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Here are some brief bios of some of Canada's alternative poets. These writers work in a wide variety of styles, there is no single aesthetic or poetic or style that can labelled "alternative," they are all writing outside of the conventional in some way. Where possible I have provided links to places where you can find out more about these adventurous writers. The entries are more or less in alphabetical order (I may be using a different alphabet than you). Enjoy!

Trevor Abes is studying Literature and Philosophy at the University of Toronto. Originally from Scarborough, Ontario, his family moved to Colombia, SA, when he was five. He is hooked on stand-up comedy. He has been published in RE: VERSE (www.youngpoets.ca) and in Sage of Consciousness.

Toronto writer Gil Adamson is the author of two poetry books, Primitive (Coach House Press) and Ashland (ECW Press), as well as the acclaimed collection of linked stories, Help Me, Jacques Cousteau (Porcupine’s Quill). Her poetry has also appeared in several anthologies, including The Last Word (Insomniac Press) and Surreal Estate: 13 Canadian Poets Under the Influence (Mercury Press).

Sandra Alland is a writer and multimedia artist who has published and presented her work in Canada, the United States, Mexico, Bermuda, Spain, Scotland and England. Her first full-length book, Proof of a Tongue was hailed as ‘a stunning first collection of poetry, displaying immense talent and skill.’ Known for her evocative readings and performances, Sandra incorporates sound and movement into poetry in fresh and exciting ways. A bookseller and micropress publisher, she advocates for the protection and nourishment of independent publishers and bookstores. Sandra has been living in Canada for 33 years - 19 in Scarborough and 14 in Toronto. She published Blissful Times with BookThug.

Samuel Andreyev was born in Kincardine, Ontario in 1981, and grew up in Toronto. A composer, oboist and poet, he has been active in the Canadian small press since the late ‘90s, mainly as editor and publisher of The Expert Press (now Trepex). In 2003 he moved to Paris, France, where he is currently studying composition at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris. Weight is from BookThug.

Tara Azzopardi grew up in the not-so-imaginative suburbs of Toronto, getting drunk in cemeteries and dreaming. From 1998 to 2000 she published the critically acclaimed Perpetual Motion Machine Magazine. Currently, Tara collects junk and continues to draw, paint, write, and make music. One day, she will move to Spain and make movies about unknown (yet underrated) sea creatures.
Tara's surrealist poetry appears in Surreal Estate: Thirteen Canadian Poets under the Influence (The Mercury Press, 2004).

Kemeny Babineau lives in Mt. Pleasant, Ontario with his wife and two girls. He writes poetry, fiction, reviews, and the occasional essay. His latest books of poetry is The Incomplete Tree Guide and VDB Wordlist from BookThug.

Elizabeth Bachinsky was born in Regina, Saskatchewan, in 1976, and grew up in northern British Columbia, the Yukon, and BC's Fraser Valley. She is the author of two books of poetry Home of Sudden Service (Nightwood Editions, 2006) and Curio: Grotesques and Satires From the Electronic Age (BookThug, 2005). Her poetry has appeared most recently in The Globe and Mail, The Malahat Review, Matrix, and In Fine Form: The Book Of Canadian Form Poetry (Polestar, 2005) and is forthcoming in Gulf Coast (US) and in translation at Siècle 21(France).  She lives in Vancouver where she is the poetry editor for Event magazine.

Jonathan Ball is a writer and filmaker living in Calgary where he runs The Martain Press and is pursuing a Ph.D. (English). At present, he is editing the literary journal dANDelion and writing a novel called Kanada. He is the author of five chapbooks and WOLVES (lone.ly) from BookThug.

Nelson Ball was born in Clinton, Ontario, and raised in southwestern Ontario. He was active as a poet, editor, and small press publisher in the 1960s and 1970s. Since 1972 he has been an antiquarian bookseller specializing in Canadian literature. He edited Frank Harrington's Kristmiss Book, published by The Mercury Press in 1993, and is the author of three Mercury poetry books, At the Edge of the Frog Pond, Almost Spring, and The Concrete Air. Ball resides in Paris, Ontario, where the Nith and Grand Rivers converge.

Douglas Barbour lives and teaches in Edmonton, Alberta. Books of poetry include Visible Visions: Selected Poems and Story for a Saskatchewan Night. He has published critical monographs on Daphne Marlatt, bpNichol, and Michael Ondaatje.

Rafael Barreto-Rivera is a poet, translator, performer, and co-founder of the internationally-recognized sound poetry ensemble, Four Horsemen. He has performed and read his work throughout Canada and in the United States and Europe. His publications include poetry books and sound-poetry collaborations with the Four Horsemen.

Gary Barwin (b.1964) is a writer, composer, and performer. He writes in a range of genres: poetry, fiction, visual and concrete poetry, music for live performers and computers, text & sound works, and writing for children and young adults. He lives in Hamilton, Ontario and teaches at Hillfield-Strathallen College.

derek beaulieu is the author of two books of poetry (with wax, Coach House, 2003; fractal economies, talonbooks, 2006). In 2005, he co-wrote frogments from the frag pool: haiku after basho with Gary Barwin (Mercury, 2005), and co-edited the controversial, best-selling, anthology Shift & Switch: new Canadian poetry (Mercury, 2005) with Jason Christie and a.rawlings. Since 1997, beaulieu has edited a series of literary magazines (including filling Station, dANDelion and endNote). His small press—housepress (1997-2004)—is now archived in its entirety at Simon Fraser University. His visual artwork—which engages the distinction between text and image—has been exhibited internationally. While he lectures on poetry and community in Canada, the US and the UK, he currently lives in Calgary with his young daughter, and is employed as a high-school instructor.

jennifer best is a writer living in montreal. she has been published in prose toad and blank magazine.

Gregory Betts was born in Vancouver to Maritime parents, and, "as part of the national compromise," spent most of his life in Toronto. Though not a natural "Upper Canadian," Gregory's work in poetry, fiction, and criticism has consistently explored the literary milieu of his adoptive city. He is the author of If Language (BookThug, 2005) and the collaborative Haikube (2006)—the sculptural counterpart of which, by Matt Donovan and Hallie Siegel, was displayed at the Olga Korper Gallery. He teaches Canadian and Avant-Garde Literature at Brock University in St. Catharines.

bill bissett was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He moved to Vancouver, British Columbia in 1958 and five years later he started the blew ointment magazine. He later launched blewointment press, which has published volumes by Cathy Ford, Maxine Gadd, Michael Coutts, Hart Broudy, Rosemary Hollingshead, Beth Jankola, Carolyn Zonailo, bpNichol, Ken West, Lionel Kearns and D. A. Levy.  bissett is based in Vancouver and Toronto, Ontario, alternating between the two cities.
He is known for his use of a unique orthography and incorporating visual elements in his printed poetry, and his performance of "concrete sound" poetry, sound effects, chanting, and barefoot dancing during his poetry readings. He has also had large exhibits of his paintings and made audio recordings. His work typically ranges from the mystical to the mundane, incorporating humor, a sense of wonder and sentimentality, and political commentary.

Robin Blaser was a major voice in the �San Francisco Renaissance� of the 50s and 60s. Blaser moved to Vancouver in 1966 and became a Canadian citizen in 1972. A highly erudite poet, he has been a kind of one-man university for a legion of younger writers. His collected poems, The Holy Forest, was published by Coach House Books in 1993 (available now through Talonbooks). He wrote the libretto for Sir Harrison Birtwistle's opera The Last Supper, which premiered in Berlin in 2000.

Toronto sound poet Christian Bök is best known for holding the world record for the fastest rendition of Kurt Schwitters' "Ursonate". He performed this double-speed live on WFMU Radio, New York, where he also performed other compositions derived from made-up languages used for Canadian science fiction shows.
Recent publications include: Pataphysics : The Poetics of an Imaginary Science (Avant-Garde and Modernism Studies, 2002); Eunoia (Coach House Books, 2001); Crystallography (Coach House Books, 1994).

H�di Bouraoui (born July 16, 1932 in Sfax, Tunisia) is a Tunisian/Canadian poet, novelist and academic, who regularly deals with themes involving the transcendence of cultural boundaries.
Bouraoui was educated in France and in the United States, in French, English and American literature. In 1972, he joined the faculty at York University in Toronto, Ontario, where he teaches both French and English literature, specializing in African, Caribbean and franco-ontarian literatures. He also launched the Canada/Maghreb Centre at the university.
In May, 2003, he was granted an honorary doctorate from Laurentian University in Greater Sudbury, Ontario in recognition of his contributions to Canadian and world literature. He has also received a number of literary awards in Canada, France and Tunisia.

Daniel f. Bradley: "i live and work in toronto. been active in writing since 1984 or so. i have had the luck to have 4 ?biggie books? come out. (River of burning movie stars) (Nemesis Press, 1993), Books of Blue Frit (Outlands, 1998), The Sharp Corners (The Expert Press, 1999), and awkward selecter of lowercase swans (BookThug, 2002). my work seems to show up in strange and wonderful places. in 2003 i was included in toronto venezia, an evening in celebration of toronto poetry held in venice, italy. currently, i listen to music by Mahler, Berg, Webern, Bruckner, etc. i like movies and love my girlfriend."
Daniel's surrealist poetry appears in Surreal Estate: Thirteen Canadian Poets under the Influence (The Mercury Press, 2004).

