About the Author

Camille Martin is the author three collections of poetry: Sonnets , Codes of Public Sleep , and Sesame Kiosk (out of print). Steeped in lyric traditions and influenced by her training as a pianist, her poetry is known for its meditative and musical qualities. Yet it also restlessly questions the assumptions of traditional lyricism, form, and narrative.

Of Sonnets, Rae Armantrout observes that “in some ways, these poems are almost traditional," yet "in these taut, fast-paced, self-aware poems, the lyric meets 21st-century paranoia and sparks fly.” Carol Dorf writes that Martin creates “a world where science and myth intersect,” a “world of a mind reflecting on itself, the natural and built environments, time, and language.” And Jordan Scott speaks of “the magnificence in these poems, a poetic magnetic, propelling you to turn the page.”

She has presented and published her work internationally. Last year, her tour to promote Sonnets, funded by the Canada Council for the Arts, brought her to several cities in Canada as well as venues in the United Kingdom, Ireland, and France. Her poetry has been published in Canada, the United States, Australia, the United Kingdom, Italy, Germany, and Argentina, and translated into German and Spanish. It has garnered major grants from the Ontario Arts Council (for Sonnets) and from the Toronto Arts Council (for “Looms,” a work currently under submission).

One of her current poetry projects is “Looms,” a collection of layered narratives. She is also working on “The Evangeline Papers,” a poetic sequence based on her Acadian/Cajun heritage and her participation in archaeological digs at an eighteenth-century village in Nova Scotia, where her finds included ancestral pipes and wine bottles.

Martin earned an MFA in Poetry from the University of New Orleans and a PhD in English from Louisiana State University.

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