Sadiqa de Meijer
alfabet/alphabet: a memoir of a first language
This is a book that dreams of transforming migration, citizenship, families, nationhood and the very utterances upon which each is built. A deeply hopeful narrative about language itself, a singular exploration of the way that words build a home.
- GG assessment committee: Sarah de Leeuw, Amanda Leduc and Evelyn C. White
Alfabet/alphabet [is] so compelling because the book is simultaneously pulling us in two directions: it’s both cultural celebration and critique.
- Myra Bloom in The Walrus
The Outer Wards
There’s a razor alertness to these lines, a tracing of the breath in an existential instant.
- John Wall Barger, Event
It is, I think, the best collection I’ve ever read about domestic life and domestic labour related to child-raising (…) to being in and deeply observing a neighbourhood, and, extrapolating from that, being in a body, a city, a country, multiple countries, multiple histories, multiple languages...
– Kate Cayley, The Fiddlehead
Leaving Howe Island
Oolichan Books 2013
Finalist for the Governor General's Literary Award 2014
Finalist for the Pat Lowther Memorial Award 2014
Sadiqa's poetry is taut, spare, incredibly evocative...and unerringly sharp.
- Wayne Grady in The Whig Standard
Both tender and funny, the poems fulfill Octavio Paz’s demand of poetry - they ‘resurrect presences’.
- CBC Poetry Prize 2012 Jury (Julie Bruck, Dennis Lee and Patrick Lane)
poem in The Walrus May 2019
Finalist in the National Magazine Awards
included in Best of Canadian Poetry 2019 (Biblioasis)
Upcoming Readings and Events
Quirks of Human Nature Series
(poetry & improvised music)
Monday, April 15th, 2024 at 7:30pm
Royal Tavern 2.0, Kingston