Pujita Verma is an award-winning poet and illustrator with Indo-Canadian ancestry living in London, Ontario. Verma was Mississauga’s second Youth Poet Laureate from 2018-2020. She earned a BA with an Honours Specialization in Political Science and a Post-Degree Diploma in Public Relations from Western University.
Poetry
Precedence: Poems
Picton, Ont.: Brick Books, 2026.
Publisher’s Synopsis (From its website)
Grounded in a recent legal case that crosses borders, Precedence offers an intimate and stunningly poised insight into a young woman’s experience leaving home and facing her father in a Canadian courtroom. Pujita Verma’s tender, hopeful voice exposes the shortcomings of the international legal infrastructure in providing recourse to survivors of childhood sexual abuse, while honoring the generations of women who have protected and taught her, and whose sacrifices ultimately put her in the position to speak out publicly. What precedents, Verma asks—legal, personal, cultural—do we rewrite for ourselves and others each time we act? What does it look like to know romantic love, and come of age, after coming forward?