In 2010, Poetry In Voice created a recitation contest for senior high school students. Since then, we’ve developed the best online resources for teaching poetry in grades 6 through 12. Like thousands of other teachers across Canada, you’ll find exactly what you need here to get your students fired up about reading, reciting, and writing poetry.
Lesson Plans
New ideas for your next poetry class
Poet In Class
Bring a poet into your classroom - for free!
Sabyasachi Nag
Mississauga, ON
Sabyasachi (Sachi) Nag is the author of a story cycle "Hands Like Trees" (Ronsdale Press, 2023), and three poetry collections, including Uncharted (Mansfield Press, 2021) and Could You Please, Please Stop Singing (Mosaic Press, 2015). His work has appeared in Anomaly, Black Fox Literary, Canadian Literature, Grain, The Antigonish Review, The Dalhousie Review, and The Windsor Review, among other places. An alumnus of the Banff Centre Literary Arts Program, Sachi holds creative writing certificates from the Writer’s Studio at Simon Fraser University and Humber College. He is currently an MFA Candidate at the University of British Columbia. He is grateful to have the opportunity to live with his wife and son in Mississauga which is part of the Treaty Lands and Territory of the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishinaabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee and the Wendat peoples and is now home to many diverse First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples. You can find him at sachiwrites.com.
Rhea Tregebov
Vancouver, BC
Rhea Tregebov’s eighth collection of poetry, Talking to Strangers, was published by Signal Editions, Vehicule Press in April 2024. Her poetry has received the Pat Lowther Memorial Award, The Malahat Review’s Long Poem Prize, Honorable Mention for the National Magazine Awards, and the Readers’ Choice Award for Poetry from Prairie Schooner. Her work is characterized by a strong poetic voice, intellectual honesty, and a compassionate engagement with the extraordinary lived experience of “ordinary” life. An early influence was Pablo Neruda: “And it was at that age … Poetry arrived/in search of me. […] there I was without a face/and it touched me.” (from “Poesía”). Tregebov is also the author of two novels, Rue des Rosiers and The Knife-Sharpener’s Bell, as well as five popular children’s picture books. Having retired from teaching in June 2017, she is now an Associate Professor Emerita in the School of Creative Writing at University of British Columbia.
Ashley Obscura
Montreal, QC
ASHLEY OBSCURA (she/her) is a Canadian-Mexican publisher, editor, and multi-disciplinary poet interested in the intersection of physical and virtual worlds. OBSCURA is the author of three poetry collections: SEXO POR ÚLTIMA VEZ (Socios Fundadores, 2022), AMBIENT TECHNOLOGY (Metatron, 2018) and I AM HERE (Metatron, 2014). Translations of her work have appeared in books and anthologies published in Argentina, Peru, Spain, Romania and Germany. Obscura has been anthologized as one of Canada’s best young poets (30 Under 30, In/Words Press, 2017), one of the most influential female poets in Quebec over the past 20 years (Anthologie de la poésie contemporaine des femmes au Québec, Éditions du remue-ménage, 2021), and named “one of the best poets in Quebec today” (Magazine Spirale, 2019). OBSCURA is the Founder and Managing Editor of METATRON PRESS (2016), an award-winning literary publisher that publishes experimental and cutting-edge contemporary poetry and fiction in unique pocketbook editions by debut authors. Metatron’s projects include literary books, The Metatron Prize for Rising Authors, the Metacösm podcast, physical and virtual events, and various digital publishing projects, including: the ÖMËGÄ blog; ÄLPHÄ magazine; video poems; micro poems; and GLYPHÖRIA (forthcoming, 2023), a new digital literary platform. She is also a co-founder of new media studio APOCABLYSS, where she works as a narrative scenographer, scriptwriter, and co-conceptualizer of experimental video games and digital environments, including work on OCEANARIUM (Apocablyss Studios, 2020), SONGS OF THE LOST (Manchester International Festival, 2019), and MUSEUM OF SYMMETRY (National Film Board of Canada, 2018). Museum of Symmetry won multiple awards including the Canadian Screen Award for Best Virtual Reality Game in 2019 for its excellence in digital storytelling. OBSCURA is an experienced coordinator, public speaker, and presenter. She has been commissioned to create work for Hazlitt, The National Film Board of Canada, Manchester International Festival, NewHive, curate for the Blue Met International Literary Festival, and present work at AWP, Festival Internacional de Poesía de Rosario, Remai Modern, Mutek, and several universities. Obscura's work and affiliated projects have been written about in the New Yorker, Dazed, Flare, Nylon, Pitchfork, Resident Advisor, and more. She is a member of the Writer’s Union of Canada. Recently, OBSCURA has helped establish INTERTEXT.E, a non-profit organization and center for new trajectories in publication, media and literary arts. She has also been active in and passionate about helping raise money for many human rights organizations and individuals in need of financial support, in Montreal and beyond. OBSCURA was born and raised on Treaty 6 Territory and the homeland of the Métis (Saskatoon), and has lived the past 16 years of her life in Tiohtiá:ke (Montréal) situated on the traditional territory of the Kanien'kehà:ka.
