Bio

Cornelia Hoogland’s “Trailer Park Elegy,” (Harbour, 2017), a book-length long poem, is her 7th book. Two previous books were on the Relit 2011 National Poetry Award; “Woods Wolf Girl” (Wolsak and Wynn), was a finalist. “Sea Level,” short-listed for the CBC Nonfiction Awards, was published as a poem (Baseline Press, 2012). Recent wins include 1st place in Freefall Magazine, and placements in Calgary Spoken Word Society’s “Canada 150 Poetry,” The New Quarterly’s “Nick Blatchford,” Pulp Literature, and Room’s “Short Forms” competitions. Cornelia Hoogland grew up on Canada's west coast, and after many years of living in cities across Canada, has returned home. Gravelly Bay and You Are Home speak to Hoogland’s sense of home––both ocean and woods imagery occurs in her books. Her sustained examination of the coastal rain forest in Woods Wolf Girl (Wolsak and Wynn, 2011), gives her treatment of the fairy tale, Red Riding Hood, a particular cast of mind. The Grimm tale is also the source of her play, Faim de Loup (Hungry Wolf), shortlisted for production at the Women Playwrights International in Sweden in August 2012, and given a full production (titled RED, by Fountainhead Theatre in London, Ontario, in 2013, John Gerry directing. Crow (Black Moss Press, 2011), celebrates the ‘wolf-bird’ who has accompanied her many homes across the nation, and was on the longlist for the Relit 2011 National Poetry Award. Hoogland founded and was the artistic director of Poetry London (www.poetrylondon.ca) from 2004-2012, she now directs Poetry* Hornby Island, on the gulf island where she lives with her husband Ted Goodden, a visual artist, and their dog, Drummer.

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The Comox Valley is Where I'm From

I am from the Puntledge River. From its current, its fish. Water courses through my valley; water and salmon its bloodstream; shoals and channels that change with a forty-foot tide. 

I’m from Courtenay, Cumberland; the Comox Glacier, Forbidden Plateau; Goose Spit; Royston; Buckley, Fanny, and Deep Bays; I’m from the islands–Denman and Hornby; from Highways 19 and 19a; the Strait Of Georgia; from Circlet Lake; and in the distance, the Beaufort Range. I’m from the Salish Sea. 

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