We have to do all that we can to promote Canadian poetry in mainstream culture; I work in a small library, part of the Vancouver Island Regional Library system, and I’m forever hoping someone will borrow a poetry book! It happens but rarely. On the plus side we have two great organizations: Tofino Arts Council and Pacific Rim Arts Society (Tofino and Ucluelet). T.A.C. helped start the Tofino Poet Laureate program, while P.R.A.S. began the Rainy Coast Arts Award for Significant Accomplishment.
What more could be done to help more public engagement? Lots of money! And always making it fun. Involving kids so they grow up used to arts being a part of their lives.
Lauren Peat: Robust public engagement in the arts depends on a number of things that don’t necessarily seem “artistic.” Secure and affordable housing, for instance, and investment in public space. Art may sometimes feel mysterious, but art-making and art appreciation don’t take place in a vacuum. Both require energy, time, both mental and physical space.
I once heard that in the mid-1990s a group of writers decided to share an apartment above what is now a burrito place on Commercial Drive. They would take turns living there, improvising a makeshift arrangement that allowed each of them the time and space to focus on their craft.
I love this anecdote, for its camaraderie and creativity. But the city itself has the responsibility to create and maintain fertile ground on which art and artists can not only survive, but thrive. Which would mean, at the very least, enforcing tenant protections, ensuring the wealthy pay a fair share, and protecting existing public space and services. I’ve been heartened to see more and more initiatives take this intersection seriously, including the upcoming reading series Crisis City: Writers in a City Without a Future, organized by Real Vancouver.
Tom Wayman: I don’t think the situation is that the arts are perfect and the public are being recalcitrant or ignorant in not being interested in what artists are doing. What is it that the arts offer people these days? For sure one thing needful, I believe, is to take the arts to where people are, rather than ask them to seek out what’s happening in the arts world. Which makes the Poetry in Transit program definitely a step in the right direction, in my opinion.
Calvin Wharton: Poetry in Transit is a terrific example of how the arts can be brought into everyday public life—something that is essential in creating a balanced and vigorous society. One way to increase the presence of, and interest in, the arts and local artists would be to make more use of SkyTrain stations, turning them into essentially gallery spaces and/or expanded platforms for the presentation of poetry and other writing.