Many thanks to Heidi Sander, Melanie Kindrachuk, and Louise Liu and Stratford Public Library for making Poetry for Health and Harmony event possible. Grateful to all the book and poetry supporters who helped celebrate Ontario’s Shakespeare town with such a wonderful festival!
Tag: book
Canada-China Symposium on Chinese and Western Poetry Creation on July 27, 2025
On July 27, 2025, the Canada-China International Cultural Artists Association and the Canada-China International Cultural Arts Center co-hosted their First Canada-China Symposium on Chinese and Western Poetry at the New Time Club.
Ten Canadian poets and forty Chinese writers and artists were brought together to explore how poetry can preserve Chinese cultural heritage while fostering dialogue with Western traditions. The gathering emphasized mutual understanding and cultural exchange through poetic expression.
Albert Moritz, former Toronto Poet Laureate, opened with reflections on cultural differences and his visits to China. Anna Yin presented original multimedia works from her Poetry and Music project with guitarist Mark Harry. Gutu gave a talk titled “Images and Sounds” on poetic expression across cultures and languages.
Poets including Allan Briesmaster, Bunny Iskov, Diana Manole, Patrick Connors, Paul Edward Costa, Renee M. Sgroi, and other Chinese poets shared their work and insights. The event also featured performances by musicians, educators, and artists. Sincere thanks to all the guests and participants for contributing their artistic voices to foster a shared sense of connection and celebration of the arts. Many thanks to more than ten Chinese media outlets covering this event!
Keynote Speakers: Biographies and Presentation Topics
(主旨发言人:简介与演讲主题 ) Photos included

Two beautiful reviews of Anna Yin’s Breaking into Blossom (June & July 2025) Congratulations to Anna & Frontenac House!

Terry McDonagh’s review on Live Encounters Poetry & Writing July 2025! #poetry #book #review


Susan McMaster
Susan McMaster’s review on Driftwood (in Chinese &English) #poetry #book #review
MAC selected Polyphonic celebration for Mississauga’s 50th Anniversary project as 2024 success
“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

Congratulations: “Awareness” by two fine Canadian poets: Katherine L. Gordon and James Deahl
We are glad to publish “Awareness”, a fine poetry collection by two fine Canadian poets: Katherine L. Gordon and James Deahl. Live Encounters Poetry and Writings featured their poems from this book in the August issue (Katherine’s two poems & James Deahl’s two poems). Epoch Quarterly (Taiwan, 创世纪诗刊 has featured their poems from this book with Anna Yin’s translations (Chinese) in fall issue 2024 #220.


About the authors:
Katherine L. Gordon is a poet, publisher, author, editor, anthologist, judge, reviewer and literary critic. She has many books, chapbooks, co-operative books and anthologies internationally. She is the recipient of many awards including Best Foreign Author from the 9th international edition of “I Colori Dell Anima” Italy. She earned an award from The World Poetry Association for her contribution to peace poetry. Her work is translated into many languages and will appear this year in a U.S./Korean anthology and two international collections in Italy and China. Katherine believes that poetry is a unifying force across the planet.
James Deahl was born in Pittsburgh during 1945, and grew up in that city as well as in and around the Laurel Highlands of the Appalachian Mountains. He moved to Canada in 1970. He is the author or editor of over thirty books (mostly poetry) and is the author of fifteen poetry chapbooks. A cycle of his poems is the focus of a one-hour American television special, Under The Watchful Eye. As a literary critic, Deahl has written about Milton Acorn, Raymond Souster, and Bruce Meyer, as well as sixteen leading poets of the Confederation Period, and he has presented university lectures on Alden Nowlan, Robert Kroetsch, Canadian Postmodernism, and the People’s Poetry tradition.
Introduction by George Elliott Clarke, & Afterword by John B. Lee:
Awareness is the down-to-earth aspect of lofty, head-in-the-clouds Consciousness … Both poets write out of the irreconcilable tension between preserving and fostering “Paradise”… and the possibility of crafting “Utopia,” some form of communal, sharing-based governance or polity, balancing economics and ecology… Katherine’s voice is that of a transcendentalist or a shaman, she is of the Garden and James Deahl is of the Forest, James tends to position his speaker out-of-doors in uncultivated spaces, where the speaker’s reflection juxtaposes natural processes and unnatural horrors…. And the delivered personage knows: Poetry is Truth exceeding Political Science, Anthropology, and Sociology, and there ain’t no turning away.
— George Elliott Clarke, Parliamentary Poet Laureate of Canada (2016 & 17)
“If as I believe, there is a sacred duty in care-filled description, in an effort to capture a moment in lyric brevity of a well-crafted poem, to seek and find and set the best words in the best order on the page, then Katherine L. Gordon and James Deahl might be said to be doing their devoirs in the long tradition of an interweaving of poems in their fine collection Awareness….They interweave their poems so their voices achieve a kind of harmony…we come to see, to feel, to taste, to touch, (and in the music of the lines) to hear a reifying and reverential aspiration to capture the natural world…we all leave in our wake when we touch the words…although there is much to lament in our spoliation, these poems celebrate hopefulness ”
–John B. Lee, Poet Laureate of the city of Brantford, of Norfolk County and of Canada Cuba Literary Alliance

Anna Yin’s poetry events in Nanjing, China (three universities)
Three Poetry readings in May in NanJing, China
Poetry Month, Poetry events in Japan and China
New Book to announce: What We Do Not Know by DC Reid, translated by Anna Yin
Another book of translations by Anna Yin will be published in Mar, 2024. The author of the book is DC Reid. DC is broadly known for extensive writing on in-ocean fish farms; neuroplasticity and extensive creativity mechanisms. He lives in Victoria, BC. Anna will introduce his work to broad Chinese communities. Recently, Anna’s translations of Reid’s poetry has been published in 新大陆诗刊 #200 in USA. Congratulations on Reid and Anna!


DC Reid is a Canadian writer and poet whose work lives in multiple disciplines: web-based video-poems, environment writing and novels. His poetry has won silver in the Bliss Carman Award twice and twenty-five other awards. DC里德是一位加拿大作家,诗人和小说家。获25项写作奖
诗人译诗:对动态对等的别样追求
——评星子安娜汉译《未知之域》刘佯 (首发在漂木诗刊)
Celebrating Live Encounters Poetry & Writing 14th anniversary
This new issue includes Anna Yin’s two poems, Don Gutteridge’s three poems, Terry Barker’s review of “Starlight Tapestry” (Poetry by Don Gutteridge, Chinese translation by Anna Yin) and other international fine poets and writers. Thank Mark Ulyseas and edictal team for the beautiful magazine (Live Encounters Poetry & Writing 14th anniversary)
Congratulations to all!