Books

Palimpsest Press 2025

“The thing that makes reviewing In the Field so difficult is knowing that no superlative, no line of effusive praise (and I’ve effused my guts out here) could come close to conveying the book’s brilliance. The collection is a work of art, both in the sense that the thing in itself is sublime, and the sense that, by integrating experience, poetry, and (what CW Mills called) ‘the sociological imagination’ just so, the book models how the essay form can push against the limits of human expression.”

- James Cairns, Spring Magazine (2025)

“De Meijer does incredible work with the form; her writing always feels authentic and beautifully curated, but unhampered by a linear sense of time or any expected modes of essay writing. Every essay should be savoured on its own, and yet together they read as beautifully cohesive, sharing an ethos of swerving and subverting readers’ expectations to reveal new insights.”

— Danila Botha, The New Quarterly (2025)

“(…) her writing — not so much the actual syntax as the feeling of the words — has the effect of visual art; it touches a wordless part of the soul. Meijer has gifted to her reader the experience that was gifted to her by a Kenojuak Ashevak lithograph. ‘For a moment I receive what there is no word for.’”

— Natalie D., Netgalley (2025)

“If reading helps teach us empathy, to understand another’s experience from the inside, I can think of no better example than moving through this particular collection, as de Meijer provides a remarkable example on just how deep, and how detailed, the possibilities.”

— rob mclennan, rm’s blogs (2025)

Palimpsest Press 2020

Winner of the Governor General’s Award in English Non-Fiction 2021

“Language as the mother of bond and breach is beautifully storied in Sadiqa de Meijer’s poignant and provocative memoir, alfabet/alphabet. This is a book that dreams of transforming migration, citizenship, families, nationhood and the very utterances upon which each is built. A deeply hopeful narrative about language itself, a singular exploration of the way that words build a home.”

—Governor General Literary Awards Peer assessment committee: Sarah de Leeuw, Amanda Leduc and Evelyn C. White (2021)

“Though labelled a memoir, alfabet/alphabet pushes this label to its limit: braiding lyric retrospection and linguistic play, it is both totally original and exemplary of a new trend in Canadian literature that is multilingual, experimental, and spearheaded by women of colour.”

—Myra Bloom, The Walrus, (2020)

“De Meijer thinks of Dutch now as a kind of ‘carbon shadow’ that permeates her English. ‘Never erase,’ her favourite art teacher said to her once, ‘it doesn’t really work,’ (…) Dutch is the foundation of language for her, the first draft of a drawing that she has added to but never erased.”

—Gavin Francis, The New York Review of Books (2022)

“This book has several strengths. But its most impressive, for me, has to be its ability to sneak that poetic, experimental, genre-busting so cleverly and so cleanly into the guise of an immensely readable, accessible, and personal memoir.”

—Dani Spinosa, Canadian Literature (2024)

“alfabet/ alphabet is not just an extremely pleasurable read, but is also an important statement on the poetics of translation and provides a valuable service in introducing several modern Dutch poets to an English readership.”

—Stephen Cain, Canadian Journal of Netherlandic Studies (2024)

“In this deeply resonating book of essays, de Meijer reflects on the ways language is linked to place and memory and how our early experiences with speech stick with us, wherever we may find ourselves later in life.”

—Cara Nelissen, Literary Review of Canada (2021)

knife fork book 2025

chapbook edition of the 2024 Page Lecture

“I loved the reflections on (…) how the material of writing–whether one is writing on clay or palm fronds, on a vertical or horizontal surface–will determine how the language comes to be written down.”

—Ken Wilson, Reading and Walking (2025)

Oolichan Books 2013

Finalist for the Governor General’s Award in English Poetry 2014

Shortlisted for the Pat Lowther Award

“Sadiqa’s poetry is taut, spare, incredibly evocative… and unerringly sharp.”

—Wayne Grady, Kingston Whig-Standard (2013)

“A voice of authority and grace.”

—Michael Crummey (2013)

Vehicule Press 2020

Shortlisted for the Raymond Souster Award

Longlisted for the Pat Lowther Award

“It is, I think, the best collection I’ve ever read about domestic life and domestic labour related to child-raising, to being with children, to being in and deeply observing a neighbourhood, and, extrapolating from that, being in a body, a city, a country, multiple countries, multiple histories, multiple languages…”

—Kate Cayley, Reading Recommendations, The Fiddlehead (2021)

“De Meijer’s take on motherhood in this collection is richly illuminating, particularly with its humanizing insight into how illness complicates the myriad roles one holds in life.”

—Melanie Power, Prairie Fire (2020)

“There is, I realised early on, the very eerie sense in these pages that de Meijer is somehow reporting from the future, having already endured the information fog and the self-isolation that the rest of us are living through now. Read that way they become, in a quiet way, an instruction guide. It is as if we have been gifted a manual of solace.”

—Mark Sinnett, Machines For Living In (2020)