- June 13, 2026
- 2-5 PM
- 2954 W 4th Ave
UNIT/PITT presents the launch of Herbal Reverie, a collaboratively produced arts publication exploring the interspecies relationship between plants and people through poetry, photography, and bookmaking.
The launch takes place at U/P’s gallery and garden (2954 West 4th Ave, Vancouver) and features a live reading by Max Power of selected poems from the book, a presentation by designer Aaron Friend-Lettner on the book design and production process, and a live vocal performance by em postl responding to the publication’s themes.
The event also includes a Host Nation welcome by Audrey Siegl, acknowledging the unceded Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh territories, a participatory plant-based activity, book sales and signing, and a community reception with hospitality.
This event is free and open to the public; ASL interpretation and mobility supports available as needed.
Books will be available for purchase and tea will be flowing all afternoon.
About the book
Herbal Reverie is a limited-edition arts publication project by writer, artist, and herbalist Max Power, designed by award-winning book maker Aaron Friend-Lettner. The book includes twenty original poems by Power, original photographs by Julie Pasila, and is edited by Rylet O’Bryne, exploring how building relationships with plants can deepen connections to ourselves, to community, and to the places we come from. The project adopts various forms of storytelling—words, images, and collaborative learning spaces—to inspire deep connection to the profound shared existence and presence of plants. The work is decolonial in its approach, highlighting the importance of connection with the natural world in light of today’s overlapping existential crises related to climate, war, food security, and shifting political ideologies.
Artist Bios
Max Power is a Gibsons-based artist, writer, and herbalist. The poems in Herbal Reverie emerged from Liz Migliorelli’s Herbal Mystery School (2021), where Max wrote a poem for each of the eight plants worked with in the course. Their practice uses plant mediation to invoke nonverbal dialogue across taxonomic classification, deepening connections between plant and human worlds.
Aaron Friend-Lettner is a designer and photographer whose photographic and bookmaking work is distinguished by its esoteric flair at the crossways of memory, culture, and place. Recipient of the inaugural Burtynsky Grant for Doorways (2017) and a Canadian national book design award from the Alcuin Society for anglepoise (2021), which exhibited across Canada, Japan, and Germany. His books are held at the Deutsches Buch- und Schriftmuseum and the Special Collections and Rare Books division of SFU’s W.A.C. Bennett Library.
em postl is a Sooke-based vocalist, voice teacher, and herbalist. A graduate of Capilano University’s Jazz Voice Performance program (2014), em performs with Only a Visitor, Moondle, and Streams Poetry Project, and studies and makes herbal medicine through their practice Moonseed Herbals.
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UNIT/PITT members get a discount! Find out more here!