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Undergraduate
Students win top awards in Vancouver Poet Laureate video poetry competition
School of Interactive Arts & Technology students were recently presented with top awards at the Vancouver Poet Laureate’s City Poems Videopoetry competition.
Professors at SFU SIAT, Emily Carr University, and UBC were invited by Vancouver’s Poet Laureate Fiona Tinwei Lam to work with their students to participate in the competition.
Students were then challenged with making short poetry videos based on 15 poems from an eligible list of poetry contest winners, all of which centred around local sites like English Bay, Commercial Drive, the Komagata Maru memorial in Coal Harbour, Hogan’s Alley, Chinatown, and more. The project aimed to stimulate public engagement and interest in poetry about local historical, cultural, and ecological sites and stories.
Teams of IAT 344 Moving Images students produced a total of 17 poetry videos over the course of two terms guided by instructor Jay Tseng (Fall 2022) and Associate Professor Kate Hennessy (Spring 2023) with Teaching Assistants Catherine Pearce and Julian Iliev.
In total, 34 films were submitted to the competition by SIAT, UBC, and Emily Carr students and were judged by a panel of video poetry artists to select the winners.
A ceremony was held on Sunday, June 11th at the Museum of Vancouver where SIAT students were presented with a number of prizes including the top three awards.
SIAT award winners
- Brian Baldueza, Nanop Yansomboon, and Wilson Pham won first place for their poetry video Contrasts based on a poem by Donna Seto about gentrification in Chinatown.
- Xinran Han, Delai Gao, Minyang Zhang tied for second place along with a group of students from Emily Carr for their poetry video An Existence That We Can Call Home based on a poem by James Kim about the displacement of First Nations and racialized communities in what is now known as Stanley Park.
- Yenan Huang, Dongmei Han, Hanako Oba and Joanne Kim were awarded third place for their poetry video This Was Meant to be for Nora based on a poem by Junie Desil about Hogan’s Alley, the site of a historic Black community in Vancouver.
- Kais Neffati, Bhalinder Oberoi, Ishmael Togi and Minh Truong were awarded with the best documentary-style poetry video for their video Welcome based on a poem by Sadhu Binning about the infamous Komagata Maru incident in 1914.
- Two teams of SIAT students were awarded with honourable mentions: Grace Yang, Jalene Pang, Brandyn Chew and Erin Yeonjae Choi for their video The Stone Artist and Christy Fang, Vito Fan, Cici Tan, and Calvin Lin for their video Entertainment.
- An audience choice award from the SFU films was given the film with the most "likes" on the Vancouver Public Library’s YouTube Channel and this was awarded to Kayla Canama, Tingting Liu, Andrea Huang, and Eleonora Shive for their video Diaspora.
The top three prizes and the Vancouver Poet Laureate’s Legacy program were funded by a generous endowment by Dr. Yosef Wosk to the Vancouver Foundation, overseen by the City of Vancouver (Cultural Services), Vancouver Writers’ Festival, and the Vancouver Public Library.
Donations and funding for prizes for best documentary-style, best animation, best visual storytelling, honourable mentions, and the audience choice prizes were from the Museum of Vancouver (museum passes), TransLink (cash prizes), the Vancouver International Film Festival (vouchers to attend films at VIFF), and Vancouver’s Poet Laureate.
- Learn more about the the City Poems Contest
- See all award winners
- Watch all the videos on the Museum of Vancouver's YouTube playlist