Shannon Bramer was born in Hamilton. She is the author of suitcases and other poems, scarf, and The Refrigerator Memory, (with Coach House Books). She lives in Toronto.

Di Brandt emerged from a highly conservative rural Manitoba Mennonite community. As a teenager she arrived in Winnipeg, just as that city was enjoying a poetry renaissance. Her first works portrayed the cultural shock that all that entailed. Working usually in extended forms, she has gone on to examine cultural differences in Canada, Europe and the Middle East. Recently returned from a year in Berlin, she has published Now You Care with Coach House Books.

David Bromige's Canadian citizenship and U.S. residence have served as handy liaison through the decades. Bromige has been recognized by the Fund for Poetry, Canada Council, NEA, and Gertrude Stein Award for Innovative Writing. Books of poetry: Initializing (Meow), and T as in Tether (Chax).

Nicole Brossard was born in Montreal (Quebec). Poet, novelist and essayist, Brossard published her first book in 1965. In 1965 she cofounded the influential literary magazine La Barre du Jour and in 1976 she codirected the film Some American Femnists. She has published eight novels including Picture Theory, Mauve Desert, Baroque at Dawn, an essay "The Aerial Letter" and many books of poetry including Daydream Mechanics, Lovhers, Typhon dru, Installations, Musee de l'os et de l'eau. She has won the Governor General award twice for her poetry (1974, 1984) and Le Grand Prix de Poesie de la Foundation les Forges in 1989 and 1999. Le Prix Athanase-David, which is for a lifetime of literary acheivement, was attributed to her in 1991. That same year she received the The Harbourfront Festival Prize. In 1994, she was made a member of L'Academie des Lettres du Quebec. Her work has been widely translated and anthologized. Mauve Desert and Baroque at Dawn have been translated into Spanish. In 1998 she published a bilingual edition of an autofiction essay titled She would be the first sentence of my new novel/Elle serait la premiere phrase de mon prochain roman(1998). In 1989, a book of her poetry in translation, Installations, was released, translated by Erin Moure and Robert Majzels. Nicole Brossard lives in Montreal.

Hart Broudy, published by blewointment press.

Alice Burdick lives and writes poetry in First South, just outside of Lunenburg, Nova Scotia. Alice moved to Halifax in 2002 from Toronto, Ontario, where she was born and raised. She has also lived in Espanola, Vancouver, and on the Sechelt Peninsula in BC.
Burdick has been involved with the small press community in Canada since the early 1990's, when she was co-editor, with Victor Coleman, of The Eternal Network. This very small ongoing imprint produced chapbooks, including several of her own works, such as Signs Like This, Fun Venue, and Voice of Interpreter. Her work has been published by other small presses in Canada, including: Proper Tales Press (a Time, My Lump in the Bed: Love Poems for George W. Bush); Letters Press (Covered); and BookThug (The Human About Us). It also has appeared in various magazines, such as Dig, What!magazine, subTerrain, fhole, This Magazine, and Who Torched Rancho Diablo?. From 1992-1995, Alice was assistant coordinator of the Toronto Small Press Fair. She has also done numerous readings over the years in many different venues, including the Ottawa International Writers Festival, The Scream in High Park in Toronto, and the Halifax Word on the Street.
Alice's poems have recently appeared in Shift & Switch: New Canadian Poetry from The Mercury Press, Fall 2005. They've also turned up in Surreal Estate: 13 Canadian Poets Under the Influence, an anthology of surrealist Canadian poetry published by The Mercury Press, Fall 2004, and in Pissing Ice: An Anthology of 'New' Canadian Poets, published by BookThug, 2004.

Clint Burnham is a Vancouver writer and teacher. Burnham is the author of numerous books, including Airborne Photo (1999), The Jamesonian Unconscious (1995), Be Labour Reading (1997) and Buddyland (Coach House Books, 2000). His latest book, Smoke Show, a novel, was published by Arsenal Pulp Press in 2005. Burnham is a freelance art critic for the Vancouver Sun.

Louis Cabri has worked in bicycle rentals and construction, has been a band member (The Hemidrones, Toronto), private tutor, bookstore clerk, festival organizer, secretary for care, editor for Oxfam, programmer for the Southern Africa Education Trust Fund, university student and teacher. With Rob Manery, he founded the ëexperimental writing groupí (Ottawa, 1986ñ1995), producing literary events that include the ongoing Transparency Machine reading series and hole chapbooks (formerly a magazine). Since 1997, Louis has curated PhillyTalks, a poetsí dialogue/newsletter series. Currently he is writing Poetics of Political Economy, a dissertation, and commutes between Calgary and Philadelphia.

Stephen Cain is the author of American Standard/ Canada Dry, a new collection of poetry from Coach House Books. Previous full-length books include Torontology (ECW, 2001) and dyslexicon (Coach House, 1999) and the chapbook Montreality: B-sides & Rarities (BookThug). His poems have appeared internationally, including in such journals as: Rampike, Open Letter, Jacket (Australia), Matrix, filling station, Essex (U.S.), dANDelion, eye weekly and QSQ. Since 1995 he has operated the micropress Kitsch in Ink, and has published numerous chapbooks and broadsides in the small and micro press communities. Cain’s sound poetry can be heard on the CD Carnivocal (Red Deer, 1999) and he is also recognized as a significant visual poet. Double Helix, a collaborative ‘novel’ written with Jay MillAr will be published this fall by The Mercury Press.

Paul Chamberland, born in Longueuil in 1939, came into prominence in the revolutionary 1960s. In his thirty books he had joined radical poetics with progessive social politics. His essays explore the possible connections between human aspirations and experiment in the arts. He won The Prix Spirale de l'essai for 2000 with his book En nouvelle barbarie.

Margaret Christakos was born and raised in Sudbury, Ontario, and now lives as so many do, in Toronto. In 2003 she became coordinator of PEN Canada's Readers in Writers Programme. In her fifteen-year career she has done a lifetime's work as teacher, editor, novelist, cultural worker, and poet. She deftly combines an activist political life with a writing program that is hip to feminist and semiotic theory. Particularly tuned to the long poem, Christakos has published six books with the most advanced literary presses of Toronto, including Retreat Diary from BookThug.

Jason Christie is a poet and visual artist who has lived in Milton, Toronto and Calgary. In 2001, Jason obtained a BA HONS from York University with a double major in English Literature and Creative Writing. During his stay at York, he was an active member of the student collective Writers at York. In 2005, Jason completed his MA at the University of Calgary. Jason has been an editorial board member for dANDelion, existere, and filling Station. He was also co-editor of Open Letter's small/micropress issue. Jason' popular community reading series, YARD, also spawned his micropress project, yardpress. Jason's first book of poetry, Canada Post, was published by Snare Books in 2006. He recently compiled a collection of noise poems and plans to exhibit his visual poetry in the near future.

Alison Clarke is a poet and children's author from Edmonton.  She has published poetry in Ariel, The Canadian Writers' Journal and has also published a children's story with a CD. 

Norma Cole, poet, visual artist, and translator, is originally from Toronto. She received her M.A. in French Language and Literature from the University of Toronto. She has lived in San Francisco since 1977. Her books include Desire & Its Double and MARS. With Stacy Doris, Cole edited Raddle Moon 16 (from Vancouver), a special issue featuring French writers new to North America.

Victor Coleman, Toronto-based poet and publisher, is an integral part of Coach House Press, which he helped found and where he continues to serve as Editorial Consultant. He has actively promoted the small press movement in Canada, attempting to unify sometimes disparate approaches to publishing and distribution. Coleman is a prolific writer and publisher, and his most recent text, Letter Drop, is an online e-text available at Coach House Books.

Stephen Collis is a poet and critic. He is the author of Mine (New Star 2001), Anarchive (New Star 2005), and Blackberries (BookThug) as well as numerous chapbooks and essays on poetry and art. He is a member of the Kootenay School of Writing collective and teaches poetry and American literature at Simon Fraser University.

Wade Compton is a Vancouver writer and editor whose books include 49th Parallel Psalm , Performance Bond and Bluesprint: Black British Columbian Literature and Orature. He and Jason de Couto perform turntable-based sound poetry as a duo called The Contact Zone Crew. Compton is also a co-founding member of the Hogan's Alley Memorial Project, an organization dedicated to preserving the public memory of Vancouver's original black community. Wayde Compton teaches in Simon Fraser University's Writing and Publishing Program, where he is a creative writing instructor in The Writer's Studio; he also teaches English composition and literature at Coquitlam College and Kwantlen University College.

