Poems from these 10 Canadian-published books will appear in transit vehicles in B.C. as part of the 30th Poetry in Transit project.

This September, verse by British Columbia-based poets will be showing up on bus cards across the province for the 30th time.

Poetry in Transit, which launched in 1996, is a project by BooksBC in partnership with TransLink and BC Transit. Each September, poems by 10 local poets are featured in the campaign, with bus cards featuring the poems mounted in transit vehicles across the province and on transit shelter ads in Vancouver. The project is the longest-running poetry on transit program in Canada.

Each bus card features the poem as well as the cover of the book in which it was first published. The poets and books featured in this year’s campaign are:

• Cynthia Woodman Kerkham, Victoria, B.C.: Water Quality (McGill-Queen’s University Press)
• Elizabeth Bachinsky, New Westminster, B.C.: Real Grownup (Nightwood Editions) Author profile
• Eve Joseph, Victoria, B.C.: Dismantling (Anvil Press) Excerpt
• Fenn Stewart, Vancouver, B.C.: women and roosters (Book*hug Press)
• George Bowering, Vancouver, B.C.: Pearl (Talonbooks)
• Jónína Kirton, New Westminster, B.C.: Save Your Prayers – Send Money (Talonbooks)
• Murray Mann, Cowichan, B.C.: poem featured in Sublime: Poems for Vanishing Ice (Caitlin Press)
• Renée Sarojini Saklikar, Vancouver, B.C.: Bramah’s Discovery (Nightwood Editions)
• Russell Thornton, North Vancouver, B.C.: Two Songs: Selected Poems 2000-2025 (Harbour Publishing)
• Wendy Donawa, Victoria, B.C.: The Time of Falling Apart (Harbour Publishing)

The poems featured each year are chosen from submitted poems by B.C.-based poets in books published by Canadian presses.

To mark Poetry in Transit’s anniversary, BooksBC is hosting two readings at this year’s Word Vancouver Festival on Sept. 19.

Poems have appeared in buses and transit vehicles elsewhere in the country as part of previous projects, including in Halifax, Calgary, and Toronto, where a group revived poems on transit in 2024 with the launch of Poems in Passage.

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