Isa Milman

Isa Milman is a poet, artist and occupational therapist who lives in Victoria, B.C. Born in a displaced persons camp in Germany in 1949, she emigrated with her family to Boston in 1950, where she grew up and was educated at Tufts University. She has lived in Canada since 1975; over a period of 21 years she lived in Montreal, where she completed a Masters degree in rehabilitation and taught occupational therapy at McGill. She is also a visual artist whose paintings and prints are found in private collections in Canada, the United States, Europe and Israel. For three days a week, she coordinates the epilepsy program at the Victoria Epilepsy & Parkinson's Centre. In 2005 she won the Canadian Jewish Book Awards Poetry Prize. She has published Between the Doorposts (Ekstasis Editions, 2004) and Seven Fat Years (Frog Hollow Press, 2002) Her latest book is Prairie Kaddish (Coteau Books, 2009) where she uses historical and personal awakening, and archival sleuthing, to create a "kaddish" - a Jewish prayer of mourning and commemoration - for a prairie community that exists now only through remembrance.