Vancouver's Poet Laureate

The Poet Laureate, ‘the people’s poet,’ is an honorary position with a flexible term of two to three years. During that term, the Laureate will act as a champion for poetry, language and the arts, create a unique literary project and represent the City as Laureate during readings at civic functions and public poetry events.

The position is funded by a generous endowment established by Dr. Yosef Wosk, OBC, in 2006.

Here, Hearing

Elee Kraljii Gardiner’s Vancouver Poet Laureate Legacy Project is called "Here, Hearing." The project links sound with presence, inspired by the origins of poetry and Vancouver's exceptional history of music, recording, and soundscape.

"Here, Hearing" focusses on exchange, creation, and collaboration through literary salons, short-term residencies, and a curated collection of audio recordings. “Here, Hearing” is in consultation and involvement with the non-hearing.

Additional Resources

Check out Elee's blog for helpful resources and to stay up to date.

Current Poet Laureate

Image

Elee Kraljii Gardiner

2025 — 2027 Poet Laureate

Elee Kraljii Gardiner is a writer, editor, and creative mentor living in Vancouver. She is the author of 2 poetry books, Trauma Head, which investigates the experience of stroke, and serpentine loop, which considers gender and physicality through the idea of ice. She is also editor of the anthologies Against Death: 35 Essays on Living and V6A: Writing from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside with John Asfour. For a decade she ran Thursdays Writing Collective, a beloved drop-in program for DTES residents that produced 10 anthologies.

She is a director of Vancouver Manuscript Intensive, a program pairing authors with mentors, and is a co-founder, with Rachel Rose, of the VMI Betsy Warland Between Genres Award, a literary prize celebrating hybrid texts. She also runs The Whole Cloth reading series, an experiment in sustained listening where a poet reads an entire book of poems, with Bronwen Tate at University of British Columbia's Green College.

Elee holds an MA in Hispanic Literature from University of British Columbia and an MFA in Poetry from the Institute of American Indian Arts. She is the recipient of the Cogswell Award for Literary Excellence, Lina Chartrand Award for Social Justice and the Pandora’s Collective BC Writer Mentor Award. Her writing has been a finalist for the Souster Award twice, as well as the Kroetsch Award, bpNichol Chapbook Award, City of Vancouver Book Award, and in the US, the Eric Hoffer Grand Prize and Montaigne Medal.

A frequent collaborator with choreographers, musicians, visual and sound artists, Elee is currently collaborating with nature via a series of durational art installations that investigate the law of thermodynamics and cultural ideas regarding the passing of time.

Learn more about Elee Kraljii Gardiner