Kevin Connolly is a Toronto poet, editor, and arts journalist.
He was founding editor of the influential 1980s literary magazine What!, and his Pink Dog chapbook series published early work by many of the city's best young talents. Connolly's first collection of poems, Asphalt Cigar (Coach House, 1995), was nominated for the 1996 Gerald Lampert Award. His second collection, Happyland (ECW), was published to wide acclaim in 2002.

Judith Copithorne, visual poet, one of the original Downtown Poets of Vancouver.

Poet Michael Coutts was a regular at the Sound Gallery in Vancouver, BC, although he, like many others who participated in the period, didn't survive the 60's. Michael Coutts was published by blewointment press.

Lynn Crosbie is a leading voice among the new urban poets of Canada. Also a teacher and a newspaper columnist, she is a poet known for subjects that make readers uneasy. Her interest in popular culture includes the demi-monde. She has written about mass-murderers and vampires, hockey players and other villains. In addition to her poems she has published two unconventional novels, and edited anthologies of feminist writing. She is a delightfully nasty critic of television and other mistakes.

David Cull was one of the editors of the Vancouver magazine Tish in the early 1960's. He later moved to Montreal, became a Buddhist, and lived in India and/or New Zealand for a number of years before returning to the west coast and becoming an environmental and hemp advocate.

jw curry, a visual poet who makes extensive use of hand-made rubber stamps.

Frank Davey (born April 19, 1940) is a Canadian poet and scholar. He attended the University of British Columbia where he was one of the founding editors of the poetry journal Tish. He then became a professor at York University in Toronto. He currently lives in London, Ontario.

William A. Davison lives in Toronto. A musician/noisician, composer/improvisor, visual artist, performance artist, film/videomaker, writer. A few of his works have appeared in Rampike, Muse Apprentice Guild, Perpetual Motion Machine, and the Mercury anthology Surreal Estate.

David Dawson is a Vancouver poet included in the 1964 anthology New Wave Canada: The New Explosion in Canadian Poetry, edited by Raymond Souster (Contact Press) and in W)here, the other Canadian poetry, edited by Eldon Garnet (Press Porcepic, 1974).

Michael deBeyer's first collection of poetry, Rural Night Catalogue, was published by Gaspereau Press in 2002. His writing has appeared in numerous Canadian journals, including Dalhousie Review, Canadian Literature, Prism International, The Antigonish Review, The Fiddlehead and filling station.
Michael deBeyer was raised in the farming community of Ayr, Ontario. He currently lives in Lakeville, Nova Scotia, or maybe in Fredericton, New Brunswick. He has a MA in English from the University of New Brunswick, and a BA in English and Creative writng from York University.

Jeff Derksen was born in 1958, in Murrayville, British Columbia. He studied at the University of Calgary and worked in New York. He is a founding member of Vancouver's Kootenay School of Writing and was an editor of the influential magazine Writing. In 1991, Derksen won the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize for his book Down Time.

Natalie De Vito's experience includes being Co-Director of Mercer Union Centre for Contemporary Art, Head of Development and Marketing at The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, and Acting Media and Visual Arts Officer at the Ontario Arts Council. She has coordinated and managed over 50 exhibitions, and has toured many internationally. Her writing has appeared most recently in Coach House Books uTOpia: State of the Arts, as well as publications including C Magazine, Parachute, Prefix Photo, VISION Magazine Shanghai, and numerous exhibition brochures and catalogues. Natalie's curatorial interests include producing artists' work that addresses social engagement, by encouraging interaction between the artwork and the audience, as well as between audience members.

Christopher Dewdney is proof that there need be no contradiction between the metaphorical language of poetry and science. Readers of his quick figures often find themselves lost in the universe, then accompanied there by sentences as strange and inevitable as themselves. He grew up in a family or artists, scientists and naturalists, in London, Ontario. A number of his books have been combined to form A Natural History of Southwestern Ontario. Thus Dewdney may be considered one of the cadre of progressive artists joined with painter Greg Curnoe in his investigation of the region he called �Souwesto.� Dewdney lives in Toronto. He published Demon Spawn with BookThug.

Jason Dickson is from London, Ontario where he founded Paradigm magazine in 1996 with Skot Deeming. His book, The Hunt, was published by BookThug.

Ra�ul Duguay is perhaps Quebec�s most prominent concrete poet and sound poet. In the 1960�s, his group Infonie mounted multi-media spectacles, during which his name was spelled Lu�ar Yaugud. In the 1970�s he became a chansonnier, a philosopher and a politician.

Paul Dutton, who was born in 1943, is a Toronto poet, essayist, fictionwriter, vocal sound artist, editor, and musician. Throughout his 30-year career he has published books, issued sound recordings, and given public performances -- both on his own and as a member, from 1970 to 1988, of the internationally-known poetry performance group, the Four Horsemen. He continues to publish and to perform throughout North America and Europe. He also collaborates frequently with musicians and composers, and gives writing and sound workshops at schools and colleges.

amanda earl's poetry has been published most recently by above/ground press, listenlight.net and ottawater.com 3.0. she's the managing editor of Bywords.ca and the Bywords Quarterly Journal. amanda also writes sexually explicit fiction and blogs too much. you can find her all over the internet, but especially on her blog (http://amandaearl.blogspot.com/) where she rambles about ottawa literary events.

Trisia Eddy is an Edmonton writer and homeschooling mother of three outrageous human beings.  She regularly enjoys performing with the Edmonton Raving Poets Society and the Stroll of Poets.  Her poetry has appeared in the Stroll of Poets Anthology, has been broadcast on CKUA Radio, and is forthcoming in both Existere and Cahoots Magazine. 

 Greg Evason has published with above/ground press and MindWare/Berkley Horse

M.A.C. Farrant is the author of eight collections of satirical and humorous short fiction. As novel-length memoir, My Turquoise Years, was published by Greystone Books/Douglas & McIntyre in 2004. She has published a number of chapbooks with David UU's Berkley Horse, with Damian Lopez's fingerprinting inkoperated and with Farfield Press.
Her stories have been adapted for both radio and television and are widely anthologized in Canada and the United States. 
She is a book reviewer for the Vancouver Sun and the Toronto Globe & Mail.
In 2006 stories appeared in the Penguin Anthology of Canadian Humour, Dropped Threads 3 (Random House), a tribute anthology for bill bissett, (Nightwood Edition) and other places. Three anthology contributions are forthcoming in 2007/08.
In March, 2007 a short fiction collection, The Breakdown So Far, appeared from Talonbooks.  She is currently working with the Arts Club Theatre of Vancouver on a stage adaptation of My Turquoise Years.

Chris Fickling lives in Manitoba.

Jon Paul Fiorentino is a writer and editor. His most recent book of poetry is The Theory of the Loser Class (Coach House Books, 2006). He is the author of the poetry book Hello Serotonin (Coach House Books, 2004) and the humour book Asthmatica (Insomniac Press, 2005). His most recent editorial projects are the anthologies Career Suicide! Contemporary Literary Humour (DC Books, 2003) and Post-Prairie, co-edited with Robert Kroetsch, (Talonbooks, 2005). He lives in Montreal where he teaches writing at Concordia University and is the Managing Editor of Matrix magazine.

ryan fitzpatrick lives in Calgary and is poetry editor of filling Station.

Cathy Ford was born in Lloydminster, Saskatchewan, and grew up in northern British Columbia. She has a B.F.A. and an M.F.A. from the University of British Columbia (1978). She now lives on Mayne Island, and in Sidney, B.C., working as poet and fictioniste, publisher, editor, and teacher. She was President of the League of Canadian Poets in 1985/86, and one of the founding members of the League's Feminist Caucus in 1982. From 1984 to 1986 she was a member of a national task force of Women and Words, working to create a draft constitution for a national association of PanCanadian Women and Words. She was a member of the Board of Directors of the Literary Storefront from 1980 to 1982, and is also a member of the Federation of British Columbia Writers and PEN.

The Four Horsemen, a sound poetry group, are bpNichol, Steve McCaffery, Paul Dutton and Rafael Barreto-Rivera

David Fujino is a writer, actor, occasional trumpet player (as part of his acting roles), who’s worked with ‘community’ on more than one level. Published in Canada, the United States, Australia, Great Britain, Japan, and the World Wide Web, Greenwood, British Columbia-born Fujino works from his long-time home base of Toronto. David is delighted to have been published by journals such as West Coast Line, dandelion and filling station, and is especially cheered when published by vital and creative poets’ presses such as new chief tongue, Psychic Rotunda, and fHole. air pressure (BookThug) is Fujino’s first full-length collection.

 Maxine Gadd is the author of numerous books of poetry, among them Lost Language (Coach House, 1982), Fire in the Cove (m(O)ther Tongue, 2001), and most recently, Backup to Babylon (New Star, 2006), which is a poetry finalist in the 2007 BC Book Prizes.

Jay Gamble lives in Calgary.

Michel Gay was one of the directors of La nouvelle barre du jour during the 1980s, Montreal's vastly important journal and publishing house for avant-garde writing. Since his first two books were published in 1978, he has been an important figure in the contemporary writing and publishing scene in Montreal.

