Meet Ronna

Ronna Bloom is the author of seven books of poetry, most recently A Possible Trust: The Poetry of Ronna Bloom, Selected with an Introduction by Phil Hall published by Wilfrid Laurier University Press.

Her work has been broadcast on the CBC, recorded by the Canadian National Institute for the Blind, translated into Bangla and Chinese, and shortlisted for several Canadian literary awards. 

Ronna runs workshops, coaches writers, and gives talks on poetry, spontaneity, presence and health care. In Rx for Poetry, she writes and prescribes poems on the spot. She brings twenty years of psychotherapy practice to her work as a poet and facilitator.

Ronna created the Poet in Community Programme at University of Toronto which ran from 2008-2023 and was Poet in Residence at Mount Sinai Hospital from 2012-2020. In these roles she offered students, staff, and health care professionals opportunities to articulate their experiences through poetry and reflective writing. She is a frequent guest speaker at universities, hospitals, community groups and institutions across Ontario.

Collaborations? Yes. A one minute film based on Ronna’s poem “Grief Without Fantasy” was made by filmmaker Midi Onodera and screened at the National Gallery in Ottawa. Her very very early video performance, I feel hopeful about the future is in the British Film Institute Archive. In a collaboration with PLANT Architects, her poem "The City" was painted 30 meters long on King Street in Toronto for the summer of 2018.

In 2025, a new collection will be published by Brick Books called, In a Riptide.