Cory Lavender is a poet of African Nova Scotian and European descent living in Mi’kma’ki. His full-length collection of poems, Come One Thing Another, came out with Gaspereau Press in the fall of 2024. His chapbooks are Lawson Roy’s Revelation (Gaspereau Press, 2018) and Ballad of Bernie "Bear" Roy (knife | fork | book, 2020). His work has appeared in journals such as Grain, Prairie Fire, Riddle Fence, and The Fiddlehead, and in Watch Your Head: Writers and Artists Respond to the Climate Crisis (Coach House Press, 2020). He currently sits on the board of directors of the Writers' Federation of Nova Scotia and lives in Gunning Cove, on Nova Scotia's south shore.
Much of my poetry is written to be heard aloud. Poems loosely set in others' voices come to me as if I am overhearing them, and I love to vocalize them to life. My poems tend to be grounded in story, with recurring characters and locales, making it easy to draw connections between poems and elaborate, off the cuff, with further points of intrigue. I have been told that I am a great reader, and I think I do a good job. However, I would point out that it's also the quality of the poems I write to eventually read that allows me to give strong readings of my work.
