Tess Liem is a Canadian poet from Montreal, Quebec, who published their debut poetry collection Obits in 2018.[1] The book was named one of the year's best Canadian poetry collections by CBC Arts,[2] and won the Gerald Lampert Award from the League of Canadian Poets in 2019.[3]
The book was also nominated for a Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Poetry at the 31st Lambda Literary Awards,[4] and was longlisted for the Pat Lowther Award.[5]
Liem's second collection, Slows: Twice, was published in 2023 by Coach House Books. Reviewing the collection for Montreal Review of Books, Salena Wiener called Slows: Twice "chock-full of versions, inversions, and revisions of the self." The collection as its central image the mirror, which is replicated formally by the second half of the collection being a mirror image of the first.[6] Sylee Gore, for Poetry, praised the book's formal inventiveness as well as its "poised and raw" tone.[7]