BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:-//YourSite//Events//EN CALSCALE:GREGORIAN METHOD:PUBLISH BEGIN:VEVENT UID:27598-0@www.visitcalgary.com DTSTAMP:20260430T074905Z DTSTART:20260515T010000Z DTEND:20260515T020000Z SUMMARY:Double Launch: We Survived Until We Could Live and Wound Archive DESCRIPTION:The event is a joint book launch of We Survived Until We Could Live by Uchechukwu Peter Umezurike and Wound Archive by Anna Veprinska. Bot h poets will give a short reading from their books\, followed by a conversa tion with Micheline Maylor-Kovitz\, the City of Calgary’s former poet lau reate\, a Q&A\, and lastly\, book signings by both poets.\n\nABOUT THE BOOK S: \nWe Survived Until We Could Live\nWho survives war? What does survival mean? And at what cost? Yes\, the sirens and bombs have ceased. Yes\, peace has settled over the rubble. But even in moments of laughter\, ghosts chaf e. Blood still smells in the air. The present is as fraught as the past\, f illed with shadows and fumes. Old wounds sting the body and the mind\, reki ndling nightmares and memory. In poetry by turns lyrical and intense\, eleg iac and intimate\, We Survived Until We Could Live plumbs the contours of v ulnerability\, inviting readers to reflect on loss and the broken flesh. Uc hechukwu Peter Umezurike skillfully uses multiple narrative voices and pers onas ?a father\, a mother\, a son?to show how postwar trauma and memory war p family relationships\, how violence persists long after a war has ended. Umezurike doesn't turn away from contemplating the psychic and physical sca rs that war leaves on people\, whether on the old or young\, parents or chi ldren. These are poems of taut breath\, silence\, and echoes. These are als o poems of love and its redemptive power. Poems of the courage to continue. Tender yet enduring snapshots of kindness\, grace\, hope\, and resilience\ , reminding us of our capacity to emerge from the crushing shrouds of darkn ess and tragedy into the light.\n\nWound Archive\n\nWound Archive is a coll ection of minimalist poems that archives the wound left by the concurrent e nding of a relationship and the beginning of a chronic invisible illness. T hese poems comprise a fragmented archive in which woundedness turns languag e (figuratively and at times formally) upside down. The symbol of the wound recurs throughout\, punctuating the ways both heartbreak and illness are e xperienced in the body. While these poems are often rooted in the body\, mo uths\, tongues\, legs\, they also employ the corporeal to reach for the inc orporeal - god\, ghosts\, healing. This tender text articulates the capacit y of brevity to hold the expansiveness of ache.\n\nABOUT THE AUTHORS\n\nUch echukwu Peter Umezurike is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Engl ish and the 2025-2026 Wayne O. McCready Emerging Fellow at the Calgary Inst itute for the Humanities\, University of Calgary\, Canada. He is the author of Masculinities in Nigerian Fiction: Receptivity and Gender (2025) and of literary works such as We Survived Until We Could Live (2026)\, there’s more (2023)\, Double Wahala\, Double Trouble (2021)\, and Wish Maker (2021/ 2025)\, and a co-editor of Please Don’t Interrupt (2025) and Wreaths for a Wayfarer (2020).\n\nAnna Veprinska has published three collections of poe try\, Wound Archive (Gordon Hill Press\, 2026)\, Bonememory (University of Calgary Press\, 2025)\, and Sew with Butterflies (Steel Bananas\, 2014). Sh e is also the author of the monograph Empathy in Contemporary Poetry after Crisis\, which received Honourable Mention in the Memory Studies Associatio n First Book Award. She was a finalist for the Ralph Gustafson Poetry Conte st\, has been twice shortlisted for the Austin Clarke Prize in Literary Exc ellence\, and won the Chinook Poetry Contest. She is an Assistant Professor in the Department of English at the University of Calgary.\n\nhttps://www. visitcalgary.com/events/double-launch-we-survived-until-we-could-live-and-w ound-archive\n\nhttps://www.facebook.com/events/1261213022211195/ LOCATION:1302 4 St SW #100\, Calgary\, AB\, Canada\, Alberta T2R 0X8\, 1302 4 St SW\, Calgary\, Ab\, t2r 0x8 END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR