Born in Duncan, B.C. in 1957, Rhona McAdam is the great grand-daughter of Vancouver Island pioneer William Chalmers Duncan. She grew up in Duncan, Fort St John, Terrace and Victoria. She also lived for 14 years in Edmonton and 12 years in London, England, before returning to Victoria in 2002. She has post-graduate degrees in communications planning, adult education and library and information science, and has worked in Canada, England and throughout Europe as a records manager, freelance writer, database administrator, corporate trainer and technical author.

Rhona McAdam is a poet, holistic nutritionist and food writer with a Master's degree in food culture and communications from L'Università  degli Studi di Scienze Gastronomiche (Bra, Italy). She writes an occasional food and poetry blog (Iambic Cafe), has taught courses in urban agriculture and food security for St. Lawrence College and Eco-Nutrition for the Canadian School of Natural Nutrition.

In Digging the City, her first nonfiction book, Rhona McAdam examines the efforts being made to introduce urban agriculture initiatives across Canada, to deal with the problems we've created and to protect our cities from real and potential crises in the food supply. Digging the City considers the effectiveness of plans and initiatives such as vertical farms, urban fish farms, seed banks, permaculture and water conservation projects.

Published in Canada, the US, Ireland and England, her poetry has been praised for her ability to create vivid landscapes, actual and emotional. In Cartography (Oolichan, 2006), her fifth collection of poetry, McAdam weaves an imaginative passage through the territories of love, work, family and aging. Ex-Ville (Oolichan, 2015) explores the contradiction in emotion between arrivals and departures, of wanting to be in the place you aren't, in the place you left behind. What underlies the poems in Larder is an urgent political argument, with care for every aspect of the earth and its connected structures. The foundation of the collection comes from recognizing the value of everything in nature: yes, even the tick.

AWARDS:

Alberta Culture & Multiculturalism Poetry Award, for Hour of the Pearl, 1987.
Short-listed for the Pat Lowther Award, for Old Habits, 1993.

Leaf Press Looking for Love competition, 2005.

BOOKS:

Life in Glass (Longspoon, 1984)
Hour of the Pearl (Thistledown, 1987)
Creating the Country (Thistledown, 1989)
Old Habits (Thistledown/Slow Dancer, 1993)
Cartography (Oolichan, 2006) 0-88982-221-2
Crosswords (Frog Hollow Press, 2003)
Sunday Dinners. (JackPine Press, 2010). 978-0-9865426-1-9
The Earth's Kitchen. (Leaf Press, 2011). 978-1-926655-25-3
Digging the City: An Urban Agriculture Manifesto (RMB, 2012) 978-1-927330-21-0
Ex-Ville (Oolichan, 2015) 978-0-88982-306-8
Larder (Caitlin Press, 2022) $20.00 978-1-77386-083-1

[BCBW 2023] "Poetry"