Gerry Gilbert, a Vancouver based writer, is actively involved in local artistic and political culture and hosts a weekly radio broadcast radiofreerainforest.

John C. Goodman has lived in British Columbia, Ontario and Newfoundland where he currently resides within sight of the ocean. He does not own a tie. John has published a book of poetry, Sounds from the Centre of Water (Lyric Publishing) and a novel, Talking to Wendigo (Turnstone Press). His stories and poems have appeared in magazines in Canada and the US.

Julian Jason Haladyn is a Canadian artist and writer. His poems have appeared in, among others, ´a·pos·tro·phe, Elimae, Identity Theory, Istanbul Literature Review, Laika Poetry Review, Nthposition, and Otoliths, as well as the collection Nuit Blanche: Poetry for Late Nights (Toronto: Royal Sarcophagus Society Press, 2007). His first poetry book, entitled 17/13, was published by Blue Medium. In addition, he has published collaborative critical articles and reviews with Miriam Jordan in Parachute, Broken Pencil, C Magazine, On Site Review, and a chapter in Stanley Kubrick: Essays on His Films and Legacy (McFarland and Company 2007). As a practicing artist his solo and collaborative artwork has been included in exhibitions internationally.

 

Joelle Hann is a Canadian living in Brooklyn. Her poems have appeared In such journals as McSweeney's, La Petite Zine, The Brooklyn Rail, Matrix, Grain, and Fiddlehead. She is currently translating the erotic poems of Brazilian poet Carlos Drummond de Andrade. She works as an editor at Bedford/St. Martin's.

Sharon Harris is a writer and artist living in Toronto. Her first book of visual and verbal poems (+ a manifesto), AVATAR , was published by The Mercury Press.
Harris has been involved in documenting the Toronto poetry scene for more than 10 years and has an ongoing project photographing the words “I love you” wherever they appear throughout Toronto. Her work plays with how language is presented on the page in the tradition of concrete poetry (one version of “I love you” was produced by Harris in Braille) and also has an interest in ’pataphysics, the imaginary science founded by Alfred Jarry.

Beatriz Hausner is a poet and the translator of some 25 titles of poetry, fiction and children’s literature, primarily from Spanish into English. Her poetry is rooted in the traditions of Spanish America and international surrealism and most of her translations have focused on the writers of those literatures. She has translated the poetry of Rosamel del Valle, Enrique Molina, Enrique Gómez-Correa, Humberto Díaz Casanueva, Ludwig Zeller, as well as prose works by Matt Cohen and Alvaro Mutis, among others. She was twice President of the Literary Translators’ Association of Canada. She works as a librarian at the Toronto Public Library.

Jill Hartman, Calgary born-and-bred poet, writes disjunctive narrative poetry. Her writing’s appeared in Queen Street Quarterly, filling Station, endnote, and DIAGRAM, in the anthologies Post-Prairie (Talonbooks) and Shift & Switch (Mercury), and in chapbooks from MODL Press, housepress, Olive Press, and her own chapbook series semi-precious press. She’s presented and performed her poetry across Canada and as far afield as Scotland. Her first book of poetry, A Painted Elephant, (Coach House 2003) was shortlisted for both the Stephansson and Lampert Awards, and along with her TWAT Team material, was featured on the program “Heart of a Poet,” BOOK TV, in the fall of 2005.  She’s also a past editor of dANDelion magazine and a Mistress of the Arts with a Creative Thesis (2005).

Paul Hegedus studied music at Laurier University. He lives in Waterloo. His book Noise Present At The Moment Less Clear was published by BookThug.

Kevin Hehir lives in St. John's, Newfoundland where he curates readings for the Writers' Alliance of Newfoundland and Labrador. He is also a collaborator with the Collective Gutsink, a multi-disciplinary improvisational performance group. He has two chapbooks of poetry and a CD called Canadadaians Art Sound Poetry by Kevin Hehir. Serial Toboggany, his new book, is in production with Anitapress. Kevin works as an educational researcher and works with young adult writers when he can.

Gilles H�nault (1920-1996) was associated with Paul-Emile Borduas, Jean-Paul Riopelle, and the other young Quebec artists who signed the famous Refus Global manifesto on August 9, 1948. Though H�nault did not sign the anti-establishment document, he shared the condemnation directed at its writers by the powers-that be. Ironically, H�nault became for five years the director of the Mus�e d'art contemporain. He was poet, art critic, broadcaster, newspaperman and professor. His major work, Semaphore, won the Prix du Grand Jury des Lettres in 1962.

Jamie Hilder is a Vancouver-based artist, critic, student and labourer.

Geoffrey Hlibchuk studied Canadian avant-garde writing at State University of New York at Buffalo. He is the assistant director of North American Centre for Interdisciplinary Poetics.

Robert Hogg was one of the younger poets in the Tish movement in Vancouver during the 1960s. His poetry is known for its precision of image and music, and is seldom far from the natural world in its focus. Hogg lives on a farm near Mountain, Ontario, a town that does not really exist. He is working on a giant anthology of Canadian poetics.

Matthew Hollett is a poet and visual artist from Newfoundland & Labrador. He is currently completing the MFA program at NSCAD University in Halifax.

Rosemary Hollingshead, published by blewointment press.

Wharton Hood, alter-ego of jw curry

Ken Howe was born in Edmonton, grew up in Beaverlodge, Alberta, and lived in Regina for eight years, playing principal horn with the Regina Symphony, before relocating to Toronto. He has studied German, philosophy, education and translation, has a degree in Music, and was a Jesuit novice for two years. Armed with a “reverberator” made out of a five-foot tube, springs and 7-Eleven Slurpee cups, Ken’s cross-Canada tour for Household Hints for the End of Time - winner of the Saskatchewan Book Award for Poetry and shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Award - initiated many fellow poets and other spectators to enthusiastically declare him as one of the most entertaining readers in the country.

Ray Hsu is the author of a book of poems, Anthropy, which won the 2005 Gerald Lampert award for best first book of poetry by a Canadian. He has published poems in literary journals including Fence, New American Writing, The Fiddlehead, and nthposition.

Jesse Huisken was born and lives in Toronto. He is currently revising a manuscript of longer poems and texts and finishing a series of paintings appropriated from mas-reproduction nature photographs. He has published poetry, fiction and drawings with the small presses BookThug, Expert Press and House Press, and under the auspices of his own imprint, Wood and Coal (recently renamed Language Points).

Chris Hutchinson moved from Vancouver, BC to Tempe, AZ where he teaches creative writing at Arizona State University. Over the years his poems have appeared in most of the major Canadian literary journals, and also in the anthology Breathing Fire 2: Canada’s New Poets. Forthcoming publications include PRISM International and Bei Mei Feng (a Chinese-English literary magazine). He is also the author of the full-length collection Unfamiliar Weather (Muses’ Company, 2005).   

Kendrick James is a synaesthetic poet and documentary film maker.

Beth Jankola is a British Columbia poet whose work has appeared in magazines and books. In 1975 she won the Bliss Carman Award at the Banff School of Arts. She has performed readings on C.B.C. radio, as well as in high schools, art galleries, libraries and on television.

Born in Leduc, Alberta, Reg Johanson lives in East Vancouver, BC, and teaches at Capilano College. He is a former member of the Kootenay School of Writing collective and current co-director of the Pacific Institute for Language and Literacy Studies.

brian david j(o(h)n)ston is a film wirter, novelist, poet and musician.  He toured and recorded in Canada and the US as percussionist with a series of rock and reggae bands, and has composed and recorded soundtracks for two feature-length documentary films.

Lionel Kearns, poet, short-story writer and educator, was born in Nelson, British Columbia in 1937. He studied at UBC, where he became involved with the tish group of poets, and the School of Oriental and African Studies, London University. Kearns was writer-in-residence at Concordia University (1982-83), first writer-in-electronic-resident on the "Wired Writers" Network (1988), and a teacher of literature at Simon Fraser University since 1966. He continues to write poetry that ranges from a concern with semantics and semiology to a concern with performance and effect. He has also worked in other genres, such as film, and has studied the interconnections between poetry, computers and consciousness.

Jake Kennedy lives in Kelowna, British Columbia. His work has appeared in a number of Canadian, US, and UK literary journals. Jake is currently working on a book of doodles. His book of prose poems, Hazard, was published by BookThug.

Roy Kiyooka was born in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan in 1926, and grew up in Calgary, Alberta. He studied at the Provincial Institute of Technology and Art (now named the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology and Art). Throughout his career, he was known as a painter, photographer, musician, film-maker, and poet. Though he taught at serveral universities during his career, he eventually moved to Vancouver and taught at the University of British Columbia until his retirement. His book, Pear Tree Pomes, was nominated for a Governor General's Literary Award. In 1978, Kiyooka was named an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1978.

