For Adults
Join two of Kitchener-Waterloo’s best-known poets and hardest-working poetry educators for a double book launch and conversation about why poetry is more necessary than ever. Chris Banks will launch his eighth book of poetry, Bureau of Useless Splendour (ECW Press), with poems that are immersed in what is wondrous and strange about human connection, pop culture, and most importantly, the elusive search for understanding and hope in an accelerating century. Tanis MacDonald will launch her fifth book of poetry Tall, Grass, Girl (Bookhug Press) with poems that examine living in the space between belonging and non-belonging, with an emphasis on bold survivorship. Both books will be available to purchase following the event.
Presented in partnership with Words Worth Books.
A feminist crow at a history of violence, Tall, Grass, Girl is essential reading for those who are tired of healing narratives that ring hollow, but who also believe hope is curative. In this searingly honest lyrical collection, Tanis MacDonald examines living in the space between belonging and non-belonging, between victimhood and bold survivorship, eventually, into full-feathered survivor joy. Surviving the past can be hard work, and to grow tall, to push past expectations, is to become a person who can refuse and thrive. These poems are a moving testament to remembering oneself via harsh and beautiful terrain, to transmuting past violence, and to finding one’s way back to being a tall, grassy girl self.
Tanis MacDonald (she/they) is the author of eight books, including the most recent, Tall, Grass, Girl, and the essay collection Straggle: Adventures in Walking While Female. She has twice won The Malahat Review’s Open Seasons Award: in 2021 for her essay “Mondegreen Girls” on female friendship and fandom, and in 2026 for “Singularity Packet.” Tanis is Professor Emeritus at Wilfrid Laurier University, an adoptee, and a dedicated walker who lives as a grateful guest on the traditional territories of the Anishnaabe and Haudenosaunee peoples. Her longest-standing relationship is with poetry.
In Bureau of Useless Splendour, Banks lets his imagination roam across the science of DNA sequencing, internet memes, space-time physics, Canadian nationalism, a lunar discussion between Canadian poet Gwendolyn MacEwen and American poet Frank Stanford, and even reimagined fortune cookie “fortunes” — as if to illustrate that tucked away among the allusions to pop culture and Shakespeare, poems about Johannes Gutenberg and the Martian mountain Olympus Mons, there exists a dusty old office where the poet sits, creating vivid, delightful pieces and mischievous “invoices” dedicated to the beauty and wonder of this world.
Chris Banks is an award-winning, Pushcart-nominated Canadian poet and author of eight collections of poems, most recently Bureau of Useless Splendour with ECW Press (Fall 2026). His first full-length collection, Bonfires, was awarded the Jack Chalmers Award for poetry by the Canadian Authors’ Association in 2004. Bonfires was also a finalist for the Gerald Lampert Award for best first book of poetry in Canada. His poetry has appeared in The New Quarterly, Arc Magazine, The Antigonish Review, Event, The Malahat Review, The Walrus, OnlyPoems, American Poetry Journal, The Glacier, Best American Poetry (blog), Prism International, among other publications. Chris was an associate editor with The New Quarterly, and is Editor in Chief of The Woodlot – A Canadian Poetry Reviews & Essays website. He lives in Kitchener, ON.
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Staff: Maddy
Located at the RIM Park Manulife Sportsplex, the Eastside Branch boasts specialized creative spaces, quiet study areas, a nature education space and lots of natural light.
