Bruce Rice is the Saskatchewan Poet Laureate. He is a poet, editor, and essayist living in Regina. He was born in Fort St. John B.C. and grew up in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan.  Bruce attended Saint Thomas and Dalhousie universities, and did community development work in the Maritimes before returning to the West. His first poetry collection, Daniel, won the Canadian Author’s Association Award.  He writes about community, reclaiming the voices of those who live on the margins, and how we are transformed by landscape even as we leave our footprints on it.

 

Bruce's most recent collection,The Trouble With Beauty, moves from prairie to the North and back, and received the Saskatchewan Book Award for Poetry. His previous book, Life in the Canopy, is both a poet’s and an insider’s look at his city. It is part social critique, part elegy, and part homage to the urban forest, and was shortlisted for Saskatchewan Book of the Year. He has also been enjoying school visits with his children’s book, Dorothy McMoogle with Kumquat and Bugle, with wonderful illustrations by Wendy Winter.

 

Bruce was selected for Best Canadian Poems in English (Tightrope Books). He received The Malahat Review’s P. K. Page Founders Award for the best poem appearing in Malahat in 2013 and was shortlisted for Malahat's longpoem competition in 2017. His most recent work can be found in Arc Magazine, CV2, Event, Grain, and The Malahat Review.  

 

He has collaborated on several performances with poetry, photography, music, film, and dance. Bruce received the League of Canadian Poets’ Colleen Thibaudeau Award for his role in establishing the Mayor’s Poetry City Challenge, which for four years saw new and established local poets reading at local city council meetings across Canada during National Poetry Month.