Best Canadian Poetry Launch

Nyla Matuk, Geoff Pevlin, Andrea Thompson, Sanna Wani, Susan Haldane, Conor Kerr, Anita Lahey, Alycia Pirmohamed and Maureen Scott Harris

5:00pm

Sunday, October 25

60 mins

Hear from the heart of Canada’s vibrant poetry scene, with this curated selection of live readings from the Best Canadian Poetry of 2020 anthology. An interview with its editor, Marilyn Dumont, will follow.

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Hear from the heart of Canada’s vibrant poetry scene, with this curated selection of live readings from the Best Canadian Poetry of 2020 anthology. An interview with its editor, Marilyn Dumont, will follow.

English captioning is available for this video. Please click the ‘CC’ button in the video toolbar to turn it on.

Featured Authors

Nyla Matuk is the author of two books of poetry: Sumptuary Laws and Stranger, and the editor of an anthology of poems, Resisting Canada. In 2018, she served as the Mordecai Richler Writer in Residence at McGill University. She was born in Canada and has a mixed identity which includes Palestinian, Afghan, and Uzbek roots. Her poems have appeared in Best Canadian Poetry, New Poetries VI, The New Yorker, PN Review, The Walrus, Poetry Review and other publications in Canada and abroad.

Read more about Nyla Matuk

Geoff Pevlin is a writer, graphic designer, and innkeeper from St. John’s, Newfoundland. He has an MFA in writing and is the co-founder of Applebeard Editions. Check out his work at GeoffPevlin.com.

Read more about Geoff Pevlin

Andrea Thompson

Andrea Thompson is a poet, novelist, editor and educator. In 2005 her spoken word album, One, was nominated for a Canadian Urban Music Award and in 2019 her album, Soulorations earned her a League of Canadian Poets’ Golden-Beret Award for Excellence. She’s co-author of Other Tongues: Mixed-Race Women Speak Out, and author of the novel, Over Our Heads. Thompson teaches through CAMH and the University of Toronto’s School of Continuing Studies. She is a member of the Brick Books editorial collective and will be a featured author in Frontenac House’s Quintet series, autumn 2021.

Read more about Andrea Thompson

Sanna Wani lives between Srinagar and Mississauga. Her poetry and essays are available or forthcoming in Briarpatch, The Puritan, Brick and Arc Poetry Magazine. She loves daisies.

Read more about Sanna Wani

Susan Haldane lives on a farm near the northern boundary of Algonquin Park. Her chapbook Picking Stones is published by Gaspereau Press. Her work has appeared in a number of Canadian journals, in the anthology Desperately Seeking Susans (Oolichan 2012), and in Best Canadian Poetry 2020. In 2019 she was thrilled to win the Magpie Award for her poem A Short History of Space Travel.

Read more about Susan Haldane

Conor Kerr is a writer/harvester and educator in amiskwaciwaskahikan. He is Metis, descended from the Lac Ste. Anne, Fort des Prairies, and Papaschase Cree Nation communities and Ukrainian by way of Odessa. He works at NorQuest College in the Indigenous Student Centre and is a sessional lecturer in the pimâcihisowin program at MacEwan University. His first book, An Explosion of Feathers is coming out in 2021 from Bookland Press.

Read more about Conor Kerr

Anita Lahey’s latest book is The Last Goldfish: a True Tale of Friendship (Biblioasis, 2020). She’s also author of The Mystery Shopping Cart: Essays on Poetry and Culture (Palimpsest, 2013), and the Véhicule Press poetry collections Out to Dry in Cape Breton and Spinning Side Kick. The former was shortlisted for the Trillium Book Award for Poetry and the Ottawa Book Award. An award-winning magazine journalist and past editor of Arc Poetry Magazine, Anita has served as series editor of the Best Canadian Poetry anthology since 2018. She lives in Ottawa, on unceded Alongonquin, Anishinabek territory.

Read more about Anita Lahey

Alycia Pirmohamed

Alycia Pirmohamed is the author of the chapbooks Faces That Fled The Wind and Hinge. Her awards include the Edwin Morgan Poetry Award, the Gulf Coast Poetry Prize, the CBC Poetry Prize, the Sawti Poetry Prize in English, the 92Y Discovery Poetry Contest and the Ploughshares’ Emerging Writer’s Contest in Poetry. Her work has recently appeared, or is forthcoming, in The Paris Review Daily, Guernica Magazine, Poetry London Magazine and others. Alycia received her MFA from the University of Oregon, and her PhD from the University of Edinburgh.

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Maureen Scott Harris

Poet and essayist Maureen Scott Harris has published three collections of poetry and three chapbooks. Drowning Lessons (Pedlar Press, 2004) won the Trillium Book Award for Poetry; Slow Curve Out (Pedlar Press, 2012) was shortlisted for the Pat Lowther Award. Her work has appeared in Canadian, American, British and Australian journals. Her essay on the Don River won the 2009 WildCare Tasmania Nature Writing Prize. With the River Poets she has developed poetry walks through Toronto’s ravines and parks. In 2019 she won the Great Blue Heron Poetry Contest and was runner-up in the Edna Staebler Personal Essay Contest.

Read more about Maureen Scott Harris