Ali Blythe

Ali Blythe is author of critically acclaimed poetry collections that explore trans-poetics.

He is winner of the Vallum Award for Poetry, twice finalist for the Dorothy Livesay BC Book Award and recipient of an honour of distinction from the Writers Trust of Canada for emerging LGBTQ writers.

Blythe’s poems and essays are published in national and international literary journals and anthologies, including The Broadview Introduction to Literature, Best Canadian Essays and Best Canadian Poetry.

Blythe has held roles as a guest editor for special editions of literary magazines including The League of Canadian Poets, Arc Magazine and Malahat Review, and as editor-in-chief for the Claremont Review, an international literary magazine for youth.

SELECT HYMNSWITCH REVIEWS:

"Blythe brings a mastery of precision and cadence to bear in creating poems that pulse with emotion, complexity and vulnerability — CBC spring preview

"With incredible economy of language and dialectical drama at the levels of sentence and caesura, Blythe delivers taut yet expansive hymns from 'the golden-throated era / of the hormone' — Quill & Quire starred review

"Blythe’s sense of orchestration is on fullest display…. It’s exciting to see a writer so conscious of building a body of work within and across collections, pursuing not just a set of ideas and concerns but an artistic vision — The Puritan

"Hymnswitch...makes an important contribution to the field of trans poetics — Canadian Literature

SELECT TWOISM REVIEWS:

"Blythe's stark, deft poems build a spectacular debut — Winnipeg Free Press

"Stunning and true — CBC

"perhaps incurring the most dog-eared pages ever — The Puritan

"His poetry is a potent form of touch — The Bull Calf

"intelligent and charming, jangly and jarring, moody, dreamy and a little bit deadly — herizons Magazine

"At the heart of Ali Blythe’s courageous debut collection is a bruising search for identity — The Malahat Review