Peace and Harmony through Poetry and Music Project 2025 updates

Peace and Harmony through Poetry and Music is a cross-disciplinary collaboration uniting poets and musicians to explore language, sound, and cultural expression. Through compositions, performances, and filming, the project weaves poetry and music into a unified experience, fostering cross-cultural dialogue, creative exchange, and a shared vision of peace and harmony.

Poet Anna Yin will lead this project and collaborate with three to four musicians from diverse cultural and musical backgrounds. Please click here to see steps and details.

Peace and Harmony through Poetry and Music Project

We are very happy that this project won a Matchmaker Microgrant from MAC in 2025 and we want to thank our sponsors: Nova Marketing Group, Triple J Canada, Sureway Press, Mississauga Arts Council and Canadian Poets: Katherine L. Gordon & DC Reid.

Many thanks—stay with us for what’s next.

Shab-e She’r (Poetry Night) Anna Yin & Jovan Shadd on May 28, 2025

Featured poets: Anna Yin & Jovan Shadd
+ Open Mic for poetry in any language
Wednesday, May 28, 2025
Tranzac Club, 292 Brunswick Ave, Toronto, ON M5S 2M7
Open Mic Sign-up: 6:30 PM EST
Show 7-10 PM EST
Admission: $10-20 Sliding Scale

Check photos of the reading night. So glad that Richard Greene, Al Moritz and many other poets and friends joined us to read!

Breaking into Blossom is ready for per-ordering! Congratulations

Thanks Frontenac House. Now Breaking into Blossom is ready for pre-ordering… We hope in the coming National Poetry month, you can receive it as a perfect poetry gift!. #books #poetry #publishing

scheduled for release in May 2025. Pre-Order here

Here is a poet who finds authority in endurance. With a deepening craft, Anna Yin confronts bereavement, repression, displacement, and the complexities of love in poems that are heartfelt and crystalline. –Richard Greene:

Anna Yin’s poems ‘breathe in two languages,’ creating a lovely tension between immediacy and distance that feels as though two points on a globe have been connected by a flight path. Her imagery is deeply sensual, compelling yet delicate. Her lines hover in our minds like the dream that “finds his own key, unlocks the door and comes inside.” —Alice Major

From Molly Peacock:
In her gorgeous book, Breaking into Blossom, Anna Yin’s poetry is like the interior of the abalone shell she depicts, “emerald… just shining.” Almost anything or anyone in this volume can break unexpectedly into blossom, including the poems themselves, often concluding with unanticipated discoveries.  The book undulates with observations and the animated sur-reality of all kinds of exchanges, from an interview with a painter to the poet’s father’s late life words to a desperate woman stepping on a Forget-me-not.  “The career of flowers differs from us only in inaudibleness,” Emily Dickinson wrote to her cousins, and Yin’s buoyant inspirations from poets across time, Li Po to Wallace Stevens, Akhmatova to Dickinson herself, give voice to subtly noticed feelings and thoughts.  Anna Yin is fast becoming a Canadian treasure.

Anna Yin’s more works showcased in USA, Hongkong, Taiwan & Canada

Anna Yin’s new translations of Yan Li’s Chinese poems showcased in Hongkong: Falling & Textbook

创世纪诗刊选用Anna三首华语新诗： 沉默，风信子，金陵。 proud for their work persisting in 70 years!

From Vancouver for Anna’s two Chinese poems

two poems for Ontario

from hongkong for Anna’s poem: Brueghel’s Two Monkeys… thanks 聲韻詩刊 Voice & Verse Poetry Magazine

Poetry and Music (The Seeking Heart) in both Chinese and English (心之寻–诗歌与音乐）

After watching 2025 Spring Festival Gala at Living Arts Center, Mississauga, Anna Yin wrote a poem: The Seeking Heart in both Chinese and English, then made poetry and music videos. We share them here with you and hope you too enjoy the beautiful music and create your own poems. Cheers. #poetry #music #videos The poem is also on Live Encounters Poetry and Writings March 2025

Live Encounters Poetry and Writings March 2025

More of Anna Yin’s translations published in the USA and Canada

Congratulations!  Tupelo Quarterly accepted Anna Yin’s translation : “Thirteen Short Poems to Chew On” from 严力‘s Chinese poems. It is now on the issue of January.
The Prairie Journal published two of Anna Yin’s translations of 木西’s Chinese poems.
Anna Yin’s two other translations of 严力’s Chinese poems (Textbook & Falling) were accepted by Cha: An Asian Literary Journal for En Route.
Anna Yin’s translation of 颜艾琳’s 超級販賣機 will be in Queen’s Quarterly’s summer 2025 issue. Thanks! #poetry #translations

MAC selected Polyphonic celebration for Mississauga’s 50th Anniversary project as 2024 success

“Poet and author Anna Yin used her Matchmaker MicroGrant to produce the ebook Polyphonic celebration for Mississauga’s 50th Anniversary – 2024. This heartfelt, community-engaged work captures the essence of local artists, particularly writers, celebrating Mississauga’s 50th anniversary through poems, stories, paintings, and photos. The ebook can be served as a “yearbook” of 2024, and captures writing in English, Chinese, Japanese, Hindi and Persian.
The book is written in three parts – the first explores the friendship between Mississauga and its sister city, Kariya, Japan, through poetry, particularly haikus. The second section features interviews with Mississauga community leaders and poetry writing on events that took place in Mississauga in 2024 and prior. Highlights include tributes to long-running Mayor Hazel McCallion and insights into what the future of Mississauga will hold. The final part showcases haikus written by students at Clifford International School in Guangzhou, China, guided by Anna during her 2024 travels. ” — Mississauga Arts Council, Oct 24, 2024

Six Canadian Poets read from new or forthcoming books at Toronto Public Library on Oct 23, 2024

“A rich multi-cultural exchange through six Canadian poets” brought together six poets from diverse backgrounds, showcasing their latest and upcoming books at Albert Campbell Branch, Toronto Public Library on Oct 23, 2024. Through their readings and discussions they created a tapestry of stories and emotions that transcend borders. These six poets were Anna Yin, DC Reid, Allan Briesmaster, Bunny Iskov, Clara Blackwood and Ling Ge.
This program is generously funded with the support of the League of Canadian Poets and the Canada Council for the Arts.

Anna Yin reads (see other videos)
DC Read reads from BC, video is here
I.B. (Bunny) Iskoy’s reading
Ling Ge’s reading
Allan Brisemaster
Clara Blackwood‘s reading