March 26, 2025 (Zoom): Cross-Pollinations

March 14, 2025

Join the League of Canadian Poets, the Health Arts Research Centre, and the Canadian Association for Health Humanities for the next iteration of the Cross-Pollinations Virtual Rounds Series.

Register for Cross-Pollinations

March 26, 2025 | 3pm PT/6pm ET

Please join us on Wednesday, March 26 at 6pm (EST)/3pm (PST) for an hour of poetry and conversation around the theme of Translation as a Creative and Care Practice. This event is curated jointly by the League of Canadian Poets, The Canadian Association for Health Humanities, and the Health Arts Research Centre.

"Suppose for a moment the claims about pain’s ineffability are historically specific and ideological, that pain is widely declared inarticulate for the reason that we are not supposed to share a language for how we really feel."
-Anne Boyer

This iteration of Cross-Pollinations takes a conceptual turn to think through the art of translation alongside the act of translating embodied experience essential to therapy and counselling.

Join writer, translator, bookseller, Claire Foster, and Psychotherapist SJ Thiessen for a reading, talk, and discussion on translation as both a creative and care practice.

Curated & hosted by Mic Jones & Rhiannon Ng.

TBD Claire Foster
TBD SJ

Claire Foster

Claire Foster is a reader, writer, and bookseller at TYPE Books. She is also a literary translator from French, most recently of Pierre Clémenti’s 1973 prison memoir, A Few Personal Messages. Her writing and translations have appeared or are forthcoming in The Hopkins Review, Public Books, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Full Stop Quarterly, and The Kenyon Review. Her translation of Valérie Manteau's novel The Furrow (Prix Renaudot, 2018) is forthcoming from Invisible Publishing. Born and raised in Ohio, she lives and works in Toronto.

SJ Thiessen

I have the privilege of spending my time (and being paid for) building relationships with people. I get to be a curious and non-judgmental listener, witness, and holder of stories. I am invited to collaborate in visionings of and experiments in building narratives, strivings, meanings, and embodiments in people’s lives, relationships, and communities. I am a sidekick in exploring possibilities, navigating dilemmas, and listening to hearts. I’m a psychotherapist/social worker (RSW/MSW - if that is important). Oh, and I am fucking political. I am here grieving, seething, and fending off the siren of indifference. To sustain this, I strive toward the ethics of generosity, dignity, and loving-justice (Kai Cheng Thom - you’re brilliant). It nourishes me to smile at strangers, hold the door for people when they are an awkwardly long distance away, and greet friends with embarrassingly enthusiastic two-armed waves.
Register for Cross-Pollinations

Recordings from past events can be viewed on YouTube.

View past events on YouTube