7:00 PM MT
Shelf Life Books
1302 4 St SW
Calgary
The Single Onion returns with four readers this fall: Herbert Poll Gutiérrez, Richard Harrison, Jaspreet Singh, and Zuleiha Yusuf.
About the Single Onion
Poetry and Performance – The Single Onion is Calgary’s longest-running poetry reading series, bringing Canada’s finest poets to our dedicated audience at Shelf Life Books. The Single Onion takes place the third Thursday of the month, nine times a year. The event schedule can always be found at www.singleonion.com
The Single Onion gratefully acknowledges the support of The Canada Council for the Arts, the League of Canadian Poets, the Calgary Arts Development, Inside Out Theatre, the Writers’ Guild of Alberta, and Shelf Life Books.
About the Poets:
Hebert Poll Gutiérrez is a Cuban-Canadian author, playwright, poet, and storyteller with 21 years of experience. His work explores identity, cultural memory, justice, belonging, and Afro-Cuban heritage through theatre, poetry, storytelling, and multidisciplinary projects. He has published 10 books, including Confessions of a Quixote Without a Homeland (2026), Whispers from the Black Gods (2022), and Last Planet Standing (2023), and his work has appeared in more than 20 anthologies and journals internationally. His plays and artistic projects have been presented across Cuba, Canada, the United States, Spain, Argentina, Chile, and the Dominican Republic. He is affiliated with organizations including the Playwrights Guild of Canada, Storytellers of Canada, SpanicArts Calgary, ASSITEJ, UNIMA Canada, AMAAS, CALTAC, and ICAI. In 2021, he was named Artist of the Month by the Immigrant Council for Arts Innovation (ICAI).
Richard Harrison is the author of 8 books of poetry, among them his just-released My Mother Joins the Resistance, and the 2017 Governor General’s Award-winning On Not Losing My Father’s Ashes in the Flood. Richard is a Professor Emeritus in the Department of English at Mount Royal University and currently a full time poet, essayist, and editor in Calgary.
Jaspreet Singh’s most recent poetry books form the “Still Astonished” trilogy — How to Hold a Pebble (2022), Dreams of the Epoch & the Rock (2024) and The Time of the Earth (2026).
Zuleiha Yusuf is a poet and author based in Calgary, Canada. Her debut poetry collection is self-published, and her work appears in a literary journal affiliated with Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ontario. She has performed poetry across Nigeria and Canada, and has spoken on panels about being a modern poet in the United States. Her practice is rooted in Romanticism and drawn from real life, concerned with identity, womanhood, the general human experience, and reclamation. She created the brand Art of Zuleiha: a devoted, genuine home for art in every form it asks to take.
