Laila Malik

*Finalist, 2024 Pat Lowther Memorial Award, League of Canadian Poets

*Finalist, 2024 Gerald Lampert Memorial Award, League of Canadian Poets

Reviews

Manahil Bandukwala 
Quill and Quire

““Malik plays with and pushes language in her debut collection. She creates word combinations and strings together evocative lines. Home is constantly in a state of flux.” 

Noor Naga
If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English

“This may be the first full-length poetry collection in English to take the Gulf itself as its subject matter. The impulse to erase the place you are in because it is erasing you is too strong. Yet though they dwell on the discomfort, vulnerability and potential violence of not-belonging, these poems feel equally at home everywhere … reminding us that migration and movement are written into the very histories of these regions.”

Salma Hussain,
The Temz Review

“Malik’s writing startles and delights word by word. She is playful with multiple languages, cultures and settings, and has created a collection of separate but inter-connected pieces which ruminate on the stories/homeland(s)we carry, bury and create. A compassionate and hopeful collection of poems from an exciting new #canlit voice that one will want to return to and savour over and over.”