Lorna Jean Crozier: A Prairie Poet's Journey

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With a shock of dyed red hair, statement glasses, and colourful sweaters, Lorna Jean Crozier dresses as eccentric as she writes. Although she never considered writing as a career when she was young, at 68 she has authored 15 books. Crozier has lived everywhere from Victoria to Toronto, but to me, her poetry shows that her heart has never left the Saskatchewan Prairies where she was born. Her works often showcase her interests, including cats, gardening, and sex--sometimes rolled together.

Her poetry is greatly informed by her childhood in hockey town Swift Current, Saskatchewan, with that environmental aesthetic often forming the backdrop to her stories of poverty, alcoholism, and the natural world. As a prairie girl myself, it’s easy for …show more content…

In her eyes, cucumbers are pesky perverts with an anal fetish, carrots are passionate but worried lovers, peas are prudish, and onions are entirely self obsessed. The poems are at once funny and relatable, covering various ways sex is seen by people in society in a way that’s not alienating or deliberately button-pushing. It’s simple truth through a lens of good humor, a signature trait of her …show more content…

After joining the faculty in 1991, she has gone on to teach writing workshops across the country. Before being hired by the University of Victoria, Lorna Crozier taught creative writing at the Saskatchewan Summer School of the Arts and the Banff School of Fine Arts, and worked for the Regina Public Library, Douglas College, the University of Lethbridge, the Cypress Hills Community College, and the University of Toronto as a writer-in-residence. Furthermore, she has done many readings for charitable organizations, including PEERS (a group dedicated to helping get prostitutes off the street) and the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to

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