Poet Laureate
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New Westminster’s Poet Laureate acts as a literary ambassador for the City of New Westminster and the community; advocating for literacy and the literary arts and helping to raise the status of poetry, language and the arts in the everyday consciousness of New Westminster residents. The Poet Laureate also develops meaningful engagement opportunities that enrich the lives of residents and visitors to the City.
Poet Alan Hill was chosen in February 2017 as New Westminster’s fourth Poet Laureate. Mr. Hill is a resident of the Glenbrook North neighbourhood of New Westminster. He is co-manager of the Poetry New West reading series and has been a regular on the Vancouver reading circuit for over ten years. He has been published in North America and Europe in numerous print and online journals. Publishing highlights in Canada include having poetry included in Event, CV2, Canadian Literature, Vancouver Review, Antigonish Review, Sub-Terrain, Poetry is Dead, Quills and Cascadia Review. He has also published two collections of poetry, ‘The Upstairs Country’ (Silverbow 2012) and ‘The Broken Word’ (Silverbow 2013). In 2007 he featured in the ‘Rocksalt’ anthology (Mother Tongue), the first BC wide anthology of poetry for over thirty years. Alan immigrated to New Westminster from the UK after meeting, and being sponsored by, his Vietnamese-Canadian wife while working in Botswana.
Subscribe to Citypage Online or follow New Westminster Art Services on Twitter for opportunities to participate in projects involving the Poet Laureate.
Candice JamesCandice James is a professional writer, poet, visual artist, musician, singer/songwriter, workshop facilitator and book reviewer. She completed her second three year term as Poet Laureate in June 2016 and was appointed Poet Laureate Emerita November 2016. She is board advisor to Royal City Literary Arts Society and director of the Pacific Festival of the Book. She is founder and past president of Royal City Literary Arts Society; past president of the Federation of British Columbia Writers; and past director of SpoCan. She is a full member of the League of Canadian Poets. She also is founder of: Poetry New Westminster; Poetry In The Park; Poetic Justice and Slam Central. She has been keynote speaker at Word On The Street, and Black Dot Roots Cultural Collective and has judged the Pat Lowther Memorial Award and Jessamy Stursberg Youth Poet Award for the League of Canadian Poets. She is the recipient of Vancouver Pandora’s Collective Citizenship Award and recipient of the Bernie Legge Artist/Cultural award.
Candice is author of thirteen books of poetry with five different publishers: A Split In The Water (Fiddlehead 1979); Inner Heart – A Journey (Silver Bow 2010); Bridges and Clouds (Silver Bow 2011); Midnight Embers – a Book of Sonnets (Libros Libertad 2012); Shorelines – a Book of Villanelles (Silver Bow 2013); Ekphrasticism – Painted Words (Silver Bow 2013); Purple Haze (Libros Libertad 2014) A Silence of Echoes (Silver Bow 2014); Merging Dimensions (Ekstasis Editions 2015); Short Shots (Silver Bow 2016) and Colours of India (Xpress Publisher, India 2016; The Water Poems (Ekstasis Editions 2017).
Candice has featured at many venues both civic and public and appeared on television and radio. She has presented workshops, mentored writers; written prefaces and reviews, published articles, and short stories. Her poetry has appeared in many international anthologies and her poems have been translated into Arabic, Italian, Bengali and Farsi. Her artwork has appeared in Duende at Goddard College of Fine Arts, Vermont, USA.