Laurie D. Graham grew up in Treaty 6 territory (Sherwood Park, Alberta). She currently lives in Nogojiwanong, in the territory of the Mississauga Anishinaabeg (Peterborough, Ontario), where she is a writer, an editor, and the publisher of Brick magazine. Her first book, Rove, was shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award for best first book of poetry in Canada. Her second book, Settler Education, was a finalist for the Trillium Book Award for Poetry. Most recently, her third collection, Fast Commute, was a finalist for the Trillium Book Award for Poetry. Her work has been shortlisted for the CBC Poetry Prize, won the Thomas Morton Poetry Prize, and appeared in the Best Canadian Poetry anthology. Laurie's maternal family comes from around Derwent, Alberta, by way of Ukraine and Poland, and her paternal family comes from around Semans, Saskatchewan, by way of Northern Ireland and Scotland. She has about a century of history in Canada.
Praise for Laurie D. Graham and Fast Commute
“[A]n urgent lament for all we are losing. [Fast Commute] is both
an attempt to speak with clarity to the unspeakable, and a
realistic look at what settler life is continuing to wreak upon our
world. It is a collection of poetry that deeply engages the reader
in a vital exploration of the destruction of the environment, while
at the same time forging startling new language to honor the very
landscape under threat. ”—Trillium Award, Jury Citation
“Fast Commute is an inventory, a checklist of damages. The book
describes the honest face of our culture’s ‘myth of unlimited
growth’ and catalogues the scars and desecrations all around
us—from strip malls to oil refineries (with their ‘manufactured
cloud formations’) to residential schools. Yet in the middle of
these lists and all this damage are glimpses of something real,
even sacred.'” —Alberta Views
"The incantatory verses in Fast Commute cast a circle of heightened
attention, in which it is safe to confront all that we avoid in our
distracted lives. It is made of scenes and fragments that at first
throb with alienation and grief for all we have done to harm the
more-than-human world, until the steady accretion of images and
language conjures a spell calling us to right relationship and
protecting us from the acedia that comes with living in colonized
landscapes. Those who are comfortable in the world, will be
disturbed by these verses; those already disturbed will take
comfort in them." --Trevor Herriot, author of Islands of Grass
“Graham has set herself a vital moral task: actually to see the
fantastic violence of resourcist culture, its appalling and
unremitting abuse of the land, and to name the cultural forces that
render that vast degradation almost invisible, reduce it to a blur
on the edge of our fast commute. She has produced a work of
unflinching, articulate witness. A keening, at once precise and
profound.” —Jan Zwicky
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