Dionne Brand

Dionne Brand (born January 7, 1953) is a Canadian poet, novelist, essayist and documentarian. She was Toronto's third Poet Laureate from September 2009 to November 2012.

Dionne Brand was born in Guayaguayare, Trinidad and Tobago. She graduated from Naparima Girls' High School in 1970, and emigrated to Canada to attend the University of Toronto, where she earned a BA in 1975. Brand later attained an MA (1989) from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE).

Brand has held a number of academic positions, including:

Brand explores themes of gender, race, sexuality and feminism, white male domination, injustices and "the moral hypocrisies of Canada" Despite being often characterized as a Caribbean writer, Brand identifies as a "black Canadian".

She has contributed to many anthologies opposing the violent killings of Black men and women, the massacre of 14 women in Montreal, and racism and inequality as experienced by Aboriginal women of Canada, particularly Helen Betty Osborne's death in the Pas.

Rinaldo Walcott in his book Black Like Who? includes two essays ("'A Tough Geography': Towards a Poetics of Black Space(s) in Canada" and "'No Language is Neutral': The Politics of Performativity in M. Nourbese Philip's and Dionne Brand's Poetry") on Brand's poetry and the principal themes of her work. (Brand herself had previously used a line from Derek Walcott to title her collection No Language is Neutral, in which she "uses language to disturb" in poetry containing biographic meaning ancestral references.) Brand believes that "by addressing real power can we begin to deal with racism", by participating in economic and political power.

In Rivers Have Sources, Trees Have Roots (1986), Brand and co-author Krisantha Sri Bhaggiyadatta interviewed a hundred people from the Canadian Native, Black, Chinese, and South Asian communities about their perceptions of racism and its impact on their lives. The authors critiqued the existence and ubiquity of racism, disparities and resistance, arguing that two themes exist where racism prevails in their interviewees' lives: through "the culture of racism" and through structural and institutional ways.

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