Congratulations to Sadiqa de Meijer, appointed the City of Kingston’s fourth Poet Laureate! This honorary four-year term position celebrates the contribution of poetry and literary arts to life in Kingston.
"As someone who was born in Amsterdam to a Dutch-Kenyan-Pakistani-Afghani family and moved to Canada as a child — “I’m foreign, and she is home” — she offers a unique perspective on the city that resonates with those new to this city or country. Sadiqa’s voice, as a woman, a mother, and migrant to Kingston, brings a diverse and inclusive voice to the role of Poet Laureate." - City of Kingston
Learn more about the Poet Laureate program and read past Poet Laureates' work on the City of Kingston website.
alfabet/alphabet by Sadiqa de Meijer
Exploring questions of identity, landscape, family, and translation, these essays navigate the shifting cultural currents of language with an eclectic approach to storytelling.
Leaving Howe Island by Sadiqa de Meijer
What does it mean to be a neighbour, to experience love, to anticipate global warming while raising a child? De Meijer's answers are anecdotal, ekphrasic, incantatory, unsettling and funny, but always profoundly attentive to craft.
The Outer Wards by Sadiqa de Meijer
"I was awake. / The hour was wrong," de Meijer writes, and her poems track, in visceral and tender detail, the distraction, exhaustion, exhilaration, and fear of child-rearing through crisis.
