Double Chapbook Launch with Vivian (Xiao Wen) Li + Kevin Spenst

On Wednesday, December 14 at 6pm, join Massy Arts Society, Massy Books and 845 Press or the launch of two chapbooks Someday I Promise, I’ll Love You by Vivian (Xiao Wen) Li and A Video Tape Swaddled in Purple Wool by Kevin Spenst.

Both pandemic time reflections, Li seeks to understand and recapture love and hope within a time of anxiety and rising anti-Asian racism, while Spenst's chapbook full of poems processes readings over zoom among many other things.  

The two will be joined by guest reader Jane Shi, author of Leaving Chang'e on Read (Rahila's Ghost Press), whose writing on survival takes the form of half-moon questions about climate catastrophe, queer disabled friendship and immigrant suburban isolation.

This project has been made possible by the Government of Canada. Ce projet a été rendu possible grâce au gouvernement du Canada.

Venue & Accessibility

The event will be hosted at the Massy Arts Gallery, at 23 East Pender Street in Chinatown, Vancouver.

Registration is free, open to all and required for entrance. The gallery is wheelchair accessible and a gender-neutral washroom is on-site. Please view our Accessibility page for parking, seating, venue measurements and floor plan, and how to request ASL interpretation.

Covid Protocols: Masks keep our community safe and are mandatory (N95 masks are recommended as they offer the best protection). We ask if you are showing symptoms, that you stay home. Thank you kindly.

The Chapbooks

Someday I Promise, I’ll Love You seeks to understand and recapture love and hope within a time of anxiety and rising anti-Asian racism. What does it mean to hold tender the self when fracture feels inevitable in all directions? How do we ground ourselves if the present refuses to stabilize? The poems in this collection yearn and reach for the answers to fragmentation and emptiness, in identity and in home.

A Video Tape Swaddled in Purple Wool by Kevin Spenst has pandemic poems, love poems, clowning it up poems, translingual poems, meditative poems, a poem about William Blake's childhood hijinks and a poem about doing readings over zoom. Here's a chapbook full of poems. 

The Author

Vivian (Xiao Wen) Li is a queer writer, editor, singer-songwriter, director, and interdisciplinary artist. Her creative works are forthcoming or can be found in The New Quarterly, The Massachusetts Review, The Fiddlehead, filling station, and CV2, among others. Most recently, she was Shortlisted for the The Peter Hinchcliffe Short Fiction Award 2022, Longlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize 2020, Shortlisted for the Vancouver City Poems Contest 2022, and Longlisted for The Edna Staebler Personal Essay Contest 2022. A MFA candidate at UBC and an editor for PRISM international and Augur, she can be reached @eliktherain. Her screenwriting, directorial, and producer debut, In Silence, We Sing, will debut at the Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival 2022. She is currently working on her thesis novel (funded by SSHRC CGS-M) engaging with themes of Buddhism, sisterhood, and reincarnation. Someday I Promise, I'll Love You (845 Press, 2022) is her debut chapbook.

Kevin Spenst (he/him) is the author of three poetry collections with Anvil Press and over a dozen chapbooks with three more on the horizon with Collusion Books, the Alfred Gustav Press, and 845 Press. He teaches poetry at SFU and lives in Vancouver on unceded Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh territory. Kevin’s latest book, Video Tape Swaddled in Purple Wool, offers andemic poems, love poems, clowning it up poems, translingual poems, meditative poems, a poem about William Blake's childhood hijinks and a poem about doing readings over zoom. Here's a chapbook full of poems.

With Guest Readers

Jane Shi is a queer Chinese settler living on the occupied, stolen, and unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and səlil̓ilw̓ətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) nations. Her writing has appeared in the Disability Visibility Blog, Briarpatch Magazine, The Puritan, and Queer Little Nightmares: An Anthology of Monstrous Fiction and Poetry (Arsenal Pulp Press), among others. Leaving Chang'e on Read (Rahila's Ghost Press, 2022) is her debut chapbook. This work shores up a series of splinters, fractures, code, and half-moon questions about climate catastrophe, queer disabled friendship, immigrant suburban isolation, and survival. It has been described as offering "kind bluntness" (CiTR) about the truth behind emotions.