Oct. 17 is Black Poetry Day in North America. Check out this list of poetry collections by Black Canadian writers which speak to their multifaceted experiences of identity and Black history in North America.
The Seventh Town of Ghosts explores these titular towns through songs that help readers grapple with the challenges of existence and independence. The book offers insight into the power of connection, tenderness and the human spirit.
Faith Arkorful has had her work published in Guts, Peach Mag, Prism International, Hobart, Without/pretend, The Puritan and Canthius, among others. She was a semi-finalist in the 2019 92Y Discovery Contest. Faith was born in Toronto, where she still resides. In 2020, she was shortlisted for the CBC Poetry Prize.
For Britta Badour, storytelling is grounded by her family, community and experience of Blackness. In her debut collection, Wires That Sputter, she has taken on translating the beauty of spoken word to poems for the page.
Wires That Sputter is an intimate collection of poetry which plays with form and punctuation. Badour explores pop culture, sports, family dynamics and Black liberation.
Badour, better known as Britta B., is an artist, public speaker and poet living in Toronto. She is the recipient of the 2021 Breakthrough Artist Award from the Toronto Arts Foundation. She teaches spoken word performance at Seneca College.
The Next Chapter21:32Britta Badour’s electric poetry collection reveals her unique experience of the world.
Canadian poet and award-winning spoken word performer Britta Badour, aka Britta B, shares the inspirations behind her debut poetry collection, Wires that Sputter.
The latest book from D.M. Bradford, Bottom Rail on Top, is a collection of poems which embodies the Black histories of antebellum life and emancipation in America. Bottom Rail on Top meditates on lineage and legacy through poetic fragments.
Bradford is a Montreal-based poet and translator. His other books include Dream of No One but Myself, which won the 2022 A.M. Klein Prize for Poetry and was a finalist for the Griffin Poetry Prize, and his translated book House Within a House.
Nomenclature by Dionne Brand collects eight volumes of the celebrated poet and author’s work that were originally published between 1982 and 2010. With a critical introduction by the literary scholar and theorist Christina Sharpe, the book features a new long poem, the titular Nomenclature for the Time Being, which is a thoughtful and wide-ranging reflection on location, consciousness, time and the current state of the world.
Brand is an award-winning poet and novelist from Toronto. She won the Governor General’s Literary Award for poetry and the Trillium Book Award for her 1997 collection Land to Light On. Her collection thirsty won the 2003 Pat Lowther Award. In 2009, she served as the poet laureate of Toronto. Her novel What We All Long For won the City of Toronto Book Award in 2006. She won the 2011 Griffin Poetry Prize for Ossuaries and in 2017, she was named to the Order of Canada.
Writers and Company53:52Dionne Brand, Margaret Drabble, Deborah Eisenberg & Andrew O’Hagan reflect on life and writing
2020 marks the 30th anniversary of Writers & Company. Since we can’t celebrate in person, Eleanor revisits the 20th anniversary special with four writers in conversation in Toronto in 2010.
West of West Indian is a poetry collection that explores the Queer Caribbean experience, both the pain and pleasure, as an individual and a collective. It dives into themes of love and autonomy using language that is often used to unsettle queer life.
Linzey Corridon is a writer and educator. He was born in the Caribbean and he now lives in Canada.
Unwashed is a poetry collection that reflects the author’s experience as an immigrant to Canada and the themes of growing up, love and alienation. Image-rich and intense, the poems explore the city of Toronto in a loud and unapologetic manner.
Daniel Maluka is an artist and writer from South Africa based in Toronto. Unwashed is his debut poetry collection.
Building a Nest from the Bones of My People begins with the speaker realizing their experience with sexual abuse in their family. In this poetry collection, Cara-Lyn Morgan writes about first-time motherhood, generational trauma and colonization.
Cara-Lyn Morgan is a Métis and Trinidadian poet and writer from Oskana, or Regina, Sask. Her other poetry collections include What Became My Grieving and Cartograph.
Otoniya J. Okot Bitek wrote her latest collection, Song & Dread, inside during the early days of the pandemic, observing the emotions and experiences of a slow life in isolation. Song & Dread takes inventory of the value of community and what becomes normalized in the face of survival.
Bitek is a poet and scholar. Her collection 100 Days was nominated for the BC Book Prize, the Pat Lowther Award, the Alberta Book Awards and the Canadian Authors Award for Poetry. It won the 2017 IndieFab Book of the Year Award for poetry and the Glenna Luschei Prize for African Poetry. She was also longlisted for the 2018 CBC Poetry Prize.
Zong! is a fragmented and evocative retelling of the forced drowning of some 150 enslaved Africans in November 1781 on the slave ship Zong. This atrocity was committed so the ship’s owners could collect money for insurance. Exploring the intersection of law and poetry, Zong! excavates the legal text of Gregson v. Gilbert, the only public record of this brutality, to tell the story that cannot be told, yet must be.
The book-long poem has become one of the most studied and written-about works of contemporary Canadian literature.
m. nourbeSe philip is a Canadian poet, novelist, essayist and short story writer who was born in Tobago. She is the author of numerous books, including the poetry collections Thorns, Salmon Courage and She Tries Her Tongue; Her Silence Softly Breaks, the novel Harriet’s Daughter and essay collection Blank. In honour of her body of work, philip received the PEN/Nabokov Award for International Literature in 2020 and the Arts Molson Prize in 2021.
Scientific Marvel is a poetry collection that looks into the history of and current life in Winnipeg. With humour and surprise, it delves into deeper themes of racism, queerness and colonialism while keeping personal lived experiences close to the page.
Chimwemwe Undi is a Winnipeg-based poet, editor and lawyer. She is the Winnipeg Poet Laureate for 2023 and 2024. Undi was longlisted for the 2020 CBC Poetry Prize. She won the 2022 John Hirsch Emerging Writer Award from the Manitoba Book Awards and her work can be found in Brick, Border Crossings, Canadian Literature and BBC World, among others.
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