Chim is Black, with long black braids. She is smiling. She is wearing glasses, thin dangly earrings and a white t-shirt. She is shown from the chest up, against the background of a grey wall.

Chimwemwe Undi is a poet, writer and editor based on Treaty 1 territory in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

brief bio:

Her debut full-length collection, Scientific Marvel (House of Anansi Press, 2024) won the 2024 Governor General’s Literary Award in Poetry. She is Canada’s Parliamentary Poet Laureate for 2025 and 2026.

long bio:

Her work has appeared in Arc Poetry Magazine, Brick, Border Crossings, Canadian Literature, Canthius, Prairie Fire, Room Magazine, and on CBC Ideas and BBC World, among others. She has appeared on numerous stages, including for the Winnipeg International Writer’s Festival, the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word and the Edinburgh International Book Festival.

Chimwemwe is the recipient of a CBC Manitoba Future 40 award, the 2022 John Hirsch Emerging Writer Award from the Manitoba Book Awards, the 2024 University of Manitoba Distinguished Alumni Award for Outstanding Young Alumni and the Mayor’s Winnipeg 150 Medal, among others. She was Winnipeg Poet Laureate for 2023 and 2024.

Her debut full-length collection, Scientific Marvel (House of Anansi Press, 2024) won the 2024 Governor General’s Literary Award in Poetry, the League of Canadian Poets Raymond Souster Award and was named a CBC Best Book of 2024. She is Canada’s Parliamentary Poet Laureate for 2025 and 2026.

She holds an MA in linguistics from York University, and practices law in her home province of Manitoba.

She likes crossword puzzles, very long or very short novels, fries, romantic comedies, peeling oranges, complicated questions, RHOSLC, both cats and dogs, meandering rivers, and reading and writing poems about those things or anything else.

Photo by Imalka Nilmalgoda.