top of page
  • X
  • Linkedin
Bertrand-004-WEB.jpg

Bertrand Bickersteth

Poet, Playwright, Essayist

Featured Book

The Response of Weeds

The Response of Weeds explores what it means to be Black and Albertan through a variety of prisms: historical, biographical, and essentially, geographical. This collection of evocative poems was the winner of multiple awards.

High Res Cover - RoW.jpg

In these poems, Bickersteth invites the reader to revisit the prairies as landscape, but also as part of Black history, geography, and psychic and poetic space... this is an essential book by an enormously talented writer.

Suzette Mayr - author of The Sleeping Car Porter, winner of the Giller Prize

Praise & Reviews

In Bickersteth's interpretation we hear a blue modality and we feel Alberta sung as a point of arrival and departure, a junction in the diaspora. This collection questions place and beloonging as it amplifies the Black Prairie.

Kaie Kellough - author of Magnetic Equator, winner of the Griffin Poetry Prize

Bertrand Bickersteth is our wayfarer. ... HIs verse, finely hewn, glitters with light that both dazzles and burns. He's the CanLit I never got to experience in all my time in school and university.

Minister Faust - award-winning author of Shrinking the Heroes

Upcoming Events

Don't miss the chance to engage with Bertrand Bickersteth at these upcoming events and literary gatherings.

Bertrand Bickersteth named Athabasca University Writer in Resident 2024-2025!

February 9, 2025, Chinook Country Historical Society, Re-Presenting Black Cowboys, 2:00 p.m. (MST)

February 12, Fireside Chat, Cochrane Public Library, 6:15 p.m. (MST)

Appearances
Bertrand-003-WEB.jpg

About the Author

Bertrand Bickersteth was born in Sierra Leone and raised in Alberta. His collection of poetry, The Response of Weeds, was the recipient of multiple awards. His writing has appeared in many places including Geist, Prairie Fire, The Walrus, The Sprawl, and CBC’s Black on the Prairies. His current project features the history of Black cowboys in western Canada. He lives in Moh’kins’tsis (Calgary) and teaches at Olds College.

© 2025 by Bertrand Bickersteth.

bottom of page