Tom Konyves was one of the seven Vehicule Poets in Montreal in 1977. He put poetry on the buses (Poesie En Mouvement), wrote a monthly column for The Montreal Star (Poetry Corn-er), initiated a collaborative poem and its performance (Drummer Boy Raga: Red Light Green Light), and produced a series of 26 TV programs about the avant-garde of Montreal (Art Montreal); he also produced his first videopoems, a term he coined to describe his blending of poetry and video into an “inextricable union”. Meanwhile, the voice of his first book of poems (No Parking) blended its way into a parodic narrative, a veritable surrealist novella he called OOSOOM (pronounced as the letters not the word) published by BookThug.

Robert Kroetsch was born in 1927 in Heisler, Alberta. He attended the University of Alberta and then and U of Iowa. After a stint working on the river boats in the Yukon and the Northwest Territories, he eventually taught at S.U.N.Y. Binghamton. Kroetsch then taught writing and literature at the University of Calgary and the University of Manitoba. He now lives in Victoria, British Columbia. Kroetsch is internationally known as a poet and novelist. He is also widely acknowledged in Canada for his literary criticism and theory. Kroetsch won the Governor General's Literary Award for fiction with his novel The Studhorse Man.

Frances Kruk was born and raised in Calgary.

Mark Laba lives in Vancouver, where he is a food reviewer for the Vancouver Province newspaper. His book of poetry, Dummy Spit, was published by The Mercury Press in 2002.

Larissa Lai was the University of Calgary Writer-in-Residence for the Markin-Flanagan Distinguished Writers' Programme in 1998 where she was extremely active as writer-in-residence, performing her work at numerous events, consulting with writers about their work, and conducting writing workshops for community organizations such as the Women of Colour Collective.. Lai's first novel, When Fox is a Thousand (1995), was nominated for a Chapters/Books in Canada First Novel Awards. Her poetry and prose have appeared in numerous publications such as Fuse, Kinesis, West Coast Line, Room of One's Own, Rungh, absinthe, filling Station, and the anthology Many-Mouthed Birds. She has worked in various cultural communities as researcher, editor, writer and organizer in Ottawa, Calgary, and Vancouver.

Patricia Lamontagne, born in 1959, is a multidisciplinary artist who came to maturity in the eighties and nineties. She is a fine contemporary poet who also works in theatre, and music. In 2001 she published her first novel, Somnolences.

Gatien Lapointe's Ode au Saint-Laurent (1961) a modern epic of 493 stanzas, is one of the great poems of our time. It won the Governor General's Award, the du Maurier Prize, and the Prix de la province de Qu�bec. Lapointe died at age 52, but produced a large oeuvre, from the Whitmanesque Ode to the experimental works of his last days, such as Arbre-Radar. He said "J'�cris pour devenir ce que je suis depuis toujours, et j'imagine ce que je ne connais pas encore."

Lance La Roque teaches at Acadia University in Wolfville, Nova Scotia.

JonArno Lawson is a Toronto poet and children's author

Jason Le Heup's work appeared in the anthology switch & shift (The Mercury Press, 2005).

Billy Little lives on Hornby Island, about four hours, including two ferries from Victoria, BC. Born NYC 1943, US Army(E-5)60-63, SUNYAB 1967-1970, student of Creeley, Duncan, Barth, Fiedler, Clarke, Canada 1974, editor, Presence, Tens, Press of the Black Flag Raised, RAW, publisher, Black Owle Press, Prose and Verses Press, My Dukes broadsides, Dojo books.

damian lopes is an author and editor born in Aberdeen Scotland, raised in Toronto and now living in Barrie, Ontario. After attending McGill University in Montréal, he lived in Vancouver BC, and then travelled through India and East Africa.

damian lopes writing ranges from poetry to fiction, and from image to text. He has published clay lamps & fighter kites (The Mercury Press, 2000), sensory deprivation / dream poetics (Coach House Books, 2000), and towards the quiet (ECW Press, 1997).

lopes founded the micro press fingerprinting inkoperated in 1990 while living in Montréal. Using a wide range of publishing methods, from rubberstamps to desktop publishing, he hand produced chapbooks, leaflets and broadsides by authors such as Nelson Ball, Daniel f Bradley, Christian Bök, jwcurry, MAC Farrant, Gerry Gilbert, bpNichol, David UU, Darren Wershler-Henry, and Alana Wilcox.

Glen Lowry is Vancouver-based writer, editor, photographer, and teacher, whose research interests include contemporary Canadian culture, critical theory, and poetics, especially in relation to West Coast literary & cultural production. He teaches in Critical and Cultural Studies at Emily Carr Institute for Art + Design + Media in Vancouver, and edits West Coast Line, a cultural and literary journal, based at Simon Fraser University.

Jeanette Lynes is the author of three collections of poetry. She recently completed her M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Southern Maine’s low-residency program. She is currently writer in residence at Saskatoon Public Library in Saskatchewan.

Karen Mac Cormack, born in Africa in 1956, with dual British and Canadian citizenships, lives in Toronto. Her books of poetry include Straw Cupid, Quirks and Quillets, Marine Snow, and The Tongue Moves Talk.

Donato Mancini,Toronto-born, Hamilton-raised, and Vancouver-resident, is a writer, visual artist and polymath whose individual and/or collaborative works have been exhibited in Canada, the United States, Cuba, Finland, Germany, Denmark, and Sweden. He has written extensively about music and his poetry has been published in such magazines as Matrix, Broken Pencil, Vallum, Grain, W, Rampike, and Queen Street Quarterly. Mancini has published eight chapbooks; his first full-length book is Ligatures (New Star 2005).

Daphne Marlatt was born July 11, 1942, in Australia. After moving from Malaysia to Vancouver in 1951, Marlatt attained her BA from the University of British Columbia in 1964, MA in Comparative Literature from Indiana University in 1968, and LL.D. from the University of Western Ontario in 1996. After publishing poetry for many years, she published two novels, Ana Historic (1988) and Taken (1996), and numerous critical articles. Most recently Marlatt has edited Mothertalk: Life Stories of Mary Kiyoshi Kiyooka by Roy Kiyooka.

Émile Martel has worked as a Canadian diplomat in Paris and several Spanish-speaking countries. In addition to his own unconventional poetry, he has published many translations from English and Spanish. In 1995 he won the Governor-General's award for his book Pour orchestre et poète seul, which was translated by D. G. Jones as For Orchestra and Solo Poet.

Danielle Maveal has a BA from York University's Creative Writing Program and a Diploma in Jewellery Arts from George Brown College.

Steve McCaffery was born January 24, 1947, in Sheffield, England. He came to Canada partly to work with bpNichol, and the two poets formed the Toronto Research Group. McCaffery and Nichol also combined talents with Paul Dutton and Rafael Barreto-Rivera as the Four Horsemen, creating and performing innovative sound poetry. McCaffery attended both the University of Hull and York University. During the seventies and eighties, he and Nichol were regular contributors to the poetic journal Open Letter. McCaffery's collection of critical writings, North of Intention, stands as one of the earliest and best collections of essays about experimental writing in Canada and the U.S., and it demonstrates and explores McCaffery's own affiliation with the practitioners of the so-called Language Poetry and poetics, often considered a uniquely American phenomenon. McCaffery recently completed his PhD at SUNY Buffalo and is now teaching at York University.

Don McKay has published 8 books of poetry, including Birding, or desire (1983), Night Field (1991) which won the Governor General's Award for Poetry; and Apparatus (1997), all published by McClelland & Stewart. His work has also received the National Magazine Award and the Canadian Authors Association Award. Since 1975 he has served as editor and publisher with Brick Books. He taught creative writing and English literature at the University of Western Ontario and the University of New Brunswick for 27 years before resigning to write and edit poetry full time. From 1991 to 1996 he edited The Fiddlehead magazine, and he has also served as a faculty resource person at the Sage Hill Writing Experience and The Banff Centre for the Arts, where he currently holds the position of Associate Director, Poetry, Writing & Publishing. He now lives in British Columbia. He won the Governor General's Award for his book Another Gravity.

Barry McKinnon (born 1944) was born and brought up in Calgary, went to universities in Montreal and Vancouver, and has been since 1969 the central figure in the literary life of Prince George. He is an editor and publisher of contemporary poetry, and a leader and instructor for many younger writers. His poetry manages the very difficult feat of tracing the brain’s music while criticizing the depredations of late-industrial imperialism.

rob mclennan lives in Ottawa, even though he was born there. The author of over a dozen trade books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction, he is spending the 2007-8 academic year as writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta. The editor/publisher of Chaudiere Books, Poetics.ca (with Stephen Brockwell), above/ground press, and ottawater.

Jeremy Mcleod lives and writes in Kingston, ON. His book Search was published by BookThug.

Christian McPherson's first collection of short stories, "Six Ways to Sunday" (Nightwood Editions) came out April 2007.  His poetry has appeared in several journals and anthologies, including "Misunderstandings Magazine," "Queen's Quarterly," "Jones AV.," and "On Spec."   He lives in Ottawa with his beautiful wife and two kids.

Max Middle hails from Ottawa.

