Laisha
Rosnau
Laisha Rosnau is a poet and novelist. She is the author of two novels and four collections of poetry: Our Familiar Hunger, Pluck, Lousy Explorers, and Notes on Leaving. Rosnau is the recipient of the Dorothy Livesay Award, the Kobzar Book Award, and the 2023 Latner Griffin Writers’ Trust Poetry Prize. She is the executive director of Caetani Cultural Centre and she and her family are resident caretakers of Bishop Wild Bird Sanctuary. Rosnau lives in the suknaqinx region of the unceded traditional territory of the syilx people of Okanagan Nation (Coldstream, British Columbia).
Award History
2023 Winner
Latner Griffin Writers’ Trust Poetry PrizeJury Citation
With incisive descriptions, steady rhythms, and imaginative leaps, Laisha Rosnau’s work shows us the flaws and fragility of being human. Her expansive body of work addresses personal and global issues in language sometimes woven delicately, and other times with necessary force. Ultimately, we are left with the desire to read more from this striking and intelligent poetic voice. The poet takes on themes of immigration, patriarchy, colonial greed, and war; the poet’s body of work to date is unrelenting in its portrayals, but not without depth and complexity. Lines like: “We live in a world saturated by symbolism. Sometimes it is best to be direct” remind us of the power of poetry to be clear-eyed and insistent on the injustices and atrocities of our past, which are still with us in the present moment.
