About Lara Bozabalian
Lara Ann Bozabalian is the author of two acclaimed poetry collections, The Cartographer’s Skin (Piquant Press), a Canadian bestseller, and Tourist (Tightrope Books). Her work appears in literary journals and she has featured at literary festivals across North America, Ireland, and Singapore. A TEDx speaker, Lara also wrote and narrated Crowd the Schoolhouse, a short documentary that won Best Writing and Best Use of Genre at Hot Docs in 2012. Currently, Lara is the co-founder of Milk Teeth Collective, an interdisciplinary collaboration with visual artist/designer Una Jani?ijevi?. The work explores the intersections of care, art, and equity through public interventions, zines, books and curriculum development. The Milk Teeth Collective strives to create spaces that honour the experiences of artist-caregivers and their children, reimagining galleries, sidewalks, and classrooms as sites of shared authorship.
In 2024, Lara completed The Poetry of Public Places, a large-scale installation and research project supported by Canada Council for the Arts. This interdisciplinary work explored how poetry can disrupt and reimagine public spaces by embedding verse into the physical and digital landscapes of everyday life. With a focus on de-centering dominant narratives and amplifying marginalized perspectives—especially those of women, caregivers, and racialized communities—The Poetry of Public Places blurs the boundaries between the intimate and the civic, making space for stories that shape how we live and belong.
Recognized for her compelling voice and civic engagement, Lara was named Toronto’s Best Poet by NOW Magazine 
in both 2014 and 2015. Her poem “The New School,” written in response to the Parkland school shootings, was selected for Rattle’s “Poets Respond” and later featured by The Griffin Trust for Excellence in Poetry in Voice / Les voix de la poésie in both their Senior Anthology and Come Together: A Mixtape Anthology. She has lectured at Queen’s University and, in 2022, was invited to speak at York University’s international conference Lessons from the Pandemic, sharing insights from two years of collaborative writing with other mothers. In April 2025, Lara presented at the Niagara University Teacher Education Conference on the hearts and minds of modern students.
As the Head of English at a public high school, Lara has been a dynamic force in arts education over the last two decades. In 2008, she founded Be Heard: Festival of Student Voices, a large-scale initiative that connected over 3,000 student writers with internationally renowned spoken word artists through workshops and performances. Lara was honoured to be invited to build, alongside FNMI Consultants, a model for NBE3U, the first YRDSB English course dedicated to examining First Nations, Métis, and Inuit voices. The course now serves as a model across the district. Lara is a founding member of Toronto Poetry Project, which produces Canada’s most successful spoken word series, including Toronto Poetry Slam, BAM Youth Slam, and city-wide writing workshops. As a spoken word artist, she has represented Toronto at the Individual World Poetry Slam, Women of the World Poetry Slam, and the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word.
How has the writing of poetry affected your life? (Glenda Jackson, Host; Coburg Poetry Workshop)
The writing of poetry has, quite simply, offered me a better way to live in the world. I deeply, humbly love what poems can do, and I strive to be the highest version of myself in creating them. Through the challenges of articulation, I have become more patient and contemplative with myself and others. I find myself listening much more consciously to the world, and to my experiences, than when I was a younger person. Loving something enough to strive for fluency, and appreciating how long of a road it takes to get there, has probably been the greatestlesson; I am continually amazed at how this relationship grows, falters, renews, strengthens. I am continually amazed that I never walk away. There is something about this process that clears me out, and leaves me open for new experiences. I know that I would not have become the person (or teacher) that I am, without a heart that beats for poetry.