Roy Miki is a poet, editor, bibliographer, teacher, musician, critic and sociologist. He is highly active in Japanese-Canadian activities, and was instrumental in achieving redress for people uprooted during World War II. His poetry is sometimes difficult but always engaged. He was born and raised in Winnipeg, went to university in Toronto, and now teaches contemporary Canadian Studies at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby. In 2002 he won the Governor General�s Award for Surrender, poems that interrogate received notions of identity and authority.

Jay MillAr is a poet, editor, publisher and bookseller. He is the author of The Ghosts of Jay MillAr (2000), Mycological Studies (2002), False Maps for Other Creatures (2005) and the forthcoming collection the small blue (fall, 2007). Recently he published a collaborative 'novel' written with Stephen Cain titled Double Helix (2006). He lives in Toronto with his wife Hazel and their two kids Reid and Cole, where he currently runs BookThug, an independent literary publisher, and Apollinaire's Bookshoppe, which specializes in the books that no one wants to buy.

Michelle Miller is a queer-feminist writer of fiction, non-fiction and poetry. She has had works published in The Danforth Review, Black Heart Magazine, Oh! Magazine, and others. Her first full-length book, an investigation into how feminists look and what that means for the movement, is forthcoming from Sumach Press in Spring 2008. She lives in Vancouver with her partner and attends UBC's Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing program. Her work has been categorized as "hostile erotica."

Erín Mouré is a poet, and translator from French, Galician, Spanish and Portuguese. Moure has published twelve books of poetry, including A Frame of the Book, which was co-published in the U.S. by Sun and Moon Press. Her most recent collection, Little Theatres, was a finalist for the Governor General's Award and the Griffin Prize for Poetry, and won the AJM Klein Prize. O Cidadán was a finalist for the GG and AJMK. Moure's translation of Sheep's Vigil by a Fervent Person, from Portuguese of Alberto Caiero/Fernando Pessoa was a finalist for the Griffin Prize and the Toronto Book Award. Moure lives in Montreal.

Lillian Necakov was born in Belgrade, Yugoslavia in 1960 and now lives in Toronto. She is the editor of the Surrealist Poets Gardening Association, a literary small press. Her work has appeared in numerous magazines, anthologies, etc, in Canada, USA, and Europe, and forthcoming in China. Some of her books include Cowboy in Hamburg (Surrealist Poets Gardening Association, 1988), Listen (Pink Dog, 1988), Sickbed of Dogs (Wolsak & Wynn, 1989) and Polaroids (Coach House, 1999).

Janet Neigh is a Canadian writer and scholar currently working on her PhD in English at Temple University in Philadelphia. She received her BA in English from Simon Fraser University and her MA in English and Creative Writing from the University of Calgary. Her work has appeared in HOW2, West Coast Line and filling Station.

bpNichol (Barrie Phillip Nichol) (September 30, 1944- September 25, 1988) was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, and became widely known for his concrete poetry while living there in the 1960s. His most famous published work is probably The Martyrology, a long poem encompassing 9 books in 6 volumes.
Nichol attracted public notice in the mid-1960s with his hand-drawn or "concrete" poems, and received international acclaim. The "visual book" Still water, together with the booklets The true eventual story of Billy the Kid and Beach Head as well as the anthology of concrete poetry, The cosmic chef, won the Governor General's Award for poetry.
In 1970, he began to collaborate with fellow poets Rafael Barreto-Rivera, Paul Dutton, and Steve McCaffery, forming the sound-poetry group The Four Horsemen.
A street in Toronto, Canada, is named in his honour. bpNichol Lane is located in the Annex district behind Coach House Press. It features an eight-line poem by Nichol carved into the pavement: "A / LAKE / A / LANE / A / LINE / A / LONE". (An employee at Coach House regularly waters the word "LAKE".)

Catherine Paquette is a Montreal-based writer. She is the author of the chapbook: the burden of a song (Mercutio Press 2007), which is a long-poem/visual experiment. Her work has appeared in publications such as brokenpencil, misunderstandings magazine and Fireweed, and more recently in the American online journals Glitterpony, Shampoo, and No Tell Motel.

Meredith Quartermain has published and read her work in Canada, the U.S. and Britain. Her most recent book is Vancouver Walking (NeWest 2005). Chapbooks include Terms of Sale (Meow 1996), Abstract Relations (Keefer Street 1998), Veers (Backwoods Broadsides 1998), Spatial Relations (Diaeresis 2001), Inland Passage (housepress 2001), The Eye-Shift of Surface (Greenboathouse 2003), and [with Robin Blaser] Wanders (Nomados 2002). Her book of prose poems, A Thousand Mornings (Nomados 2002), is about Vancouver's oldest neighbourhood, the dockside area of Strathcona. Her work has also appeared in Canadian Literature, Literary Review of Canada, Matrix, The Capilano Review, West Coast Line, filling Station, Queen Street Quarterly, Prism International, Raddle Moon, Five Fingers Review, Chain, Sulfur, Tinfish, East Village Poetry Web and other magazines. She has taught English Literature and Composition at the University of BC and Capilano College, and Creative Writing at the Naropa Summer Writing Program.

Sina Queyras' third collection of poetry, Lemon Hound, received both the Pat Lowther Memorial Award and a Lambda Literary Award. In 2005 she edited Open Field: 30 Contemporary Canadian Poets, for Persea Books, and in 2006 edited Canadian Strange, a folio of contemporary Canadian writing for Drunken Boat where she is a contributing editor. From 2005-2007 Queyras co-curated the *belladonna reading series in New York. Her work has been published widely in journals and anthologies. She has taught creative writing at Haverford College and Rutgers University.

a.rawlings (Angela Rawlings) is a poet, editor, publisher, host, and multidisciplinary artist, she has had her hands in a number of significant literary endeavors and institutions including: working at The Mercury Press, editing WORD, hosting The Lexiconjury Reading Series, the new documentary series Heart of a Poet, running workshops, helping to run the Scream Literary Festival, co-editing (along with derek beaulieu and Jason Christie) the very successful anthology of new Canadian writing Shift and Switch. Remarkably, amidst all this work in the name of Canadian poetry, Rawlings has found the time to develop her own poetic career. In April 2006, Rawlings published her incredibly accomplished first book of poetry, Wide Slumber For Lepidopterists, with Coach House Books.

Rob Read grew up outside Komoka, and has lived in Toronto since 1996. He writes (among other things) Daily Treated Spam. Rob operates Produce Press, a publisher of handmade books.

Jamie Reid (born April 10, 1941) is a Canadian poet. He was born in Timmins, Ontario.
Reid co-founded the influential poetry journal TISH in Vancouver in 1961 with George Bowering, Frank Davey and Fred Wah. He published his first collection of poems, The Man Whose Path Was on Fire, in 1969. A short time later he dedicated himself to communist organizing in Ontario, and ceased publishing. Reid returned to print in 1994 with Prez: Homage to Lester Young, a verse-biography of the famed jazz saxophonist. He currently publishes DaDaBaBy, a journal and chapbook press.

Monty Reid was born in Saskatchewan, lived in BC, Alberta and Quebec, and now resides in Ottawa, where he is Director of Exhibitions at the Canadian Museum of Nature. His works include Karst Means Stone (NeWest), Crawlspace (Anansi), The Alternate Guide (rdc), Flat Side (rdc), Dog Sleeps (NeWest) and the chapbooks Fridays (sidereal), Six Songs for the Mammoth Steppe (above/ground), Cuba: A Book (above/ground), and Sweetheart of Mine (BookThug). His poetry, as well as essays on natural history and museums, has appeared in many journals for the past 25 years. He has played guitar and mandolin in the bands Blues Formation, Blue Lonesome and the Exhibitionists.

In the mid-nineteen-forties, Th�r�se Renaud was part of a group of young painters, writers, and dancers in Montreal who were called les automatistes. Their 1948 manifesto, Refus global, is no doubt the most important avant-garde text of its kind published in Canada. In 1946, at nineteen years of age and before she left Montreal for Paris, she wrote a series of poems in the Surrealist tradition of automatic writing, of which a selection were published in a chapbook entitled Les sables du r�ve, illustrated with drawings in the automatist spirit by her friend, Jean-Paul Mousseau.
Th�r�se Renaud went on to write a half-dozen other volumes of poetry and prose that have built her reputation as an elder sister to a generation of important feminist writers from Quebec, Les sables du r�ve was republished a number of times, notably in the avant-garde periodical Les Herbes Rouges.
Th�r�se Renaud passed away in December 2005.

Les sables du r�ve was translated into English by Ray Ellenwood, a well-known Toronto translator of such authors as Marie-Claire Blais, Jacques Ferron, Claude Gauvreau and Gilles H�nault. It was published as The Sands of Dream by BookThug.

Harold Rhenisch lives in the Cariboo country, the high volcanic plateau between the Thompson and Fraser rivers that drain the British Columbia Interior. Rhenisch's poetry explores the land on which he lives and where he grew up in an immigrant culture developing orchards and vineyards in the fertile Okanagan Valley. Rhenisch turned his sense of the land into a vehicle capable of speaking for a complex contemporary world: the autobiographical fiction of Out of the Interior: The Lost Country.

