Poet Laureate Marie Metaphor Specht

Marie Metaphor Specht is Victoria’s current Poet Laureate for 2023 to 2025. This honorary position celebrates literature and poetry in the capital city.

Read the original announcement of Specht’s new role.

Specht is a spoken word poet and multidisciplinary artist whose work has been published in Oratorealis, Untethered MagazineThe Chestnut Review, The Hellebore and Room Magazine among others. She regularly performs at a wide variety of venues ranging from arts festivals to literary events and poetry slams.

Specht has collaborated with musicians, filmmakers and lighting technicians to create complex and interactive works. Her first full-length book of poetry, Soft Shelters, will be published with Write Bloody North in fall 2023.

“Poetry is a way of reaching towards each other; of closing the spaces between us,” says Specht. “I believe that creativity is our shared human birthright and any artform with an audience is a means to foster connections between people; an opportunity to see and hold each other in our complex histories of joy and suffering. This work is how we imagine a way forward; how we birth new worlds. Our communities flourish through intrepid acts of beauty, through the incredible power of stories shared.”

For more information about this program, or to contact the Poet Laureate, email culture@victoria.ca.

Poetry in Light Workshops + Performance

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City of Victoria Poet Laureate Marie Metaphor Specht invites you to participate in Poetry in Light, two poetry writing workshops and a performance inspired by and performed with an upcoming interactive, sculptural lighting installation inside the Greater Victoria Public Library's sxʷeŋxʷəŋ təŋəxʷ James Bay Branch. 

“The Poetry in Light workshops and performance will explore writing as an act of love and what it is to be human in a profoundly difficult yet terribly beautiful world – integrated with Love Begets Love, a sound reactive, sculptural art installation,” said Victoria Poet Laureate Marie Metaphor Specht.

The Love Begets Love interactive artwork will be on display from November 27 to the end of April 2024. 

Pre-Register Now

Pre-register to participate in one or both of the free poetry writing workshops (November 30 and December 7) led by Victoria Poet Laureate Marie Metaphor Specht and attend the Poetry in Light performance on January 12, 2024.

UPDATE: The workshops and performance are now SOLD OUT.  Wait lists are available through Eventbrite. 

Former Poet Laureates