Canadian feminist poet, critic, and academic known for Jerusalem, beloved; questions i asked my mother; So this is the world & here I am in it, and other works. Her works were shortlisted for such honors as the Trillium Prize and the Griffin Poetry Prize.
She graduated from both the University of Manitoba and the University of Toronto and subsequently taught at the University of Windsor and Brandon University.
Many of her poems, including those in the collection Sweet, Sweet Blood, were set to music.
She grew up in a Canadian Mennonite community with a fraternal twin sister and two other siblings. She and her artist husband, Les Brandt, had two children.
She and her literary contemporary, Anne Carson, were both born in Canada.