David C. Brydges is a League of Canadian Poets member, Ontario Poetry Society branch manager Cobalt, artistic director of Northern Ontario's Spring Pulse Poetry Festival, organizer of a painting/poetry competition called PoeARTry North. David is an event planner, cultural entrepreneur, and coordinator for the Wild West Poetry Festival adventure.
Joan Conway has made the Terrace area her home for the past 35 years. Her love for the culture and geography of this place strongly influences her work. She sees her poetry as an avenue to create social change, build community, and to celebrate life. You can find her recent work along with other poets North of 54 in our collective chapbooks.
Sherry Duggal is an actor, playwright, writer and poet. She has written and performed her work in India, UK and Canada. Sherry was featured as a writer/presenter at World Poetry, Poetic Justice, Pandora's Collective, Holy Wow poets, Writers International Network, Surrey Muse; and spoken word events throughout Vancouver. Sherry published her first book Beneath The Surface (Leadstart Publishing, India) and looks forward to releasing her second book soon.
A writer, ontological coach, and teacher, Harold Feddersen's poetry can be found in ten publications including his latest Haiku for My Father, and Water Worn ~ poems of transformation, the latter of which is with Writer's North of 54°.
The entertaining and often humorous poems of Ontario poet, Kathy Figueroa, can be found in a multitude of diverse places, including newspapers, magazines, dozens of anthologies, websites, blogs, and her five published books. She's currently the poetry editor for the Quinte Arts Council newspaper, "Umbrella."
Montreal-born, Edmonton-based poet Kathy Fisher has been performing her words for international audiences for over three decades. Her passion is marrying sonic elements in poetry with improvisational music or 'found sound' – be they recordings of northern lights, tracks from her oral history sound library, or arias from rediscovered opera divas. She recently served as mentor in the Writer's Guild of Alberta Borderlines program and is currently excavating and re-writing her LL.M. thesis as creative non-fiction.
Kate Marshall Flaherty's recent books, are "Stone Soup," Quattro Books, and "Reaching V," Guernica Editions. She's been published in journals such as CV2, Descant, Grain, Malahat Review and Vallum, was Shortlisted for Descant's Best Canadian Poem, the Pablo Neruda Poetry Prize and Robert Frost Poetry Prizes and guides StillPoint Writers' Retreats.
Norma Kerby is the Northern Area representative for the FBCWriters, Norma has had poetry published in journals/e-zines such as Room, Prism International, WorkWorks, Dreamland, filling Station, and Big Pond Rumours, as well as anthologies, including North Coast Collected, Language of Trees, The Rivers Speak, Skunk Cabbage, Snow Feathers, and Water Worn.
Born in Powell River, Sheila Peters moved inland to the mountains near Smithers 40 years ago. She married and raised two sons while working as a journalist, weaver, college instructor, environmental and human rights activist. Her writing has appeared in many Canadian literary journals as well as her six books.
My name is Roylin Joseph Picou. I was born in Lutcher, Louisiana on June 11 th 1963. I was raised in New Orleans and I've been living in Canada since April 4,1989. I'm a proud, father, Lover, only Son, friend, poet, songwriter, author, and musician. I AM always all ways.
DC Reid's 13th book, of poems, These Elegies, is scheduled for 2018. Two previous books were shortlisted in their separate years for the Dorothy Livesay Award, BC's highest prize for a book of poems. His most recent award is the 2016 national Roderick Haig-Brown Award for sustained environmental writing. Other writing areas include cutting-edge brain science, neuroplasticity of artistic creativity and his next memoir, A Man And His River, about being out in Canada's wilderness and fly fishing for The Ghosts of Summer, as summer steelhead are known (and a further book).
Pierrette Requier, was raised a bilingual child of les Grandes prairies canadiennes, and is a long-time resident of Edmonton. Her work as an arts advocate constantly brings her to new places, her poems come from some deep core of home in her, a rising up of words, of a rhythm, through the ears, like a heartbeat; a surging, like the Autumn wind scattering the leaves. Wherever she finds herself she plants her feet in the sustaining earth and absorbs. Aware that language is constantly evolving, thus lends itself to new artistic creations as a poet, performer, collaborator, producer and playwright, Pierrette Requier's deepest interest is in sharing the delight of La langue vivante, of authentic language shared. Pierrette believes that poetry is an inexhaustible resource and loves to partake part in transmitting the wealth.
Pierrette Requier est fille du vent et des vastes prairies de l'Ouest canadien, et femme de la ville. En s'engageant dans la réalisation et la production de maintes collaborations littéraires bilingues, et parfois multilingues et multi arts, Pierrette Requier a découvert que ce qui emballe c'est la langue vivante. Puisque la langue est toujours en émergence, elle se prête à la créativité, à l'invention de nouvelles formes qui incitent la rencontre avec l'Autre, un partage authentique et profondément intime.
Barbara Robin has always had a thing for Cowboys and the western lifestyle. Maybe it's because I was born in the year of the horse, according to the Chinese Zodiac. I took up writing and reciting Cowboy Poetry in the 1990's and recently self-published my first collection of true life stories and poems titled "I Should Have Married a Cowboy."
Writing poetry has been a strong interest of mine for the past fifteen years. Since moving to Canada 2 years ago I have enjoyed the vibrant poetry scene where I have read my poetry at multiple events including the PoeTrain, and have published poems in anthologies and periodicals.
Janet Vickers has two published books of poetry "Impermanence" (2012) and "Infinite Power" (2016) both by Ekstasis Editions. She lives on Gabriola Island with her husband, Tony.
Ella Zeltserman is a Soviet-born poet and a member of the Edmonton poetry community. Her first book small things left behind was published by University of Alberta Press and won Robert Kroetsch Poetry Award from Book Publishers Association of Alberta and The Betty Averbach Foundation Prize from Western Canada Jewish Book Awards. Her second book The Air is Elastic will be published by Turnstone Press in the spring of 2018.
Musician songwriters Anne Hurley and Jim Videto were the featured musicians in 2016 on the Alzheimer anthology Memory and Loss tour. They performed in a private 1920's rail car in Ajax, next night in Toronto and finally in their home town of Ottawa. What distinguished the tour was they created original songs from the anthology, performing them alongside the poetry readings. They were invited to the Spring Pulse Poetry Festival and once again composed original songs to the mining history of Cobalt and the legacy of its most famous poet Dr. William Henry Drummond. On this tour, they will perform original compositions to celebrate Canada's 150th plus birthday and a special song created from the poem by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle called "On the Athabaska Trail".