About

Bertrand Bickersteth is a poet, playwright, essayist and educator who was born in Sierra Leone and raised in Alberta. His collection of poetry, The Response of Weeds, was a finalist for multiple awards and won the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award, the Stephan G. Stephansson Award for Poetry, the 2021 High Plains Book Award in the category of First Book, and the Eighth Annual Fred Cogswell Award for Excellence in Poetry. His writing has appeared in many places including Geist, Prairie Fire, The Walrus, The Sprawl, the CBC project Black on the Prairies, and two editions of Biblioasis’s Best in Canadian Poetry: 2023 & 2025. He is currently working on a collection of poems highlighting the history of Black cowboys in western Canada. He lives in Moh’kins'tsis (Calgary), teaches at Olds College, and writes about Black identity on the Prairies.