Shab-e She’r (Poetry Night) Nowruz 2025 Celebration

Shab-e She’r (Poetry Night) is Canada’s most diverse & brave poetry reading + open mic series

Featured poets: Zahra Tootonsab & Richard-Yves Sitoski
+ Open Mic for poetry in any language

Host: Bänoo Zan

Time: Wednesday, March 26, 2025
Place: Living Room, Tranzac Club, 292 Brunswick Ave, Toronto, ON M5S 2M7
This is an in-person event open to the public.

Open Mic Sign-up: 6:30 PM EST at the venue
Show 7-10 PM EST
Admission: $10-20 Sliding Scale
Cash at the door
There is an ATM machine at the venue.

Zahra Tootonsab is a Ph.D. candidate in the English and Cultural Studies Department at McMaster University. She is an Iranian poet and the author of The Aftertaste. Her interdisciplinary doctoral project uses poetry to explore the relationship between water, sheltering, and decolonial flourishing from so-called Canada to Iran. She's interested in learning how decolonial sheltering and living can address the challenges of the global climate crisis. Tootonsab's sheltering ethics and poetics are inspired by the Bakhtiari nomads of Iran.

Richard-Yves Sitoski is a songwriter, performance poet and the 2019-2023 Poet Laureate of Owen Sound, on the territory of the Saugeen Ojibway Nation. He has works in Arc, Prairie Fire, The Fiddlehead, The Antigonish Review, and elsewhere. He is a Best of the Net nominee, the 2021 John Newlove Award winner, and the 2022 Don Gutteridge Award winner (2nd place). His next collection, A Current Through the Flesh, comes out with Ronsdale Press in October 2025. He is co-editor, with Penn Kemp, of Poems in Response to Peril: An Anthology in Support of Ukraine, profits from which went to displaced Ukrainian cultural workers.