T.L. Murphy
Canmore, AB
Tim Murphy grew up in North Carolina and attended Eckerd College in St.Petersburg, Florida. He immigrated to Canada in 1978. He worked briefly as a journalist in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and began publishing poetry. In the 1980s he started a construction company, building many houses in Nova Scotia, then moved to Alberta in 1992 where he continued his constrution career until retiring in 2016. His poetry has appeared in a varitey of journals and anthologies and has been translated into Greek and Chinese. His chapbook Up Cape Fear was published in April, 2019 and is available through lulu.com. He is the current poet laureate of Canmore, Alberta.
Kirsteen MacLeod
Kingston, ON
I have a broad range of poetic interests and influences. I am never happier than when reading an international anthology of poems. I am an immigrant, a traveller, and I am fascinated by 'geographies' in the broadest sense -- physical places as well as imaginative terrain. My work is the writing of nature and place, whether physical landscapes, or inner spaces of body and mind. My abiding fascination with the writing of place stems from formative experiences of a "lost world”—Scotland, where my family lived until I was three—and a "transplanted world"—Canada. This conflict-generating displacement inspires my poetry. I am particularly influenced by Scottish poets (George Mackay Brown, Kathleen Jamie, Don Paterson), Canadian ones (Elizabeth Bishop, Sue Goyette, the Villanelles - my poetry group), as well as Ellen Bass from the US, the late Meena Alexander, and Lucille Clifton. My work has been a finalist for prizes including the Arc Poetry 'Poem of the Year' 2020 and The CBC Poetry Prize 2021. I live in Kingston, Ontario, was born in Glasgow, and count Brazil, India and a cabin in the north woods near Bancroft as among my most inspiring of places.
Ruth Daniell
Kelowna, BC
Ruth Daniell is a speech arts teacher, editor, award-winning writer, and the author of The Brightest Thing (Caitlin Press, 2019). Her work engages with fairy tales, feminism, the lived experience of the body, and the complexities of co-existing on a planet with other living beings. Recent work has appeared in Watch Your Head: Writers and Artists Respond to the Climate Crisis (Coach House Press, 2020), Resistance: Righteous Rage in the Age of #MeToo (University of Regina Press, 2021), Worth More Standing: Poets and Activists Pay Homage to Trees (Caitlin Press, 2022) and on BC’s city buses as part of Poetry in Transit. She holds a Bachelor of Arts (honours) in English literature and writing from the University of Victoria and a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from the University of British Columbia. She lives with her family in Kelowna, BC, where she is at work on a new collection of poems about birds, climate change, parenthood, fear, and joy.
Gavin Barrett
Toronto, ON
Gavin Barrett is a poet and the author of Understan, a new collection of poems published by Mawenzi House in June 2020. Understan is a CBC Books recommendation. Gavin was born in Bombay (now Mumbai), of Anglo-Indian and Goan East African parentage. He has a Bachelor’s degree in Economics from St. Xavier’s College, Bombay, and an M.A. in English Literature from Bombay University. After leaving Bombay, he lived in Hong Kong for several years before immigrating to Canada. In addition to Understan, Gavin’s poetry has been published in Ranjit Hoskote’s anthology of 14 contemporary Indian poets, Reasons for Belonging (Viking Penguin, India); the journal of Pen India; The Folio; The Independent; The Toronto Review of Contemporary Writing Abroad; and Poeisis — the journal of the Bombay Poetry Circle — he was a Poetry Circle member from its very first meeting. He is the founder, host and series co-curator of the Tartan Turban Secret Readings, a Toronto reading series that focuses on giving BIPOC writers a stage. He is a member of the Canadian Authors Association and sits on its Toronto branch Advisory Board. and is also a member of the League of Canadian Poets, PEN Canada and The Writers’ Union of Canada. Gavin is the co-founder of Barrett and Welsh, a visible-minority-led branding and advertising agency. A certified B Corporation® based in Toronto, the agency specializes in creating inclusion through communications. His commercial writing has been published in 35 countries, helped elect prime ministers, drew the ire of the lawyers for Dolly the cloned sheep, attracted an angry crowd in Lagos, has been studied in business texts in Canada and India and was critiqued by a fictional character in a John Irving novel.
