Royal City Literary Arts Society presents
Poetry in the Park 2025 Opening Night
Wednesday July 2, 6:30 pm - 8:30pm
Queen's Park Bandshell, New Westminster
Feature Poets Elee Kraljii Gardiner and Kevin Spenst
With Host Jonina Kirton
Elee Kraljii Gardiner is the author of Trauma Head and serpentine loop, and the anthologies Against Death: 35 Essays on Living and V6A: Writing from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. A frequent collaborator with choreographers, musicians, and visual artists, Elee directs Vancouver Manuscript Intensive and co-directs with Bronwen Tate The Whole Cloth, a reading series where a poet is invited to read their entire book in one go. She is the current poet laureate of Vancouver.
A poet, teacher, and reviewer, Kevin Spenst (he/him) has published four full-length poetry collections, most recently A Bouquet Brought Back from Space (Anvil Press, 2024) and 17 chapbooks, most recently Windowful (Anstruther Press, 2025). He is one of the organizers of the Dead Poets Reading Series, has a chapbook review column for subTerrain magazine, occasionally co-hosts Wax Poetic on Vancouver Co-op Radio, and is one of the poetry ambassadors for Vancouver’s newest poet laureate Elee Kraljii Gardiner. He is the 2025 Poetry Mentor at The Writer’s Studio at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver on unceded xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish) and səl̓ilw̓ətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) territory where he cohabitates with the one and only Cheryl Rossi.
Jónína Kirton, an Icelandic and Red River Métis poet currently lives in New Westminster BC, the unceded territory of the Hul’qumi’num speaking peoples. She was sixty-one when she received the 2016 Vancouver’s Mayor’s Arts Award for an Emerging Artist in the Literary Arts category. Her second collection of poetry, An Honest Woman, was a finalist in the 2018 Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. Her third book, Standing in a River of Time, released in 2022, merges poetry and lyrical memoir to take us on a journey exposing the intergenerational effects of colonization on her Métis family.
* Every WED eve in the month of JULY
*Each weekly session we present feature poets and an Open Mic.
*Fun, Free, Family Friendly Event
*Open Mic sign-up starting at 6:15pm.
Bench seating is available but consider bringing a folding chair or blanket. Everyone welcome!
Also check out other Arts events in New Westminster, Literary Art events in New Westminster.
