The Poet Laureate Podcast

rob mclennan & Kyeren Regehr: Special Double-interview Episode
Recorded in front of a live studio audience during National Poetry Month, 2026

We recorded this one in front of an audience. No scripts, no agendas—just two poets turning the mic on each other to talk about language, survival, small-press hustle, and why anyone keeps making art in a culture that mostly forgets it exists. rob mclennan doesn’t really nee...

Launching audio-first publication! In this special episode of The Poet Laureate Podcast, host Kyeren Regehr speaks with poet, educator, and Surrey’s inaugural Poet Laureate, Renée Sarojini Saklikar. Renée reads two poems from Bramah’s Discovery, along with a new poem arriving first through sound—marking the podcast’s inaugural audio-first publication. Their conversation moves through epic poetry, climate cha...

In this attentive and graceful episode of The Poet Laureate Podcast, host Kyeren Regehr speaks with poet, translator, educator, and Mississauga’s inaugural Poet Laureate emerita, Anna Yin. The conversation moves through naming, migration, attention, translation, and the way poetry can open a life. Anna speaks about choosing her English name as a university student in China, the cultural significance of names and fate, and her...

In this deeply inspiring and generous episode of The Poet Laureate Podcast, host Kyeren Regehr sits down with poet, memoirist, teacher, and the inaugural Poet Laureate of Victoria, BC, Carla Funk, The conversation moves through poetry, the daily work of a creative life, and remaining awake to the world. Together they explore Carla’s practice of “hunting beauty in common places,” the role of wonder and listening in...

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 th...

Poet Laureate Podcast: Inaugural Community Episode (2025)

Featuring: Lorne Daniel, Jeremy Loveday, Zoe Dickinson & Tracy Wai de Boer

Recorded live in the Garden Studio at Haus of Owl Creation Lab, this episode celebrates community, poetic resilience, and the power of shared voice. Four poets with new or forthcoming collections join Kyeren Regehr to read and reflect on the craft of poetry and the lives behind the words. We open wi...

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 ...

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 “Audubo...

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 conv...

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 donati...

Poet Laureate Podcast – Episode Four
Steven Ross Smith |  Writing Like Jazz 

In this fourth episode, Kyeren Regehr welcomes Steven Ross Smith — poet, mentor, arts leader, and former Poet Laureate of Banff. One of Canada’s great poetic experimenters, Steven speaks about improvisation and constraint, the sonic body of the poem, and his long-running Flutter Tongue series. With clarity and generosity, he ...

In this third episode Kyeren Regehr welcomes John Barton—poet, editor, essayist, and the fifth Poet Laureate of Victoria, BC. With unflinching grace and poetic precision, John speaks to the evolution of queer poetics in Canada, the intimate distances of influence and his evolving relationship with formal constraint. Featuring three poems, including the Frank O’Hara–inspired “In Eggs and Love.” Recorded...

In this second episode, Kyeren Regehr welcomes Iranian-Canadian poet and multi-genre writer Hollay Ghadery, inaugural Poet Laureate of Scugog Township, who speaks with deep honesty and intelligence about poetry as a practice of receptivity, form as a map, and writing as a means of reclaiming enchantment. Featuring three poems, including Braids. Recorded in Victoria, BC, on the Lekwungen homelands at Haus of Owl.

This episode is gene...

In this debut episode, Kyeren Regehr welcomes acclaimed Métis poet Lorri Neilsen Glenn who speaks with clarity and grace about writing as a way to think, to listen, and to find connection across time and experience. Featuring three poems, including Writing Has Always Felt Like Praying. Recorded in Victoria, BC, on the Lekwungen homelands at Haus of Owl. 

This episode is generously sponsored by Munro's Books. A literary landmark...