Natasha Ramoutar is an Indo-Guyanese writer and editor now living in the Scarborough region of Toronto. She is the Social Media Assistant at the Festival of Literary Diversity (FOLD). Ramoutar earned a Master of Professional Communication from Toronto Metropolitan University.
Poetry
Bittersweet
Toronto: Mawenzi House, 2020.
ordered
Publisher’s Synopsis (From its website)
Ma misses the sun, warmth and colors of their faraway homeland, but her daughter sees magic in everything — the clouds in the winter sky, the “firework” display when she throws an armful of snow into the air, making snow angels, tasting snowflakes. And in the end, her joy is contagious. Home is where family is, after all.
Bittersweet is an exciting, accomplished collection of poems evoking both a reconstructed homeland and Scarborough (Ontario). Using memory—intimate as well as collective—prompted by photographs, maps, language, and folklore, Ramoutar meditates on themes of obscured and suppressed history, time, and liminality. Her poems journey from home to home to home, from Toronto to Guyana to South Asia; and Scarborough remains omnipresent, with a mix of identities and a strong, active, and boisterous youthful presence.
Awards and Honours
2021 Gerald Lampert Memorial Award (Finalist)