Jónína Kirton is a Red River Métis/Icelandic poet. Born in Portage la Prairie, Manitoba she currently lives in the unceded territory of the Musqueam, Sḵwxwú7mesh, and Tsleil-Waututh.
She received the 2016 Vancouver’s Mayor’s Arts Award for an Emerging Artist in the Literary Arts category. She was sixty when she published her first collection of poetry with Talonbooks in 2015. Much to her delight, page as bone ~ ink as blood, has received some critical acclaim.
Two years later she brought us her second collection, An Honest Woman, again with Talonbooks. The book was a finalist in the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. Betsy Warland had this to say about An Honest Woman: “Kirton picks over how she was raised familially and culturally like a crime scene.” Apparently, all that dreaming about being a Nancy Drew when she grew up did come to fruition. Just not the way she thought it would as a child.
Jónína will be lending her poem, untethered, to be interpreted and illustrated by Jan Castillo for #walltowallwpg 2018!
- Adams Brothers Automotive, 343 Sherbrook St.