Kama La Mackerel
Kama La Mackerel is a multilingual writer, visual artist, performer, educator, literary translator, and ritualist. Her interdisciplinary practice bridges insularity, oceanic memory, trans poetics, créolité, and decolonial ecologies, reclaiming dominant aesthetic and political spaces for queer and decolonial imagination. La Mackerel has translated numerous works of fiction and nonfiction, and was shortlisted for the Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBTQ2S+ Emerging Writers. She is the author of Indrazaal et la quête de l’océan and ZOM-FAM, and her creative practice is rooted in love, justice, and collective empowerment across artistic forms. La Mackerel lives in Montreal.
Writers & Books
Award History
2021 - Finalist
Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBTQ2S+ Emerging Writers
Jury Citation
“Kama La Mackerel’s poetry is a sensuous and fiercely political exploration of gender, familial love, and the intergenerational impacts of colonization. Their multilingual, lyrical poems entrance with hypnotic rhythm and tell a story that spans decades and borders. La Mackerel captures the power of connections maintained in spite of the blunt, relentless pain of distance. Wooing the reader with a carefully orchestrated, gentle lapping of words, they then jolt us with earned, splashy staccatos of euphoria.” — 2021 Dayne Ogilvie Prize jury (Daniel Allen Cox, Eva Crocker, and Danny Ramadan)Works Recognized by WT