What is a poem?

Workshop Leader: Fred Wah

Description: What is a poem? Is it inside of your head? Inside of your body? What is a poem? Where can you find one? Is it something you remember, something you can't forget? Is it inside of a book? Inside of a word? This short workshop will offer a variety of ways to locate the poem you could write; the poem you are inside of and the inside of a poem.

Fred Wah was born in Swift Current, Saskatchewan in 1939 but grew up in the Kootenays in southeast British Columbia. He has published widely since the early 1960s and frequently presents internationally on Canadian poetry and poetics. Recent books are Diamond Grill, a biofiction about growing up in a small town Chinese-Canadian cafe (1996), Faking It: Poetics and Hybridity, a collection of essays (2000), both from NeWest Press, and two collections of poetry, Sentenced to Light (2008) and is a door (2009). He is a former Parliamentary Poet Laureate and an Officer of the Order of Canada.