Writing Workshop: We who have known tides

This generative writing workshop, led by Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize shortlist poet Junie Désil, begins in conversation with We who have known tides: Indigenous Art from the Collection, an exhibition that turns our attention toward the ocean as a site of relation, continuity and deep time.

Rather than offering interpretation, the experience invites participants to enter the Gallery with a spirit of attention and to consider how the artworks prompt us to feel our way through this place, its shifting edges and its long histories.

From there, we will think about what it means to meet these coastal waters as Black, diasporic, newcomer or non-Indigenous people on Indigenous homelands. How do we arrive at a shoreline that long predates us? What might the water know about our being here?

Toni Morrison writes: “All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was.” Leanne Betasamosake Simpson reminds us that: “Water is alive, a relation, a teacher.” And Dionne Brand observes that: “The sea is history, but it is also the present tense, insisting.”

Guided by these thinkers, we will spend time with the exhibition, noticing how water surfaces in the work—through movement, story, echo, absence or return—and consider how these resonances connect with our own lived and inherited geographies.

Participants will move between quiet observation, gentle guided reflection and short generative writing periods. Together, we will explore how water can open pathways into writing about place, memory, longing, belonging and the tides—literal and figurative—that shape our lives.

This workshop is designed to be connective, grounding and creatively expansive. No prior writing experience is required.

Registration is free for Members and Access Pass Holders or with Gallery admission.

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This event is co-presented with The Black Arts Centre as part of the Gallery’s 2026 Celebrating Black Futures programming.

ABOUT THE PRESENTER

Junie Désil is of Haitian ancestry, born of immigrant parents on the traditional territories of the Kanien’kehá:ka on the island known as Tiohtià:ke (Montréal) and raised in Treaty 1 Territory (Winnipeg). Désil has performed at various literary events and festivals. Her work has appeared in Room Magazine, PRISM International, The Capilano Review and CV2.

A University of British Columbia alumnus, a participant in Simon Fraser University’s Writer’s Studio and current University of Victoria MFA student, Désil’s debut book of poetry eat salt | gaze at the ocean (Talon Books, 2020) was short-listed for the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. Her second collection allostatic load (Talon Books) came out in April 2025.

Désil mentors poets at SFU’s Writer’s Studio and also teaches in SFU’s Leadership Essentials Certificate program.