Fury & the Saints

FURY OF THE SAINTS: POETRY & TROUBLE

Some events can be very difficult to summarize because what happened in the room was never really meant to be reduced to a summary.

This was for sure one of those gatherings.

Across two encounters, Stephen Jenkinson was joined by painter Gary Dillon and poet April Tierney for a fierce, searching exploration of poetry, artistry, performance, trouble, and what it means to make something worthy in difficult times. This was not poetry as decoration, nor art as escape. It was an inquiry into the deeper work of culture-making — into what beauty, language and creative practice might ask of us when the world itself feels increasingly unsteady.

There was a particular quality in the room: intimate, unruly, thoughtful, alive. At times provocative, at times tender, often funny, the conversations moved beyond presentation into something harder to name — part performance, part reckoning, part summons. As you likely know, Stephen Jenkinson can really hold a room… and his guests here, were no different. Wow.

As ever, we were honoured to host and produce these gatherings at Sunset Labs, welcoming people into our wee studio here in Victoria while carrying the experience outward through livestream to a much wider audience.

We captured some pics of the affair, which offer a glimpse into those two remarkable encounters — the faces, the gestures, the stillness, the laughter, and some of the atmosphere that made Fury of the Saints such a beautiful and memorable weekend.