The Poet Laureate Podcast

In this rich and sweeping conversation, Kyeren Regehr speaks with poet and bass clarinetist, Toussaint St. Negritude about poetry as ritual and risk, liberation as artistic practice, and the living intersections of Blackness, queerness, place, music, and spirit. Together they explore the origins of his chosen name, the sacred and political resonances of Haiti and Vodou, the improvisational energies shared by poetry and jazz, and the civic possibilities opened by his time as Poet Laureate of B...

Poet Laureate Podcast – Episode Eight Joanna Streetly | Deep Time, Transformation, and the Ethics of Place In this eighth episode, Kyeren Regehr sits down with Joanna Streetly—poet, memoirist, and the inaugural Poet Laureate of Tofino. Writing from a float house in Clayoquot Sound, Joanna explores the intersections of deep time, personal grief, and the fluid nature of transformation. The conversation navigates the ethics of writing about place as a settler, the "brave swimmer" metaphor for ex...

In this seventh episode, Kyeren Regehr welcomes Yvonne Blomer—poet, editor, and the fourth Poet Laureate of Victoria. With nuance and urgency, Yvonne speaks to reimagining myth through a feminist lens, her environmental curation of the anthologies Refugium, Sweet Water, and Sublime, and the ways poetry intersects with mothering, disability, and visual art. Featuring three poems, including the haunting palindrome “Audubon: Still Life.” Recorded at Haus of Owl Creation Labs on Lekwungen Homelan...

Poet Laureate Podcast – Episode Six Drew Lavigne | The Aesthetic Pull In this episode, Kyeren Regehr welcomes Drew Lavigne—poet laureate of Moncton, poetry editor at The Fiddlehead, curator of the Attic Owl Reading Series, and author of Evening Dress (Anstruther Press). With precision and vulnerability, Drew speaks about the compulsion to write, the quiet power of memory, and poetry as both record and ritual. The conversation travels through long-form poetics, family mythologies, shame and t...

Episode 5: Fiona Tinwei Lam on Poetry as Ritual, Film, and Public Art The Poet Laureate Podcast with host Kyeren Regehr In this episode, former Vancouver Poet Laureate Fiona Tinwei Lam joins Kyeren Regehr to explore poetry’s power to honor history, heal collective wounds, and engage the public in fresh and unexpected ways. Fiona begins with her moving poem “Gift”, which commemorates the Uda family’s donation of 1,000 cherry trees to Vancouver—most of which were only planted after the family’...