Lisa Robertson (born in 1961 in Toronto) is a Canadian poet who currently lives in France.
In 1979, she moved to British Columbia, where she remained for twenty-three years. During her time there, she was a member of The Kootenay School of Writing, which is a non-profit society that offers an alternative to the mainstream pedagogy of most Canadian universities. She was integrally involved in Vancouver's art scene and was a member of the Artspeak Gallery. Robertson contributed to the "Beneath the Pavilions" column in Mix from 1997-1999.
She co-edited the poetry journal Raddle Moon with Susan Clark in Vancouver, and has worked as an arts journalist, a copy editor, an astrologer, a guest lecturer, and an essayist. In 2006, she was a judge of the Griffin Poetry Prize. Robertson was Holloway poet-in-residence at UC Berkeley.

Ren�e Rodin, poet and visual artist  was born and raised between the "Two Solitudes" in Montreal, Quebec. She moved to Vancouver in the 60s and in the 80s began R2B2 Books along with its reading series which she ran for 8 years.

Stan Rogal was born in Vancouver and has lived in Toronto for the past eight years. As well as being a playwright, he is a published poet and fiction writer. He is co-founder of Bald Ego Theatre and also co-ordinated a weekly reading series at The Idler Pub in Toronto.

Stuart Ross is a Toronto writer, editor, and writing instructor.
Stuart has written a bunch of books of poetry, fiction, and essays, including I Cut My Finger (Anvil Press, 2007), Confessions of a Small Press Racketeer (Anvil Press, 2005), Hey, Crumbling Balcony! Poems New & Selected (ECW Press, 2003), Razovsky at Peace (ECW Press, 2001), Farmer Gloomy's New Hybrid (ECW Press, 1999), The Inspiration Cha-Cha (ECW Press, 1996), Henry Kafka and Other Stories (The Mercury Press, 1997), The Mud Game (w/ Gary Barwin, the Mercury Press, 1995).
Ross edited the anthology Surreal Estate: 13 Canadian Poets Under the Influence (The Mercury Press, 2004) and Why Are You So Sad? Selected Poems of David W. McFadden (Insomniac Press, 2006).

Joe Rosenblatt was born in Toronto in l933. He started writing seriously in the early sixties, and in l966 his first book, The L.S.D. Leacock, was published by Coach House Press. Since then he has published more than a dozen books of poetry and fiction. His selected poems (1962-1975), Top Soil, won the Governor-General's Award for poetry. Another volume of selected poems, (l963-l985), Poetry Hotel, won The B.C. Book Prize, l986 for poetry. His poems have appeared in numerous anthologies and periodicals in North America.
Rosenblatt has held several writer-in- residence positions in Canadian universities and libraries, as well as short term writer in residence positions at the University of Rome and University of Bologna. Between l987 and l993 he toured Europe giving readings and lectures in Italy, Sweden and Finland. An experimental novel Beds And Consenting Dreamers, an allegory on Stalinism was published August 1994 by Oolichan Books ( Lantzville, B.C.) . A bilingual edition of his new sea sonnets, Madre Tentacolare (A Tentacled Mother) has been translated into Italian by Prof. Alfredo Rizzardi of the University of Bologna. A Tentacled Mother in the original and The Rosenblatt Reader ( poems and prose, Exile Books, Toronto) was published in early 1996. In the fall, l996, Beach Holme Press Ltd (Victoria, British Columbia) published a coffee table of his new coloured drawings plus a selection of the best drawings, chosen by gallery director, Prof. Michael Bell from the Rosenblatt Collection of Carleton University Art Gallery, Ottawa, Ontario.
For over fifteen years, Rosenblatt has been living in Qualicum Beach on Vancouver Island.

Jenny Ryan, originally from Ontario, is currently finding her way in Saskatoon as a writer caught up in the career of a Children's Librarian.

Trish Salah is a Montreal-based writer and sessional instructor at the Simone de Beauvoir Institute and at Bishop's University. She is widely published in 'zines, journals and anthologies and is a contributing editor to FUSE Magazine. Her first book of poetry, Wanting in Arabic,was published in 2002.

Greg Santos is a poet originally from Montreal. He has been featured in print and online publications, such as, McSweeney's, Matrix, and Feathertale. He co-edited the "Voce: Recorded Poems" DVD project for Palimpsest, Yale University's arts and literary journal. He lives in New Haven, CT and started an MFA in Creative Writing at The New School in Fall 2007.

Jordan Scott’s blert explores the poetics of stuttering.  Portions of blert have appeared in Shift and Switch: New Canadian Poetry and Companions and Horizons: an Anthology of Simon Fraser University Poetry.  Jordan’s first book of poetry, Silt, was published by New Star Books in 2005. Jordan lives in Coquitlam BC.

Trevor Speller's work appeared in switch & shift (The Mercury Press, 2005).

Natalie Simpson is a former managing editor of filling Station. She has lived in Calgary and Vancouver.

Steven Ross Smith is a Toronto sound poet.

George Stanley was a San Francisco poet in the 1960s, part of Jack Spicer's circle, but emigrated to Canada in 1971. After moving across the border, he lived first in Vancouver, then in the far-flung northern settlement of Terrace, B.C., then again in Vancouver, where he taught at Capilano College.

Nathalie Stephens writes in English and French, and sometimes neither. Writing l'entre-genre, she is the author of several published works, most recently L'Injure (l'Hexagone, 2004), Paper City (Coach House, 2003), and Je Nathanaël (l'Hexagone, 2003). L'Injure was a finalist for the 2005 Prix Alain-Grandbois and the Prix Trillium (2005); the short fiction, Underground (TROIS, 1999) was a finalist in 2000 for the Grand Prix du Salon du livre de Toronto. Stephens's writing appears in various anthologies, including Biting the Error: Writers Explore Narrative (Coach House, 2004), Breathing Fire II (Nightwood, 2004), The Common Sky : Canadian Writers Against the War (Three Squares, 2003), La Cendre des mots (l'Harmattan, 2002), and in literary print journals such as New American Writing (2005), Apokalipsa (Slovenia), jubilat (Amherst),  filling Station (Calgary), LVNG (Chicago), Senez (Basque Country) and Tessera (Montréal). Stephens has presented her work internationally, notably in Barcelona, Norwich, Ljubljana, and New York. She is the recipient of a 2002 Chalmers Arts Fellowship and a 2003 British Centre for Literary Translation Residential Bursary. Some of Stephens's work has been translated into Basque, Bulgarian and Slovene. She has translated Catherine Mavrikakis and François Turcot into English and Gail Scott and R. M. Vaughan into French. On occasion, she translates herself. She lives between.

Originally from Montreal, Andrea Strudensky is currently living in Buffalo studying poetry.

W. Mark Sutherland is a language-based artist, poet and musician. He studied at The Royal Conservatory of Music (in conjunction with The University of Toronto) and has a BFA from York University. Sutherland has exhibited and performed extensively throughout North America and Europe, and has published numerous bookworks and articles in critical journals.

Todd Swift is a contributing editor of Matrix, Quebec’s longest running English-language literary magazine. Swift's own poetry has been collected in four collections, all from DC Books Canada, Budavox (1999), Café Alibi (2002) Rue du Regard (2004) and Winter Tennis (2007); and he is an editor of over ten international audio, electronic and/or print anthologies, including 100 Poets Against The War, Poetry Nation, Short Fuse, and Life Lines: Poets for Oxfam.His writing has appeared widely in journals in Australia, America, Canada, Ireland and the UK, such as Agenda, Books In Canada, Cordite, The Dubliner, En Route, Geist, The Literary Review of Canada, Jacket, The National Post, Poetry London, Prism International and Stand. The Chronicle of Higher Education has compared his work to "that of Ezra Pound's in the 10s and 20s of the last century, in Paris and London".

Souvankham Thammavongsa is the author of Small Arguments. The poems in Small Arguments were first published by the author over a series of handmade chapbooks. Her work has garnered praise for its "quiet, beautiful, jeweller's-eye lyrics" and has won the national Relit prize for poetry. Thammavongsa has presented her poems at the Emily Carr and Harbourfront's Premiere Dance Theatre. Pedlar Press released her new work in 2007.

France Théoret is one of a group of feminist experimental writers who emerged in Montreal in the sixties and seventies. She is often associated with Nicole Brossard, Gail Scott, and Louky Bersianik. She has been founder or editor of the important avant-garde review, La Barre du jour, the feminist journal Les Têtes de pioche, and the magazine Spirale. Equally accomplished as poet and fiction writer, she is also a fine essayist and dramatist. She was a professor for two decades before turning to writing full time. In 1999 she was co-editor of the major anthology Les Grands poèmes de la poésie Québécoise.

