Gary Barwin and I began co-writing poems during the pandemic. We had met only briefly in real life but developed a collaborative practice quickly based on the concept we call “triangle poems”—poems sparked by each of us writing to the same three ideas/images/words. We trade poems, edit them separately, then edit them together. Some of our collaborations become visual and/or audio pieces. We are at work on a full-length collection of page poems.
We’ve published poems in Miracle Monacle and The Goose.
Our chapbook, WATCHER, from Timglaset Editions in Sweden is available here and images from it will be part of a visual art exhibit at Massy Arts Society in Vancouver in fall 2024.
Gary Barwin is a writer, composer, and multidisciplinary artist and the author of 26 books including Nothing the Same, Everything Haunted: The Ballad of Motl the Cowboy which won the Canadian Jewish Literary Award and Bird Arsonist (with Tom Prime) His national bestselling novel Yiddish for Pirates won the Leacock Medal for Humour and the Canadian Jewish Literary Award, was a finalist for the Governor General’s Award for Fiction and the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and was long listed for Canada Reads.
His interactive writing installation using old typewriters and guitar processors was featured during 2016-2017 at the Art Gallery of Hamilton. Forthcoming books include, The Most Charming Creatures (ECW Press, Fall 2022), The Fabulous Op, with Gregory Betts (Beir Bua, 2022) and Duck Eats Yeast, Quacks, Explodes; Man Loses Eye, with Lillian Nećakov (Guernica, Spring 2023.)
A finalist for the National Magazine Awards (Poetry), he is four-time recipient of Hamilton Book of the Year, has also received the Hamilton Arts Award for Literature and has co-won the bpNichol Chapbook Award and the K.M. Hunter Arts Award. He was one of the judges for the 2017 CBC Poetry Prize.
A PhD in music composition, Barwin has been Writer-in-Residence at University of Toronto (Scarborough), Laurier, Western University, McMaster University and the Hamilton Public Library, Hillfield Strathallan College, Sheridan College and Young Voices E-Writer-in-Residence at the Toronto Public Library. He has taught creative writing at a number of colleges and universities, to at-risk youth in Hamilton through the ArtForms program and currently mentors through the Vancouver Manuscript Intensive. His writing has been published in hundreds of magazine and journals internationally—from Readers Digest to Granta and Poetry to the Walrus—and his writing, music, media works and visuals have been presented and broadcast internationally. Though born in Northern Ireland to South African parents of Ashenazi descent, Barwin lives in Hamilton, Ontario. He is married with three adult children and lives in Hamilton, Ontario and has never been Governor of Louisiana. garybarwin.com