Janet Rogers

Janet is a Mohawk/Tuscarora writer from the Six Nations band in southern Ontario. She was born in Vancouver, British Columbia and has been living on the traditional lands of the Coast Salish people (Victoria, BC) since 1994. Janet works in the genres of poetry, spoken word performance poetry, video poetry and recorded poetry with music and script writing.

Janet has three published poetry collections to date: Splitting the Heart, Ekstasis Editions (2007), Red Erotic, Ojistah Publishing (2010), Unearthed, Leaf Press (2011). Her newest collection Peace in Duress was released with Talonbooks in September 2014. Janet's poetry CDs Firewater (2009), Got Your Back (2012) and 6 Directions (2013) all received nominations for Best Spoken Word Recording at the Canadian Aboriginal Music Awards, the Aboriginal Peoples Choice Music Awards, and the Native American Music Awards. You can hear Janet on the radio as she hosts Native Waves Radio on CFUV fm and Tribal Clefs on CBC Radio One fm in Victoria. Her radio documentaries Bring Your Drum (50 years of indigenous protest music) and Resonating Reconciliation won Best Radio at the imagaineNATIVE Film and Media festival 2011 and 2013. Ikkwenyes or Dare to Do is the name of the collective Mohawk poet Alex Jacobs and Janet created in 2011. Ikkwenyes won the Canada Council for the Arts Collaborative Exchange award 2012 and a Loft Literary Prize in 2013.

As Victoria's third Poet Laureate (2012-2015), Janet created opportunities for the community to come together in celebration of poetic voices on the traditional lands of the Coast Salish people. She also had the opportunity to work with two Youth Poet Laureates, Morgan Purvis and Aysia Law who were appointed for one-year terms by the City of Victoria Youth Council.