Soutar-Hynes, Mary Lou

Mary Lou Soutar-Hynes is a Jamaican-born poet/educator and former nun with an interest in how poetry can help us understand life. Her poetry and essays have appeared in many anthologies and journals and she has published three critically-acclaimed volumes of poems The Fires of Naming (2001), Travelling Light (2006), and Dark Water Songs (2013). 

She has been a Fellow at Scotland’s Hawthornden International Retreat for Writers and has given public readings of her work throughout Canada and in the UK. She is a long-standing member of the Long Dash group of poets in Toronto where she now makes her home and initiator of the group’s ongoing collaboration with a group of visual artists that has resulted in several joint exhibitions and readings.