Hugh Thomas grew up in Winnipeg, and has lived in several places in Canada and the United States. He is currently living in Fredericton, where he teaches mathematics at the University of New Brunswick. His poems of his have appeared in Chiaroscuro, fhole, Queen Street Quarterly, and on a sheet published by red iron.

Lola Lemire Tostevin was born into a bilingual family, and brought up in Northern Ontario. Her early books dealt with the problems and points of interest in writing in different languages, French and English, male and female. She has also published a book of essays and two novels, as well as translations. Her work is experimental in form, and intellectual in its concerns. Her second book, Gyno-Text, became a kind of manual for young feminists in the 1980s.

Mark Truscott (born in 1970) is a Toronto poet. He was born in Bloomington, Indiana, USA.
His first collection, Said Like Reeds or Things (Coach House Books, 2004), was shortlisted for a ReLit Award and received an Alcuin Society Book Design Awards citation for Darren Wershler-Henry’s design. Poems appear in the anthologies Shift & Switch: New Canadian Poetry (Mercury Press, 2005) and Pissing Ice: An Anthology of 'New' Canadian Poets (BookThug, 2004). With Jay Millar, he co-edits the small magazine BafterC. Mark lives in Toronto, where he curates the Test Reading Series.

David UU (pronounced "double-U") David W. Harris, was born in Barrie, Ontario in 1948. He is considered an accomplished concrete and experimental poet and an important small press publisher. Along with bill bissett and bp Nichol, he was a pioneer of the concrete-poetry movement in Canada, and perhaps the first Canadian poet to explore visual collage embodying literary, philosophical and language references. He also wrote and published more conventional poetry, poems and prose for children, two novels, short stories, scripts for theatrical performance and several essays. In addition, Harris founded and operated Fleye Press (1966-67), Derwyddon Press (1972-73), Silver Birch Press (1987-94), and co-founded grOnk in 1967. Harris died in 1994 at a farmhouse near Delhi, Ontario.

Steve Venright is the author of four books of poetry in prose, including Straunge Wunder (Coach House, 1996) and Spiral Agitator (Coach House, 2000). His chapbooks include The Sleepy Turbine (LyricalMyrical, 2003) and The Illustrated Venright English Dictionary (BookThug, 2004). He has also published extensively in various magazines and anthologies, or as broadsides, postcards and booklets produced by assorted small presses.
Through his Torpor Vigil Industries CD label he has released several unique recordings, including Songs of Elsewhere by Samuel Andreyev and The Further Somniloquies of Dion McGregor?: More Outrageous Recordings of the World’s Most Renowned Sleeptalker. Steve was born in the fictional land of Sarnia and now resides in a large consensual reality domain called Toronto, Ontario.

Fred Wah was born in Swift Current, Saskatchewan in 1939, but he grew up in the West Kootenay region of British Columbia. He studied music and English literature at the University of British Columbia in the early 1960's where he was one of the founding editors of the poetry newsletter TISH. After graduate work in literature and linguistics at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque and the State University of New York at Buffalo, he returned to the Kootenays in the late 1960's where he taught at Selkirk College and was the founding coordinator of the writing program at David Thompson University Centre. He now teaches at the University of Calgary. He has been editorially involved with a number of literary magazines over the years, such as Open Letter and West Coast Line. He has published seventeen books of poetry. His book of prose-poems, Waiting For Saskatchewan, received the Governor-General's Award in 1986 and So Far was awarded the Stephanson Award for Poetry in 1992. Diamond Grill, a biofiction about hybridity and growing up in a small-town Chinese-Canadian cafe was published in 1996 and won the Howard O'Hagan Award for Short Fiction. He also critiques contemporary Canadian and American literature.

Tom Walmsley is the author of five collections, including What Happened (BookThug), Rabies, Lexington Hero, and Honeymoon in Berlin. He has also written three novels, ten plays and one film, titled Paris, France. He lives in Toronto.

Natalie Zina Walschots recently completed her MA in Creative Writing at the University of Calgary. She serves as the Managing Editor for filling Station and is the co-organizer of the Flywheel reading series. She has also served as the Managing Editor for dANDelion. Her work has appeared in Matrix and The Capilano Review and she was the winner of the 1st annual Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry. Her manuscript, Thumbscrews, will be published in the fall of 2007 by Snare Books.

Wilfred Watson, poet, playwright, professor emeritus of English literature at the University of Alberta (b at Rochester, Eng 1 May 1911; d at Nanaimo 25 Mar 1998). A highly innovative writer, Watson influenced 1960s theatre in Canada; his number-grid verse is significant to prosody and to poetry performance. His first book, Friday's Child (1955), won the British Council and the Governor General's awards for poetry.
In the 1960s, Watson turned to drama. In the 1970s he returned to poetry: The Sorrowful Canadians (1972); I Begin with Counting (1978); and Mass on Cowback (1982).
Watson's Collected Poems (1986) and Plays at the Iron Bridge (1989) bring together his most important work. His papers are deposited in the University of Alberta Archives. Watson was married to the influential novelist Sheila Watson.

Andy Weaver grew up in several small towns across Canada. He has published poetry in various literary journals and anthologies in Canada and the US. His first book, Were the Bees, was published by NeWest Press in 2005 and was nominated for the Stephan G. Stephansson award for best book of poetry by an Albertan author. He is on the faculty of York University in Toronto as a member of the English Department.

Douglas Webster currently resided in Toronto.

Darren Wershler-Henry wrote his doctoral dissertation at York University on the relationship between the typewriter and the poetics of dictation. A native of Winnipeg, he now lives in Toronto.

Ken West was published by blewointment press.

Ryan Whyte is a poet and visual artist originally from Edmonton, relocated to Toronto.

Jonathan Wilcke is a musician and poet living in Vancouver.

Julia Williams is a poet and prose writer whose work has appeared in The Literary Review of Canada, CV2, Queen St. Quarterly and THIS magazine. Most recently, her poetry was included in the 2005 Mercury Press anthology, Shift & Switch: New Canadian Poetry. She has lived in England and New Zealand, but is now nesting in Calgary, where she works for a non-profit organization and dabbles in freelancing.

Lissa Wolsak is the author of the long poems THE GARCIA FAMILY CO-MERCY, Tsunami (1994), and PEN CHANTS or nth or 12 spirit-like Impermanences, Roof Books (1999). She works as a metalsmith in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Rita Wong was born in 1968 and grew up in Calgary. She has taught English in China, Japan and Canada, and currently lives in Vancouver where she remains active as a writer, activist, and archivist. In 1997 she received the Asian Canadian Writers' Workshop emerging writer award. Wong has a Masters degree in English from the University of Alberta and a Master in Archival Studies from the University of British Columbia. She is a doctoral candidate in English at Simon Fraser University.

Mike Woods was included in Pissing Ice, An Anthology of 'New' Canadian Poets; edited by Jon Paul Fiorentino and Jay MillAr (BookThug, 2004).

Suzanne Zelazo is a poet, academic and runner. She is the author of Parlance (Coach House Books, 2003) and both editor and publisher of Queen Street Quarterly.

Ludwig Zeller was born in 1927, in Rio Loa, in the desert of Atacama, in the north of Chile. He has been living since 1971 in Toronto, where he has published surrealist texts under the imprint of Oasis publications and exhibited his collages. His books include: Woman in Dream (1975); When the Animal Rises from the Deep the Head Explodes (1976); the three volume Spanish-English set of Circe's Mirrors, Visions and Wounds, and Wanders in the Mandala (1978); and In the Country of the Antipodes (1979). The Eye on Fire, translated by A.F. Moritz was published by Ekstasis Editions.

Rachel Zolf: Toronto poet Rachel Zolf’s practice is situated near the limits of language and the page. She creates polyvocal assemblages from found fragments, long poems that work by accretion with montage effects. Themes that include subjectivity, cultural identity, sexuality and trauma stew in wry anti-aesthetic language/lyric explorations of the modern familiar. Zolf’s third book of poetry is, Human Resources, Coach House Books in 2007. Her second book, Masque (The Mercury Press, 2004), was shortlisted for the 2005 Trillium Book Award for Poetry, and the title long poem from her first book, Her absence, this wanderer (BuschekBooks, 1999), was a finalist in the CBC Literary Competition. She has written two chapbooks, from Human Resources (belladonna* books, New York, 2005) and the naked & the nude (above/ground press, 2004), and her work was recently anthologized in Shift & Switch: New Canadian Poetry (The Mercury Press, 2005). Zolf was founding poetry editor for The Walrus magazine.

Carolyn Zonailo was born in Vancouver, Canada. She has published over a dozen chapbooks and books of poetry. Her work has appeared in periodicals and anthologies, her poetry set to music, recorded and broadcast. She studied at the University of Rochester, New York, and received her M.A. in literature from Simon Fraser University, British Columbia. She has also studied Jungian psychology, mythology and astrology. Zonailo has been active with Small Press publishing, and works as a freelance editor. She has served on provincial and national executives for literary organizations. She now makes her home in Montreal, dividing her time between Quebec and the West Coast. She is working on a new collection of poetry and a childhood memoir.