Biography
Ruth Roach Pierson is a poet who lives in Toronto. She has published four collections of vivid, thought-provoking poetry, including Aide-Mémoire, a finalist for the 2008 Governor General’s Literary Award for Poetry. The book’s themes reflect a lively mind that is fascinated by the unreliability of memory, by time and history, and by inheritance and loss. Pierson’s most recent book, Realignment, demonstrates, as one reviewer noted, “the mind’s capacity to interact with poetry (and with art in general) to illuminate even our darkest and most painful recollections.” Pierson, a historian and feminist scholar, started to publish poetry after she retired from academia. For thirty-one years she was a professor at Memorial University of Newfoundland and at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto.