Tricia McCallum

Tricia McCallum is an award winning Glasgow-born Canadian writer and poet, a Huffington Post Blogger, and a nominee for the 2016 Pushcart Prize.

McCallum is the author of "The Music of Leaving" by Toronto's Demeter Press (2014) and "Nothing Gold Can Stay: A Mother and Father Remembered" (2011). Her newest poetry collection entitled "Icarus Also Flew" was a finalist in New York's 2017 Marsh Hawk Press Poetry Prize.

An insatiable traveler all of her life, her various, seemingly endless incarnations have included stints as a bartender, flight attendant, shrimp de-veiner, speechwriter, writer of personalized wedding vows, chambermaid, house painter, au pair, TV product pitch artist, short order cook, corporate editor, legal courier and perhaps her favourite, a freelance photographer specializing in black and white.

McCallum’s poem about her mother entitled “To Her, I Was” appeared in the Huffington Post on International Women’s Day 2011. Her poem "The Island Dog" is included in the hardcover anthology entitled Estuary: A Confluence of Art & Poetry, an international poetry and visual arts album published in November, 2012 in England. Two of McCallum’s poems, “Following Seas” and “The Gift of Donovan,” appeared in the first issue of the quarterly poetry e-zine called IMPress, a poetry and art publishing house.

McCallum’s poem “Glowing Tribute” appears in the Key Porter anthology of Canadian verse entitled Barbed Lyres, edited by Margaret Atwood. Cosmopolitan magazine under the editor Helen Gurley Brown published a total of 20 of McCallum’s poems throughout the ‘80’s and ‘90’s, more than that of any other poet. Her poem “No Harm Done” appeared in a League of Canadian Poets’ newsletter. Most recently her poems have appeared online in many poetry journals including Every Day Poems, Poetry Breakfast, and A Quiet Courage.

In her career as a Toronto freelance writer she has been featured as a guest columnist in the Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star, and the Financial Post, written for Flare magazine, and lectured on freelance writing at Toronto’s York University.

McCallum also publishes fiction. Her short story “What Gets Lost” was published in the Canadian literary journal Quarry and her short story “Clutter” won a Toronto Star award for fiction writing.

"Put simply, I write the poems I want to read," McCallum says." I have always aspired to write intelligible, accessible poems. I can’t imagine doing otherwise.

"In essence I am a storyteller who writes poems. My poems tell of falcons in Ireland, elephants being traipsed through the Queen’s Midtown Tunnel and stray island dogs. About beleaguered mothers and neglected toddlers and subservient wives. About small town cashiers, beauty queens, and neurosurgeons. I am always curious about how people navigate their lives and what it is they struggle with under the surface."