Rae Marie Taylor
Biography
Quebec poet Rae Marie Taylor’s bilingual work Steady. Against the Absurd. Kinship at the Core won the American Book Fest’s 2025 International Book Award in the poetry-narration category. Earlier, her book of essays, The Land: Our Gift and Wild Hope, was finalist for the New Mexico-Arizona Book Awards. On stage as a Spoken Word artist, she has authored and produced seven solo bilingual shows with beloved musicians in Montreal and Quebec, as well as Black Grace, a CD of her poetry with multi-instrumentalist David Gossage. In both cities, she performs with colleagues in various venues, among which: Casa del Popolo, La Palabrava, LOGOS, La Maison de la littérature, and on Zoom with Fixed & Free Quarterly and Poetry Playhouse. Concerned with the earth and the spiritual health of our contemporary lives, Rae Marie bridges borders, living and writing in Quebec while staying active in her literary community in the American Southwest.
Micro-interview
Yes, we read and recited poetry in high school, including Sandburg's "Fog," and Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," which was intense to perform, but it was Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven" that thrilled me.
I wrote regularly during my undergraduate studies, alone and with friends with our guitars, but it wasn't until several years later once established as a visual artist that I recognized that the poems that came while I was painting were alive and worthwhile. However, it was a bout with cancer at 30 years of age that thrust me into being a committed poet.
A poet's job is first and foremost to use the language honestly to express what she/he/they see, feel, and understand.
