Lisa Epp: Poet, Writer, Teacher

Lisa Epp lives, writes, and works in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. A mother of three, she enjoys walks in the forest with her family of five and escaping the city thrum with regular meanderings down by the creek. Lisa finds great joy in the minutia of the everyday: standing over the soup pot, stirring; tending to tender tomato seedlings in her backyard greenhouse; or enjoying long driveway sits and chats with family and neighbours. Her constant daily quest is to still be able to find the feeling of a village within a city of over a million. A person of great faith, Lisa is kept aflame by seeking the Divine in the everyday. She finds very little division between the poetic and the mystical, finding both to be endless wells to draw from in life.

Young Life

A writer all her life, Lisa has always been a fan of words--both those that tumble around on the page and those that rattle around in the mouth. She shares: "As a child, I was always memorizing and reciting jingles, lines of verse, and playful pieces like Lewis Carroll’s 'Jabberwocky'. I was enamoured with the way poetry could play on the page and in my mind like waves a-tumble with stories. As a student in school, however, I despised the dry toast versions of poems we only ever seemed to be offered--not to mention that we were never, ever afforded the opportunity to ourselves write poems that mattered. After graduating high school and going on to become a secondary English teacher myself, I now regularly remind myself (and my students!) that writing poetry that is playful or that drips with story is a special kind of magic that should be gripped tightly onto.” 

Reaches

Lisa is working towards future publication goals for her growing poetry and writing collection. She continues to dream about further opportunities to share her works across various literary journals and ventures. She is reaching forward to the goal of publishing a chapbook of collected works.