“Britta Badour uses the page as a canvas, sheet music. Poems that feel like songs. The collection invites readers to dance, light fires, and unlock the homes we are made of.” —Ian Keteku

Born and raised in Kingston, Britta Badour, better known as Britta B., is an award-winning artist, spoken word poet, performer, emcee, voice talent and mentor living in Toronto.

Britta has been a Toronto Arts Foundation’s Emerging Artist and COCA Lecturer of the Year. Her work has been featured in print, in sound and onstage across North America in notable spheres such as the Art Gallery of Ontario, CBC Arts: Poetic License, The Walrus Talks, TEDx and The Stephen Lewis Foundation. As an educator, Britta facilitates artist-training seminars, poetry workshops and social justice programs in partnership with organizations like JAYU, Poetry in Voice, Prologue Performing Arts, and League of Canadian Poets.

Her debut poetry collection, Wires that Sputter, is a propulsive, intimate work with an eye toward Black liberations, pop culture, sports, and familial fractures. Brandon Wint says of the collection, “Britta Badour proves herself to be a poet unafraid to risk, unafraid to push the English language to its buoyant, confounding and sonically pleasurable limits. These poems testify to Britta’s faith in poetry as a mechanism for expansiveness, where the tensions between the spoken and unspoken, the revealed truth and the concealed (family) secret are exquisite, daring and capacious.” Britta holds a Creative Writing MFA from the University of Guelph and is a professor of spoken word performance at Seneca College.

Britta’s appearance is supported by Author Patron Steve Page, in memory of Joanne Page.

Appearing in 22. The Black Experience in Kingston, WR.10 Spoken Word