Mixtapes

Mixtapes provide a playlist of poems for when you want to dive into a subject, idea, or theme. Don’t forget to check out the liner notes, where you’ll find the thought process behind each Mixtape as well as recommended readings if you want to go even deeper.

A woman with two braids looks out at the moon while blue flowers rise up beside her.

Ancestral Knowledge

Poetry carries with it our hearts, and in that, the hearts of our ancestors. When we write we bring to the page not just our own lives but all those…
A colorful digital rendering of a leaf.

Intergenerational Love

When we learn about Indigenous peoples across Turtle Island, we often hear about mistreatment, abuse, forced assimilation, and worse. While…
A woman looks out of a window of an abstract building

Big City Feelings

In “Big City Feelings,” I have curated a collection of poems that speak to the emotional tether that binds many of us to urban environments. In my…
A woman looks out while various images of nature are superimposed over her

The Wildness in Poetry

In “The Wildness in Poetry” I have curated a selection of poems that I feel showcase how poetry can use nature and animals as a means of exploring…
A young girl has her hair braided by her mother

The Stories Our Mothers Don't Tell Us

For most of us, our earliest human relationship is with our mothers, and for the first years of our lives it’s often the most intimate. And yet,…
a child stands within the internal world of a father

Fathers

In this mixtape you’ll encounter a multiplicity of fathers, from the noble and beloved to the troubled, damaged and downright dangerous—and their…
tarot cards are exchanged over a candle

Spell Casting Through Ritual

In our modern times, it’s fascinating to see where we still hold rituals in our lives, even in small quiet ways such as preparing morning coffee,…
A colonial European soldier shakes hands with an Indigenous person.

Treaty

Treaty was and is ultimately about making relatives of newcomers. Indigenous people will often ask people “where are you from?” This is to see if and…
a woman picks berries on the tundra while a golden spirit in traditional Inuk clothing sits beside her

Living Language and Culture

As a small messy haired child, I noticed that our language in my home community of Iqaluit was a mix of slapped together English and choppy Inuktitut…
a woman looking out a smiling face porthole

Humour Mixtape

I turn to humour for the pure joy of goofing around and burbling with laughter, for a moment of silly to lighten a mood or a day. And I turn to…
a sun rises over multiple lines

Poetry is the Power to Transcend

I hope you find something in this mixtape that carries you forward, lifts you up. Something you can put in your pocket and call on as a touchstone in…
a hand decorated with henna coming through a computer screen

Diaspora Voices

Over the years, when I’ve been asked where I come from, my answer has generally been a mouthful. To make a long story short, I identify as being…
Inside bright blue flowers are scenes of environmental devastation

Ecological crisis/grief/love

We live in a time that feels like a tipping point. Global temperatures rising, permafrost melting, ocean acidification—the Anthropocene is wreaking…
hands holding up colorful elastic bands, using resistance to imagine a brighter future

Poetry of Resistance

In "Poetry of Resistance" I have curated a selection of poems that I feel demonstrate the theme of resistance within contemporary poetry,…
a mixed gender person stands over a colourful background.

Rainbow Intimacies

I am glad to have put together "Rainbow Intimacies" for you. This is an anthology of 2SLGBTQQIA+ poets, who each spark within them a delicate…
Shame & Compassion

Shame & Compassion

Humans have understood how to use shame – and the fear of shame – as a method of social control for centuries. We understood how, by making people…

What Are You?

My parents tell me that when I was a kid, I introduced myself to my kindergarten teacher by saying “I’m half Chinese and half French, but I don’t…

Platforms and Sites

Papryrus scrolls or Facetime calls– what we used to communicate has changed, but the role of poetry has connected us for millennia. In fact, this…

The Road Ahead: Poems at the Crossroads

The poems in this anthology are about transitions, transformations, and trepidations. At the crossroads of big decisions, the speakers prepare…

Prairie Inclusivity

The prairies may seem a place for moving through, but it is home, real and imagined, for many writers. The combination of flat lands and epic sky…

Come Together

At the beginning of the pandemic this lady dropped her shopping bag in front of me. I went to help her pick her stuff up and realized: Oh yeah. I…

My Body, My House: Disability Poetics

I learned early on that my body was not like other bodies. I missed a lot of school, and I was always at the doctor’s office. Being sick put me on…
woman in a head wrap that has scenes of the Caribbean

Islands of Influence

Poets and poems have become my teachers, my guides. As a Canadian poet born to a Jamaican father and Barbadian mother, the poets who make up this…
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