Rachel Zolf’s poetic practice explores interrelated materialist questions concerning memory, history, knowledge, subjectivity and the conceptual limits of language and meaning. She is particularly interested in how ethics founders on the shoals of the political. Her fourth full-length book, Neighbour Procedure, was released by Coach House Books in 2010. Previous collections include Human Resources (Coach House, 2007), which won the 2008 Trillium Book Award for Poetry and was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award, Shoot & Weep (Nomados, 2008), from Human Resources (Belladonna books, 2005), Masque (The Mercury Press, 2004), finalist for the 2005 Trillium Book Award for Poetry, and Her absence, this wanderer (BuschekBooks, 1999), finalist in the CBC Literary Competition. Her fifth full-length book of poetry, Janey’s Arcadia, which enacts the ravages of settler-colonialism on the Canadian west, is forthcoming with Coach House in Fall 2014. She is also working on a collection of essays re-examining the poetics of witness as part of her PhD in Media/Communication at the European Graduate School.

Zolf’s poetry has been widely published in journals and anthologies such as Prismatic Publics: Innovative Canadian Women’s Poetry and Poetics (Coach House, 2009) and I’ll Drown My Book: Conceptual Writing by Women (Les Figues, 2012). Her critical essays have appeared in publications such as Xcp: Cross-Cultural Poetics, Canadian Literature, Open Letter, West Coast Line and Jacket2. She was the founding poetry editor of Canada’s The Walrus magazine, has edited several books of poetry and sat on numerous arts juries. She has been awarded a Chalmers Arts Fellowship as well as multiple poetry, non-fiction, and video grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, the Toronto Arts Council and the Bravo arts network. Her poetry has been translated into French, Portuguese and Spanish and into video art form.

Zolf has collaborated with other artists on various initiatives, including film/video, polyvocal performance and what could be the first collaborative MFA in Creative Writing ever, The Tolerance Project. She wrote the screenplay for New York artist Josiah McElheny’s film, The Light Club of Vizcaya: A Women’s Picture, which premiered at Art Basel Miami Beach in 2012; the screenplay was published in Josiah McElheny: Towards a Light Club (Hatje Cantz, 2013). Zolf has published art criticism and co-edited a book of media art criticism, Resonance: EMMEDIA Anthology of Critical Texts 2011/12. Besides giving talks, seminars and performances at academic and literary venues across North America, Zolf has also taught creative writing at The New School in New York and is currently an Assistant Professor in English and Creative Writing at the University of Calgary. Her literary papers are housed at York University archives.