University of Manitoba - Centre for Creative Writing and Oral Culture - Alison Calder
Alison Calder
     

Alison Calder’s first poetry collection, Wolf Tree, won two Manitoba Book Awards and was a finalist for the both the Pat Lowther Award and the Gerald Lampert Award.  Her second collection, In the Tiger Park, was a finalist for the Lansdowne Poetry Prize.  Her third collection, Connectomics, came out with IRON Press in the UK in 2017.  She has also published two limited-edition chapbooks with Saskatoon’s JackPine Press:  Connectomics and Ghost Works:  Improvisations in Letters and Poems

Alison is the editor of Desire Never Leaves:  The Poetry of Tim Lilburn, and of critical editions of Settlers of the Marsh and Over Prairie Trails, both by Frederick Philip Grove.  She co-edited History, Literature, and the Writing of the Canadian Prairies.  She’s been a poetry reviewer for the Winnipeg Free Press and served as poetry editor for CV2.  She has read from her work across Canada and in the United States, France, Germany, and China. 

Click HERE to listen to a reading by Alison.

From the author
One of the things that I'm very interested in is the process of definition – who's in, who's out, what terms are being used to describe a situation. Some of my poems, like the "freak" ones, deal with these issues in explicit terms. Other poems, more domestic ones, may deal with this question more obliquely. In a related way, I'm fascinated by the way that language carries political power, disenfranchising some voices while coercing support of others.  Many of my poems treat these issues, either between people or between humans and the worlds (natural and created) around us.

To contact Alison or to learn more about her, please click here.