English Poets

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A.F. Moritz
English

A.F. Moritz has published his twentieth collection of poems, As Far As You Know (Anansi, 2020).

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Adèle Barclay
English

Vancouver poet Adèle Barclay's second collection is Renaissance Normcore from Nightwood.

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Albert Dumont
English Local Canada

Albert Dumont is Ottawa's English poet laureate.

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Andre Fenton
English

Andre Fenton represented Halifax at 7 national poetry slams across Canada.

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Annick MacAskill
English

Annick MacAskill's Shadow Blight (Gaspereau Press, 2022) won the Governor General’s Award

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Bahar Orang
English

Where Things Touch (Book*hug) is the first book of Bahar Orang.

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Ben Ladouceur
English Local

A local and much lauded poet, Ben Ladouceur's most recent is Mad Long Emotion (Coach House).

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Brandon Wint
English

Brandon Wint's first print collection is Divine Animal (Write Bloody North, 2020).

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Chuqiao Yang
English Local

Born in Beijing and raised in Saskatchewan, Chuqiao Yang's poetry has received many awards.

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Conyer Clayton
English Local

Conyer Clayton's long-awaited debut collection is We Shed Our Skin Like Dynamite.

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D.A. Lockhart
English

D.A. Lockhart's poems record the common person and the famous in his fourth collection.

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David O’Meara
English Local Canada

Ottawa's David O'Meara's newest moving collection is Masses on Radar (Coach House, 2021).

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Dimorphic
English Local Canada

Dimorphic discovered spoken word in 2008, and has represented Lanark County at 7 national festivals.

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Gabrielle Marceau
English

Gabrielle Marceau is currently completing a book of poems entitled A Tree in Miami.

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Helen Robertson
English Local

Helen Robertson was longlisted for the 2019 Vallum Award for Poetry.

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Irfan Ali
English

Irfan Ali's debut collection, Accretion is their humility. Faith and cynicism, love and betrayal.

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ísta Fanney Sigurdardóttir
English

ísta Fanney Sigur∂ardóttir is an Icelandic poet and an artist.

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J.R. Carpenter
English

Itinerant poet JR Carpenter lives in Edmonton, where she is the writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta.

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Jayde
English Local

For Ottawa poet Jayde, spoken word is an opportunity to reclaim self.

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Jennifer Pederson
English

Jennifer Pederson's poetry has appeared in the anthology the bird philomela (battleaxe press), and in in/words magazine.

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Johannes Göransson
English

Johannes Göransson makes "language out of the bleed-through" as you'll see in Poetry Against All (Tarpaulin Sky).

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Julie Morrissy
English

Irish poet and lawyer Julie Morrissy released Where, the Mile End with Book*hug in 2020.

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Justin Million
English

Justin Million's first book EJECTA!: The Uncollected KEYBOARDS! Poems is out now with Apt. 9 Press.

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K.B. Thors
English

K. B. Thors' Vulgar Mechanics (Coach House, 2019) pushes boundaries of language, trauma and place.

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Kaie Kellough
English

Kaie Kellough experiments in sound and poetry and has authored two sound-poetry recordings.

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Kamal Hakim
English

Kamal Hakim is a Somali-Canadian spoken word, hip hop artist, and entrepreneur from the city of Ottawa.

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Karen Solie
English

Karen Solie's most recent collection, The Caiplie Caves (Anansi), was short-listed for the TS Elliot Prize.

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Karuna Vellino
English Local

Karuna Vellino's chapbook A Year In Violets is acollection of poems that give voice to Karuna's experience with love and identity.

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Ken Babstock
English

Poet, editor and teacher, Ken Babstock's latest is Swivelmount from Coach House books.

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Ken Victor
English

Ken Victor's We Were Like Everyone Else (Cormorant Books) traverses humanity's challenges.

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Larissa Tarasoff
English

Part of the 2015 Saskatoon Slam Team, Larissa Tarasoff won first place at the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word.Â

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Laura Kasischke
English

Laura Kasischke poems work in haunting fragments and visceral snippets in New and Selected (Copper Canyon).

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Lindsay B-e
English

Lindsay B-e's The Cyborg Anthology melds sci-fi and poetry, human and machine.

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Margo LaPierre
English Local

Margo LaPierre's Washing Off the Raccoon Eyes finds passion in chaotic liminal spaces.

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Marshall Hryciuk
English

One of Canada's leading haikuists Marshall Hryciuk makes a return visit to VERSeFest.

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Monika Rinck
English

Berliner Monika Rinck writes poems of pointed social critique. They will make you be more beautiful.

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Namitha Rathinappillai
English

Namitha Rathinappillai published her first chapbook Dirty Laundry with Battleaxe Press in 2019.

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Natalie Hanna
English

Natalie Hanna is the author of the poetry collection lisan al’asfour (ARP, 2022)

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Nicola Vulpe
English Local

Ottawa poet Nicola Vulpe undertakes an intelligent survey of deep history in Insult to the Brain (Guernica).

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Nicole Raziya Fong
English

PEЯFACT is Nicole Raziya Fong's moving, philosophical debut in poetry.

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Oana Avasilichioaei
English

Performer, translator and poet Oana Avasilichioaei writes of surveillance and resistance in Eight Track (Talon).

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Pearl Pirie
English Local

Pearl Pirie's fourth collection is footlights from Radiant Press.

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Philip Metres
English

Philip Metres' latest collection is Shrapnel Maps (Copper Canyon 2020).

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rob mclennan
English Local

rob mclennan's most recent are A halt, which is empty (Mansfield Press, 2019) and Life sentence, (Spuyten Duyvil, 2019),

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Shawn K
English

Shawn K went to the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word with a poem called Gratitude.

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Shazia Hafiz Ramji
English

Shazia Hafiz Ramji swept up the prizes with herPort of Being (Invisible).

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Shery Alexander Heinis
English Local

Rising iterary star Shery Alexander Heinis is the author of Splinter.

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stephanie roberts
English

stephanie roberts dreams of a compassion-based society and wrote rushes from the river disappointment

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Stephen Sexton
English

Belfast poet Stephen Sexton's If All the World and Love Were Young won the Forward Prize.

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Susan Atkinson
English Local

Susan Atkinson's debut poetry collection is The Marta Poems (Silver Bow Press, 2020)

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Switch Bridges
English Local

Switch Bridges was a member of the CFSW Championship Youth team in 2011.

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Vivian Vavassis
English Local

Vivian Vavassis is a Montréal ex-pat who lives in Ottawa and calls both cities home.

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