Participants

From a student’s confrontation with a teenage streaker, to a company man’s complete undoing at his summer party, Michelle Brown’s Safe Words finds rich darkness in happy partnerships. A maiden name is “handed down / like a sweater”, a taxi ride “ends… at someone else’s life”. Played against a backdrop of pop culture, late-night swagger and vivid imaginary landscapes, Safe Words is the rare poetic debut that delivers passion and control, wielding humour and empathy in equal parts.

Michelle Brown’s poetry has been published in The Walrus, Malahat Review, Arc, CV2, Grain, Prism and The Puritan, amongst others. A runner-up for CV2’s Young Buck prize and the CBC poetry prize, Safe Words (Palimpsest Press, 2018) is her first full-length collection. She lives in Toronto with her husband and dog Bo, where she works as a copywriter and runs an online fabric store.