Triny Finlay

Triny Finlay’s creative work intersects with her research and teaching interests, which include creative writing, contemporary Canadian literature, poetics, genre theory, and gender and sexuality in literature.

Her latest poetry collection, You don’t want what I’ve got (Junction 2018), is a long poem that explores her experiences with mental illnesses, their treatments, and stigma.

She is also the author of the poetry collections Splitting Off (Nightwood 2004), Histories Haunt Us (Nightwood 2010), and the chapbook Phobic (Gaspereau 2006). Her writing has appeared in anthologies and periodicals such as Breathing Fire 2: Canada’s New Poets, ARC Poetry Magazine, The Fiddlehead, The Globe and Mail, Grain, The Malahat Review and Plenitude.

She is currently writing a book of ekphrastic poems, entitled Out of Water. This collection considers the ideological and aesthetic impulses of contemporary visual art installation projects by a range of international artists, including Heather Benning, Lee Bul, Cassils, Los Carpinteros, Monster Chetwynd, Christo, Ruth Cuthand, Cornelia Parker, and Amalia Pica.

Triny has supervised creative graduate theses in poetry, creative non-fiction, and fiction, and is currently supervising graduate students working in the fields of ecofeminist poetics, theories of gender and sexuality, representations of mental illness in art and literature, and ekphrastic poetries of place. Current member of the Graduate Academic Unit.

Read Triny’s recent interview with Room magazine.