Di Brandt has published five collections of poetry: Now You Care (Toronto:
Coach House, 2003), Jerusalem, beloved (Winnipeg: Turnstone, 1995), mother,
not mother (Toronto: Mercury, 1992), Agnes in the sky (Winnipeg: Turnstone,
1990), and questions i asked my mother (Winnipeg: Turnstone, 1987). She has
also published a critical study of contemporary Canadian women's texts, Wild
Mother Dancing: Maternal Narrative in Canadian Literature (Winnipeg:
University of Manitoba Press, 1993), and a collection of creative essays on
cross-cultural poetics, Dancing Naked: Narrative Strategies for Writing
Across Centuries (Toronto: Mercury, 1996). She also recently released
Awakenings, a collaborative poetry/music CD with Dorothy Livesay
(posthumously), Carol Ann Weaver, and Rebecca Campbell
(caweaver@uwaterloo.ca, 2003).
She has received the Canadian Authors' Association National Poetry Award,
the McNally Robinson Award for Manitoba Book of the Year, and the Gerald
Lampert Award, and has been twice shortlisted for the Governor General's
Award for Poetry, as well as the Dillons Commonwealth Poetry Prize. Di
Brandt is a former poetry editor of Prairie Fire Magazine and Contemporary
Verse 2.
Her poetry has been set to music, and adapted for theatre, CD, film, video,
radio, television, multimedia performance, and dance. She is currently
writing "Berlin Notes," based on a six month sabbatical visit to that city
(the first chapter was a cover feature in Prairie Fire Fall 2003), and
co-editing two volumes of proceedings from the conference/festival, Wider
Boundaries of Daring: The Modernist Impulse in Canadian Women's Poetry
(University of Windsor, 2001), with Barbara Godard, of York University. She
is also co-producing "Planet Earth", a musical CD featuring settings of
Canadian women's poetry by well known composers like Violet Archer, Barbara
Pentland, Chester Duncan, Jana Skarecky, Paul McIntyre, and others
(performed, commissioned for, and premiered at the Wider Boundaries
conference/festival), together with Barbara Godard, Jana Skarecky, and
Brenda Muller. Her poetry suite, Sweet Sweet Blood will be premiered at the
Sounding in the Land music conference at the University of Waterloo in May
2004.
PUBLICATIONS:
Now You Care. Toronto: Coach House Books, 2004.
Dancing Naked: Narrative Strategies for Writing Across Centuries. Stratford, ON: Mercury Press, 1996.