Rayanne Haines
Edmonton, AB
Rayanne Haines (she/her) is a pushcart nominated poet and an award-winning hybrid author as well as a cultural producer of intersectional films, stage shows, and panels. In addition to hosting the literary podcast, Crow Reads, she recently completed a year as the 2022 Writer in Residence for the Metro Edmonton Federation of Libraries. Rayanne is currently an Assistant Professor in the Arts and Cultural Management Program at MacEwan University and is the President for the League of Canadian Poets. Rayanne has penned three poetry collections - The Stories in My Skin (2013), Stained with the Colours of Sunday Morning (Inanna, 2017), and Tell The Birds Your Body Is Not A Gun (Frontenac, 2021) which won the 2022 Stephan G. Stephansson, Alberta Literary Award for Poetry as well as being shortlisted for both the Robert Kroetsch Award for Poetry, and the National ReLit Award for Poetry. Her essay, This is Normal, published in Impact: Women Writing After Concussion (UofA Press), was shortlisted for the John Whyte Memorial Essay Alberta Literary Award. She is a 2019 Edmonton Artist Trust Fund Award recipient. A new hybrid collection of poetry and creative non-fiction is forthcoming in 2024. Rayanne Haines’s writing has appeared or will appear in The Globe and Mail, Grain Magazine, Minola Review, Fiddlehead, Prairie Fire, Impact: The Lives of Women After Concussion Anthology, Voicing Suicide Anthology, The Selkie Resiliency Anthology, Freefall, and Funicular among others. Rayanne was the Executive Director for the Edmonton Poetry Festival from 2012 to 2019 and in addition to Poetry in Voice has taught or mentored writers with the Writers Guild of Alberta, The Alexander Writers Centre, and the University of Alberta Extension. She was a previous WIR for Audreys Books. Rayanne holds a Masters of Arts Degree in Arts, Festival and Cultural Management from Queen Margaret University.
Phoebe Wang
Toronto, ON
Phoebe Wang (she/her) is a first-generation Chinese Canadian writer and educator. She is the author of two collections of poetry, Admission Requirements (McClelland & Stewart, 2017), which was nominated for the Trillium Book Award, and Waking Occupations, (McClelland & Stewart, 2022). She was the Writer-In-Residence at the University of New Brunswick in 2021-2022, and currently is a poetry editor with The Fiddlehead and Brick Books. She works at OCAD University as a Writing and Learning Consultant and mentors in the University of Toronto MA in Creative Writing program. Her work employs a lyric mode and is concerned with the interrelation of place, time and identity. She seeks to heal the rifts of colonization with language.
Conyer Clayton
Ottawa, ON
Conyer Clayton is a writer and editor who was born and raised in Louisville, Kentucky. They now happily call Ottawa home. They have a MA and BA in English and Creative Writing from the University of Louisville. Their most recent collection is But the sun, and the ships, and the fish, and the waves (Winner of the Archibald Lampman Award, A Feed Dog Book by Anvil Press, 2022), a collection of surrealist prose poetry. Their first book, We Shed Our Skin Like Dynamite (Guernica Editions, 2020), won the Ottawa Book Award and was a ReLit finalist. Their poetry, fiction, and nonfiction is published widely throughout Canada in journals and magazines like Room Magazine, THIS Magazine, filling station, Best Canadian Poetry 2023, Canthius, Arc Poetry Magazine, CV2, The Capilano Review, and others. Conyer works as a freelance editor and consultant, Senior Editor for Augur magazine, and at Perfect Books. Conyer's various writings vary greatly in style, but their often multi-genre work explores grief, disability, climate crisis, and gender-based violence through a surrealist lens. Their work on abortion was read at city council by then-poet-laureate of Fredericton, Jenna Lyn Albert, and garnered national attention to the role of the poet laureate when some council members claimed the poem was "too political." Our identities and experiences are always worthy of being written about and shared, and doing so is a form of activism that can help create meaningful change. Conyer's favourite writers include Mary Ruefle, Italo Calvino, Samantha Schweblin, Mariana Enriquez, Leonora Carrington, Carmen Maria Machado, Mikko Harvey, Kaveh Akbar, and Stuart Ross. But beyond words—lifting weights, bugs, toads, dancing, music, cows, squirrels, garlic, gardening, their family—all these things inspire them.
