Celebrating the depth and diversity of BC publishing
Please join Simon Fraser University’s Department of English and Poetry in Canada for the third annual Phyllis Webb Memorial Reading, featuring award recipients Erín Moure and Chantal Neveu in conversation with special guests Oana Avasilichioaei and Annie Lafleur. This free event takes place on Saturday, April 5th (Doors: 6:15 PM; Event: 7-9 PM) at the SFU Segal Building (SG 1300). Enjoy readings, discussion, and light refreshments.
The Phyllis Webb Memorial Reading honours a Canadian poet(s) with a cash award and a celebration of their work. This event will occur each April and will be organized and administered by the Poetry in Canada Society, https://www.poetrycanada.org/.
A Governor General’s Award–winning poet and a member of the Order of Canada, Phyllis Webb was a major Canadian cultural figure from the 1950s through the 1980s, publishing ten celebrated collections of poetry and prose and co-founding the CBC Radio program Ideas (in 1965). When “words abandoned” her in the early 1990s and she was no longer able to write, she took up photography, photocollage, and eventually painting.
As Stephen Scobie once wrote, the work of Phyllis Webb “has always been distinguished by the profundity of her insights, the depth of her emotional feeling, the delicacy and accuracy of her rhythms, the beauty and mysterious resonance of her images – and by her luminous intelligence.” It is this legacy that the Phyllis Webb Memorial Reading seeks to honour, by selecting a poet who is distinguished by similar qualities.
In 2025, the third annual Phyllis Webb Memorial Reading honours two poets: Erín Moure and Chantal Neveu.