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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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Finalist in the National Magazine Awards
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included in Best of Canadian Poetry 2019 (Biblioasis)
Upcoming Readings and Events
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Steven Heighton Happening
with Kaie Kellough, Jason Heroux, Armand Garnet Ruffo,
Mary Averling
Kingston WritersFest
Saturday September 28th
9:00pm - 10:30pm
The Mansion
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drift / line
Reading and Music Series
Sunday October 6th
7:00pm
Musiiki
Kingston
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