HANNAH ADELINE GARDINER

I'm a writer and cultural organizer from Kitchener, Ontario. My writing and criticism have appeared and are forthcoming in various Canadian literary magazines and journals. With support from Canada Council for the Arts and the Region of Waterloo Arts Fund, I am currently developing my first book. 

I'm primarily interested in how meaning is made from layers of subjective experience, and am drawn to forms — namely, the lyric essay, literary criticism, and poetry — that give me ways to study and express that. As a child, I often wrote about earthly things at the edge of mystery, like belugas and clouds and dreams. At the moment, my writing seems to circle around certain memories and moods, especially those that broach the unsaid (the profane, taboo, and subtext) or just my usual and endless longing. I expect that, with time, this, too, will change.

I have a master's degree in literary studies from the University of Waterloo, where I studied the ekphrastic poetics of Anne Carson and later worked as a research assistant to help develop a relational bibliography of Carson's body of work. I also spent several years working as a research assistant on a SSHRC-funded medieval badges project, which might contextualize occasional references to pilgrims and saints in my work. (That I have spent considerable time in Germany, Taiwan, and France sometimes comes up too.) As a cultural organizer, I have directed independent and collaborative community projects, ranging from lectures to film screenings to one beloved giraffe parade. I am grateful these projects have received support from both public and private funders. 

Photograph by Phi Doan Photography.