Dennis Denisoff

Dennis Denisoff (Toronto)

“In 1994, I was struggling to suture a trepidatious yet bucolic vision of gay love that I’d developed while growing up in a BC lumber town with the cocky, experimental formalism of the Language Poetry scene. And then Robert Glück’s Margery Kempe entered the room, managing somehow, possibly with her sheer honesty alone, to create a place for queer desire in these self-aware arts. Marg (we’ve become that close) made me unembarrassed to be emotional, to write about my yearning and my community’s love and anger. In her passion for Christ and other hot young men, she led me to appreciate and respect the excesses of both the carnal and the devotional.”

In addition to diverse undertakings at Ryerson University and numerous scholarly publications, Dennis Denisoff authored The Winter Gardeners and Dog Years (novels) as well as Tender Agencies (poetry). He edited Queeries, Canada’s first gay male prose anthology, and is currently working a novel about the Doukhobours in the West Kootenay.