Photo credit: Dave Stobbe

Peace Akintade

As an African Canadian interdisciplinary poet, public speaker, and chorus poem playwright, Saskatoon-based Peace Akintade engages and examines the complexities, nuances, triumphs, and challenges of learning and relearning culture, community, and selfhood amid colonization. Her work has been widely recognized in the arts community in Saskatchewan, and she was Saskatoon’s Youth Grand Slam Champion from 2017 to 2019, Saskatchewan’s Youth Poet Laureate from 2020 to 2021, and is READ Saskatoon 2022 Poet Laureate. She believes strongly in ensuring poetry is accessible and that youth know their work with the written word doesn’t have to end in English class. She’s the co-coordinator of Write Out Loud, a Saskatoon-based youth poetry community.

Through her work with Common Weal and the Youth Speaker’s Bureau for the Office of the Treaty Commissioner, Peace facilitates poetry workshops in classrooms and schools across the expansive and diverse communities of Saskatchewan. She has facilitated workshops at Nutana Collegiate, Aden Bowman, Warman High School, Saskatoon Open Door Society, Regina Open Door Society, Chokecherry Studios and beyond. Her own writing has introduced Neo Soul poetry into the spoken word scene, revealing the inauthenticity of the English language when spoken from a voodoo tongue. Her work knits together folklore, current events, and vivid imagery to create a bridge between cultures and lands, community and self. When she’s not writing, she can be found debating the existence of humankind or lounging in local coffee houses.