Lea Harper

Author | Poet | Musician

…Harper is a perfectionist. In her talented hands poetry becomes a scalpel with which
she deftly excises all the darkness, disease and decay beneath the surface of things and
lays it on the lines for all of us to read. [She] can justifiably be called an original, a thing
unto herself. While other books try to find and then imitate the kinds of writing currently
in vogue, All That Saves Us offers up a voice that is both timely and unique. It is the
genuine article, the kind of work that must be read.

Ronnie R. Brown, CanadianBookseller

About Lea

Lea Harper is the author of two collections of poems, All that Saves Us and Shadow Crossing (Black Moss Press), and four recordings. Her songs have received a Juno nomination and won a Canadian Reggae Award. She performs with the Jazz/poetry ensemble, Alchemy, and is currently living on a lake in the Haliburton Highlands, north of Toronto where she is completing her first novel.

Read Full Bio and Publishing History

Poetry Books

By Lea Harper

All That Saves Us

1998

All That Saves Us “…cuts a fearless path. It’s laced with black humour, tough skepticism and a satiric rage…nonetheless, intimately personal and visceral…wording ‘clean as a bone flute’. Harper’s fierce imagination, seering metaphors, relentless rhythms and trenchant perceptions unite with ‘an alchemy of beauty and violence.’”

- Allan Briesmaster, People’s Poetry Letter

Shadow Crossing

2000

“Shadow Crossing…probes the complex and mysterious universe that is simultaneously frightening and glorious…penetrating the darker recesses of experience…No matter how blighted the earth under the rapacious hand, there is still power in wisdom, still redemptive faith and hope…”

- Deborah Foulks, The League of Canadian Poets Online Bookstore