Hello there!
I was born in St. Thomas and have lived here for all of my adult life. I grew up in Toronto, Rexdale, mostly. We lived next door to the Rexdale Public Library and the Humber River was within walking distance. In those days parents let their kids run loose so I spent hours of unsupervised exploring, both in the library and along the banks of the river. Weekends we’d get into the car and drive west to Port Stanley, on the north shore of Lake Erie. In those days my dad’s parents had a thirty-five-acre tobacco farm crisscrossed by a couple of gullies. Many of my relatives were farmers or worked in jobs connected to the railroads that ran through St. Thomas.
Long Bio
Author of three poetry collections, worn thresholds, the walnut-cracking machine and I
am &c. The Gilbert White Poems, Julie Berry has been writing and publishing poetry
since the late 1970’s. Her poems can be found in a wide variety of literary journals and a
number of Canadian anthologies including Open Wide a Wilderness. Her writing was
featured in an award-winning CBC documentary, “Poetry of the Woods” in 2008. A
poem, “Apology to an Estranged Friend” was short-listed for the Arc Poem of the Year
Contest in 2022.
worn thresholds and the walnut-cracking machine speak to her experiences from
childhood to middle age, as a mother and a teacher of young children. I am &c. The
Gilbert White Poems is a chapbook inspired by White’s journals and his one book, The
Natural History of Selborne, published in 1788. His book slowly gained favour during
the 19th century and became one of the most published books in the English language,
right up there with Pilgrim’s Progress and The Collected Works of William Shakespeare.
Awards & Residencies
- Sage Hill Writer’s Workshop, Lumsden, Saskatchewan, 1994
- First and Third: Short Grain Contest in the prose poem category, 2005
- Writer-In-Residence, Trent University Library, Peterborough, 2007
- Second: CV2 48-hour poem contest, 2007
- Five Week Residency at Banff Centre for the Arts, May 2009
- Longlisted for the CBC Poetry Prize, 2014
- Shortlisted for Arc’s Poem of the Year Contest, 2020