{"id":442,"date":"2012-06-15T19:34:57","date_gmt":"2012-06-15T19:34:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/library.ryerson.ca\/asianheritage\/authors\/kevin-irie\/"},"modified":"2025-07-08T11:45:03","modified_gmt":"2025-07-08T15:45:03","slug":"irie","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/library.torontomu.ca\/asianheritage\/authors\/irie\/","title":{"rendered":"Kevin Irie"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Kevin Irie, a third generation Japanese-Canadian, was born in Toronto. He received an M.A. in English from the University of Toronto. Irie continues to live in Toronto.  Irie reads selections from Angel Blood<\/em> in the CD from Frontenac Press called No Holds Barred<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Poetry<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Angel Blood: The Tess Poems<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Calgary: Frontenac House , 2004.
PS8567 .R48 A76 2004<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Publisher’s Synopsis (From it’s website)<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Angel Blood: The Tess Poems<\/em> is Kevin Irie’s radical re-interpretation of Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d\u2019Urbervilles<\/em>. Here, Tess herself recounts her tale of sex, class, money, and violence. This is the voice not of a Victorian maiden but a demonic Tess returned from the dead, unleashed from the underworld. Finally free to speak as she pleases, and with nothing to lose, she does not care who will be taken aback, be it husband, family, or \u201cThe President of the Immortals\u201d \u2013 or even the innocent reader.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Poetry<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Burning the Dead<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Toronto: Wolsak and Wynn, 1992.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Poetry<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The Colour of Eden<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Alma, N.B.: Owl’s Head Press, 1996.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Publisher’s Synopsis<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

[This] is largely a book of nature poetry, but nature observed acutely as in the object of poems of the American poet Robert Bly, the French poet Francis Ponge, and the Odas Elementales of the great Chilean poet Pablo Neruda. This collection establishes Kevin Irie as one of the strongest new voices in Canadian poetry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Awards and Honours<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

1997 City of Toronto Book Award<\/a> (Finalist)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Poetry<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Dinner at Madonna’s<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Calgary: Frontenac House , 2003.
PS8567 .R48 D56 2003<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Publisher’s Synopsis (From it’s website)<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Kevin Irie’s Dinner at Madonna’s<\/em> explores the fusion of personal and historic memory and nationality within the context of growing up in multicultural Canada.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Poetry<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Evacuations<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 2026.
forthcoming Feb. 2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Publisher’s Synopsis (From its website)<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

With Evacuations<\/em>, Kevin Irie weaves a poetic documentary for readers, capturing the personal and political histories of the Japanese-Canadian internment in British Columbia during World War II. The collection offers a rich tapestry of historical voices, revealing the devastating effects of the internment and preserving the stories of a generation gradually slipping into silence. The poems oscillate between the lyric mode and techniques of erasure poetry to highlight the dehumanizing nature of public decrees and government notices. Irie presents a history of the Canadian state\u2019s racist policies, creating a record of painful memories replete with archival resonances. This collection will be of particular interest to readers in British Columbia and Alberta, to individuals with Japanese heritage, and all those interested in knowing more about the history of internment in North America.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Poetry<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The Tantramar Re-Vision<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2021.
PS8567.R48 T36 2021<\/a>
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Publisher’s Synopsis (From its website)<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Inspired by the literary landscape of the late poet John Thompson, Kevin Irie’s The Tantramar Re-Vision<\/em> presents a portrait of nature where the benign and the bedevilled coexist, collude, or collide.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Tantramar Re-Vision<\/em> charts routes of discovery as it follows trails, waterways, flights, and fears, be it through the woods, the wilds, the page, or the mind where “it’s hard to admit \/ you are not to your taste.” It questions an existence in which the inhuman thrives, ignorant of divinity, while the human psyche continues to search for answers as “life takes directions \/ away from” it. The Tantramar Marsh setting of John Thompson’s Stilt Jack resonates with Irie’s landscapes of birds, fish, plants, and wildlife, all still within reach yet part of a world where “wind carries sounds \/ it cannot hear.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Insightful and meditative, The Tantramar Re-Vision<\/em> is poetry of the inner self and the outside observer, a poetic testament to the ways literature creates its own landmarks and nature survives without knowing a word.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Poetry<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Viewing Tom Thomson, A Minority Report<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Calgary: Frontenac House , 2012.
PS8567 .R48 V54 2012<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Publisher’s Synopsis (From it’s website)<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

What is the place of an early 20th<\/sup> century landscape Canadian painter in the increasingly urban, multicultural world of 21st<\/sup> century Canada? Viewing Tom Thomson, A Minority Report<\/em> explores the possibilities in poems sometimes personal, sometimes public, in which this former iconoclast, now famous icon, emerges as a source of inspiration, intrigue, admiration, and ire.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Awards and Honours<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

2013 City of Toronto Book Awards<\/a> (Finalist)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Links<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Publisher Frontenac House<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Publisher McGill-Queen’s University Press<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Interview <\/a>with Irie from Black Coffee Poet website, Nov. 2012<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kevin Irie member profile<\/a> from the Writers’ Union of Canada website<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kevin Irie, a third generation Japanese-Canadian, was born in Toronto. He received an M.A. in English from the University of Toronto. Irie continues to live in Toronto.  Irie reads selections from Angel Blood in the CD from Frontenac Press called … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"parent":16,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-442","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.torontomu.ca\/asianheritage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/442","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.torontomu.ca\/asianheritage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.torontomu.ca\/asianheritage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.torontomu.ca\/asianheritage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.torontomu.ca\/asianheritage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=442"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/library.torontomu.ca\/asianheritage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/442\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20319,"href":"https:\/\/library.torontomu.ca\/asianheritage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/442\/revisions\/20319"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.torontomu.ca\/asianheritage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/16"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.torontomu.ca\/asianheritage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}