Camille Martin
Biography
Camille Martin, a poet and collage artist who recently moved to Toronto from New Orleans, is the author of Codes of Public Sleep (Toronto: BookThug, 2007) as well as several earlier chapbooks. Recent work is published or forthcoming in The Literary Review, PRECIPICe, The Walrus, West Coast Line, This Magazine, White Wall Review, and Peter O’Toole. Her current project is a collection of sonnets. She has presented her work in numerous cities in the United States and Canada. She teaches writing and literature at Ryerson University.
Poet's Note
Codes of Public Sleep breaks open the code of private thought to modes of knowing catastrophe that defy insufficient isolating sagas. Camille Martin’s poetry is the shattering signal from a laudably wild tongue that will not keep still for our death-drive culture. This is a remarkable collection. —Carla Harryman
Codes of Public Sleep bridges two cities: New Orleans and Toronto. I wrote the title poem to investigate private acts in public spaces in that most eccentric of Southern cities. The telltale signs of the poems written in Toronto are the images of ice and snow. I wrote my Katrina poem long before Katrina.
I’ll also read from a work-in-progress, a collection of edgy sonnets that set language loose on a playground of fourteen lines to see what games it can invent.
Sample Poems
Two poems (pdf)
External Links
Martin's website