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The Fury of the Saints: Poetry and Trouble
May 24, 2025 @ 6:30 pm - June 8, 2025 @ 12:30 pm
The Fury of the Saints: Poetry and Trouble
Stephen Jenkinson and Guests
A live encounter with the poet’s calling, with poetry’s moral, alchemical force.
May 24th – 25th
Live In-Person in Victoria, BC (Sold Out) & Online Livestream Encounter
The Orphan Wisdom School is stabled for now. But the scholar’s mind is kicking at the stalls, clamouring for work. Here it is.
What is poetry to a time flirting with madness?
Stephen Jenkinson will be joined each session by a working poet. We won’t come to poetry as self-expression, nor as therapy, nor entertainment. We’ll test poetry’s fitness for the tempest, as a moral force, as an alchemical encounter with what troubles us most.
These sessions are live encounters with a spirit amnesia in a poetically adrift time.
The Fury of the Saints: Poetry and Trouble
Stephen Jenkinson and Guests
Live In-Person Rendezvous
At Sunset Labs, Victoria, BC
$100 CAD
Online Livestream Encounter
$50 CAD for Canadians Participants
$50 USD for International Participants
Ticket is valid for both days
“Years ago I was sweating it out, sitting at the front of a room full of urban people I didn’t know, people who looked like me, readying myself for a two-hour throwdown about grief and death and the like, waiting for the introduction to conclude. Meaning to honour me and my work, the organizer called me a ‘visionary’.
Big trouble.
Visionaries come from exotic places, have exotic looks. That’s not me. How to deal with that, set the record straight?
“Well”, I said when I got to the microphone, “I’m not sure about that ‘visionary’ thing. ‘Divisionary’, maybe. That sounds right.”
And that’s what good poetry is in a time of trouble: Not divisive. Rallying. Questioning. Beautiful in its way, yes. And divisionary.”
– Stephen Jenkinson
Stephen Jenkinson, MTS, MSW
~ Culture activist/ farmer/ author ~
Stephen teaches internationally and has authored seven books of cultural critique. He is the creator and principal instructor of the Orphan Wisdom School, co-founded with his wife Nathalie Roy in 2010. The School’s new project, The Scriptorium (2025), is creating an archive and library of his life’s work.
Apprenticed to a master storyteller as a young man, he worked extensively with dying people and their families. He is a former programme director in a major Canadian hospital and former assistant professor in a prominent Canadian medical school. Stephen has Masters’ degrees from Harvard University (Theology) and the University of Toronto (Social Work).
In 2023 Stephen received a Distinguished Alumni Honours Award from Harvard University for “helping people navigate grief, exploring the liminal space between life and death, and connecting humanity through ceremony and storytelling.”
In August 2025, Sounds True will release Stephen’s newest book: Matrimony: Ritual, Culture, and the Heart’s Work.
He is also the author of Reckoning (co-written with Kimberly Ann Johnson in 2022), A Generation’s Worth: Spirit Work While the Crisis Reigns (2021), Come of Age: The Case for Elderhood in a Time of Trouble (2018), the award-winning Die Wise: A Manifesto for Sanity and Soul (2015), Homecoming: The Haiku Sessions (a live teaching from 2013), How it All Could Be: A workbook for dying people and those who love them (2009), Angel and Executioner: Grief and the Love of Life (a live teaching from 2009), and Money and The Soul’s Desires: A Meditation (2002). He was a contributing author to Palliative Care – Core Skills and Clinical Competencies (2007).
Since co-founding the Nights of Grief and Mystery project with singer/ songwriter Gregory Hoskins in 2015, he has toured this musical/ tent show revival/ storytelling/ ceremony of a show across North America, U.K., Ireland, Israel, Australia and New Zealand. They released their first Nights of Grief & Mystery album in 2017, and at the end of 2020 released two new records: Dark Roads and Rough Gods. A new album release is planned for 2025.
Stephen Jenkinson is also the subject of the feature length documentary film Griefwalker (National Film Board of Canada, 2008, dir. Tim Wilson), a portrait of his work with dying people, and Lost Nation Road, a shorter documentary on the crafting of the Nights of Grief and Mystery tours (2019, dir. Ian Mackenzie). Recently Mattias Olsson, a Swedish filmmaker released Murmurings of the Land (2025 Campfire Stories).
He was a stone sculptor turned wood-carver, and learned the arts of traditional birch bark canoe building. His first house won a Governor General’s Award for architecture. He now lives on a small scale organic farm in an off-grid straw bale house. The 120 year old abandoned granary from across the river which appeared in Griefwalker was dismantled last year and re-erected at the Orphan Wisdom farm, where it is again a working barn.
Gary Kekoa Dillon:
A Ceremonialist and a self-taught Muralist and Artist in many media. In younger days he was engaged in performance dance. He is an independent scholar of Arabic and of indigenous languages, including Hawaiian and Nahuatl.
To find out more about Gary Kekoa Dillon access their website here.
April Tierney:
A poet, craftswoman, mother and lover of stories. She is the author of four full length collections of poetry, Matter/Mother (2024), Memory Keeper (2022), Origin Stories (2020), and Signing to the Bones (2018). Her work has been nominated for The Pushcart Prize and featured in many magazines, literary journals, and anthologies. April lives in the U.S. along the foothills of the Colorado Rocky Mountains where she guides nature-based writing circles for adults and kids. To find out more about April Tierney access their website here.
The Fury of the Saints: Poetry and Trouble
Stephen Jenkinson and Guests
May 24th – 25th
Live In-Person Rendezvous
At Sunset Labs, Victoria, BC
$100 CAD
Online Livestream Encounter
$50 CAD for Canadians Participants
$50 USD for International Participants
Ticket is valid for both days
Frequently Asked Questions
Event date: Saturday Night 24 May
Time: Doors open at 6:30pm, Event 7-9pm PT
Event date: Sunday Morning 25 May
Time: Doors open at 10am, Event 10:30-12:30pm PT
Cancellations Policy
We offer no refunds – If for some reason you are no longer able to participate, know that you’ve helped make it possible for someone, who could otherwise not attend, to be present. Thank You.
How long is the recording available?
The recordings are available to both the live and online participants until the end of August 2025.
Where do I find the Zoom webinar link?
Check your spam box. Check your email the week before we start and we will also post the link in the online community group platform.
Technical difficulty or Other Concerns? email us.
Where is the live event taking place?
We will be meeting at Sunset Labs (400 Herald St, Victoria, BC V8W 3N8). This is a LIVE event please arrive in good time to be seated. We will begin promptly. Avoid arriving late.