Steven Ross Smith
Victoria, BC
Steven Ross Smith was Banff Poet Laureate 2018-21. He is a poet, fiction writer, and arts journalist, currently living in Victoria. His latest poetry books are Emanations: Fluttertongue 6, published by Book*hug in 2015, and the collaborative chapbook "coda: fluttertongue 7" from JackPIne Press in 2021. He was awarded the Saskatchewan Book of the Year Award for his poetry book fluttertongue 3: disarray in 2005, and won the bpNichol Chapbook Award for Pliny’s Knickers in 2006. His work appears in journals, recordings, and videos in Canada, USA, and abroad. Smith was Director of Literary Arts at the Banff Centre (2008–2014) and Director of Sage Hill Writing Experience (1990–2008). His writing is published in Grain and CV2. Smith’s poetic work is known for its innovative challenges to poetic form, notably in the seven-book long poem sequence Fluttertongue, and in his past performances of sound poetry. His latest book is "Glimmer: Short Fictions" (Radiant Press, 2022). A new publication - "The Green Rose" - a poetic collaboration with Phil Hall, appeared in 2024 from above/ground press. He has presented in classrooms, and at festivals and readings locally and internationally. Smith's work can be seen on his website at fluttertongue.ca, in indie bookstores, and on YouTube, and info can be found on Wikipedia and Google. You might find him walking by the ocean or in the woods around Victoria BC where he now lives.
Cassidy McFadzean
Toronto, ON
Cassidy McFadzean was born in Regina, Saskatchewan, graduated with an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and now lives in Toronto. In 2015 she published Hacker Packer, which won two Saskatchewan Book Awards and was a finalist for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. Cassidy’s second collection Drolleries, a finalist for the Raymond Souster Award, was published in 2019. Her poems have appeared in magazines across Canada and the U.S., and she has been a finalist for the CBC Literary Awards and anthologized in The Best Canadian Poetry series. Her work is formally playful, often combining rhyme and pop culture allusions with references to classical mythology and the natural world to explore themes of gender roles, grief, and the metaphysical. Cassidy's third book Crying Dress is forthcoming from House of Anansi Press in April 2024.
Go Deeper
Use our website to engage your students!
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ReadLet your students browse the junior anthology for grades 6-8 and the senior anthology for grades 9-12 using Poem Roulette (search by theme, mood, or poet), the Random Poem, or the Poets page. Discover all kinds of content, including Mixtapes - poetic playlists that delve into a specific topic or theme.There’s truly something for everyone: our collection spans centuries and includes important contemporary Canadian voices, including Billy-Ray Belcourt, Emma Healey, and Canisia Lubrin. |
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ReciteVisit the RECITE section of our site to learn about how our Junior and Senior Recitation Competitions work. You’ll find all the tools you need to run a contest at the classroom and school levels. A Team Regional is a great local contest option too — contact us if you’re interested. |
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WriteStudents in grades 7-12 can submit their original poetry (inspired by the work of other poets) to our journal, VOICES/VOIX and to our monthly poetry prompt prize with chances to win prizes and take part in FutureVerse, an all-expenses paid poetry intensive. Get your students writing now with our writing prompts. |
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BingeScreen a few of our incredible recitation videos, take a quiz (there are no wrong answers!) or listen to an episode of our podcast, which features poets in conversation with the contest finalists who recited their work.
From all of us at Poetry In Voice, thank you for sharing the beauty and power of poetry with your students. |