Books

Palimpsest Press 2025

Palimpsest Press 2020

Winner of the Governor General’s Award in English Non-Fiction 2021

“Language as the mother of bond and breach is beautifully storied in Sadiqa de Meijer’s poignant and provocative memoir, alfabet/alphabet. This is a book that dreams of transforming migration, citizenship, families, nationhood and the very utterances upon which each is built.

knife fork book 2025

chapbook edition of the 2024 Page Lecture

“I loved the reflections on (…) how the material of writing–whether one is writing on clay or palm fronds, on a vertical or horizontal surface–will determine how the language comes to be written down.”

—Ken Wilson, Reading and Walking (2025)

Oolichan Books 2013

Finalist for the Governor General’s Award in English Poetry 2014

Shortlisted for the Pat Lowther Award

“Sadiqa’s poetry is taut, spare, incredibly evocative… and unerringly sharp.”

—Wayne Grady, Kingston Whig-Standard (2013)

“A voice of authority and grace.”

—Michael Crummey (2013)

Vehicule Press 2020

Shortlisted for the Raymond Souster Award

Longlisted for the Pat Lowther Award

“It is, I think, the best collection I’ve ever read about domestic life and domestic labour related to child-raising, to being with children, 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, Reading Recommendations, The Fiddlehead (2021)

“De Meijer’s take on motherhood in this collection is richly illuminating, particularly with its humanizing insight into how illness complicates the myriad roles one holds in life.”

—Melanie Power, Prairie Fire (2020)

“There is, I realised early on, the very eerie sense in these pages that de Meijer is somehow reporting from the future, having already endured the information fog and the self-isolation that the rest of us are living through now. Read that way they become, in a quiet way, an instruction guide. It is as if we have been gifted a manual of solace.”

—Mark Sinnett, Machines For Living In (2020)