Elizabeth Zetlin

Elizabeth Zetlin's previous publications include Said the River (Penumbra Press, 1995), Connections (Always Press, 1994), and Ghost of Glenelg (Always Press, 1995), all collaborations with visual artists. Her chapbook The Gourd Poems received the 1999 Canadian Poetry Association's Shaunt Basmajian Award. Her poetry has also received a Stephen Leacock Award (1998), and her first short story an honourable mention at the Eden Mills Writers' Festival.

In May 2001, CBC Radio's Ontario Today program broadcast the poems "My Sweet Love" and "Peonies," and hosted a "Gourd Word" contest. The winner, Tracy Shepherd, received a Zetlin poem inspired by her word, "milk," and an ornamental gourd with the winning word inscribed.

In addition to writing, Elizabeth works as a visual artist, creating installations such as ornamental gourds inscribed with images or words; hundreds of garlic cloves that mature into a word of prayer; and a life-sized birch bark cone inscribed with words of body and garden. Her current project is The Punctuation Field, both a manuscript and a meadow (featuring commas, parentheses, the @ symbol, a question mark, and the emoticon for irony).

Born and raised in Norfolk, Virginia, she now lives in Toronto and Traverston (near Markdale), Ontario.

The League of Canadian Poets

Back to Authors