Zachariah Wells



Zachariah Wells (born 1976) is a Canadian poet, critic, essayist and editor.

Born in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, he grew up in the rural community of Hazel Grove. Wells attended high school in Ottawa, Ontario and university in Halifax, Nova Scotia. As an undergraduate, he spent summers working in Iqaluit, Nunavut as an airline cargo handler. After a brief stint at graduate school in Montreal, Quebec, he returned to Iqaluit in 2001 and later that year transferred to the remote settlement of Resolute, on Cornwallis Island, where he worked until 2003, when he moved to Halifax with his wife, Rachel Lebowitz.

At this point he started contributing book reviews and essays on Canadian poetry to periodicals including Books in Canada, Quill & Quire and Maisonneuve. In the spring of 2004, his first chapbook of poems, Fool's Errand, appeared. In the fall of that year, Toronto's Insomniac Press published his full-length collection of Arctic poems, Unsettled, under Paul Vermeersch's 4 AM Books imprint.

In 2004, Wells started working for Via Rail Canada as a service attendant. In 2006 he became the Reviews Editor for Canadian Notes & Queries. In 2007, after moving to Vancouver, he published Sealift, a CD recording of 24 poems from Unsettled; "Achromatope," a letterpress broadside; and After the Blizzard, a limited edition chapbook. In the spring of 2008, Jailbreaks, his anthology of Canadian sonnets, was published. Anything But Hank!, the children's book he co-wrote with Lebowitz, with illustrations by Eric Orchard, was published in the fall. In 2009, after moving back to Halifax, Wells published Track & Trace, his second trade collection of poems, with illustrations by renowned graphic artist Seth. Track & Trace was shortlisted for the 2010 Atlantic Poetry Prize. In 2010, he published The Essential Kenneth Leslie, the first collection of Leslie's poems to be published since 1972.

Publications

 * Fool's Errand (chapbook), Charlottetown: Saturday Morning Chapbooks, 2004
 * Unsettled (trade paperpack), Toronto: Insomiac Press, 2004
 * Ludicrous Parole (chapbook), Montreal: Mercutio Press, 2005
 * Huginn & Muninn (lithographed broadside, in collaboration with Margaret Flood), Halifax: privately printed, 2005.
 * Sealift (audio CD), Vancouver: Avatar Records, 2007.
 * Achromatope (letterpress broadside), Victoria: Frog Hollow Press, 2007.
 * After the Blizzard (chapbook), Peterborough: Littlefishcart Press, 2008.
 * Jailbreaks: 99 Canadian Sonnets (anthology, as editor) Emeryville: Biblioasis, 2008.
 * Anything But Hank! (children's book, co-written with Rachel Lebowitz, illustrated by Eric Orchard) Emeryville: Biblioasis, 2008.
 * Track & Trace (trade paperback), Emeryville: Biblioasis, 2009.
 * The Essential Kenneth Leslie (as editor) Erin: The Porcupine's Quill, 2010.