Photo credit
Joanne Gervais

Biography

NIKKI REIMER (she/her/they/them) is a multimedia artist and writer, and chronically ill neurodivergent prairie settler currently living in Calgary / Mohkinstsis. She has been involved with art and writing communities, primarily in Calgary and Vancouver, for over 20 years. They are the author of three books of poetry and multiple essays on grief. GRIEFWAVE, a multimedia, web-based, extended elegy, was published in February 2022. Frequent themes are feminism, the body, the Anthropocene, late capitalism, death, grief, loss, and animal subjectivity.

Reimer explores capitalist detritus and its impact on bodies in [sic] (Frontenac House 2010) and DOWNVERSE (Talon Books 2014). The labour of grieving is worked through My Heart is a Rose Manhattan (Talon Books 2019).

Poetry, non-fiction writing, collaborative interdisciplinary performance and artworks have appeared in print, digital form and meatspace via stages, billboards, public art exhibits, poem-plays, magazines, journals and anthologies, most recently Watch Your Head: Writers & Editors Respond to the Climate Crisis (Coach House 2020) and Locations of Grief: an emotional geography (Wolsak and Wynn 2020).

 

Micro-interview

Did you read poetry when you were in high school? Is there a particular poem that you loved when you were a teenager?


I read poetry in high school, and used to inscribe my favourite song lyrics in my exercise books, and one particularly punk pair of jeans. My very favourite poem from late adolescence is Frank O’Hara’s “Song (Is it Dirty),” which made it’s way into my first book of poetry as an epigraph. O'Hara's tone is both exulting and blunt, poetic, but anti-whimsical. "That's not a thought, that's soot." The city is dirty, and we love it.

When did you first start writing poetry? And then when did you start thinking of yourself as a poet?


I’ve been writing poetry since I was a child, and started thinking of myself as a poet when I was in high school.

What do you think a poet’s “job” is?


A poet’s job is to challenge mainstream culture’s definition of the world, to explore the world as they see it, and to define new possible worlds.

If you had to choose one poem to memorize from our anthology, which one would it be?


“Trust Fund Witches” by Emma Healey. I love the assonance, alliteration, sensual glittery imagery. The scene Healey weaves is as gritty as O'Hara's odes to New York, but Healey reminds us about the capital that underpins bohemian luxury. These witches have "glittering auras," they're fashionably lo-fi, but with wealth that allows them to move through walls. Who belongs? Who owns? Who stays?

Publications

Title
My Heart is a Rose Manhattan
Publisher
Talonbooks
Date
2019
Publication type
Book
Title
DOWNVERSE
Publisher
Talonbooks
Date
2014
Publication type
Book
Title
[sic]
Publisher
Frontenac House
Date
2010
Publication type
Book
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