The Community Poet creates and shares new work at Saanich events, engages with community members, and collaborates with local organizations and partners. Through community projects and public engagement opportunities, the role helps foster connections through poetry while enriching Saanich’s cultural life and strengthening connections to its people, places, and spaces.
Poetry Projects & Initiatives
Explore some of the ways that Saanich Community Poet Jesse Holth is working with the community through a range of poetry projects, workshops, and public activities.
Poetry Postcard Series
A collaborative project bringing artists and poets together to create poetry postcards that celebrate local voices and help bring poetry into the community.
Share Your Poetry with Us
A poetry contest and collaborative Community Poem inviting writers across the region to contribute.
Poetry Sessions
Drop-in sessions with Jesse exploring poetry, writing and creative practice at the Greater Victoria Public Library – Saanich Centennial Branch
Jesse Holth (2025-27)
I am very honoured to serve as the inaugural Community Poet for the District of Saanich. I often write about nature and the more-than-human world—I believe it is a site of healing, a place of interconnection, and a catalyst to reflect and take action. I look forward to engaging with the community, tapping into our awe and curiosity, and using poetry to develop our imagination, empathy, and connectedness.
Jesse Holth is a writer, editor, and poet whose practice explores ecology, health and healing, misogyny, and social justice. Her poems have appeared in POETRY, Prairie Schooner, Arc, CV2, Grain, Room, PRISM, and other publications in Canada and the U.S. She created the series Ecopoetics in the Era of Climate Crisis as Editor-in-Residence at The Ex-Puritan, and served as Assistant Poetry Editor at The Tishman Review. Her poems have been featured in several anthologies including The Nature of Our Times (Poets for Science) and Resistance (ed. Sue Goyette). She is a member of Poetry in Voice and the League of Canadian Poets.
For more information about this program, or to contact the Community Poet contact: communitypoets@saanich.ca.