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Bio

 

Barbara works at the Dundas Public Library and is a Hamilton-based emerging writer and poet. She was mentored by Canadian poet Jaclyn Desforges through the Writer-in-Residence program at McMaster University and was invited to read at Jaclyn’s finale party in April 2024. She continued to work with Jaclyn in her Poem Garden class the fall semester of 2024.

She has a short personal essay published with Canadian Running Magazine in their January-February 2023 issue. She has poetry published with Tower Society Poetry, Poetry Pause through The League of Canadian Poets, and most recently, she will have a poem published in issue seven of The Journal of Undiscovered Poets. She holds an honourable mention for poetry for the Short Works Prize in 2023 through Hamilton Arts & Letters and Hamilton Public Library.

 

Trigger Warning

When I fall up the front steps
layers of skin scrape off,
forearms still hold fast
to parcels I won’t even remember
later on.

I slam hard.

The retaining wall catches me with splinters.
And for one whole week,
when I raise my arms to speak,
(or just to lift books to the shelves),
people will ask in a concerned way,
Oh, what happened?
And gasp and laugh and recognize
the story as if it were their own.

At the end of the week,
there is no more asking,
only two faint pink lines,
like eyes that
look out of the wound,
tiny bumps
I will run my fingers over
again, and again,
when thinking.

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