Evacuations

Kevin Irie is a Japanese-Canadian poet whose works have been translated into Spanish, French, and Japanese. In 2024, he won Grain Magazine’s poetry contest, took second prize in Prairie Fire’s poetry contest, third prize in The New Quarterly’s poetry contest, and had Honourable Mention in Grain’s 2024 Hybrid Contest for Experimental Writing. His book, Viewing Tom Thomson: A Minority Report, was a finalist for the Acorn-Plantos People’s Poetry Award and the Toronto Book Award. The Tantramar Re-Vision was picked by the CBC as one of their Spring Poetry Books in 2021. He is in The Gate of Memory: Poems by Descendants of Nikkei Wartime Incarceration (2025) and Best Canadian Poetry 2026 (2025). He lives in Toronto.

• On Reading Joy KogawaI. Of the White Man’s Well BeingWhat I Remember (Hearing) of the EvacuationMottainaiOf the White Man’s Well BeingOf the Workers at The Great Northern Cannery, West VancouverFloundersLow Tide Under The Great Northern CanneryThe Higher the Boat… (An Alzheimer's Elegy)Family Stories: A Powell Street KitchenSandy Cove Haiku, West Vancouver, 1938Victory Bonds for Interned Japanese-CanadiansTO MALE ENEMY ALIENSNOTICE TO ALL PERSONS OF JAPANESE RACIAL ORIGINPre-War PhotosSeizure Cento / Voice and EchoChattels for Interned Japanese-CanadiansBaggage for Interned Japanese-CanadiansFINAL EVACUATION REGISTRATION Of All Persons of Japanese Origin TashmeButterbur for Interned Japanese-CanadiansColtsfoot for Interned Japanese-Canadians (Yellow Peril)Common Burdock for Interned Japanese-CanadiansFiddleheads for Interned Japanese-CanadiansInternment Camp, The Communal Bath HouseThe Autograph Book, New Denver, Summer 1943Duckface (From an Internment School Photo) Of the Japanese-Canadians Who Built the Trans Canada Highway A Carving from Solsqua Road Camp, 1942 On Asking Why Japanese-Canadian Internees Never Tried to Escape To All Persons of Japanese Racial Origin Now Resident in British Columbia In Late 1946 Popoff Was Dismantled (13 Ways of Looking at an Internment)East of the RockiesOwnedII. AfterR.C.M.P. File #10349 (Sonnet for A Grandmother)Of the Internees Who Stayed In New Denver, BCPost-War Photo: A Funeral in The RockiesThe Internet Is Our Photo AlbumDonald Trump Has Asian EyesDeparting for Pearson AirportPost Script: A Japanese-Canadian History MapNotesAcknowledgments

"Evacuations by Kevin Irie doesn’t just take my breath away, it breathes into me with the scent of the Rocky mountains—Slocan, Bayfarm, Tashme, Lemon Creek, Sandon. It’s the ongoing womb and wound, the inhaling ex-haling of our JapaneseCanadianess." Joy Kogawa, author of Obasan