Featured poets: Anna Yin & Jovan Shadd
+ Open Mic for poetry in any language
Wednesday, May 28, 2025
Tranzac Club, 292 Brunswick Ave, Toronto, ON M5S 2M7
Open Mic Sign-up: 6:30 PM EST
Show 7-10 PM EST
Admission: $10-20 Sliding Scale
Check photos of the reading night. So glad that Richard Greene, Al Moritz and many other poets and friends joined us to read!
Anna Yin read poems from her new book: Breaking into Blossom at 2025 Frontenac House’s Spring book launch in Calgary. Congratulations to all authors including Bruce Hunter and Sanita Fejzic , Check more photos.
Thanks Frontenac House. Now Breaking into Blossom is ready for pre-ordering… We hope in the coming National Poetry month, you can receive it as a perfect poetry gift!. #books #poetry #publishing
Here is a poet who finds authority in endurance. With a deepening craft, Anna Yin confronts bereavement, repression, displacement, and the complexities of love in poems that are heartfelt and crystalline. –Richard Greene:
Anna Yin’s poems ‘breathe in two languages,’ creating a lovely tension between immediacy and distance that feels as though two points on a globe have been connected by a flight path. Her imagery is deeply sensual, compelling yet delicate. Her lines hover in our minds like the dream that “finds his own key, unlocks the door and comes inside.” —Alice Major
From Molly Peacock:
In her gorgeous book, Breaking into Blossom, Anna Yin’s poetry is like the interior of the abalone shell she depicts, “emerald… just shining.” Almost anything or anyone in this volume can break unexpectedly into blossom, including the poems themselves, often concluding with unanticipated discoveries. The book undulates with observations and the animated sur-reality of all kinds of exchanges, from an interview with a painter to the poet’s father’s late life words to a desperate woman stepping on a Forget-me-not. “The career of flowers differs from us only in inaudibleness,” Emily Dickinson wrote to her cousins, and Yin’s buoyant inspirations from poets across time, Li Po to Wallace Stevens, Akhmatova to Dickinson herself, give voice to subtly noticed feelings and thoughts. Anna Yin is fast becoming a Canadian treasure.
创世纪诗刊选用Anna三首华语新诗： 沉默，风信子，金陵。 proud for their work persisting in 70 years!
From Vancouver for Anna’s two Chinese poems
from hongkong for Anna’s poem: Brueghel’s Two Monkeys… thanks 聲韻詩刊 Voice & Verse Poetry Magazine
Congratulations! Tupelo Quarterly accepted Anna Yin’s translation : “Thirteen Short Poems to Chew On” from 严力‘s Chinese poems. It is now on the issue of January.
The Prairie Journal published two of Anna Yin’s translations of 木西’s Chinese poems.
Anna Yin’s two other translations of 严力’s Chinese poems (Textbook & Falling) were accepted by Cha: An Asian Literary Journal for En Route.
Anna Yin’s translation of 颜艾琳’s 超級販賣機 will be in Queen’s Quarterly’s summer 2025 issue. Thanks! #poetry #translations
“Poet and author Anna Yin used her Matchmaker MicroGrant to produce the ebook Polyphonic celebration for Mississauga’s 50th Anniversary – 2024. This heartfelt, community-engaged work captures the essence of local artists, particularly writers, celebrating Mississauga’s 50th anniversary through poems, stories, paintings, and photos. The ebook can be served as a “yearbook” of 2024, and captures writing in English, Chinese, Japanese, Hindi and Persian.
The book is written in three parts – the first explores the friendship between Mississauga and its sister city, Kariya, Japan, through poetry, particularly haikus. The second section features interviews with Mississauga community leaders and poetry writing on events that took place in Mississauga in 2024 and prior. Highlights include tributes to long-running Mayor Hazel McCallion and insights into what the future of Mississauga will hold. The final part showcases haikus written by students at Clifford International School in Guangzhou, China, guided by Anna during her 2024 travels. ” — Mississauga Arts Council, Oct 24, 2024
Mississauga is home to Indigenous peoples and diverse ethnic groups. Over years, Mississauga has evolved from small villages into a modern city. This project is a unique project designed and lead by Anna Yin to celebrate Mississauga’s 50th anniversary by collecting stories from different people and arts in Mississauga, creating a new set of poetry, and collaborating with artists and translators to create polyphonic celebration. With a Matchmaker Microgrant from MAC in Dec, 2023 and sponsorship from local business and artists, this project started on Jan 1, 2024. The followings are some highlighs:
Paintings of Mississauga by Nisreen Art.
Main activities’ schedule
Jan 1- July, 2024: appropriate stories collected and researched to compose a series of poetry
April- Aug 20: Anna collaborates with other artists for paintings and photos
Mar, 2024:Free public zoom meeting: Poly-Translations from art to poetry to film (跨界多译—艺术/诗歌/电影)
(sponsored by East and West Learning Connections & The League of Canadian Poets)
April 6, 2024: A haiku presentation in Kariya, Japan and many photos
August 2024: Anna and participants translate appropriate poems (3-4 locally relevant languages)
Sept 2024: the above photos, photos of paintings, poetry, translations will be combined to produce eBook.
Oct 2, 2024:Release the eBook and showcase it on social media and sureway press website
Online showcase:
Anna Yin’s poems with local artists’ arts as samples
Students’ work from Clifford International School, Guangzhou, China (April, 2024)
Photos and Haiku from KIFA (Kariya International Friendship Association), Japan (2024) (in English and Japanese)
Mississauga Travelogue by Toshitaka Okumura, 2024 (in English and Japanese)
The Beauty of Friendship (in English, Japanese and Chinese)
Artists and arts at Pollinator Showcase Garden, Mississauga 2024 and poems
Writings from local writers in Mississauga, Canada (2024)
Painting (Juno Jiang) and poem for Mayor Hazel (Anna Yin) July 25, 2024, (in English, Chinese, Perse languages)
(The poem is also on Sauga Arts Hub, Thanks MAC)
Beautiful Dreams (poem in English & Chinese) -inspired by Mississauga’s Olympic Champion: Katie Vincent (2024)
Thank sponsors for their great support! Please also check our previous successful projects with the following link. You are welcome to join us for this new project in 2024!
Anna will share poems from “What We Do Not Know”, “Mirrors and Windows” and “Love’s Lighthouse”.
