Twisted Poets Literary Salon

March 19th , 2025 
Pandora's Collective Presents
TWISTED POETS LITERARY SALON 
Featured Poets:

• Bren Simmers
• Yvonne Blomer
• Cynthia Woodman

and open mic 

Hosted by: Daniela Elza and Natasha Boškić
​Time: 6:00 - 7:50 pm
Location: Britannia Library, 1661 Napier St, Vancouver

Bren Simmers is the winner of the CBC Poetry Prize and The Malahat Review Long Poem Prize. She is the author of five books including the wilderness memoir Pivot Point. Her latest poetry collection The Work (Gaspereau Press) was a finalist for the 2024 Governor General’s Literary Awards. She lives on Epekwitk/PEI. [Epekwitk is pronounced: ehb-uh-gwihd]
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• Yvonne Blomer’s sixth book of poems Death of Persephone: A Murder, is a mystery based on the Persephone myth, the noir mystery genre and the ongoing violence to girls and women. It is a murder mystery in poetry including linked sonnets, palindromes and narrative poems published by Caitlin Press in 2024. An excerpt of Death of Persephone won the Gwendolyn MacEwen poetry prize in 2021 with Exile Editions. Sugar Ride: Cycling from Hanoi to Kuala Lumpur is her memoir exploring body, time, and travel, published with Palimpsest Press. Yvonne is the past Poet Laureate of Victoria, B.C. and Arc Magazine’s poet-in-residence for 2022-23. She is an award-winning poet and nonfiction writer who has edited five anthologies, most recently: Hologram: Homage to PK Page. Yvonne holds an MA with Distinction from the University of East Anglia and lives on the traditional territories of the Lək̓ʷəŋən (Lekwungen) speaking people.​

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Cynthia Woodman Kerkham was born in a marsh filled with bullrushes. She then lived on a raft in the South China Sea, surrounded by sharks, but, when she fell off, her sister saved her—sometimes. Her teen years were spent gazing at the Vancouver Harbour while she ate bowls of cheerios, and her writing life has been nurtured in her adult years by French rivers, Greek bays, the Salish Sea and a BC lake. Her poems have gone on to win awards, including The Malahat Review’s Open Season Award, the Federation of BC Writers Contest, and the John Lent Poetry/Prose Award as well as been chosen as finalists for the CBC Poetry Prize and the Gwendolyn MacEwen Poetry Competition. She’s been published in journals across Canada and in the US and been selected for BC’s Poetry in Transit. She’s co-editor of the anthology Poems from Planet Earth and the author of the poetry collections: with feathers (Kalamalka Press), Good Holding Ground (Palimpsest Press) and Water Quality (McGill-Queens University Press). Cynthia is a board member of the Victoria Writers Festival, and she gratefully lives, teaches, and edits in the traditional territories of the Lək̓ʷəŋən and W̱SÁNEĆ peoples aka Victoria, BC, where she hasn’t found a body of water she doesn’t love.

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Contact: [email protected]
www.pandorascollective.com ​